I am a big believer in the power of true, two-way dialogues between companies and their customers. The new marketing. Ongoing, sincere conversations can maximize your customer relationships. (Here is a previous post of mine Using Your Web Site to Start (More) Customer Conversations: Cisco.com)
While blogs may be the most common way companies are starting customer conversations, wikis (web pages or ‘workspaces’ where all users can create and edit content) are fast becoming the new, new thing in customer-product developer collaboration (a.k.a., marketing). eWeek’s Stan Gibson writes a comprehensive article in the Nov. 20, 2006 print issue (pages 22-28) about how wikis are "spreading virally" across the enterprise.
The article titled, "Veni,vidi, wiki" (not yet posted at eWeek’s site as of today) highlights some interesting ways Novell, Motorola and Chordiant Software (a customer experience software maker with mega customers like, UPS, Capital One and Royal Bank of Scotland) are using wikis to shorten product cycles, generate new business, and generally create better software that suits customer requirements. Wikis are basically web pages that contain both company and user-contributed, user-edited content, so these companies are using them to improve collaboration both internally and externally. Check out Novell’s Cool Solutions Wiki Main Page.
Chordiant has opened its developers’ wikis to customers in order to better meet customers’ requirements when developing its software. The article quotes Chordiant:
"We’re reinventing software development to be a continuous conversation between Chordiant and our customers," according to Greg Biggers, director of product strategy and manager of the customer-and-developer wiki project, Chordiant Mesh (with 800 users).
Biggers described Chordiant’s traditional product development process like this: product manager talks to customers, collects ideas, then creates requirements. The resulting product was at best 75% of what customers wanted–maybe less by the time it shipped. With the (speedier) collaboration enabled by the wiki, the entire product design process is improved. (Note: only design ideas are exchanged in the wiki, not the software code itself.) The Chordiant Mesh wiki has controls built in, such as different levels of permissions, i.e., per page and read-only. Biggers states that the wiki project has created new business and reduced IT costs for software development.
eWeek’s article is fascinating peek into the future that addresses the pluses and minuses of both internal and customer-collaboration using wiki platforms. (I’ll provide the link when/if the eWeek article is posted on line.)
This is an excellent example of Web 2.0 at work for small and mid-size businesses. New web 2.0 technologies like wikis are making it easier, faster, cheaper to collaborate with customers. The article quotes IT costs to Chordiant of $50,000 license for the wiki and $10,000 per year to host. Other wiki platforms can cost closer to $30,000 per year (according my own investigation). Wikis are not just an IT deal. Wikis, and blogs enable your company to conduct ongoing, customer and market research, and boost your marketing efforts into true collaboration with your customers.
In the meantime, how are your product developers collaborating with customers?
Hi Cynthia,
I am glad you found the stories about how at Chordiant we have reinvented software development to be a continuous conversation with customers. It has been an exciting journey of culture change and value creation.
I wanted to correct one item in your post– while the eweek story concentrated solely on wikis, the Chordiant Mesh Collaboration initiative actually does include transparent influence of the actual source code. We have found that combination of collaboration AND transparency to be necessary (and disruptively valuable) partners in affecting such big change.