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 the same, many people think they are and call Saas a second incarnation of ASP model. Sucess of services such as salesforce.com has really fueled the success of Saas and everyone seems to be talking about it.

McKinsey recently published a very good article on delivering Saas, which explores the financial, accounting, customer support, developmental and other business and operational implications of Saas. To me, it is a must read for any product manager working in the software industry. The article explores these different implications and calls on all software companies to take Saas very seriously or fear to be left behind. (The article requires registration with McKinsey to get full access, but it is definitely worth the registration process).

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 the new name - “Bazaar Buzz”. Why this name?

Being a marketer, “Bazaar” is what we called the market in India. Given that I am a bring proponent that the market does not live in spreadsheets or fancy powerpoint slides, but where real buyers shop (like the market shown below), I thought that would be a fitting word in the name for my blog. (Picture shown below is from wiki on Union Square Farmers Market)

Then I write about a lot of topics related to product management and marketing and hence the word “Buzz” (please don’t mistake it to represent buzzwords, because I am not a fan of buzzwords).

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 popular presentation software used by everyone from business folks, students and even kids these days.

While Powerpoint is widely blamed for the degradation in presentation skills (read my earlier post on “Presentation skills - do you care about your customers” on how to buck this trend), it is still a very useful tool. I use it very effectively for my presentations (only when needed) and just like any other tool, you cannot blame the tool for its misuse. The way you use it is up to you.

More details on Powerpoint’s ride to a ripe old age can be found in a recent article on the Wall Street Journal.

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 with Alan Chachich, President of BreakThrough NPD. I have known Alan for the last couple of years. When we were catching up on stuff, he handed me his new business card and that is when I discovered this great little product innovation that to me makes a lot of sense and solves a problem I have always had. The back of his business card looks like that shown below (click on the image for a larger view)

Brilliant !! I meet so many people during customer visits, user conferences and other industry conferences. I collect business cards from many people and in many cases I have follow up actions that I need to take. Or in other cases, I want to jot down topics that I have discussed. This is exactly what Alan has done on the back of his business card and in a very professional way. No more messy notes that I leave on the card or elsewhere. I will admit that I don’t know if this is Alan’s original idea or not, but this is the first time I am seeing this and hence I have to give some credit to Alan for it.

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 have always wondered if the folks who write such stuff understand it themselves let alone their customers.

One of the key things to do while listening to customers is making note of words, phrases they use - the vocabulary they use to describe things. If you don’t understand these terms, ask them to explain. Once you start seeing a trend of what words are commonly used, incorporate these terms in your product UI, documentation, in your presentations, in your marketing materials and so on. Communicating to your customers using terms they are familiar with helps you to immediately connect with them. Companies that do this will be able to differentiate themselves (agreed that this is not going to compensate for an inferior product). It is amazing to me how the vast majority of these companies don’t do this. Communicating benefits of your products to your audience is going to be so much simpler if you pay attention to the user vocabulary. It is such common sense to me to do this, but hey who is it that said that common sense is not that common.

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 you call or visit the next customer, commit to listening. I sometimes write “Don’t talk” as a reminder on my note pad so that I constantly remind myself to shut up and listen. After all, we have two ears and one tongue, but unfortunately the latter gets used a whole lot.

There are couple of active listening techniques I use all the time:

1) Paraphrasing - After the customer has told you something, repeat back to the customer what he just told you in your own words. This serves two purposes - tells the customer you were listening and also makes sure that you did get the essence of what the customer told you

2) Followup questions - Ask follow up questions based on what the customer told you. This again reinforces to the customer that you indeed were listening and interested in knowing more about what he just said.

Remember that if you indeed listen to the customer, you will also be building trust and rapport with the customer. Not many people do this and hence you will be the one the customer remembers. After all, it is all about people relationships and not about products. Happy listening !!

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 they do, but cannot be considered as the best people to design your product. As a product manager, it is your job to do a deep dive and find the real pain point for which the customer has proposed the said solution.

This is where the concept of Five why’s come in. I believe this concept has its roots in the six sigma philosophy (though I am sure about this). Nevertheless, the trick is to ask the customer why he is proposing a solution. Keep asking why’s until you really arrive at the root of the problem. It is not necessary that you may have to ask five why’s or that you have to stop at five, but the idea is to make sure that you keep probing until you fully understand the customer’s real problem that needs to be solved. Some simple examples on 5 why’s can be found on the isixsigma site.

Before you do this, I have found that it is important that you let the customer at the start of your interview that you would be asking some basic questions (or the why’s) during the interview. Let them know that this is only to make sure that you fully understand their problem. The last thing you want the customer to think is that you are questioning his/her judgement or that you getting defensive based on their input. So I always make it a point to tell this to the customer right at the outset (lay the ground rules first to make sure everyone is on the same page).

Once you truly understand the problem, you can engage the smart people in your development team to come up with the best possible solution to solve the problem. Be ready to be surprised that in some cases, the solution proposed by the customer has nothing to do with the real problem. In fact, in some cases it may even make the customer’s problem worse. You are the expert in your product and it is up to you to figure out how to solve the customer’s problems in the best way.

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. This is because in either of these cases, you role is to overcome the customer’s objections to close the deal or to find workarounds to the problem faced by the customer. In both of these cases, you are not listening to the unmet need of the customer, you are trying to sell or get your product to work. You are the one who is doing the talking.

When you visit customers to listen to their voice, you should be listening and not talking. Human beings cannot do both of this at the same time (sales people may think otherwise !). When you are visiting customers to listen to them, your role is that of an explorer. You have to keep your eyes and ears open. Customers do not always tell you the whole story, not because they are withholding information, but in many cases sometimes they themselves do not recognize the pain points they have. It is up to you as an explorer, to ask the right questions and to get the customer to tell you their real problems (not solutions) that if solved would create a product differentiation for your product.

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 product you are talking to them about (you hear them say”may be I am doing something wrong” or “I am sure I am doing something it was not designed to do” and so on).

To make users feel at ease, do the following things at the start of the conversation

1) Tell them that you are not a sales person (ie. if you are not) and that you are not trying to sell them anything. You are trying to get their honest feedback about your products so that you can make it work better for them.

2) Tell them that you want to hear both the good and the bad news about the product. Hence, tell the customer not to sugar coat anything. You are not here to defend anything about your product but to make sure that you get honest feedback from them about your product. However, make sure that if the customer blames your company for some issue that is not under your control, do not ratify (you are hearing only one side of the issue), but acknowledge that you have noted down the issue and you will make sure it is brought to the attention of the right people in your company who can resolve the issue to the customer’s satisfaction.

3) Once the stage is set, start with some softball questions. Not everyone likes to talk especially about your product. So ask them to talk about what they know best - their business and their products. This prevents them from starting the discussion with a laundry list of enhancements, but at a much higher level. After all they are ONLY using their product to get better at their business. Hence this helps you to understand their business processes, how your product fits into their processes and then allows you to slowly move the conversation towards pain points, unmet needs and then gradually bringing the focus to your products.

I have used this technique over the last several years and I have found that it works very well to build the rapport with the customer.

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 share these tips via my blog by writing on one tip per day over the next several days.