Perfection never comes

Waiting for a service or product to be perfect before launching it is wrong. For at least two reasons:

1. Until it is launched you are working to internal specifications and so real customers in real use situations have not responded to it. Even if perfect to those initial specifications it is guaranteed to be imperfect to real users. Iterate with users, not with founders or focus groups.

2. Users do not necessarily expect perfection. They want a service or product that works well - and when there is a problem or issue with it they want to be heard. Spend some of your pre-launch time ensuring that you know exactly how you will deal in a timely and open manner with complaints/issues that your users raise. And you have got to hope they will because passionate users are your life blood.

And passionate users will come back if you treat them with respect. Take a look at this statistic "82 percent of all complaining customers will repurchase from you if their complaints are answered and resolved quickly".

This is from an article that is linked here: http://www.localtechwire.com/article.cfm?u=13131 and it is worth a read. I know that I am very tolerant of a service with a glitch if my issue is dealt with promptly - and completely dismissive if it is not.

Thanks to Tom Markiewicz for this http://www.tmarkiewicz.com/never-underestimate-the-power-of-a-quick-fix/

keith

technorati tags: launch, customer care, complaints, Pure Play

Comments

[Ken McGuire]

Treating them with respect will not only have them coming back... it'll bring their friends too (kilkennymusic.com has been that way for me)

Once you're nice to people in helping them out, (guess this applies to life in general as well as in running an online project - spooky) it goes a HUGE way towards boosting the reputation of your product, along with yourself for your service.