Listening to your customers is good, right?
What if your customer was the same guy who said the iPod was “lame” and would never catch on? (this was actually said – check out this circa October 2001 post on Slashdot)
The impact of listening to (and not listening to) users in the product development process is the subject of a great post by Ken Norton, VP of Products at JotSpot titled User triangulation: how to listen to customers.
He breaks down product audiences into several distinct sets: Influential Observers, Leading Adopters, Middle Adopters and Late Adopters and gives behavior patterns and marketing implications of each.
It’s a very compelling, educational and (most important of all) lively read. Check it out. Now.
Why are you still here?…
It sounds like these labels were borrowed from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.
Henry Ford once said “If I asked our customers what they wanted, they’d say faster horses.”