Customer Feedback
Who Are They?
As a Product Marketing person, your customers are the most important people you work with. They are the ones who ultimately fund your company and determine the success of your product. It sounds silly to even have to say it, but it is one of those things that are often forgotten in the rush of trying to complete day-to-day tasks.
Your customers will often go several levels deep. The sales channels (whether they be direct or indirect) are your customers. Additionally, within the purchasing company, the evaluator of your product is your customer, the person who approves the PO for your product is your customer, and the end user is your customer (sometimes three different people, sometimes all the same person). The methods used for gathering input below should be used for all levels of customers.You should do surveys, for example, of both your sales force and your end users (with different questions depending upon the audience).
All your customers should be treated as the critical resource that they are. They are all directly responsible for the success of your product and company.
How do you get the most out of them?
Getting the most out of your customers? Isn't that a little backward? It is true that you want to give your customers your very best, but how can you do that if you don't understand what they need?
Something so obvious and so simple - getting real customer feedback into the development process - is very often ignored in fast-paced engineering driven companies. It is ignored for many reasons, but most often it is because it is not always easy to get customer feedback in a form that is truly useful and timely.
Customer data needs to be collected regularly and proactively. If you only take informati ...