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GO EASY ON YOUR USER Try to use familiar metaphors when designing your product, rather than inventing new ones, so that users can easily understand how it works.
FAILURE IS INFORMATION Start experimenting with, and releasing, prototypes (or beta versions) as soon as possible. If you’re not iterating and failing, you’re not learning.
WATCH IT IN THE WILD Put early versions of your product in the users’ hands as soon as possible. Then watch what they do, and refine based on your observations.
You’ve built it. Now the question is: Will they come? The rise of e-commerce and the social web has made finding customers for your product or service easier than ever. That said, it’s also made it easier than ever for your customers to talk back.
The impact is manifold: It means that we have to cultivate stories that create a real emotional connection to break through the noise. It means that we have to learn to speak authentically and honestly to our customers, and that we can’t hide when we make mistakes. It means that we must strive not only to help our customers but also to inspire them.
The blog post asking for donations went up with no preamble. There was no launch campaign and no guilt trip, just a simple description of the need for clean water in Ethiopia. The invitation to participate came at the end, asking readers to join in making a difference. In less than a day, $22,000 came in—all from the one post.
STEP 1: INVITE YOUR ARMY TO SERVE
But your charge, as the leader of your all-volunteer army, is essentially to serve. Every day, start by asking yourself two questions: What am I making? Whom am I helping?
STEP 2: IN TURN, SERVE YOUR ARMY
Like relationships, loyalty isn’t created in a single conversation or transaction. Instead, it’s built over time. One of the best ways you can establish loyalty is through a series of touchstones—small things you repeatedly do that create a positive impact in someone’s life.
A few examples: Make your expertise available to the community at regular intervals.
Share your paid content with users for free on different channels.
Look around and be generally helpful wherever you can.
Back in the dark ages when we all used dial-up, communities were explicitly local. If you wanted to connect with someone in another part of the world, your options were limited. These days, there’s no doubt that the world has changed. You can now connect with people regardless of where they live. You can build a community based on mutual interests. You can deploy this community for social good, for profit, or in pursuit of a greater mission that combines the two. The key lies in crafting a consistent message, making a real difference in people’s lives, and serving the people who’ve chosen to
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Nothing is more important than your relationships with them. As with the $22,000 blog post or the $100,000 product launch, success is built on the creation of trust and value. If you make your army the focus of your daily work, rewards will inevitably follow.
Think about all the tone-deaf customer service interactions you’ve had. The ones where you were treated like a stepping-stone to profit rather than an actual human. The tech support person telling you to restart your computer as he reads a script, the airline attendant throwing up her hands and telling you, “There’s nothing I can do,” the bureaucrat refusing to even consider your problem until you’ve filled out all the right forms. Chances are you only interact with companies like these when you have no other choice. And that’s why they’re not going to last.
PLAY THE LONG GAME
“DO THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE”
REMOVE PAIN POINTS
Don’t treat your customers like a “1” in the page view column or as money to be tucked into a budget document. They’ll know. Amazon made their customers’ lives easier, and they came back in droves. Airbnb listened to their customers one by one and took their feedback to heart, and the business’s growth skyrocketed. Charles Schwab identified what every single customer hates about banking (hidden fees) and removed them.
But being human is more than just a good policy. It’s more fun. No one starts a business with the intention of sitting alone in a room staring at a glowing screen all day. We start businesses to make the lives of those around us better or easier (and earn a little scratch in the process).
Nothing is more rewarding than launching a new product or service you believe in and then asking your customers to help make it better. I’ve never spoken with a longtime entrepreneur who attributed success ...
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Every time someone lands on your website or purchases your product, they’re raising their hand and letting you know that they care. We’d be wise to return the favor. Listen to your...
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People have extremely sensitive BS detectors these days. We’ve all been inundated with advertisements since we started walking and talking. So we can pick up on a brand’s authenticity—or fakeness—immediately.
Companies can’t hide. If you make a mistake, or you do something wrong, it’s going to get out there. And if you’re not proactive about responding when it happens, you’re going to dig yourself into a deeper hole.
Have you ever taken the time to tell your friends about a product, review it, tweet or Facebook about it? I’m not talking about lashing out on Twitter with a complaint for a quick customer service response, but rather taking the time to leave an unsolicited compliment for a product or service you love. Or how about sharing the story behind a brand and why you care about it with your circle of friends? Sure, it’s easy to surface this kind of product love with social media now, but what drew out these public displays of love in the first place?
The answer is simple. It’s the thing that has driven man since time eternal: stories.
You’ll be surprised by just how much that community can do: they can spread the word about your company, provide almost instantaneous product feedback, and even begin servicing other members of the community. Patagonia has done it. Nest has done it. My company did it. And so can you.
GREAT STORIES INSPIRE US
– Ask yourself: How are you tapping into your audience’s aspirations and dreams?
GREAT STORIES CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK
Ask yourself: How is my product going to change the way people think or go about their daily lives?
GREAT STORIES START CONVERSATIONS
Ask yourself: How can you share more of the process behind your product with customers? It can be good, bad, or ugly—as long as it’s honest.
“It’s easy to miss the real point of our lives even as we’re living them,” writes Arianna Huffington in her book Thrive. “And it is very telling what we don’t hear in eulogies.” Those things include making senior vice president, sacrificing kids’ Little League games to go over those numbers one more time, or my personal favorite: “she dealt with every email in her inbox every night.”
MAKE STORYTELLING SECOND NATURE Build a story into your brand from day one. Then, invite customers into that story by using the social web to share your thinking, your challenges, and your successes.
PLAY THE LONG GAME Get to know your customers—and their pain points—early on, even if it requires tactics that aren’t sustainable. You have to perfect the customer experience before you can scale.
FREE UP YOUR EXPERTISE Make reciprocity part of your business strategy. Strive to share some part of your expertise, content, or product with your community for free.
CONVERSATION IS A TWO-WAY STREET Don’t try to control the conversation about your brand. Focus instead on influencing the conversation your customers are having in a positive way by delivering killer service.
REFINE YOUR PROCESS TO IMPRESS Consider all the cues—big and small—that you can use to instill confidence in your customer as you build out your service process.
DELIGHT IS IN THE DETAILS Don’t forget to have fun, and imbue your brand experience with “small kindnesses.” Customers notice the little things; no detail is too small to be an opportunity for delight.
In an era where initiative and innovation are what we prize most, leadership is the opposite of what many of us think it is: Telling people what to do. The true leader’s job is to help everyone around them do their job better.
Then we dig into the essentials of great leadership: how to drive better collaboration by upping your commitment to transparency, how to make sure everyone is communicating and moving forward in unison, and how to instill ownership and pride in your team members.
Every great business needs someone standing at the helm, guiding the ship. So if you truly want to make an impact, it’s time to get your sea legs.
Managers are under fire these days. And it’s no wonder. From Dilbert to Office Space, we all know the trope of the useless and conniving political player who’s managed to entrench himself into an otherwise well-meaning organization. He holds the keys to advancement, adds little value, makes other people miserable, and seeks only more power.
Whatever your strengths are, they will likely lead straight into your weaknesses.
WHY SHOULD WE PAY ATTENTION TO MANAGEMENT?
I’ve always thought that the hardest and most valuable thing in work is to get a group of smart people to work together toward a common goal.
BEING A SERVANT LEADER, NOT AN EAGER LEADER
I used to think that if you cared for other people, you need to study sociology or something like it . . . I concluded, if you want to help other people, be a manager. If done well, management is among the most noble of professions.
