The fourth gap we’re going to look at is around customer opinion… and not the usual NPS kind of thing.
We’re all familiar with NPS (Net Promoter Score), and the associated customer satisfaction surveys. Oh, and the inevitable link to personal objectives/team scorecards and all that metrics nonsense. Am I the only person who marks everyone as an 8 just to wind them up? 😉
We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the people who actually evaluate, buy, deploy and use your service, your product or your software! And the key people to get an opinion from might not be the people you expected.
The technical lead or technical leader closest to the PoC that’s evaluating or deploying your stuff has an incredible amount of sway over how an opportunity develops, or doesn’t. Their opinion and the opinion of their people is paramount. And most companies forget these people entirely, and only really hear from procurement, and CTO/CIO/CISOs.
The opinion of these people is important. They ultimately make the investment decisions, but their opinion is strongly informed by the people at the coal face.
Unfortunately, you’re unlikely to get much access to these people, ever. Or they are unlikely to be terribly honest with you. They are more likely to be highly guarded and reserving of their views, which they’ll only share within their organisation.
That’s clearly a problem, as this opinion is literal gold! And most organisations can’t hear it. I was speaking to a client last week, and they recognised this gap. And fortunately Taylor Harrow could help.
Taylor Harrow has some pretty unique experience and skills in it’s locker! Our team led Security Futures for BT, spotting future trends, positioning company wants with vendors/partners, and evaluating new technology…. both for BT’s own use, and for onwards sale at BT’s Go To Market Security Unit, a successful MSP in it’s own right.
We offer what we call a ‘Test Drive’ service. We answer the key questions:-
• How easy is it to understand, deploy, debug, consume and use your product?
• Does it do what it says on the tin?
• What’s our honest feedback on the experience?
• What slows implementation or could be a blocker in a large corporate enterprise?
We can help you with insight that will improve your product, your documentation, your communication, or your sales approach.
We can offer a straightforward evaluation and report, through to packages including social media commentary and so on. We would jointly agree a technical/product scope, a set of aims, deliverables and a budget. Then Taylor Harrow takes over and creates a target architecture, into which we deploy your product.
We evaluate every step from obtaining the software, reading the documentation, initial deployment, integration, testing, scaling and so on. And you get the feedback and insight from a team with serious experience.
So if you’d like some support from the team that’s done this kind of thing for a living, or this is an area where your organisation could benefit from some help, please get in touch via Linked In.