[Read Reaction #2] Listen and Listen with Sincerity

In Chapter 5-8, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff （2011）show us how organizations could utilize groundswell to achieve commercial successes. Instead of viewing your customers as objects of your market research, you should get close to listening to their insights on a mutually respected basis. It’s like co-write a paper with our peers. We sit together in a meeting room and go through everyone’s parts to see if there could be any improvement. When we have no idea where our paper is heading, we begin a brainstorm because each one of us will be inspired by others’ ideas, no matter how useless they sound like at the first place. Starting a conversation with the groundswell benefit (energize) both the organization and the groundswell itself.

Listening to the groundswell, as is described by Li and Bernoff, is our first step to interact with the groundswell. Listening does not simply indicate knowing your customers’ feeling: “ market research is very good at finding answers to questions. But if you want to generate insights, you should listen.” (p. 79) What interesting is that Li and Bernoff also make many efforts emphasizing the importance of putting ourselves into [our customer’s] conversation. And to put ourselves into the conversation, we are suggested to show customers a sign that we are listening and we really value their insights.

Many organizations have taken actions to listen to their customers, but not all of them are good at listening. It’s necessary to leave your customers a sense of being listened. Otherwise, they would think that you are listening but you just don’t care what they think at all.

                                                                                          

Last week’s class I shared my terrible experience with Windows 10’s feedback mechanism. After that, I did some online research to see whether I’m the only one who feels this way. No, I am not. Windows 10 is a great operating system, but it’s far from perfect. At least, it’s built-in feedback function is disappointed.

The UI of Feedback Hub

Microsoft has long been passionate about hearing directly from Windows users, and the development team of Windows 10 even made a built-in app called Feedback Hub to collect user’s insights. However, even it aims for a good purpose, it became a terrible practice of listening in the end. The operating system automatically allows Feedback Hub’s begging prompts to pop up. It pops up too often and it keeps popping up even after you have filled the feedback form for several times.

Apparently, no user would think that Microsoft cares about their feedback in such a situation. In the Window 10 Store page of Feedback Hub, 45% of all 497 reviews so far gave 1-star ratings. Comments are including "You wouldn’t listen anyway", or "Great idea, poor performance". The overwhelming notification from Feedback Hub is so annoying that they tried to shut down the feedback function once and for all. Feedback function became one of 10 things to disable in Window 10. And if you type “Windows 10” and “Feedback Hub” into google search, there would be tons of articles teaching you how to "stop asking you for feedback".  

Ratings of Feedback Hub

Comments for Feedback Hub

Li and Bernoff also talk about setting up your own private community so that you could observe your customers’ natural interaction and reaction to your products there. However, several days ago, Microsoft Germany just demanded some websites remove their apps from the Microsoft Store because having Windows in their name. This led to the close of two Microsoft user communities, WindowArea.de and Dr Windows. They have long served as places where users of Microsoft products share their experience and review on products, but now they are all gone.

In an interview, one developer of WindowsArea says, “It (remove their app from the Store) testifies to pure arrogance at Microsoft, an incredible indifference expressed here to developers and their fans.” This might now be the common feeling of many Microsoft’s partners and customers.

Communities like WindowsArea and Dr Windows were closed, demanded by Microsoft

Work Cited

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2011). Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies(1st ed.). Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press.