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SaaS Customer Success: Eliminate 'Dead Ends' to Drive Engagement

What if I said there was something you were doing right now that was actively reducing your SaaS customer success? What if that thing you're doing was standing in the way of driving higher levels of engagement and was reducing the amount of expansion revenue you're generating while potentially increasing churn? ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Extreme Customer Insights: A Startup Marketing Secret Weapon

In my first startup marketing job I was given the task of attempting to call a couple hundred customers to try to rustle up a dozen or so customer references. That task opened my eyes to how important customer insight was for our startup's marketing efforts. ...

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Written by April Dunford

Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing

Can You Deliver On Your Brand's Promises?

So yesterday I got an e-mail from a WooThemes customer, which read: "Thank you for your answer! This confirms your superior support reputation." My immediate reaction was to smile, because the customer was happy, and this is something that we proactively strive to achieve at Woo. But then, I realized how easily that could've worked out differently too if the customer didn't have a great experience ...

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Via: Adii
Written by Adii Rockstar

Entrepreneur, co-founder of WooThemes and general creator of

What Does It Replace?

When companies talk about their new product or service, they talk about what it does. Features, bullet points, checkboxes. Maybe, if they're particularly enlightened, they'll shift a bit and talk about what problems it will solve. What normal people tell their friends about a product or service, they talk about what it replaces ...

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Written by Cindy Alvarez

Making people more awesome through building better software.

What is someone going to stop doing when they start using your product?

When you're building a new product, you're often thinking about all the new things people are going to be able to do with it. Now they can do this, now they can do that. Exciting! But there's a better question to ask: What are people going to stop doing once they start using your product? What does your product replace? What are they switching from? How did they do the job ...

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Written by Jason Fried

Founder of 37signals. Co-author of REWORK. Credo: It's simpl

It costs 6-7 times more to acquire new customers over retaining existing ones ...

I deliberately let this commonly repeated statement be the title without qualifying it. Of course statements like these, (this particular one made famous by Loyalty Effect) cannot stand by themselves regardless of how popular the Guru who said this is. Let us look at this closely. ...

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Written by Rags Srinivasan

Practicing Effective Pricing

The paradox of how bugs and downtime can be a good thing

Often if I give a talk or I speak with someone about getting their idea off the ground, the topic of how solid the product should be comes up. In particular, people very frequently wait far too long before launching. One of the key learning for me with Buffer was that the impact of problems people have and downtime they experience are directly tied to how we, as a startup, choose to handle it. ...

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Via: joel.is
Written by Joel Gascoigne

Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th

The Bucket Analogy

Who doesn't love a good story? I know I do. Storytelling has been gaining in popularity in the business world. Following the trend, I've also been using stories to help clients understand user / customer experience better. A lot of times, I find that non-UX stakeholders find it more difficult to make sense of how a particular usability issue affects their bottom line. I've found that using storie ...

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Written by Nirish Shakya

User experience designer, software developer, Room to Read v

Retention causes virality, and vice versa

This sounds pretty straightforward: Make sure your product is retaining your users, THEN work on growth. Don't work on growth until your product is working. However, it's an oversimplification. For fundamentally social products, it's hard to separate retention/engagement and virality. Turns out that for fundamentally social products, retention causes virality, and vice versa too. ...

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Written by Andrew Chen

Bay Area entrepreneur, blogger, formerly in online ads and v

Steve Jobs' Unfortunate Contribution to Product Development

We're all very well aware of Steve Jobs' contributions to technology and society. Without Steve, and Apple, we would all be using Motorola Razors or some other "cool" phone (ah, those were the days) or tablets would be just a failed Microsoft project.But there's one thing that Mr. Jobs has indirectly contributed to that I'm not a big fan of. ...

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Written by Pasan Premaratne

Expert Teacher at @treehouse, husband to @hpremaratne, autho

Are You Providing Answers to Magic Questions?

The best kind of visitor is the one looking to buy. She knows what she wants and has a credit card in her hand. Now it's your job to seal the deal. If you're dealing with a motivated customer, you just need to make taking action easy and present a competitive and compelling offer - and answer the magic questions. ...

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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

10 Things To Know About The Single Ease Question (SEQ)

The Single Ease Question (SEQ) is a 7-point rating scale to assess how difficult users find a task. It's administered immediately after a user attempts a task in a usability test. ...

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Written by Jeff Sauro

Please follow @MeasuringU this account is no longer used.

