Are Your Customers PASSIONATE About You?
I seriously doubt it... I'm talking about being really crazy over you ... fanatical to the extent where they excitedly promote the use of your products... thrilled enough to go out of their way to pen a blog post or Tweet or however else comes to mind to market you over the social and business networks.
Well, here's me being fanatical, and it's not about your business or your product. Here's me affirming my obsession for Apple.
For such a long time, I was a huge follower of Microsoft and Windows. For years, I opposed the allure of switching to Apple. But now I'm a new man. I've gone Apple, and I'm all in. If Steve Jobs decides he's going to to start producing kitchen sinks, I will invest in them. He's got me and he's got me good. I invest more money with Apple than I ever did with Microsoft, and I've got my entire family spending too.
Now I realize this narrative is becoming a cliche. I don't give a fig. I'm ardent enough about Apple and what Steve Jobs has accomplished to build up the state of technology so I'm going to write about it anyhow.
So it all started out, like so many of us, with the iPhone a couple of years back. After 10 years of us all waiting for the nirvana of smartphones becoming a user-experience delight, it was Jobs who eventually made good on it. He was the first to work out how to conceive a phone that just about anyone can use. And I mean anyone, such as my 18-month old son (at the time), who discovered in a matter of days the best way to navigate the settings to turn on wireless; and a few more days to figure out how to navigate to the kid games section of the App store to download a game (the only thing he hasn't discovered is my App store password, thank goodness!).
Then came my first encounter with customer service at the Apple Store. My iPhone 4 was having issues with the proximity detection, and thus letting my cheek to determine when to mute the phone. I took the phone to the store without first confirming if the mobile phone had the most current update. "No problem sir... I'll just give you a new refurbished handset so you don't have to wait". Right there and then, I experienced the delights of agreeable customer service.
Compare that to my experience with Dell around the same time. The trackpad on my wife's 10 month old laptop broke. It took two weeks of intermittent calls to Dell support in India; remote access and driver updates; online chat; voicemails; yada yada yada. The trackpad is still broken, and my wife will be getting a new Mac shortly.
Next came the iPad... Now my 81 year old mother who has never, ever used a computer before is sending emails, going on Facebook and Netflixing away like there's no tomorrow. My favorite scene is watching my now three year old son instructing my 81 year old mother just how to download apps. Hail Jobs!
Next I buy the new Mac Air. Wow!!! If you've never experienced the opening splash screen on a Mac, it's worth buying one just for that. Since then, I haven't been more content using a laptop computer. Good riddance to Windows and its unending versions. Never again to Windows Updates. Never again to downloading countless drivers to get the Sony Vaio to work right with Windows 7.
So are your clients enthusiastic about you? Prove it to me by sending me a post like this one about your company.
I believe that expansion stage software companies spend very little time focusing on delighting their consumers through exceptionally designed user experiences and even less on creating client support with the goal of leaving each customer interaction with a pleased customer. And I must confess that we at OpenView Venture Partners also don't do enough. We tend to concentrate much of our time mentoring software CEOs on sales and marketing processes and content marketing... and less on how to create experiences that would thrill customers. It is time to change that. Watch out for our next forum, hosted by OpenView Labs.
So what can you share with us about how you have excited your clients?
Firas Raouf is a Venture Partner at OpenView.
