RULE 1: FEEL THE PAIN. THEN DEVELOP YOUR PRODUCT.
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not an outsourced function; their customer service reps and managers were employees of the company, located right in California near company headquarters. Customer service reps and managers got constant training on existing and new company products. And they didn’t just read from a script that popped up on their computers– they listened and carefully wrote down all customer concerns and suggestions. Customer service managers had direct access to top company executives (CEO, CTO, and President). They met every week to go over the top 5-10 concerns and suggestions gathered by the reps. “The top five suggestions are pretty consistent across users,” Manish Kothari told me. They might be as mundane as “Increase font size,” or “Include writing templates,” both of which were top five features included in the Neo, then the company’s latest “education computer” product.
Engineers
Research and Development groups tend to be isolated from end users. The marketing team prepares market requirements documents (MRD), or product requirement documents (PRD), which engineers read and translate into a working product. This can be a big mistake. Few things are as valuable for a company as having research and development people get direct input from watching real products being used by real customers in real situations. Alphasmart’s engineers have direct contact with end users. They observe them when they use the products, freely ask questions and get straight, direct, unfiltered feedback from them. “Their technicians fly out here and talk directly to the students” said William Reeder, Director of Technology for the Fairfax, Virginia, Public School System. “They talk to teachers and to the technology infrastructure people.” Customer visits can thus be a profitable experience for both the engineer and the user. The latter will feel that her voice is being heard and that she can talk to someone who is in a position to solve her problem. For the engineer it’s good to see exactly how the product is being used. There are no filters from salespeople or marketing people.