Why Listening is Hard and How to Think Critically

Listening is hard - The most obvious reason why we focus so much on monitoring and jump into analyzing is that listening is hard. ...

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Written by Valeria Maltoni

Sr. Director Strategy, Empathy Lab. [Make sense. Make do. Ma

Marketing Funnel is The Role of Customer Service

The marketing funnel (sometimes called the purchase funnel or customer funnel) maps a consumer's journey toward the purchase of a product or service. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the stages of that journey and how to maximize the number who make it from one stage to the next. ...

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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

What's Your Biggest Problem?

Try asking your members this. Create the thread, turn it into a sticky thread, include it in your mailing list, add your own problem, and see what response you get. ...

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Written by Richard Millington

Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy

Customer Retention is the key to Long-term Profitability

Profitability is one goal that most of the SaaS CEOs who ask me for help all share. Though, while they're all focused on achieving profitability, how that is measured varies from company to company. For the sake of this post we'll consider profitability to be achieved once the Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) have been paid back ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Better Customer Service with Snippets

When used appropriately, snippets can improve the level of service you provide to your customers, helping you to quickly handle the eighty percent of cases that require routine support, giving you more time to focus on the twenty percent of cases that might need advanced troubleshooting and a more detailed response. ...

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Written by Ben McCormack

Becoming a better version of myself. I do the CrossFit/Paleo

Why we don’t like Net Promoter, and what we used instead

A few reasons why I don't like Net Promoter (at least for us as a B2B SaaS provider) and think it shouldn't be used as a growth predictor ...

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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

How I Increased Support Requests 600%

Wait what? INCREASED support requests? Isn't our goal at startups to reduce the support requests? After all, support requests means time taken away from developing code right? ...

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Written by James Panderson

Startup guy, Founder of BudgetSimple, Soccer player, beer dr

3 Simple Ways to Gain Product Insight

With the rise of social media, it's never been easier to conduct simple market research with a little bit of collaboration and creativity. Here are three simple ways that you can effectively use social media to gather market research without the resources, cost and time. ...

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Written by Dhara Naik

social media enthusiast with a passion for health education,

How do I raise prices?

What *exactly* should you do when you want to raise prices, especially on existing customers? ...

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Written by Jason Cohen

Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me!

10x Price Increase and Happier Customers

They raised their prices 10x and they made their customers HAPPIER! So I just had one of my quarterly Progress Check and Planning sessions with a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member - we'll call him "Larry" - who told me since they moved away from Freemium just 4 months ago to a Premium-only SaaS offering with a Free Trial they are now profitable and are on track to do $100,000 in revenue this mon ...

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Written by Lincoln Murphy

I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu

Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours)

This has to be one of my favorite customer development tips: using Mechanical Turk to do customer interviews. Nick Soman, Founder of LikeBright, and I discuss how he used Mechanical Turk to interview 100 customers in 4 hours, and how that got him into TechStars Seattle. ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Feedback / How To /
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Written by Justin Wilcox

Entrepreneur-ish

Reward Early Feedback With Features

I've invested in hundreds of companies that have started from scratch and I've been though some crazy number of product launches, especially if you include all of the TechStars companies I've been involved with. These alphas, or betas, or v1.0 or v0.1 launches are exciting moments as they signify the transition from an idea to a product. And, it's at that point that the real work begins. ...

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Written by Brad Feld

I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder,

How Your Customers Hold The Key That Unlocks Your Amazing Product

Was it as amazing as you hoped for? I don't mean kinda-sorta amazing, I mean riding in on a unicorn with rainbows shooting out of its eyes amazing. Probably not. And if it did, the product you bought before that certainly didn't. ...

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Written by Lars Lofgren

Lars Lofgren helps businesses grow their profits using onlin

The Value of a Raving Fan

Maximizing revenue and keeping costs down is the name of the game in business school but don't forget the value of praises sung. Calculate that value and ask yourself every day, "Did I have the opportunity to create another fan?" ...

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Written by Lisa Gerber

Chief Content Officer of Spin Sucks, Idaho expat in Chicago.

Stop spending money on marketing that you could spend on keeping customers

I recently read this thought-provoking article from the very sharp Andrew Chen. He bravely tackles the prickly debate of startups with a business model vs startups without a business model. His conclusion tries to simplify the whole situation: yes, business model is important...it's just not that hard. ...

