Users Are People Too

Posted on 2010.2.24 by thomasknoll

Just ran across my new favorite #loveyourcustomer hack!

Back in the video days of Seesmic it was very easy to ‘humanize’ our users. They were real talking faces streaming down our screens all day long. I got to know many of them very well. Literally watching them laugh and cry, some at their lowest moments without hope, others during a wedding ceremony or the first moments with a new child. We flew from around the world to cram ourselves into a basement in the middle of winter, just to hang out with each other. So many of these people are still my good friends today.

For many companies, however, it is not that easy to see the people behind the usernames. Especially not on such a consistent and personal basis. But, no worries, Joe Heitzeberg came up with a wonderful solution:

How do you take a team that’s swamped with work and make them become incredibly customer focused overnight? … Every day, print out a few hundred new user photo thumbnails and post them on the walls.

[ via currentlyobsessed.com ]

Three-minute Rule is a Great first step into Customer Development

Posted on 2010.2.22 by thomasknoll

Most companies I have spoken with–who are reluctant to explore the customer development process–feel that talking to customers is too hard and don’t even know where to begin. The secret (there is no secret) is to just start. It is much easier to have done something, than to think about doing something. In other words, JUMP IN!

Anythony Tjan has provided a great exercise that should make it easier get started:

You can learn a great deal about customers by studying the broader context in which they use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service…

[ via The Three-Minute Rule - Anthony Tjan - Harvard Business Review ]

If you still need a little help, (i.e. want to wear a life jacket and an inner-tube before jumping in) then you need to learn how to ask your customers questions. The secret (there is not secret) is to just start. Pick one customer you have spoken to before (not so scary) and ask them those two questions: (1) What were you doing 3 minutes before you last used our product? (2) What were you doing 3 minutes after you last used our product?

Don’t create a form. Don’t send out a mass email. Don’t assign it to your sales team. Don’t make your intern do it. Pick up the phone and call one customer. You don’t need to promise them anything, and you better not try and defend yourself or your product. Just listen, learn, and share the love by saying thank you.

Now, you’re ready to swim in the deep end.

photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenneth_hynek / CC BY 2.0

Tweets inspired by morning sessions at DreamForce

Posted on 2009.11.19 by thomasknoll

I would love to come back to these tweets and dig in a little further under the surface. But, I wanted to at least quickly capture some of the thoughts inspired by this morning’s sessions at DreamForce. (The #’s link out to the original tweet.)

Do you have a visual, defined, roadmap for customer success that you use internally AND share with your customers? #

Learning how Starbucks implements Salesforce products to build customer community. Incl. mystarbucksidea.com #

Community Building Goals: 1 communicate value 2 build internal support (culture) 3 Engage ALL users. Also, understand purpose of new ideas. #

Types of Customer generated Ideas: Top, First, New, Sleeper, or Validates (an internal assumption). Name and treat accordingly. #

Healthy communities increase customer loyalty, attract quality prospective customers, and acceleratecompany learning (transform us) #

“OMG! If we create customer communities, we might have to listen to them, and have a conversation.” FastForward: We got richer. #

You probably don’t have ONE community. Build in neighborhoods. #

Visionary leadership essential to transition into community engagement. Business value (though likely) cannot be proved up front. #

Sustainable Community – Over Eager Greeter

Posted on 2009.11.19 by thomasknoll

Ricardo Nunez made a comment in a previous post, that got me thinking about the transition from “engage and help everybody” to “the community maintaining itself”? A noble goal for cultivating a community. Though, like infinity, it is a goal you can never really reach. But, I wanted to share a few observations I’ve made that help move communities in that direction.

Part 1: Over Eager Greeter
This one took me quite some time to recognize. My own excitement about greeting new members the second they joined the community (most services have the option to shoot off an email when there is a new member) meant that other members of the community didn’t get the chance. Obviously they could have gone up to greet people as well. But 8 (or 8000) “hi, welcome to x, let me know if you have any questions” would be awkward. and overbearing.

Related to this, some people just want to check out a new community. Maybe they don’t feel like they have *joined* anything yet, so pouncing on them the minute they “walk in the door” can throw them off guard and cause them to raise their defenses.

I don’t believe there is a magic number (i.e. 1 day or 386 minutes) of how long to wait before greeting new members. All communities have different cultures and purposes. Some have hundreds of messages/notifications per day. Some only meet once a month. Etc.

With each community (you probably have more than one in each organization) I try to figure out how much time someone might need to get a feel for the place, as well as the average time it takes for members the seize their opportunity to say hello first. Finally, I write the numbers down, and ask a few members if those numbers make sense. With that information in hand, I have a decent guideline for how long to wait before extending my own greeting.

photo credit: Photo Denbow

coming soon:
Part 2: Helping Should be Easy
Part 3: Make it Safe

books on community

Posted on 2009.11.14 by thomasknoll

Brainstorming titles of books on community with @communitygirl:

“Community: All is Fair in Love and War”
“Community: These People Kill Me”
“Community: Love Scales”

[ via tweeeet ]

Community: All is Fair in Love and War
Community is not all peaches and ponies. It is hard work and messy and beautiful and creative and draining. People are mean. And people are inspiring. The only thing harder about dealing with a person, is to deal with a lot of persons. But, but, but, it is always worth the journey. So, how can we learn the rules of love AND the rules of war and bring a whole group of people along for the ride.

