How To Talk To Customer & Make It Count

Transcript

1. Leif Singer leif.me | @LSinger & Make It Count How

   To Talk to Customers

2. Hello! :) phd, computer science • collaboration research, interviews &

   surveys, software development consultant, currently product at iDoneThis.com • product strategy, customer development, user interviews, software development

3. iDoneThis team collaboration: - log dones, goals, blockers - sync

   with team - async communication

4. iDoneThis reminder • evening email: what did you get done?

   • reply to post.

5. iDoneThis digest • morning email: what your team got done

   yesterday.

6. iDoneThis web UI • likes, comments, @mentions, tags, inline images,

   notifications, …

7. iDoneThis integrations • Slack, Alfred, Teamwork, Breeze, … + 100s

   through Zapier • Salesforce, Google Calendar, HipChat, Trello, GitHub, Bitbucket, Evernote, Todoist, Toodledo, Instagram, Twitter, …

8. iDoneThis started as side project 2011 AngelPad 2011 5 people

   • NYC, Milwaukee, Italy, Hannover 150k+ users

9. friendly customers

10. what should we work on? how should that thing work?

11. goal? grow the company • reduce churn • increase growth

12. always work on the most important thing

13. 80% of the benefits … with 20% effort?

14. Research Product Vision +

15. “Let's build an API!”

16. why an API? increase “stickiness" • reduce churn • easier

    to fit iDoneThis into existing workflows + tools • Rogers: compatibility

17. capabilities / endpoints? /teams /teams/idt /teams/idt/dones /teams/idt/dones/12345 /teams/idt/dones/12345/likes /teams/idt/dones/12345/comments /teams/idt/tags/personal/dones/12345/likes/321

    …

18. “That looks like a lot of work.”

19. What do people want?

20. What do people want? OMG NO!

21. What do people actually need?

22. What do people actually need? (they don’t know!)

23. instruments I’ve found useful - semi-structured interview - qualitative survey

    - quantitative survey / poll

24. The Interview

25. prepare - have a goal - easy scheduling - interview

    script • “semi-structured”: with a script, but follow interesting topics • aim for 20 minutes

26. the script - confidentiality - what do you do? -

    how do you use our tool? • when? what do you do before / after? • what’s great? what’s annoying? - how do you currently cope with challenges? - ideal world?

27. during the interview note demographics • company type, team size,

    team distribution take lots of notes • and / or record, but get consent let them do the talking • you listen

28. after the interview write down key points • who? why?

    what? “James Q. from ACME Corp. manages 12 engineers who don't want to use iDoneThis because it's duplicate work for them. To help them adopt it James wants automatic posting of GitHub commit messages.”

29. repeat notice patterns • remember demographics make connections • large

    teams: automatic posting from other services • smaller teams: desktop tool … until “saturation” • that moment when things don’t surprise you anymore for API: most people care only about posting and reading dones

30. what about the endpoints? GET /teams GET /teams/idt GET |

    POST /dones GET | PUT | DELETE /dones/12345 … research saved a lot of work. most of the work went here required for selecting a team got for free from framework

31. uh oh … hey, we have an API! but no

    integrations ... which ones should we build?

32. The Qualitative Survey

33. ask your visitors

34. ask your visitors

35. lots of unstructured data

36. lots of unstructured data CODE IT!

37. The Quantitative Survey

38. None
39. None

40. insane growth; similarity to HipChat makes code more reusable

41. hooray! :)

42. how do people use iDoneThis?

43. how do people use it? standup replacement async comm peripheral

    awareness managers: get feeling for activities, performance, blockers

44. how do people use it? standup replacement async comm peripheral

    awareness managers: get feeling for activities, performance, blockers planned to filter digest for large teams removing people not core to them, but in interviews found: know what their core group / reports are doing, for them value lies in seeing what people at their periphery are doing!

45. academic studies

46. academic studies leif.me

47. further reading Cindy Alvarez • “Lean Customer Development” Steve Portigal

    • “Interviewing Users” book • “Dollars to Donuts” podcast Dale Carnegie • “How to Win Friends & Influence People” How to Start a Startup • “How to Run a User Interview”

48. Q&A reduce churn — increase growth build something people need

    figure out what that is • be genuinely interested in your users & show it • build rapport; smile • be grateful — they're gifting you their time • ask why? a lot • triangulate: interviews, surveys, analytics, … !