#11: Customer Love and Weekly Digest.
xoxo - your customers ❤️
Welcome to the 21 subscribers who have joined us since last Wednesday! We’re so excited to have you.
On Customer Love
I first heard about the concept of love in product development in Jon Kolko’s Well Designed. Before reading that book, I thought the goal of building products was to help customers achieve their goals and nothing more. I believed all we needed to focus on was understanding customer needs and building products that meet those needs. My rookie mistake was thinking “needs” were one-dimensional and easy to understand.
Humans are complex beings, and no two beings are identical, not even twins. So how do we understand and address the needs of people who might share similar characteristics but are fundamentally different? This is what I think makes building products so tricky. And customers these days are now demanding more—better experiences and offerings, ease of use, delight—and the list goes on and on.
With the market for most products getting increasingly competitive, low switching costs and the shift to customer-centricity, customer happiness has never been more critical. Furthermore, high customer acquisition costs have led product firms to clutch to their customers by working tirelessly to keep their business.
In a bid to be proactive about managing customers and their expectations, the concept of “customer satisfaction” has been popularized. People have created all sorts of definitions and methodologies to understand and measure customer satisfaction. The more popular methods are:
the Net Promoter Score [NPS]: aimed at measuring customer loyalty, satisfaction and love.
the Customer Satisfaction Score [CSAT], aimed at measuring customer satisfaction.
Still, these measures are not without their flaws.
There are so many things wrong with the NPS. The most prevalent issue is that it asks people to predict their future behaviour by asking them “how likely are they are” to do something. This is a big no-no in psychology and, adjacently, user research. It’s the equivalent of asking people if they will buy your product; the truth is it depends. I will most likely write about this in the coming weeks, but this article by Jared Spool addresses this issue and speaks to the other flaws of NPS.
Then there is the CSAT which isn’t a terrible method. Still, a major flaw is that most people don’t understand the concept of satisfaction. Satisfaction regarding a product, service or experience differs from the dictionary definition of satisfaction. We treat satisfaction were one-dimensional, which isn’t the case. The difference is that the former is a process while the latter is an end state. This is yet another thing I hope to write about in the coming weeks.
What irks me is that people are pedalling the idea that NPS is a good measure of customer love, customer satisfaction and customer experience. HOW? NPS, as it currently is, barely measures loyalty. So how in the world will it measure customer love? Before we can address this issue, we’ll need to define customer love. But let’s start by clarifying what love is.
The challenge is if you ask five different people what they think love is, you will get five unique responses. This goes to show that, as with satisfaction and need, love is a complex concept. Regardless, I find that the following characteristics of love are bound to come up in all the definitions:
a feeling
loyalty
satisfaction
delight
Let’s say these four characteristics are always found in love; how can we translate this to a customer’s relationship with a business? Easy. From the four characteristics stated above, we can deduce that customer love consists of four main elements:
Feeling: How do customers feel about your product?
Loyalty: How loyal are customers to your product?
Satisfaction: How satisfied are they with your product?
Delight: How delighted are they about your product?
I was going to attempt to define customer love, but I don’t think it’s necessary. We don’t need a formal definition if we already know what it comprises. So it begs the question, how do I know if my customers love my product? That’s a great question. In human relationships, the easiest way to identify if someone loves you is to watch what they say and do. So in the same guise, to know if your customers love you, pay attention to the following:
What they say about your product or service:
What reviews do your customers give your product?
What do they say about your product on social media and in their circles?
What they do:
Do they pay for your product?
Do they repeat purchases?
Do they refer you to their community?
I know there’s a lot to pay attention to, but the four characteristics of love can stand as your foundation. All you have to do is:
First, examine what your customers say and do.
And in those examinations, focus on understanding how they feel about your product and how loyal, satisfied and delighted they are.
How can you go about doing this?
You guessed right; the easiest way to do this is by conducting intentional research. Well-structured interviews and surveys can help you uncover insights and learn interesting things about your customers. Social media and customer support feedback are also under-utilized channels. They can really help you learn more about your customers.
