"Video Lecture _Lecture 7 How to Build Products Users Love, Part I”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz_LgBAGYyo&feature=youtu.be

  This post is about 'How to Build Products Users Love' by Kevin Hale. The lecturer shared his ideas supported with lots of great experience which were very interesting. He introduced how he determined users’ problem and created products that customers loved. Lecturer analyzed several points such as growth, his own experiences, and compared the customer support to human interaction such as relationships.

  The topic of growth has been discussed several weeks, but what it is it in perspective of K. Hale. In the viewpoint of the lecturer, it is an interaction between concepts or variables: conversion rate and churn. The gap between the two will essentially symbolize how fast you’re going to grow.  Now let's understand these two concepts. The conversion rate is the percentage of customers who are informed of a product or a service and eventually become customers. The churn rate is the yearly percentage of customers that stop subscribing to a service or leave a job.  K. Hale became a partner at YC in 2006 being alumni. In this period he built a product called ‘Wufoo’ which is online form builder that helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and simple payment forms. Why did he succeed?  The main reason was that because it was fairly easy to use, they had customers from every industry market and vertical you can think of including a majority of the Fortune 500 companies. Therefore, after 5 years of running the company, they were acquired by Survey Monkey and received funding in the Silicon Valley through Y Combinator. ‘Wufoo’ rose about $118,000 total and their return for their investors was about 29,561%. Can it be possible to link his experience with your own startup? So, we should consider main points why the product worked and use those characteristics. The important aspect for them was to create a product that people would love and have a relationship with.  Moreover, they thought about how relationships work in the real world such as dating and marriage, and how to apply those concepts to their business. They focused to give their product a personality that would make an impact.  What are associations of dating with the product?  The first common thing between date and product is the first impression. There exist initial special moments. You should understand what the emotion of a user is when they interact with your product. Anything we work with, whether the things we associate with or clothes we wear, eventually it develops features correlated with and that’s how we interact. The more connected you are with your customers, the greater the likeliness that you build better software. Furthermore, what parallels are between customer support and relationships. It is usual to see fights in a relationship for various reasons: money, kids, sex, time, and others.  These points also work in customer support; for example, money means that this product may cost too much, or other (meaning jealousy and in-laws) may refer to a competition and partnerships. Moreover, they may occur higher problems which will lead to breakups. In the way of customer support, it happens by these circumstances: criticism which is the focus, not on a specific issue but arching issues; contempt way to purposely attempting to insult another person; defensiveness not trying to take accountability or making excuses for actions; and stonewalling simply shutting down.  Sometimes there can be major obstacles which every company meets:

·         Divorce which is the consequences of their actions,

·         Having everything under control, going right, and filled with opportunities before a launch,

·         But after a launch, reality sets in and other tasks come in,

·         Trying to change software development to inject values such as responsibility, accountability, humility, and modesty is what Hale calls SSD,

·         It becomes a way of creating high-quality software,

·         Making everyone do customer support ends up fixing the feedback.

  Consequently, after some problems, relationships may end so may customer support. However, there will be chances to stop it.  In a relationship, you have to constantly be putting energy and effort back into it and the same method works with customers. The lecturer mentioned that sometimes their company greeted returning members by sending handwritten thank you cards to early users and high-paying customers. Consequently, the pathway to market dominance follows by the hospitality industry.