Toyota - Death by 1000(s) Recalls

For every company, there is a mojo that drives it to success. This is usually a soft skill above and beyond any company's IP. In business lingo, there is a fancy name for it "core competency". This core competency is what defines that company's brand identity. For Toyota, this core competency was its legendary quality system. Tomes have been written about Toyota's quality process. MBA courses tout Toyota's ultra-flexible (relative to auto industry standards) operations and how they maintain tight control over the quality of their products. Not too long ago, Toyota was the rising star that was beating the hell out of American car companies. To the extent they were idolized as America's best car brand.
But, as has been well covered in the press, recent recalls of Toyota cars has hit it in the gut. The legendary brand known for its quality has been hit by a widespread recall across most of its product line. Sure, the aggressiveness by which the NHTSA has pursued this recall smacks of political desire to level the playing field for the "American Brands". But, without resorting to mud slinging, the Toyota management has mismanaged the whole process by trying to hide issues. That is where the true tragedy lies - Toyota basked in its Roman glory and forgot its roots. Its brand loyalty has taken a hit. As a Product Manager, it is truly sad to see where the numbers become more important than customers. Sure enough, today's reports on how American companies might be benefiting from Toyota's downfall drives the point home. It is going to be an interesting case study of Toyota in days to come.

Three to Tango - SaaS, Social and Mobile

In November 2009, Salesforce.com announced Chatter as its own spin on Social Networking within a business network. In a recent update, Chatter is due to be released as a private beta to some 100 companies. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are predominantly focused on enabling C2C communication. But, it is a just a matter of time before the social network ecosystem starts overlapping with your professional network. Indeed, just today, LinkedIn announced integration with Microsoft Outlook. Xobni and Salesforce.com's Chatter, both allow updates from your extended social networks to be seen within your professional feeds. Now, throw in the whole mobile apps ecosystem, and suddenly you have a hyper-connected interactive world that exhibits the true promise of a networked world.
Due to the low barrier to entry in the SaaS space, we see tons of startups providing solutions to one problem set to make this world in cloud a better place. Where this ultimately leads to is still a big question. My sense is that we are going to see more and more fragmentation of this space before ultimately consolidating in an equilibrium where some companies would be computing power utilities powering the smaller networked applications. On the customer side, in the long term, barriers between professional and personal life would continue to fall. So, tools those allow me to organize my personal and professional information in a better way are going to evolve. Google Wave, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com Chatter are trying to address this issue, but their innovation is naturally biased by their current offerings. Google Buzz is an example. A fresh new approach is required. The big mantra for consumers is going to be "any information, anywhere and anytime". Don't make me log in, don't make me visit different sites. Just hand me what I want.

Actionable NPS

NPS (Net Promoter Score) is gaining much traction these days as a simple alternative to traditional customer satisfaction surveys, which are often ineffective due to their length. Many companies from industry stalwarts like P&G and Intuit to recent upstarts like Zappos have adopted NPS as a standard and implemented programs to monitor NPS. In doing so, they have achieved big success in gaining customer loyalty and consequently earned a huge viral following in their target segments. To learn more about NPS go directly to the source.

One question has come up consistently - how to make NPS actionable? Before addressing some possible options, it is important to point out that NPS is essentially like a health-sensor of your company. IMO, NPS is not meant to be a deep customer insight tool. Followup research is often required to pinpoint "why" customers are unhappy.

Now, here are some ways to make NPS actionable:

1. Focus on a Product Area: NPS traditionally focuses on the entire customer experience. One way to drill down is to ask the recommendation question based on customer experience for a certain area. For example, to find if customers are satisfied with the pay day experience in a payroll product, ask "Based on your experience paying your employees, would you recomment...".
2. Alter the Free Form Question: NPS surveys tag an open text field question for free-form customer feedback. Change this question so that it focuses on a certain product area. But make sure that the response remains free form. It is important to not be judgemental in phrasing this question.
3. Segment your customer base: This is more akin to an AB test where a segment of your customer base NPS is tested against a control population. This can give you richer insights into what a specific segment of your population thinks.

Before signing off, it is important to reiterate that NPS is not the means to an end. It is not just about your product, but it IS about complete experience. It is how Tony Hsieh says "customers may not remember what you do or what you said, but they would definitely remember how they felt". It is about having a complete package.

SaaS: Top reasons why SaaS is better than Desktop software.

SaaS is hot these days. SaaS is simply a natural progression of software delivery brought on by increasing spread of broadband and growing acceptance of online services by users. Heck, online services are just desired but expected. But, delivering software as a service is fundamentally different from their desktop counterparts.
Key to a SaaS product is not just the distribution mechanism, but treating it as a "whole" product. Here are some of the key ways how a SaaS service can differ from its desktop brethren:

• Availability: Services need to be 24X7. To compete effectively with a desktop version, online services have to establish reliability by making sure they are always available.
• Agility: Services are agile. It is far easier to roll out updates to services than updating software products. Due to high costs of distribution, incremental updates are difficult for desktop products. With online services, distribution costs are zero to minimal. Due to this very fact, online services tend to be way more agile than their desktop brethren.
• Interactive: SaaS services have a true opportunity to go beyond their staid desktop counterparts. Due to their interactive nature, they can learn and collect boatloads of information about customer preferences. As this revolution advances, do not be surprised to see more and more personalized interaction.
• Customer Service: This is often an overlooked aspect. To reduce customer contact costs, companies zealously try and avoid providing good customer service. It is important to treat the customer contact not as a cost, but as an opportunity to develop closer ties to the customer. This is also where a service is fundamentally different from installed software. With a service, customer service is expected. Any SaaS company worth its salt has to deliver on this promise if they expect to survive longterm.
• Secure: With online services, security is often a primary concern. Customers hesitate to store their sensitive data online. Attitudes are changing, but skeptics still abound. Especially for new online services, it is imperative that they make customers comfortable about the security of data.
• Collaboration: This is where a SaaS company can truly deliver and differentiate. Unfortunately, being continuously focused on functionality, companies tend to look at the collaborative aspects of an online service as an afterthought.

For successful customer outreach, it is always imperative to focus on key customer pain points. But that usually leads to feature functionality that may not be enough to drive SaaS service adoption. It is important that companies focus on the whole product from sales to customer support when thinking SaaS.