Two weeks ago, a friend and I went to a bar to watch the Packers-Cowboys game (thanks, NFL network). Normally, our sporadic football-watching happens as his house, as I don’t have TV (yes, I have a TV, just not an antenna, satellite dish or cable). We watch the game, make armchair quarterback calls, comment on the stupidity of most of the ads and discuss random technology issues (we both work at technology companies). But instead of our normal conversational environs, we were immersed in the revelry of the crowd.
What was so fascinating to see was how much passion the fans at the bar were about their respective teams. By my rough estimates, the ratio of the crowd was 60/40 Dallas to Green Bay, but everyone was energized. One member of the group of Cowboys fans sitting behind us repeatedly shouted at the game on the big screen every play. EVERY play. “Come on, Romo!” “Get your hands up!” At one point he even shouted that the defense should watch out for a fake play, as if he could help his team by alerting them to something he saw that they might not have.
It got me thinking about how great it would be to have customers like that. Shouting at the top of their lungs how great your product is and how much they want you to succeed. Some consumer products have that. The iPod has it. TiVo used to have it. The Motorola Razr used to have it.
I have customers who are enthusiastic about my product. They constantly provide feedback on new features and make feature requests for future releases. They participate in beta. They review mock-ups and requirements documentation. But they don’t have the passion that I saw in those fans. I want them to have that passion. I want them to scream at me (figuratively, though, not literally) to make sure that I see the punt fake play.
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Tags: beta, customer, enthusiastic, fans, feedback, passion, products
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I don’t have TV, really don’t have it. So I’m not familiar with the TiVo status, have they lost their mojo?
@Victor
How funny, I thought I was the only one who didn’t have TV. Almost all of my friends and family who do have it, don’t use TiVo. If they have a DVR, they use the one that they get from their cable or satellite provider, which may or may not have TiVo software on it. The ones that do have an actual TiVo box are holding on to older versions that they purchased initially. I think the verb, Tivo, has stuck around, but the product/service, not so much.
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