Before I start, I should let you know that this really is all common sense stuff. I really wanted to write this down though so I can refer people to it when I promote my sharing use case at work. I get frustrated continually talking about what I am about to discuss below, so I thought I would write it down!
As a customer of a web service I want to know that if I have feedback to provide to a web service that it will be acted on. Even if I have nothing to say about a web service I use, I want to know that I am able to make suggestions should I feel the need arise. For this reason I love web services that provide an ample distribution of services to allow their Customers get in touch with them. Communities such as twitter and Facebook, as well as many other social networks, make the development of such Customer feedback services almost free. Sure answering the comments and calls to actions on such forums is not free but managing this cost should be welcomed by the developer of services, as put simply, this means you have Customers engaging with your service who are willing to take the time to get in touch with you.
A Customer who can make a suggestion that is acted on, or get immediate help about using a web service when they have an issue, might become a loyal Customer. There is of course no guarantee. The only way to generate Customer evangelism of your service is by making Customers loyal to your service such that they come back again and again. This means that the improvements that they suggest, if valid, need to be acted on. Delivering continual product improvement keeps Customers interested in the service as they have the chance to explore new features and find out how they can use them in their every day lives. If it’s a feature they have requested then this will drive Customer loyalty even further. That being said even usable features can become stale so continual product improvement, i.e. continual product development, is the only way to keep a Customer loyal and create new Customers. Even an evangelic Customer will have trouble promoting a feature that they have been using for months. What they will promote is your new feature, especially if it helps them improve the usage of your service. Of course you are going to hear nothing but complaints if it decreases the joy of their usage of your product! This is a good thing though! Active and angry customers can generate positive improvements in your service as long as you are able to address their needs. This you do via your continual product evolution process.
Of course it is not going to be possible to implement every new feature request, or address every angry complaint or rant, the following day, but a quick, and personal response, i.e. not generated by a machine, saying “Thanks for your feedback, we are looking into this…” will allow the Customer to feel they have an impact on your product. This promotes a sense of ownership of the product. Allow the Customer to feel they are the owner of the product, and their opinion counts, then wow you are well on the way to creating a Customer who will become an evangelist of your service. If you ‘ping them off’ (Note in this case ‘ping them off’ does not mean delete ;-) ) a note when you have implemented their feature request or fixed their issue, asking them if the work you have done is OK, then wow, as long as you are up for the long term relationship, you have a Customer for life!
Of course at some stage the overhead of managing this relationship becomes a real cost burden, but wow what a problem to have. If you have too many queries to address and too many feature requests to add, then you have a service that is actively used by a load of Customers and you are doing something right. Hopefully a mass of Customers also equates to increased revenue ;-). Start developing forums to allow the many users of your service to address their issues by themselves. As the developer of a service you can then allow your evangelists to help you and allow them to become a further and integral part of the product community. It would also help if you rewarded these evangelists somehow. There are many mechanisms to do this from promoting them as super users, or indeed if you actually have a physical product, give them one for their hard work. As an example if you are a mobile network you could reward loyal Customer evangelists with a free mobile contract or even a free handset.
There is a complete flipside to this concept of Customer loyalty and evangelism as well. As a developer, at least for me, the key concern about your product is that in the end it is being used. You might not agree with every feature you are asked to implement, but as long as you know that it is being used by Customers that you are actually able to provide for, then there is a strong chance that you will be a loyal Customer yourself. If you can create happy and loyal Customers, in almost all cases you will create a happy, loyal development team. This will create a belief in the development team that they can excel and deliver above what is expected as they will be able to get instantaneous Customer feedback. Actually hearing a Customer likes your product is such a powerful incentive to deliver something that is great. Hearing that your Customer doesn’t like your product is not so great, but as long as you can share and communicate with them, this should provide a driven team to deliver improvements above the minimum required. I would like to address this in more detail though in a later blog.
Of course this is a simplistic view of the concept of creating a loyal Customer who actually chooses to use your product over someone else’s. However if you want to add value to a Customer experience on the internet, in my view, the only way to do this is create Customer loyalty which can then possibly translate into evangelism. The only way you can do this is by promoting the concept of Customer ownership of a service by providing mechanisms for Customers to feel that their input, and therefore time spent, on a service is truly valued.
Of course you can also choose to not communicate with your Customers. Where do you think Customer isolation will get you though?
In my view, every product that is developed the concept of how the Customer can actually feel as though they are the owner of a service needs to be addressed first. Of course the actual product feature itself is clearly important, but if a Customer cannot easily share the product experience, be that good or bad, with the developers of the product as well as their friends, then it doesn’t matter how good the product experience is. To stick out in a very crowded market, Customers, should they choose to, must be able to feel they belong.
That’s it for now. As I said at the top of this blog, I really think this is common sense, but all too often you see products that do not allow for the web community to embrace them.
Cheers
M
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