Month: June 2007
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Software as a service
One of the hot topics these days is the concept of “Software as a service” (Saas). Earlier this decade, there was a lot of hype around ASP (Application Service Providers) and when the dot com bust happened, ASP was one of the victims. Though ASP and SaaS are not exactly…
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Bazaar Buzz – New title for the blog
Well I am not good at naming things and that becomes obvious given how many times I have renamed my blog. It started with “Temple of the customer” – agreed a mouthful, then went to a bland and generic “Voice of the customer”. I think I have finally settled for…
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Powerpoint turns 20
Well, the big news this week is how the software that is respected, loved, hated all at the same time depending on who you talk to, turned 20 years old. 20 years after Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin rolled out Powerpoint 1.0 for Macs in 1987, Powerpoint remains the most…
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Business Card Innovation
As I had mentioned in one of my previous posts on Incremental Innovations, you come across some simple product innovations that make you say Wow, why didn’t someone think about that before? This weekend, I attended the TieCon East Conference at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. There I met…
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Hear the “user vocabulary” – Voice of the Customer Tip #5
How many times have you read marketing brochures, datasheets etc. shook your head and really wondered what the product that is being described is meant to do? Marketing collateral is full of “flexible, scalable, reliable, robust, next generation, empowering, state of the art, ….” – you get the idea. I…
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Voice of the Customer Tip #4 – Practice active listening
Customers are wishing someone would listen to their needs and concerns, as opposed to talking to them. You sales people, your marketing people, your competitors and everyone else is talking to them about the products they should buy. But companies that are successful listen and observe their customers. So before…
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Voice of the Customer – Tip #3 – Five Why’s
It is very typical while talking to customers that they ask you for a very specific enhancement. As a product manager, you should make sure you do not fall into this trap of accepting that the solution proposed by the customer is what they want. Customers are good at what…
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Voice of the Customer Tip#2 – Role of Explorer
As a product manager, you could be asked to visit customers to help close a sales deal or to trouble shoot a customer problem along with a technical support person. None of these visits can be considered as part of your effort to listen to the voice of the customer.…
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Voice of the Customer Tip #1 – Start with softball questions
Whenever you start talking to users whether it is face-to-face or over the phone, first of all make them feel at ease. Users tend to be a) skeptical whether vendors trying to sell them something int the guise of a conversation and b) fearful of exposing their ignorance of the…
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Listening to the “Voice of the Customer” – Tips
I have been working with customers for the last 11 years in determining their unmet needs and then creating products/solutions to solve those unmet needs. Over these years, I have learnt a lot about how to do these customer interactions while I have made several mistakes. I have decided to…
Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy 