Plenty of companies say customers come first. But at LG Corp., the phrase is much bigger than a simple mantra. Over the past five years, the Korean conglomerate’s Chairman and CEO Koo Kwang-mo has gone the extra mile to build on the company’s 75-year tradition of creating valuable experiences for customers. This year’s LG Awards served as a testament to Koo’s commitment to advancing LG’s legacy, fostering customer-centric innovation and working toward a brighter future for all.
The 2023 LG Awards held in April at LG’s in-house training center, Inhwawon, highlighted the ideas that stem from actively listening to customer needs. Notably, it emphasized the importance of catering to the MZ generation (comprising millennials and Gen Z) consumers for future growth and included their representation on the jury that selected the award winners.
The ceremony recognized innovations that benefit customers, including Braille stickers for customers with low vision and user-friendly products for those with limited motor skills, earning LG Electronics’ Customer Value Innovation Center the Customer Impression Grand Prize. The Farm Hannong Team also received the Customer Inspiration Award for their groundbreaking solution to combat tree diseases using bio-control methods. These solutions may not generate significant profits, but they greatly benefit customers and demonstrate how much LG values innovations that enhance its customers’ lives.
Koo personally congratulated the winners and took the opportunity to express his appreciation for the thoughtful innovations and the people behind them who consistently embody LG’s unique customer-focused values in their work. He also emphasized that LG’s business success naturally stems from these customer-centered efforts and challenges, adding, “It’s not just major technological or business achievements that satisfy us. It’s also about small, meaningful experiences that create long-term value for each customer.”
LG’s Unique Customer Value Strategy
The Making Of A New Management Philosophy
Creating meaningful experiences is not a quick accomplishment. It requires continuous, steadfast effort. When he assumed office in 2018, Koo made customer value a central focus, instilling it as a company-wide passion and source of pride. As he rolled up his sleeves to begin the hard work of reshaping the company’s business portfolio for future growth, he ensured that LG’s number one principle, Creating Value for Customers, also got a makeover to remain relevant and future-proof.
New phrases like “making a meaningful difference in customers’ lives,” “anticipating and fulfilling customer needs proactively,” and “consistently innovating and improving,” were introduced and put into practice throughout the company. These principles laid the groundwork for the coming years of careful planning and investing, methodically positioning LG toward the creation of new future growth engines.
Stronger Consumer Messaging Every Year
A strong and direct focus on customer needs became a key facet of LG’s approach. Koo kicks off every new year with a keynote address to the company’s employees, reinforcing the importance of delivering outstanding customer value through consistent messages. In 2020, he called on his teams to work hard at identifying and addressing customer pain points, calling them the essential building blocks for developing customer value. In 2021, he emphasized the importance of establishing a meaningful understanding of customers and encouraged greater empathy through micro-segmentation.
By 2022, LG was already deep into a transformative journey aimed at introducing new experiences to the marketplace with real customer appeal. Koo’s overarching objective was to create products and services so innovative and compelling that LG’s customers would never want to set them aside for competing alternatives. “LG can establish itself as a company that customers really love when we fully commit to embodying customer-centric values,” he says, calling on his teams to “come together around the single mission of always finding ways to captivate and inspire our customers.”
Embracing Change On All Fronts
The impressive waves of transformation have reached the shores of LG’s regional affiliates too, accelerating change that is also aimed at delivering exceptional customer value. In addition to making organizational changes, LG’s affiliates started working to build platforms that actively utilize technologies such as AI and big data to enhance customer value. The genesis of the move came in a New Year’s speech, with Koo speaking to teams about the importance of “reflecting customer insights into products and services with concrete value in as many ways as possible,” emphasizing that “new digital technologies like AI and big data will definitely help us.”
A powerful case in point is the new system LG Electronics began creating in 2020 to gather information about how people use their products. The ThinQ platform is used to analyze usage data to identify ways to make improvements in upcoming product versions. That innovation led directly to the release of LG Up appliances, which can be updated with new features even after purchase, making them feel brand new all the time.
Last year, LG Chem stepped to the forefront of the petrochemical industry with another first when it launched a digital platform called LG Chem On. The focus here was on its enterprise clientele. Unlike the traditional way of meeting customers in person, LG Chem On allows customers to easily find LG Chem’s products online. The system was the direct result of meetings with more than 500 customers as it gained insight into key pain points. Today, a customer can visit LG Chem On virtually and quickly buy the materials they need to produce parts with just a few clicks—a major innovation in the enterprise space.
Elevating Customer Value From Within
In this remarkable transformation journey, LG has moved beyond typical “customers come first” storytelling, instead choosing to embody a profound commitment to its customers that sets it apart. Koo’s leadership in creating customer value has evolved into a company-wide passion and a source of immense pride for LG, signaling a future full of bold narratives where the company continues to realize its customers’ dreams.
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