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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

How to be a better (beta) user

Many of us tend to get pissed the moment Facebook changes something, or Twitter adds promoted tweets, or Instagram sells itself, or Lore doesn't work. Count me among them. But are we entitled to get that upset? We receive these services for free and enjoy a multitude of benefits from using them. ...

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Written by Edward Boches

Marketer, Blogger, Believer in Sharing, Chief Innovation Off

Marketing Choices: Does The Customer Come First?

If you ask most companies, they are all on board. Nobody ever says they put their customers last. No one readily admits that customers are a necessary evil. Few people ever come straight and say that almost every business decision they make is all about sales and never about customers. Or maybe they do. ...

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Written by Richard Becker

Rich at Copywrite, Ink. Editor, LiquidHip. CTO, CelebratingL

[Case Study] How To Value Customer Feedback

So many marketers have this received wisdom about online surveys being a great alternative because they are fast and cheap. But there is an enormous benefit to doing online surveys the right way, making an investment in all segments of your customer base, and creating a virtuous circle between the desire to share information with your brand, and the desire to spread information about your brand wi ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Feedback /
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Wrong Question -> Wrong Answer

At the heart of what we do is The Hypothesis. Getting the hypothesis right is the first key to validating (or invalidating) our assumptions underlying our entire startup. If you get out of the building with a bad hypothesis, you won't hear anything valuable from your customers. ...

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Written by Victor Lombardi

product manager/designer/foodie/musician/husband/father and

The Key To Customer Loyalty

If you don't form relationships, your customers will just want discounts. If consumers share values with your brand, you can spend less on messaging, less on discounting, and you're less affected by the turbulent economy. ...

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Written by Peep Laja

I make websites sell. Conversion optimization pro. Founder o

Your First Question is Usually Wrong

The first question you want to ask your customers is usually not the question you want answered. For some reason, our first instinct is to ask a question that is one or two or three steps removed from the actual information we want. I can't tell you why this is, but I can tell you I've seen it every time I work with someone to get user research done. ...

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Written by Cindy Alvarez

Making people more awesome through building better software.

Marketing Is NOT About Relationships

"Marketing is about relationships" is a common phrase on blogs or Twitter. Unfortunately, it is also very misleading. Here are three reasons marketing should not be developing relationships and what marketing needs to do instead. ...

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Written by Eric Wittlake

Focus: Digital Media & Marketing for B2B. Belief: Marketing

UX designers - Have You Tried Talking To Your Customers?

Anyone who works in UX has had experience of watching clients fight over "What The Users Want". Talking to your customers is one of the most important things you can do as an app developer/owner, so shouldn't it be easy? ...

Tags: Feedback / UI/UX /
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Written by Des Traynor

COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi

Every Mistake is an Opportunity to Surprise and Delight

Everyone and every organization makes mistakes. But if you can follow up those mistakes with a little (or a lot) of surprise and delight, you can not only erase the mistakes - you can create fans for life. How much is that worth to you? ...

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Written by Dave Kerpen

Father. Husband to @CarrieKerpen. CEO @LikeableMedia, social

Customer satisfaction isn’t just about answering email, it’s also about croissants

As I waited in line, I noticed a cashier who wasn't manning a register or getting food for customers. Odd thing during their rush, right? Shouldn't they be trying to help with the immense line? Turns out she was cutting up a chocolate croissant to put out as samples. The samples sit right next to the line. All the folks tapping their feet and checking their watch now had a new focus: delicious, f ...

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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

Measuring the Customer Experience: Questions and Answers

The ultimate business metric is revenue but it's a lagging indicator. You can't do anything about last quarter's profits. You want to find some leading indicator of growth which is why the Net Promoter Score is popular. For many companies growth is measured by positive word of mouth and NPS tracks that reasonably well. ...

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Written by Jeff Sauro

Please follow @MeasuringU this account is no longer used.

If Customers Ask for More Choice, Don't Listen

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz's warns that giving consumers more product choices actually lowers their purchase satisfaction. Schwartz reasons that having too many options makes us fear missing out, which causes anxiety, analysis paralysis and regret. ...

Tags: Feedback /
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Balancing conviction and feedback – a key skill for entrepreneurs

I think that one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur is figuring out who to listen to and when to take feedback on board. At the earliest stages there may well be precious few people who understand what you do well enough to provide constructive criticism ...

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Written by Nic Brisbourne

I'm a VC in London

Getting Feedback On Products/Services From A Community

Let's split community feedback on your products/services into two types; prompted and unprompted. Prompted feedback happens when you ask members to give you feedback. Forum questions, surveys, focus groups etc are all prompted feedback. Unprompted is when it comes up in community discussions (or complaints). ...

