4 ms·
It's also important to note that the high-expectation customer is not the high-frequency complainer that you will have in your customer base. Don't confuse the
by arvidkahl 7y ago
It's also important to note that the high-expectation customer is not the high-frequency complainer that you will have in your customer base. Don't confuse the two, they are opposites.
In my experience with my own company, there were customers who would reach out very often with ideas, complaints, and questions.
I learned at some point that these customers often were just confused did not even really understand their own problems. Figuring out a solution to help someone in that position is a very ineffective way to think about the product.
In terms of the model presented by the article, those vocal customers often lacked the hacker spirit, they benefitted marginally and were never considered experts in their field.
Took me a while to understand that the volume of feedback is not correlated with meaningful gains of information.
- playpause 7y agoFor this reason, I'm not sure "high-expectation customer" is a good term. It also doesn't capture this part well: "someone who will benefit the most from your product, whether they realise this yet or not". If they don't realise it, their expectations are zero. Maybe 'high potential benefit' would be a better term ("HPB customers").
- hammock 7y ago"customer need"
- phkahler 7y agoI would say "high performance customer". The one that is going to push your product to its limits, trying to make it do more than you thought it could. Those limits are where you need to add features so people don't have to hack around the limitations.
- balfirevic 7y agoSo, "power customer" (analogous to power user)?
- arvidkahl 7y agoI would invoke the "skin in the game" metaphor. Listen to customers who have a vested interest, for their own reasons (brand building, networking, the "expert" part) as well as for optimizing some part of their professional workflow, making your service a catalyst of their moneymaking abilities (the benefitter part). The hacker part to me is mostly a consequence of frustration or necessity, and that is different for every industry. If a publicly outspoken professional uses your software, engage them. That has been very helpful for our company every single time. It resulted in great publicity, brand building and in almost all cases meaningful insight into the what and why of their actual business problems.
- rogual 7y agoSomething I noticed about the high-frequency complainers among my customers is that almost all of them got the product for free.
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoYou have to gaurd yourself against cheap customers. They will squeeze you for everything they can get. This is not the same as customers that are low paying.
- arvidkahl 7y agoIt seems to be statistically correlated, at least from my experience. We used to have a really cheap plan, now grandfathered in with just a handful of users, and those are - to this day - the most vocal group of complainers. I believe that for some reason, a low price creates more entitlement than a higher price. I have yet to comprehend the psychology behind this, but customers paying up to three times as much complain far less often.
- doctorpangloss 7y ago> these customers often were just confused did not even really understand their own problems When you make software that helps people earn money, you’re competing with driving for Uber and Facebook ads, not just other business services. A less confusing way to make money is actually a huge innovation.
- arvidkahl 7y agoThis is a very interesting insight. If your product can both provide a great service AND educate you about how this service can be amplified by choosing the correct job to use it with, then you have a great service. For me, customer education is a very big part of value nurturing. In my customer service conversations, I have often had the opportunity to directly talk to people who had yet to hear about major technical improvements that most of us here reading HN take for granted, things like clipboard history managers, text expansion tools or shareable screenshot / screencast tools. Providing insights directly to customers has been very interesting.