Whether I was at a bar watching my Horns lose in the NCAA tourney or reading live-streaming updates from friends in Facebook, I could not escape the question, “What do you think of the new Facebook design?” Seems like no matter where I go, everyone is talking about the new Facebook design, even in the height of the NCAA tourney. Working for a SaaS-based company myself, got me thinking about how companies can prevent such a widespread revolt.
Change is never easy, however with SaaS (Software as a Service) you can expect change, like it or not. In fact, the ability to receive new product features and enhancements as they happen is one of the major benefits of SaaS solutions. I suspect most users of Facebook don’t realize Facebook is a SaaS application and take it for granted that they did not have to download any software to reconnect with old and new friends or pay a fee for new features.
While change should be expected from SaaS, there are ways to implement changes that will minimize a user revolt like the one currently being led by Facebook users. All businesses, not just SaaS providers, should keep in mind the following Final Four Customer Tips when implementing change:
1. Know Your Customers– Don’t assume since a competitive offering is taking off, your users want the same experience. Differentiate with features that will appeal to your user base. It is true Twitter is growing rapidly, however was it the right choice for Facebook to take on a similar live stream approach like Twitter?
2. Listen to Your Customers– Show you value your customers by listening to their wants and needs. Not all needs can be incorporated in your offering but at least acknowledge that your customers have been heard. It has been reported that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, stated that disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers. Companies can be disruptive and still listen to customers.
3. Communicate with Your Customers– Give a heads up that change is coming and be prepared to conduct webinars and develop training materials highlighting the changes made. Explain the rationale behind the changes. Make sure the communication is two-way, not one-way.
4. Respond to Your Customers – If customers voice concerns over changes, be proactive and address their concerns. Continue to make changes and revise previous changes if needed. You cannot please everyone, but when over 90% are unsatisfied, it’s time to consider a compromise.
We continually update our online database and do our best to follow the four steps above to keep our database innovative and relevant to our user base. And unlike Facebook, we listen to our customers and believe that the future of our database depends on a positive user experience.
So back to the original thought, how would you handle a public customer revolt? Listen and react or move forward with the current design.
i don’t understand why facebook always seems to start a big hoopla every time they make a change. in my opinion, there are many ways in which facebook Needs to change if they’re going to keep people. they need far more granularity in terms of privacy settings (and more visibility so that commenters know what privacy setting their comments are going under), some sense of customizability in terms of a user making their page look a little more personalized, a better means of controlling app. invites and app. alerts, etc. perhaps it’s just that facebook has so many users that there’s always bound to be a disgruntled subset, no matter how necessary the change might have been in making FB a more usable service.
i don’t know what multiply is doing better or different, but almost every change they’ve made since they started in 2004 has been met with praise and excitement from the users. there cooking up something new for this summer and i can’t wait to see what they come out with. that’s the kind of excitement that FB should be engendering before the change comes around.