ProductMarketing.com

The Wal-Martization of E-Commerce

Now all you need is a good idea to make some good money. You can start right away by getting a dot-com domain name registration for a year for much less than US$1 a month, and get a sparkling Web site for under $5 per month. For an additional $3 a month, get an encryption capability on the same site so you can offer secure online credit card transactions. Cha-ching. Plus e-mail and many other things thrown in for free. In principal you will have almost the same basic e-commerce tools as any other large-size corporation. All that power and those business tools for under $10 per month.

High-tech job market lost 400,000 jobs

The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according to a new report on CNN.com.

Are you living in a Dilbert cartoon?

I subscribe to the Daily Dilbert cartoons. Sometimes they are hilarious because they are so true. In the interest of cutting down the number of emails I get, I decided it was time to cancel. I clicked on the Unsubscribe link and was taken to a page asking for my email address and a password. I enter the password I normally use for this type of stuff and it doesn't work. So, I click on "Forget your password?". It says it will send me a password to the email address. For days I patiently wait. Nothing. The comics keep coming. I go to Yahoo and read my Bulk Mail folder with all the spam in it. (Believe me, it is ALL spam. Thanks, Yahoo, for normally shielding me from all of this junk.) It's not there. Back I go to the website (comics.com) and finally dig to find a page resembling "Contact Us." But when I click on the link for unsubscribing, nothing happens. So, I scroll through the gazillion items (it was an FAQ page), and I find what I'm looking for. Finally, I got an email saying they will delete me from the list. (At least they responded and took care of the situation, but the whole thing felt Dilbertesque.)

LESSON: test your links and processes with real people!

While I'm ranting, have you ever sent an email to the address on the Contact Us page of a website? Never to hear from them? A friend told me she sent several emails with no response and finally got a real live person on the phone. The lady's response to the fact that the emails were ignored? A terse response of "We're understaffed. There are only a few of us here!"

LESSON: Don't put a "Contact Us" link if you have no intention or resources to answer the email. And rudeness and hearing about your problems are never acceptable responses. Steve wrote earlier this month about customer satisfaction. You wonder how many companies lose business and never know why. "Moments of truth." It shouldn't be this hard...

Hiring Technical People

Johanna Rothman has published Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People, available at Amazon.

She writes, "Hiring knowledge workers, such as technical people, is different from hiring purely skill-based staff. Knowledge workers are not just the sum of their technical knowledge; they are the sum of their technical knowledge and the way in which they apply that knowledge to the product. The method with which they apply their knowledge is determined by how they use their technical skills for the product, how they manage their work, and how they manage their relationships with other people. Skill-based staff members have a set of skills they can apply the same way in almost all situations. Knowledge workers must adapt their knowledge to the situation."

Stats on customer dissatisfaction

Dozens of studies conducted by government, universities, and industries have proven that customer satisfaction is critical. A customer whose complaint has been resolved will actually create much more revenue than the resolution cost. A satisfied customer will return to buy more, and he or she will refer more new customers. Three key findings regarding customer complaints

• The average customer with an unresolved complaint will tell nine to ten people; 13% tell more than 20 people.
• Up to 70% of complainers will return to your business if their complaint is resolved. Up to 95% return if the problem is resolved quickly.
• For every one complaint received, the average company has 26 unhappy customers it never hears from; six of these customers have problems that are considered "serious" problems.

[Source: Technical Assistance Research Programs Institute]

"Moments of Truth"

Every interaction between a customer and a vendor is a "moment of truth." Did the sales person listen? Did the product work as documented? Was customer support friendly--and did they resolve the problem? Every interaction gives your company a chance to keep your promises... or break them.

Seth Godin writes, "I just spent the last few days on the phone with HP, Creative and Maytag. Infuriating. Difficult. Time-consuming. In two cases, I 'won' the discussion, but of course, both of us lost. In the other, they won; I gave up and don't expect to return any time soon."

Last week I returned my iPod for repair and Apple fixed and returned it this week. They sent an email explaining how to return it, sent me an email indicating they received it, and sent a final email reporting it was on its way. They solved the problem quickly, and kept me informed all along the way.

Do you consider customer support a cost to be cut? It's truly an investment in customer loyalty.

Source Control HOW TO

Every successful product team needs automation, for product managers, developers, QA, and others. Developers probably have the most advanced set of tools; certainly source code control is critical. While product managers may not be using these tools, it's helpful to understand them and how source code control can prevent product delivery disasters. Eric Sink is writing a series on source code control. He writes:

"Our universities don't teach people how to do source control. Our employers don't teach people how to do source control. SCM tool vendors don't teach people how to do source control. We need some materials that explain how source control is done. My goal for this series of articles is to create a comprehensive guide to help meet this need."

if you choose innovation, you can't outsource

Johanna Rothman reminds us that development doesn't follow a formula. Creating great products is still an art, not a science. Throwing coders at it won't do the job.