I’m sure you have a ton of questions.
What questions can I ask customers to understand if they love our product? I don’t have much bandwidth, so how can I set up a lightweight process for understanding customer love? Is customer love for B2B products different from that of B2Cs? Can we really quantify customer love? Great questions! I’ll answer them in subsequent issues.
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Product Feature of the Week
This week’s product feature caught my attention when I stumbled on it. I think it’s because I’ve been using a similar product for the past five years, which has saved me so much money and trouble. I am so excited to feature this product today.
So, let’s get to it.
Profile
Name: Mamy Eyewear
Website: https://mamy-eyewear.com/
Countries Served: Kenya
Product Space: eCommerce [Health-tech]
Price: Starting from Ksh 6,500 [$54]
Founders: Marie Dédès, Arthur Querolle, Antoine Drouet
Funding Stage: Pre-Seed
Year Founded: 2021
Highlights: Nairobi Wire, Techstars Announcement.
In their own words:
It’s 2021, and glasses are still incredibly expensive — all the more crazy when you know it’s a 700-years-old invention, and that high-quality frames cost around $10 to produce (yes, that’s right).
Of course, lens technology is constantly evolving to offer your peepers the best possible comfort, and some prescriptions are trickier to correct, but it doesn’t justify them costing an arm and a leg.
In Kenya, the eyewear industry is still dominated by the old-school giants who keep prices high by selling through traditional opticians, piling on mark-ups — and leaving consumers with no other options to choose from.
Mamy was founded to create a modern, responsible and lasting alternative. We believe that everyone should be able to buy glasses without feeling the pinch and that it should be fun and effortless. So we’ve worked hard to make your life easier and re-imagined the whole experience from the very beginning.
We design elegant and timeless eyewear, but never without this subtly rebellious touch that is so uniquely Parisian. And we like a quirky retro feel, too!
All our frames are manufactured with top-tier material and assembled in Kenya. For our prescription lenses, we work with the best there is, the world’s leading supplier, Essilor.
We’re cutting out the middlemen (and their margins) and overseeing all steps, from the birth of conception to the final polish. By designing our collections in-house and serving our consumers directly, we can offer a fair and transparent price for high-quality glasses.
We’ve created a whole new experience, and we made it extra simple. We offer free eye tests (no hidden conditions) at home, and we bring your favourite frames with us, so you can see how they feel and give them a road test.
Vibe Check:
To be honest, the glasses are still a little pricy, in my opinion. Not to price shame Mamy, but I’ve bought a new pair of glasses from EyeBuyDirect for about $25. And they lasted for about two years. So that the price of the cheapest pair of glasses on their site is $54 is a little surprising.
I’m thinking more from the accessibility perspective. The minimum wage in Kenya is about $130 a month, and I wonder if the average Kenyan can afford the product. It could also be that the “average Kenyan” isn’t their target market, which is fair. The product is still in its earlier years, so we’ll just have to watch it play out.
One thing I really love is their redistribution program. The brand I use also has one; honestly, I think it’s a great cause. It gives some level of altruistic satisfaction, and I appreciate that. I have high hopes for the product and see a clear opportunity to expand to other African countries. I am looking forward to it; I think it’ll be amazing.
What do you think about Mamy Eyewear?
On an unrelated note:
Here is what I am musing about this week.
On Failure:
What is it about failure that is debilitating?
You could have secured 50 wins, but one loss could make all the wins feel worthless.
We should know better, right?
We know no one has ever had a continuous streak of wins without losses.
No one has won a battle without first losing numerous ones.
No one has made progress without experiencing retrogression.
So what is it about failure that seems to catch us by surprise?
I would love to know what you are musing about this week. Send them to me by replying to this email or drop them in the comments!
Bowing out:
That’s it for this week, folks! I hope you found it enlightening.
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I hope the rest of your week goes great! See you next week!
Yours in Product Discovery,
Dumss.
Musing about the 21 new subscribers 🤭