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Written by Richard Millington

Founder FeverBee Limited - Online Community Consultancy

Turn Your Company into a Customer Platform

The idea that customers can't or shouldn't participate much in the innovation process is one barrier to creativity that companies are rapidly knocking down. Many firms are rethinking their businesses, envisioning themselves less as providers of internally-created products and services, and more as platforms that allow customers to create their own experience and value. This new view and way of ope ...

Written by Bill Lee

Bill Lee is a business consultant and professional speaker w

Should You Ever Fire A Customer?

It was tough deciding to stop working with this customer especially because we could see that other companies were able to meet this customer's needs. They could do it and we couldn't. It is a tough, tough reality to face, but an incredibly valuable one. ...

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Written by David Feinleib

Investor, operator, and entrepreneur

Making Decisions: Are Consumers In Control?

Eighty percent of startups develop products they never intended, driven by the markets they never intended to enter as dictated by the consumer. Never mind that the figure - 80 percent - was anectodal and unattributed. So what if this so-called 80-20 rule is right? What do you want to do? ...

Tags: Feedback / Ideas /
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Written by Richard Becker

Rich at Copywrite, Ink. Editor, LiquidHip. CTO, CelebratingL

Why customer feedback shouldn’t be an afterthought

Feedback is going to define your company at some point or another, whether you want it or not. Every single company story is one of customer feedback. Apple heard (feedback) that computers (theirs, but moreso Microsoft's) were perceived as complex and confusing. So they re-focused on devices that simply worked and /seemed/ simple. Candy-colored iMacs weren't what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak imagi ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Feedback /
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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

Focus on Delighting Early Customers Over Accumulating Followers

Too many "viral launch" strategies require a prospective user or customer to tweet or e-mail friends or post a badge on their blog before they have had a chance to experience any aspect of the service. ...

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Written by Sean Murphy

New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

Vaccinate Yourself Against Crappy Customer Feedback

The occasional batshit insane customer email, which, if you care about your business, can be terribly upsetting, because you can't help but think What did I do wrong?? and your natural instinct is to engage and try to fix it. This is often a mistake. For starters, you often can't fix it, because the customer has a serious problem... and it's not your product. ...

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Written by Amy Hoy

I put the Amy in anomaly. Bootstrapper, product crusader, Ru

Why talking about your outages and issues might MAKE you money

You need to admit to your customers when something goes wrong - because they value honesty more than they hate issues. People prefer honesty from their partners, their friends, and their companies. An honest company is one you can trust ...

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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

I Don't Know What's Wrong with Your Product

It is an unfortunate fact that many startups talk to people like me (or their investors or their advisors or "industry experts") instead of talking to their users. ...

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Written by Laura Klein

Principal at Users Know. Director of Product & UX at One J

How We Saved Millions (and got an 800% ROI) By Asking Customers 5 Simple Questions

You can save money AND increase customer satisfaction. You can make higher profits AND create an awesome customer retention machine. Just by asking customers 5 simple questions (And of course, writing down, sorting, trending, and analyzing what you find out). ...

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Written by Terry St. Marie

Writer, Husband, Friend, Entrepreneur. I write about (and h

A word on idea protectability

Ever so often, I get asked a question like "Should I be worried about telling people my idea?" The question almost always comes from first-time entrepreneurs. It's a commonly blogged about topic among entrepreneurs and VC's, but I'd like to add in my two cents. ...

Tags: Feedback / Ideas /
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Written by Nat Turner

Co-founder of Flatiron Health. Previously Co-Founder/CEO of

Empower your customer service representatives, win like Zappos

When your company is small, it's easy to improvise to delight your customers. You know most of them. You remember them. And you know each member of your customer service team well (and could probably hit them with a paper airplane from where you're sitting). Joe from Company X wants a discount? Sure. Fred from Company Y is going to be in town? Have him come by for a beer! ...

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Written by Evan Hamilton

Head of Community @UserVoice in San Francisco, singer in the

How Getting Rejected By Founder Collective Helped Save Our Startup

In January 2010, I remember shakingFounder Collective's Eric Paley's hand after pitching Yipit to him for an hour and struggling to smile as we left his office. The meeting had been a complete disaster. Founder Collective wasn't going to be investing. Maybe nobody would. I remember thinking I had been so foolish for having been excited just a few hours before. ...

