When John Deere & Company pulled back the curtain on its Big Reveal event Tuesday morning, CONEXPO attendees saw the new Chatterbox – visible proof of John Deere’s commitment to bringing customer-driven value to its equipment line-up by listening to what they have to say.
The next configuration of John Deere’s customer advocate group participation, the Chatterbox will be used to actively seek out contractors’ ideas and opinions at dealer events and on actual jobsites.
John Deere said that sharing these real-people comments with its design and engineering teams will result in new products and services that reflect what their customers really want and need in their construction equipment.
Built on a fifth-wheel platform, the easily towed John Deere-yellow Chatterbox is a custom-designed mobile recording studio in which customers are invited to express their opinions, complaints and praise of John Deere's equipment and services. The two-room unit features a welcoming reception area in the front and the Green Room – a video recording space – in the back.
Customers settle in to a familiar operator-style cab seat and begin a pre-loaded list of prompts on a digital machine control-style touch screen. Customers can select an input channel such as ‘Equipment’ and follow the screen dialogue to fill-in-the-blank questions like, “The type of equipment my company uses most is ____.” Participants read the question aloud, adding their own response at the blanks.
For customers looking for a more open-form forum, John Deere included the ‘I just want to rant’ channel. As customers work through the touch screen list of questions, John Deere records each response for future use by design engineers, support service departments and customer advocate groups.
John Deere did several pilots last year with the Chatterbox at two dealerships in Florida and Tennessee, and at a Florida jobsite, to get the opinions of on-the-job operators.
