Expectations and obligations between a software vendor and its customers can be hard to nail down. The “customer is always right” maxim is great for retail but it falls short in other arenas. It’s harder for a software as a service (SaaS) vendor to please a whole ecosystem of customers and partners with one product. Social computing analyst Jeremiah Owyang started a great discussion at his blog today on the flexibility of SaaS solutions that outlines some of the major problems of this distribution model: First, customers are forced to accept instant upgrades and new features on the vendor’s schedule. Second, many customers would rather keep their data in-house. I’d like to offer some solutions.
Go modular to please everyone
If customers are rebelling because they didn’t want your latest platform upgrade, you’re in trouble. The best way I can see to avoid this is to make your service as modular as possible. Rather than fragment into a line of mostly similar products (perhaps named “home, office, and enterprise”) you’re going to have to break out your innovative new features into blocks of functionality that can be flipped on or off at the customer’s whim. This way you’ll satisfy nimble early adopters without alienating your biggest customers.
Enable community contributions
The best-run web 2.0 communities are publishing their software as a service with an interface for third-party enhancements. Think of the cornucopia of applications available for free on Facebook. allowing third parties to extend and enhance their core platform Facebook is able to meet the needs of millions of niche users who might otherwise be passed over in favor of the higher profile feature requests in the official pipeline. Your service should do the same, but coordinating these third party developers is a responsibility that is not to be undertaken lightly.
Set your customers free and they’ll want to come back
Buying in to someone else’s web service is a big risk for any organization. That service can change its terms or shut down or sell your data or any number of things that will force you to walk away. Once you hit a point of no return you’re going to have to get your data out however possible. If the service provider thinks ahead and eases this natural turnover then the customer will feel much more comfortable coming back if their issues are ever resolved.
A good example here is the game World of Warcraft, where each player’s account is kept intact forever in case the player ever wants to return and pick up where they left off. Since players can invest thousands of hours of playtime into an account, it’s great for them to never have to start over from scratch. How can you use this example for your software service? Make the customer data export simple and free so that they can walk away with a good feeling if they ever need to drop you. They’ll be impressed and spread good vibes about your service.
Call me names
There are plenty of holes to be poked in my suggestions above. Maybe you think I’ve been overly optimistic in my recommendations. I’m sure some of you have tried these ideas and seen them fail in the real world. Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below so that each of us can have a more well-rounded perspective on the future of software services.
