Comments on: How a Customer Crisis Ten Years Ago Helped Me Understand the Challenges of Cloud Service Creation Today (Part 1)

By: tom nadeau

tom nadeau — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:17:30 +0000

Never tired of hanging out or working with you Speirsy. You are a tireless worker – and a great listener of customer requirements (and pain points).

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By: Stephen Speirs

Stephen Speirs — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:15:54 +0000

Hi George

Thanks for your point. At first read of your comment I was about to disagree .. however the key word you mentioned here is the word “discern” …. yes when creating new cloud services (or any other product or service for that matter), you of course need to listen to the customer. Then as a key step I advocate (based upon my story here) that we need then to talk to customers what their real problems are. It may be that with their “requirement”, they (as I have found) already have home grown solutions in place already. Maybe not ideal solutions, however displacing a home grown solution is a challenge. As you say, if we discren their *needs* from an understanding of what their real and pressing problems are, we should be able to devise a more successful offer.

Thanks again George and great to hear from you on this topic.
Stephen

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By: George Ball

George Ball — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:38:14 +0000

The trick is to listen to what the customer *wants* and from that to discern what the customer *needs*

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By: Stephen Speirs

Stephen Speirs — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:13:43 +0000

Indeed it was Tom – great to hear from you and glad you are reading my blog – I thought you got enough of me after the thousands of miles we travelled together!

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By: Tom Nadeau

Tom Nadeau — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:04:09 +0000

Having been there for that customer “experience” I can say that this was a lightbulb moment for me too!

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