She writes, "You can choose to turn your products into commodities or you can innovate. If you choose commodity, then select the cheapest labor market--because it doesn't matter. But if you choose innovation, you can't outsource. You can't define all the requirements and hand them off to anyone in a highly innovative product--requirements definition and product development have to be a joint exploration--and you can't do that when the definers and the developers (and testers) don't sit near each other. You can't wait for a product to be done--you need to see the product unfold and adjust the product (or the project) to accommodate the things you forgot."

Innovative products require collaboration between the members of the product team: architect, developers, product manager, QA, doc, and others. Everyone on the product team has to understand your discipline and the industries that you serve. If you just want a "me too" product, then outsourcing may be for you.

Is Your Product A Missionary Or A Savior?

Jacques Murphy writes, "Taking a step back and using a Product Management perspective to look at the constant stream of new software products, it becomes apparent that while every company wants their product to be brand spanking new, there are two very distinct strains of newness: the Missionary and the Savior. And one of those two types is a much harder sell." Read more in Is Your Product A Missionary Or A Savior?

Customers want control

Once again, a media company misses the point: customers want control over their entertainment. Matt Haughey reported on PVRblog about a recent decision by XM radio to prevent people from storing XM programming. TimeTrax is a third-party program that rips XM signals into your PC so you can play them back later. Rather than allow this convenience to their users, XM discontinued the radio model with USB interface that enables TimeTrax.

Remember The Innovator's Dilemma? New technologies, initially scorned by the established vendors, ultimately destroy them. Why can't the movie and music people see the hard-drive based media center is an opportunity rather than a threat? John Mayer is a great example of a "company" embracing new technology. His web site contains snippets of songs from all of his albums plus lyrics, buddy icons, wallpaper, a screen saver--all designed to keep his name in front of his fans--and of course, a link to buy merchandise. Most important, Mayer is publishing his live concerts as albums on Apple's iTunes, a new one every week, just days after the actual concert. While fans of the Grateful Dead shared bad bootleg recordings of concerts (with the support of the band), Mayer's fans can enjoy great recordings from his concerts, pulled straight from the mixer board. I would imagine that many, many fans immediately download the album of the concert they attended but perhaps the really rabid fans are downloading them all. Sold by album only, they give John and company another $8 per fan with minimal costs. I mean, how much does it cost to post songs online without any packaging?

I'm sure I ranted on this in the past but there are literally hundreds of albums from my college days that I would like to buy again--really obscure albums that will never be released on CD. And I agree with the decision not to publish on CD. Surely only a few listeners would buy "Apprentice in a musical workshop" by Dave Loggins--the album that brought us "Please come to Boston." But posting that album online would cost virtually nothing and deliver revenues to the music companies that they will never receive otherwise. In a similar vein, Joel Spolsky explains why usability wasn't important for Napster. Joel writes, "an application that does something really great that people really want to do can be pathetically unusable, and it will still be a hit." And Napster did something great: it gave us access to music and movies in a format that the media companies would not allow.

The new revolution in music and media is this: today's technology lets vendors create affordable devices that allow truly personalized user experience. Cheap, small hard drives and inexpensive operating systems make TiVo and the iPod possible. Customers of TiVo and iPod, as well as XM radio, become maniacal! Now we're screaming for an iPod for TiVo to let us take our movies on the road and an XM recorder that lets us hear scheduled programs on our schedules. What new product or service could your company offer using a new delivery method even if it's not the way you've always done it? One that is both convenient to your customer and profitable for you.

Poor design--do you recognize your company?

Some companies embrace the idea that their products are only successful when they meet the needs of those intended to use them; and these companies' processes, metrics, and rewards work together to encourage good software and web design. However, many companies unwittingly reward their staff for products that don't meet the needs of end users. In the article Seven Deadly Excuses for Poor Design, Dr. Kevin Scoresby discusses the common excuses and underlying problems they represent.

Rivers of Revenue

In Rivers of Revenue, Kristin Zhivago writes, "Marketing doesn't have to be confusing and stressful. When you look at the selling process from the seller's perspective--as everyone does--there is no clear answer. One theory sounds as plausible as the other. Why? Because the answer can't be found on the seller's side of the equation. What makes sense to sellers doesn't make sense to buyers. Since the buyer is the one with the money--and the decision-making power--it makes a lot more sense to look at the selling process from the perspective of the buyer."

Issue 4: Navigating Pathways to the Future

The Jul/Aug 2004 issue of productmarketing.com, featuring Navigating Pathways to the Future is now online.