Better Product Managers, and Product Management

This is the sad story of a little company who is killing off their evangelist users.  (Well, at least this one.)

I’ve provided a timeline so that you, too, can squander the goodwill of the people who would otherwise brag about you, blog about you, and buy a bunch of your products for their friends.

September 2008:

Launch with the TechCrunch 50.  Provide a concise, compelling description of your features and some tantalizing screenshots.  Allow your excited future evangelist users to pre-order.

November 2008:

After two months, post your first blog post with some updates into the manufacturing process.   Let us know there will be a delay – but promise to provide frequent blog posts and updates on Twitter.  Do not actually provide your Twitter username.

December 2008:

One month and 15 comments later, a blog reader leaves a comment: “Hey guys – this post was made over a month ago, it doesn’t seem you responded to any comments, no Twitter updates, not a thing.” Do not respond.

Get everyone excited again with a detailed blog post including details and photos.   By now your evangelists are salivating for more.  Their comments say things like “I can’t WAIT to get this thing!”  Do not respond.

January 2009 through March 2009:

Once a month, provide one post to tantalize your audience.  While providing some transparency into the continued delays, continue to not respond to comments.  Allow someone else to steal your company’s Twitter handle.

April 2009

In this month’s blog post, show one screenshot of the software that will accompany your product.  Promise to open up a beta version of the software to pre-order customers.  This time, answer questions throughout the comments.  Revel in the fact that your evangelist customers are at a fever pitch of excitement.

May 2009

Announce your ship date – July 27!  By now, the ship date is a full six months beyond the original promise.  But that’s okay – your evangelist customers are practically begging for access to beta test your software, for free.  Do not respond.

June 2009

In response to your evangelist customers continuing to beg for access to the beta version of the software, say “I think we’re going to hold off on allowing access until the product ships, so that we have a bit more time for our QA people to stress test the site and uncover any remaining issues.”

Why would you want feedback from your most passionate users, anyways? And everyone knows that the best way to find bugs in software is to limit access to a small team of people! I mean, come on.

July 2009

By now, this evangelist has stopped checking the blog.  In fact, I’ve gone from being thrilled about you to being vaguely annoyed to having completely forgotten about you.

In casual conversation, a friend asks how I like your product.

“What?  Oh – that.  I’d totally forgotten! That’s right, I’m supposed to have it by now!”

I check the website: ship date is now “sometime in August”.  Do I believe you? No.

Am I going to link to your website? No.  Maybe you’ll ship me the product I pre-ordered last September, maybe you won’t.  At this point, I don’t much care.

This post is kind of negative.  And that’s deliberate - your users don’t have any particular reason to give you the benefit of the doubt.

From your perspective, you’re working as hard as you can to get them the best possible product.  You want their first impression to be awesomely great. You want to check that every detail is perfect first.   You think: I’d rather wait and give them something perfect.

But it doesn’t work that way.  From the users’ perspective, you’re unresponsive, not listening, withholding the scraps of information that they’re begging for.  As time goes by with limited updates, your users either raise the bar of their expectations impossibly high… or stop caring altogether.

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