Tags: Feedback / Funding /
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Written by Vinicius Vacanti

Co-Founder and CEO of @Yipit. Sharing lessons learned as a f

Don't Be A Knee-Jerk When It Comes to Feedback

Putting work in front of people for criticism is pretty hard. After all, who wants to expose something they've poured their blood, sweet and tears to criticism? Who likes hearing where they've gone wrong? But we need constructive feedback to improve our designs, our products. We need good feedback or we risk failure. ...

Tags: Feedback /
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Written by Ryan Thomas Riddle

Editor @ZURB, Writer, Educator, and occasional Starship Com

The Value in Wowing Your Customers

At Rackspace an employee on the phone with a customer during a troubleshooting session heard the customer tell someone in the background that they were getting hungry. As she tells it, "So I put them on hold, and I ordered them a pizza. About 30 minutes later we were still on the phone, and there was a knock on their door. I told them to go answer it because it was pizza! They were so excited." ...

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Written by Fred Reichheld

Early Customer Feedback Can Lead to a Death Spiral

For most new high-tech products, the first customers are always "early adopters." The conventional wisdom is that early adopters are the ideal target for new products, to get business rolling. I see two pitfalls with any concerted focus on early adopters; first, the size of this group may not be as large as you think, [...] ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Feedback /
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Written by Marty Zwilling

Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro

Honor Customer Commitments To Avoid Poisoning the Well

I fear the long-term effect of all these acqui-hires is my potential customers saying "No thanks. I doubt you geeks will be around in 18 months” when I market to them." ...

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Written by Sean Murphy

New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

Why Complaints Are Gifts

Let's face it; it's no fun when someone complains. Some people, the saying goes, just like to complain. Best to give them what they want and send them away, right?  Not really.  Complaints can provide such valuable market feedback that you'll want to include strategies in your business plan for dealing with them. .. ...

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Written by Rolfe Larson

All things social enterprise/social ventures, author Venture

You Can Keep Your I Love Yous

The greatest gift you can give an entrepreneur is creative criticism. The greatest skill an entrepreneur can have is critical listening. I was going to write a long post (and now that I have started writing, I will probably end up being long-winded) about how, as an entrepreneur, you have to cut through the positive ...

Tags: Feedback /
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Written by Micah Baldwin

Why User Experience Is Different From Consumer Experience

Forrester recently released a report on the rise of the Chief Customer Officer. The emergence of a C-level role with authority over customers' interactions has caused much hand-wringing within the UX community. It's like the job (we think) we're made for has been stolen from us. ...

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Written by Johnny holland

Don't ask customers what they'll pay: tell them

An optimal price is one that is accepted but not without some initial resistance. It is your job to both set that price and convince the customer... Pricing is considered more art than science but in the next series of posts I'd like to explore tactics for demystifying how to set and test pricing. ...

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Written by Ash Maurya

Orders of Magnitude: Power Users vs. Mainstream Users

Yes, you "know" that your power users are different (more vocal, more active, more tech-savvy, more exploratory) than your mainstream users. But do you know HOW MUCH different they are? Chances are, they're not 10% more active.  They're not 20% more expert. It's probably more like 100%.  200%.  500%. ...

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Written by Cindy Alvarez

Making people more awesome through building better software.

We're Running Completely Blind

I had a big realization yesterday: I don't know anything. I'm talking about Airtime for Email. I know that people are interested in it. We've had almost 100 businesses sign up since launch. I know it's a validated idea - we have paying customers. Knowing that kind of thing just tells me that I should keep working on Airtime. But the problem is that I have no idea WHAT I should be doing. ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Feedback /
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Written by Dan Shipper

UPenn junior. Co-Founder at @UseFirefly. Jets fan.

Managing the Right Customer Experience Measure

If you can't measure the customer experience, you can't manage it. Improving the customer experience starts with measuring. But you've got to be sure you're getting the right measure (or usually measures) to manage. ...

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Written by Jeff Sauro

Please follow @MeasuringU this account is no longer used.

Understanding your users - Jonathan Briggs

In this talk, Jonathan leads us through his years of experience with user modelling, some formal and some less so. What he has learned and is keen to impart is that too often we don't think of "users" as real people. He gives the example of the Google image search for "user" in which the first page of results returns an army of featureless icons. These aren't people, he explains. "This monochromat ...

