When Agile and Scrum first disrupted the IT industry, they were thought of as something that changed how we managed software development projects. Over the years it has continued impacting the other teams that work in technology based companies – implementation teams and operations teams. Albeit at times in a blended fashion, where some agile concepts are adopted or morphed variations have emerged. Such as the emergence of DevOps, an Agile practice that focuses on collaboration and cooperation between development and service operations teams. Still, I find it ironic that the origins were in development, while in truth the other teams are probably better suited to an Agile philosophy.
The Border is an Imaginary Line
The essence of the lesson learned is that geographical boarders are made by man and business can and does regularly work across them. Though for a variety of self-limiting reasons, Canadian tech companies often believe they have to make it locally first before they venture abroad. Yet with larger more lucrative markets outside of the country, it’s actually sometimes easier to achieve success outside of the country first. A strange but true Canadianism.
Delighting the Customer should always be the higher goal between corporate Silos
Problems occur in the gaps between people. Often issues occur between individual people, teams and silos, companies and customers because of miss understood lines of responsibility and unmet expectations. How often have we all heard the expression that a problem arose because “things fell through the cracks” He then went on to explain that the ideal solution to these problems is not reorganization or rewriting of agreements, but in finding the higher goal that the separate sides would benefit from, and forge a joint resolve to accomplish that goal.
When should you offer your existing customers a deal?
If you run any type of repeat or subscriber business, where you have an existing contract or agreed price, then your deals and marketing efforts to acquire new customers, can sometimes be perceived as negative marketing to existing customers if they aren’t offered any deals at all. Especially, if they are not happy or at risk of churn.
Since you’ve been gone… How to encourage the sometimes User
When analyzing usage statistics for information to help with retention, I believe you need to look at usage by segment. Identify your Super Users as outliers – and segment them accordingly. You do want to keep them – they help you innovate, but look at them separately so that their behavior doesn’t impact thinking about the other segment of users. Then look at what the majority of the people are doing on the system. Try to make what they are doing as easy as possible. Though either the product or service solutions.
All Aboard! Helping Customers realize value from the get-go!
I would expect that for most subscription type services there can be a reverse bell curve to lifetime. With a blip of churn occurring early. Then customers that stay a subscription cycle or two will end up staying for some time. This is real churn, or at least the churn that is most worrisome, because it is often customers that leave before you recover the cost of acquiring them in the first place.
