Monday, March 30, 2015

Customer Conference 2015


I spent last week at our annual customer conference.  While tweeting about the conference I received a tweet from a fellow product manager on how it’s a good sign that it’s more party than complaint desk.  That tweet inspired me to write this post. Our conference was a good balance of customer feedback, brain candy and fun.

With over 1800 users at our conference, it was a great way to get customer feedback.  At breakfast and lunch we mingled with our customers and received a range of feedback across the entire experience: from product, to customer service and everything in between.  That type of interaction is invaluable because it gives one a more holistic view into the good and not so good of how your organization is doing.  I also gave (& attended) a variety of sessions.  Here I received more targeted feedback based on the area the session was about.  It was also a great reminder that it’s always the ‘simple’ stuff that gets customers jazzed up.  Solving those things can save customers tons of time.  

I also received many customer business cards so in the future I can set up customer visits and interviews.  An easy way to fill up my customer queue.

A leader at my organization refers to attending conferences as brain candy.  Time spent out of the day-to-day, learning and thinking about what-if.  Our customer conference had the same learning opportunity – where else can you hear Magic Johnson, Simon Sinek and Erik Wahl all speak at the same event.  Awesome to hear them speak and they really get one thinking well after the conference ends.

I showed some of my friends pics that were taken at the event.  They asked if I did any work…any one that has gone to this type of conference knows it’s a ton of work…but yes we did have fun.  And no, I’m not talking about the evening events (although they too were fun)  My co-workers made everything fun.  We had one co-worker bring his mom; she was in many pictures with co-workers and even had her own hashtag. There was a bounty on my head to see if peeps could get a picture of my being hugged (*sigh*), etc.  It was a good reminder that life is made to be enjoyed.  This level of energy makes it more fun for the folks working and your customers.

All in all a great week.