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Written by Hack FWD

We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and

Customer Centric Trumps Customer Service Every Time

New product startups rightfully begin with a heads-down focus on creating the ultimate product – whether it’s a new technology, a new look and ease of use, or a new low-cost delivery approach. Most then add customer service at the rollout, but very few really understand what it means to be truly customer centric, and [...] ...

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Written by Marty Zwilling

Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro

Our frictionless way to collect user feedback and the unexpected impact it had

How do you measure how much your users like your product? This is one of the essential question that every founder needs to answer to make the right decisions - to move the product ahead. In some lean startup related discussion I stumbled accross the idea of asking your users if they were sad if the used product would vanish. As the lean startup is all about validating assumptions based on data ...

Tags: Cust-Dev / Feedback /
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Written by Marcus Kuhn

Announcing Change without Inducing Panic

Your product will change. You’re going to have to communicate those changes to your customers. How you do this can make the difference between “a few angry Tweets” and “death threats from your community” That last point may bear repeating — 9 times out of 10, it’s not what you changed that makes customers angry. [...] ...

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Written by Cindy Alvarez

Making people more awesome through building better software.

You Suck! And How to Handle Other Negative Feedback

Negative feedback hurts. It’s easy to take personally and get offended. It’s easy to dismiss too. But negative feedback is a lot better than no feedback at all. The worst thing for a startup -at any stage- is crickets. ...

Tags: Feedback /
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Written by Ben Yoskovitz

VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder

How to reward users for opting-in, signing up, visiting a page and more!

Many of our users still don’t realize that there are almost 20 additional actions you can reward-enable using ... ...

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Written by Angela Sanfilippo

Silicon Valley marketer, Auntie to 5, animal lover, left and

Customer Relationships Are a Two Way Street

More companies are adopting the Net Promoter Score as a means of measuring client or customer delight. It’s becoming the currency– more important, if truly indoctrinated, than any bottom line. Delighted customers are promoters, advocates for your brand who potentially cost less and do more than legions of sales and marketing teams combined. It’s a win win theory at at time when b ...

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Texting is Killing Real Business Communication

Whether it’s a business or personal interaction, multiple studies show that as much as 50-65% of the communication is nonverbal. That means that people who are addicted to text messaging and email may be sending only half the message, and receivers often misinterpret even that half. Yet the use of text messaging for business purposes continues to grow, in concert with more of Gen-Y enterin ...

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Written by Martin Zwilling

Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro

How to Turn Complaints Into Compliments

One of the things that many businesses fear about being online is that they will open the door to people publicly criticizing them, their products, or their services. But it doesn’t matter whether your business is online or not – if your customers are online, then people will still be talking about you! I have [...] ...

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Written by Kristi Hines

I am a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusias

The holy grail of marketing is loyalty

The holy grail of marketing is loyalty. Every marketing plan includes a flow chart on how to migrate consumers from awareness to trial to repeat to loyalty. Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts even defines a brand as “loyalty beyond reason”. Yet many brands approach loyalty primarily through loyalty programs and loyalty cards that bear little relationship to true loyalty. It’s “loyal ...

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Written by Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist and Founder of Marketoon Studios (http://market

Going Global by Going Local: Why localization improves engagement

While a global presence is necessary for any organization hoping to connect with customers around the world, placing reliance on one prevailing strategy is just the beginning. In any web strategy, including social and also mobile media, localization is king. ...

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Written by Brian Solis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Solis

The Problem With "No Problem"

“No problem” is almost universal in service industries today. “Can I get a refill?” “No problem.” “Could you transfer this money from my checking account to my savings account?” “No problem.” “Thanks.”  “No problem.” It may seem innocuous, but it … Continue reading → ...

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Building products from improvised user behaviors

For a long time, there were niche communities of “lo-fi” camera enthusiasts: people who enjoyed photos taken on old cameras that had interesting ways of filtering shots. The iPhone app Hipstamatic popularized lo-fi filters, selling over 1M copies. Because Hipstamatic lacked sharing features, many users took pictures with Hipstamatic and then shared those pictures using othe ...

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Written by Chris Dixon

Founder & investor

Social Business Is About Actions Not Words

A cried a little on a plane last week. It wasn’t due to a delay, an uncomfortable seat, or peanut salt getting in my eye. It was because I saw a shining example of “social business” at work in the real world. Mid-way on a Southwest Airlines flight home from a speaking engagement in Ft. ...

Written by Jay Baer

Hype-free social media strategist & keynote speaker. Tequila

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