24 DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS

Text: Milou Snaterse

YOUR WISH IS OUR PRODUCT

TOPdesk believes that customer feedback is essential during the design and development phase of our new products. But what do we do with this input?

Erik Pols and Renske van der Heide, product managers

Renske van der Heide and Erik Pols are TOPdesk product managers. They visit customers throughout the development phase to fully understand their wishes and needs, and use this knowledge to improve our software.

ITS ALWAYS TRICKY TO BALANCE TOPDESK SO THAT ITS PERFECT FOR EVERY ORGANIZATION

Photography: Robin Kuijs

DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS 25

Preliminary research
Product managers prefer to visit customers before the development of a new product has even begun. During these visits, they see how and why customers use TOPdesk and they use this information to improve the product. Pols and Van der Heide often visit customers. We have customers tell us how they use TOPdesk, explains Pols. Some find that odd, but concrete information about our product is invaluable to us. For instance, its really useful to know which information people would want to add to certain forms. Do they want extra fields? Or do they want to not be limited to the standard fields, allowing for more flexible data entry? Answering these questions helps us improve TOPdesk forms. However, TOPdesk is interested in more than just how the product is used, as Van der Heide explains. We also want to know what other tools and products our customers use to do their work. This can vary from making notes on post-its to other software. What we want to know is, why not just use TOPdesk? People are experts in finding solutions, but each post-it a customer uses is a sign that we can improve our software. TOPdesk is used by organizations and departments with a wide variety of sizes and requirements. It is a challenge for product managers to adapt the tool to suit each customer. Its always tricky to balance TOPdesk so that its perfect for every organization, says Pols.

Customer feedback during development

The product managers formulate a product vision based on the preliminary research, for instance by creating product sketches. After analysing the product vision they ask two questions: are we heading in the right direction? And are our solutions good solutions? Customer feedback is key to answering these questions. We could get feedback during the design phase, but also when our development department has already created something, says Van der Heide. The product managers show the customer design sketches, or demonstrate a preliminary product design on a computer. This enables customers to provide feedback early on in the development process and help improve the product. Organizing customer days is one of the ways TOPdesk involves its customers in the software development process. Twenty customers attended the May 2011 session in Delft. The objective of that particular session was to check whether or not the product vision and accompanying sketches resolved the problems that TOPdesk customers faced. The product managers also wanted to gain insight into which TOPdesk components customers thought were the most important. Each customer was given twenty cards stating wishes about TOPdesk use. The customers could then select ten of the cards and arrange them in order of importance. The information we gathered during that session was extremely valuable, says Pols.

EACH POST-IT A CUSTOMER USES IS A SIGN THAT WE CAN IMPROVE OUR SOFTWARE

Evaluating the product

Have we been able to improve the product? End users can best judge whether or not we have succeeded. That is why product managers also visit customers to evaluate the software. Its good to see how customers receive our products and whether they feel anything is missing, says Pols. The information gathered during such visit is used to further improve the tool. The product managers do their best to visit a wide range of customers. Diversity is very important, says Van der Heide. Its good that we interview TOPdesk users in different fields using varied applications. Smaller organizations have different needs than larger organizations, for instance. Enthusiasm and constructive criticism are great during these evaluations, no matter your size.