The Testimonial Pipeline

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The Testimonial Pipeline Ross Belmont

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. Interviewing prospective or current end users • Understand how the product concept fits within their overall job and other responsibilities • How can we innovate in a way that fits with their job function? What do they do 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after using the product? • Understand constraints typical of organizations like theirs (e.g. other teams and processes outside their control) • What should we avoid building because they can’t make progress in that area, even if they’d like to? • Get ahead of items that would inevitably become feedback filtered through customer support

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. A Brief Aside on Roles • Interaction Designer • Developer • Developer • Developer • Developer • QA • Product Manager • Doc Writer • User Researcher(s) • Visual Designer(s) Embedded in the scrum team Shared across many teams

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. Usability testing: letting someone “test drive” • Scheduling around 30 minutes for a representative user to test one ﬂow through the system • The product team observes how well (or if) the person makes it through successfully • The person also gives feedback of their own as to how they felt it went • 80% of the issues found during these sessions are cosmetic¹ 1. Source: Salesforce.com, Dreamforce 2011

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. Example from Salesforce: Article on R.I.T.E. • Rapid • Iterative • Testing and • Evaluation Source: “Getting Software RITE” by Jeff Patton published in IEEE Software magazine May/June 2008 (http://bit.ly/2WC4ZD)

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. Example from Salesforce: Article on R.I.T.E. Source: “Getting Software RITE” by Jeff Patton published in IEEE Software magazine May/June 2008 (http://bit.ly/2WC4ZD)

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. Beta programs: the product meets the trenches • Betas in the enterprise are closely managed to maintain the customer relationship and gauge success • Include a customer if you know they’ll invest in usage and also give speciﬁc feedback • Avoid incentives other than a seat on an advisory board

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© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved. Reference Customers: The best sales tool • Testimonials and references shorten sales cycles and reduce the cost of sales while avoiding downward price pressure • Also avoids “Hail Mary” sales tactics, selling to ﬁrms that are a poor ﬁt, overpromising and excessive comparison to competition • Six references in each major vertical is a good target for enterprise products • 10-15 is a good target for consumer products, though those will require less management Source: “The Power of Reference Customers” by Marty Cagan (http://bit.ly/1cpgAhU)