Here’s a round-up of some of the presentations and discussions I attended at the recent ProductCamp London, with links to the slide decks and recommended reading where applicable.
How much would you invest to prevent a mass customer exodus? Everything Everywhere, the merged T-Mobile / Orange behemoth, was happy to spend £150 per customer to shore up its customer base following the post-merger restructuring.
What did it gain? A reduction in monthly churn from 1.7% to 1.3%, significant given their customers number well into the millions, plus an additional 300,000 customers locked into long-term contracts in place of short-term pre-pay contracts.
What should product managers keep an eye on in 2011?
I was discussing recently the importance of getting a product installation or upgrade process right for customers. Here are some guiding principles from a usability perspective that you may wish to consider when defining your product’s requirements.
Do you find it difficult to set appropriate financial targets for your product?
I strongly believe that all software companies should have a manifesto or a set of guidelines for usability.
Earlier this month, I was attempting to appease my wife by reducing my server’s power consumption physical footprint. In this follow-up, I’ll give you an update on how I got on and pass on a few tips if you’re planning to do the same.
Normal I Manage Products service will be resumed in the next article!
Every now and again, I undertake a DIY tech project. I think it’s because I’m a geek at heart and I like to think to myself a little smugly, “still got it”. This time the brief actually came from my lovely wife: shrink the physical footprint and electricity consumption of the servers running 24/7 in the home office. The beige boxes are going green!
Ah, pricing. Always a thorny topic for product managers as it’s one those more subjective areas of the job. I’d love to have some kind of oracular spreadsheet that foresees how much customers would be willing to pay for my new product. Ironically, I would pay good money for such a thing…
A product manager who thinks they’ve got an easy ride because their product is a cash cow is probably missing the point. While failing or unpopular products have a more obvious set of problems to tackle, successful ones have a different set of arguably trickier problems
