Where do we find customers like these?

Over the years, I’ve run into some pretty tough customers.

A billion years ago, when I worked the phones at the Sears after-hours call-in center for the Northeast (a.k.a., the customer complaint center - in those days, we called a spade a spade), one customer - whose paint had not been delivered in time for her husband to paint the house during his vacation - started screaming at me that I’d ‘better ‘get your ass down to Dorchester with that paint.’ Well, I wasn’t going to be getting my ass down to Dorchester with or without the paint, but I could understand her frustration. Here she had ordered paint from Sears. It hadn’t shown up. And she was stuck with her husband underfoot for a week and had no freshly painted house to show for it. No wonder she was ticked off.

Fast forward to a couple of customers I heard from when I worked for a small software company that sold “enterprise development tools” for big bucks. One customer called to let us know that she feared she was going to lose her job because she’d chosen our product over the ones that were cheaper and easier to use - generally a winning combination, but we were very convincing about the merits of our beast of a system  - yes, it was harder to use, but it did oh, so much more for you [if only you could figure out how to use it]. Another customer kept calling to demand their money back. Caveat emptor, pal - that money was already spent and there was no way we were going to unbook it.

It sounds funny when I recount these tales of woe, but at the time - all joking aside (and we did plenty of gallows-humor joking) - it was embarrassing and demoralizing to work for a company with products that, frankly, most of our customers flat out didn’t like.

Fast forward once again. I am now doing free-lance work for a software company with products that the customers actually love.

I do a lot of customer interviews and case studies for them, as well as win-loss surveys. Remarkably, even the “losses” have high praise for our products.

They have customers who are enthusiastic users of the products because the products a) are well designed and easy to use; b) solve a real problem; and c) are priced right (i.e., price is commensurate with value). This sounds like it should be a relatively easy recipe to replicate - kind of like making baking powder biscuits or a fluffernutter. But it’s been a recipe that has quite astoundingly been ignored in many of the companies I worked with when I was a full-timer.

So needless to say I was excited to receive an e-mail yesterday from a customer of the client with the oh, so happy customer base.

I had interviewed this guy a couple of weeks ago, and written up a case study. A few days after the case study was approved, he called and asked me to run some very minor interference for him. Which, of course, I did.

Yesterday’s e-mail was brief. “I have an idea. Give me a call.”

Even though yesterday was a vacation day - my sister and I were painting our niece Caroline’s room “Angel Pink” - I was checking my e-mails, so I called him back.

His idea was for a sales tool that he thought would be useful for us to produce, and that he would like to be a content source for. Yes, the sales tool will also help him with his business, as it will explain why you’re better off going with a company that uses our products. Still, it was a great idea and I told him so.

After speaking with the client, I immediately called one of the folks I work for at this company, and she’s all on board with the idea. It’s now on my to-do list.

But I just can’t get over how thrilled I am - after all these years - working for a company that has customers that like them so much that they come up with ideas for how we can sell more stuff.

Talk about a first!

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