Community: These People Kill Me
Cultivating a community a lot of work. The kind of work that can kill you. No, seriously, stress causes heart attacks. Heart attacks kill people. On the other end, there are so many (SOOOOO many) stories that come out of community life. Heartbreaking, wonderful, beautiful things, that only surface when people crash into one another around things they love, or hate, or are passionate about. (Or, are bored.) Interesting how the same people who make you want to die, can also make you laugh so hard it feels like you are dying.

Community: Love Scales
So many things related to the business of interacting with customers do not scale. Every company, at some point has so many customers that they simply can no longer engage with them on a one-to-one level. This is sad. This is also life. When companies and organizations learn how to cultivate a community of customers (or communities of customer groups) they give birth to something that can scale. Make it easy for your customers to love you, and then they might fight for the chance to do your marketing, pr, customer service, evangelism, and sales FOR YOU.

What would you title your book on community?

I hate Community Management

Posted on 2009.10.27 by thomasknoll

People’s “relationships” are emergent and thus can’t be managed. That is, they can be influenced but not controlled.
[ via Charlie Ehin ]

a.k.a. Why I Think ‘manager’ is the worst word to follow the word ‘community’

I prefer the phrase Community Cultivation and try to map all tasks and skills against gardening metaphors:

planting seeds
mindfulness about environmental factors
neighborhood kids who like to kick over the tomatoes
too much water is bad
not enough water is bad
fallow fields
weeding
harvest time
sharing with and helping the neighbors
getting up early
canning

What would you add to the list?
or What metaphors do you use?

say my name, say my name

Posted on 2009.10.25 by thomasknoll

I saw this float down my screen today, and it struck a nerve, because I have the same problem:

At least 12 times yesterday someone asked me, “Do you know [name]?” or, “I was talking to [name] earlier, you know them right?” I had to shrug my shoulders and timidly reply, “I think so?” or, “They sound really familiar…?”. Only to discover five minutes later–once we got into the story a little further–that I *totally* know that person.”

I’m not OK with this.

The why is most easily summed up in Dale Carnegie’s words:

“Remember that a person’s name is to them the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

The sound! It really does go that deep. As in, chemicals are released into your body when you hear your name. (I have a whole deeper level of thoughts about this. If you are interested, please ask.)

The how is a little more difficult. Even though there are about 170,000,000 results for “how to remember names”, the tricks haven’t helped much so far. But, @chrisbrogan is going to kick my ass if I make any excuses. So, it’s time to own this weakness.

Here is where I could use your help: I am not interested in a tip, or a list of tips. (I could read google results for 37.4 days to get those). But, if you could tell me a story about your own mini or major breakthrough with names, I truly believe that will help etch the skill into my mind. (Another one of those ‘whole deeper level of thoughts’ thing you can ask me about, if you want.)

When did you have a remembering-names-breakthrough?

the fewer rules, the better

Posted on 2009.9.27 by thomasknoll

Really, the fewer rules, the better. The concept is just if [a customer] calls and there’s an issue, do whatever is necessary to make her happy and really wow her.

[ via The Way I Work ]

Courting Customers Instead of VCs

Posted on 2009.8.11 by thomasknoll

If you invest in your customers now, you might find VCs anxious to invest in you.”

After 6 years of trying to raise funding for 3 of my startups over the years with zero success I decided to let the market decide and court customers now rather then VC. it’s been a turning point for me because my customers get it immediately whereas the VC just don’t seem to get it. And my customers give me feedback to improve my concept and the VCs just seem to shoot it down and say it won’t fly and that I’m “too early” which just means they aren’t interested.
– Comment by Blake Southwood on a NYTimes article on “Falling Valuations: Poison for Venture Capital”

I am still a n00b when it comes to venture capital, so I really can’t address any comments about the value of that industry. However, I know a lot about customers, and love to hear stories about entrepreneurs who recognize how much value their customers provide.

“Customers Get it Immediately”

Almost by definition, your customers are the ones that get it. Obviously you caught their attention, and they were intrigued or inspired enough to sign up or buy. There is a ton of value in understanding your current customers, and how they understand you. While other companies play percentage games with marketing (If I hit 1000 random people with an add, 180 click, and 27 buy…) you can focus on understanding what inspired your existing customers to embrace your product. Then, as you improve their experience and refine the product, they will lead you to the rest of your market(s).

“Customers Give Feedback”

Your customers want to help you. They want a better product/experience, and they know what would make it better. (After all, they probably use it more than you.) They want to leave their mark. It is a primal instinct. Embrace it. They are more than happy to give you a ton of help for the low cost of recognition and validation. And, sometimes they just want to complain. That is OK, let them. Make it easy for them to come complain to you. If you don’t listen, they’ll find someone else to complain about you to who will listen.

Bottom Line

I flew through some reasons why your customers want to give you feedback. I want to dive much deeper into those, but for now, I just want to point out that there is a lot of value in listening to that feedback. You shouldn’t act on all their feedback. I’m not describing design by committee. But, I am saying that any feedback you receive from your existing customers is very valuable in growing your business and getting more customers. Bottom line, the market will tell you where to go, it is up to you to innovate and refine in that direction.

thomas knoll

thinking out loud – community cultivation & customer development

Category Archives: community