I had the good fortune of having a call with a somewhat angry customer today. Yes….good fortune. As I start to reach out to customers in my new role I am hoping to get one of two reactions:
- I love your software and have received countless benefits and value through it’s implementation and use.
- Your product is killing me!
If customers are not loving your product and pushing you to make it better or screaming at you because it is not working properly that means they have given up and are apathetic about you and your product. As long as your customers still have emotion, engage with them and get to Know Your Customer.
While it is always good to get positive feedback from your customers and delivering value some of the best feedback comes from struggling customers. These customers can provide you with key actionable inputs and feedback that can help drive further value for happy customers and turn around unhappy ones.
As you meet with more and more customers you start to pick up data points that form trends. These trends then can then drive product strategy decisions.
Go to your customers and look for the unhappy ones as much or more than your happy ones and drill into there problem and struggles with your product. Often a turned around customer will be a more engaged, passionate customer than one who was happy to start with
Let me know how it goes for you and make sure you take the angry phone calls before apathy sets in.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The last thing a company wants is for customers to 'voice' their anger with their feet and just walk away. Complaints actually communicate, "I really like you company and want to keep doing business with you, but..."
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