How To Talk To Customer & Make It Count

The slides for my LeanDrinks talk at CeBIT 2015. Some of the strategies and methods we use at iDoneThis to find out what to build.

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
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, … !