Are You Seeing What Your Customers Are Saying?

AdaptiveBlue CEO Alex Iskold has a post today discussing his time doing customer service. He suggests that all CEOs should do some customer service and support noting, "you will never think about your product and customers in the same way."

I've always been a nut about customer service starting from my very early days delivering newspapers. I would take Alex's statement one step further. During my time leading product teams and large-scale marketing programs, everyone had some time on the customer service hotline. Designers, developers, marketing, it didn't matter to me. While some of the team needed a coach from customer service to help them with the replies, it taught the team lessons about what customers look for in a product. The projects always seemed to finish stronger and we'd consistently receive more positive feedback.

It's one thing to see the feedback on a chart or graph, it's another thing to be immersed in it yourself. Products like GetSatisfaction are a good start. Check out what happened when we put 10 of the top Web apps to the customer service challenge. It's worth a read - Technorati ranked worst, Dogster ranked at the woofpack.

Below I've emebdded a video from VW. It's their latest commercial for the Golf. It made me wonder how many times we just hear, but don't listen. Goes along with the customer service theme above.