19 June 2010

Dogfooding - Getting the Customer Experience

I wanted an additional TataSky connection. I logged on to my account to buy one. There is no apparent way in which I could do this on-line. I went to the contact us page which has two levels of selections. You have to select the first level then see if the relevant choice is available at the second level. I was lucky enough to have found the relevant choice on the 2nd first level choice. Is it very customer friendly? What if my subject did not match any of the sub-categories?

Why not just give an email-id - contact-at-somecompany.com? Are the sales/customer-care people so busy that they cannot figure out what to do unless it is bureaucratically fitted into some category?

Do C level executives see such mail?

More importantly, how many executives actually visit their sites as a customer, or ask their friends and relatives to do so?

American managers have a saying, "If you make dog food, you must eat it". That is getting the customer experience. Do not count on the dog filling out a feedback form:-)

I know we did not dogfood the programming tools we made :-(

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