Hi Habr!

Recently, an article about Service Now caught my eye. It described how good their product is. They even showed a middle manager with a microphone, which said something without numbers (from the article, "reduced the time of administrative work, and the doctors were able to focus on their main purpose").

However, during a quick reading of the article, I still have a small residue, at least due to the fact that I worked with this system (as a user). And I had an absolutely negative opinion about the software of this company as a whole (and about the product in particular).

After the article, I tried to realize - and how can you evaluate the product like this for users with such advertising presentations, or did it only help middle managers to get another bonus ?

0: good and bad products

To designate the terms of the article in advance, and at the same time to narrow the subject area, the terms are better defined as:

• The product is a program / service, etc., which helps specialists to work (in theory or in practice). The article does not consider the services that are imposed by the state. Also, the article does not consider programs that allow getting rid of workers (such as replacing bank tellers with ATMs), since in this case economic indicators will be the most objective factor. Also, the article does not consider things that help not specialists at work, but, for example, a person at home / outside work.
• A good product is a product that allows a specialist to save time on routine tasks (for example, a doctor will be able to do less writing routine and spend more time on a patient)
• A bad product is an antonym to a good product, that is, a solution that a specialist spends more time working with than he did before, provided that the workload of other company workers has not decreased either (after putting the product into operation)
• Product A is better than product B - product A allows you to save more time on routine tasks for specialists than product B.

From the above terms, we obtain the consequence: if a product saves time for a specialist, the latter will be able to make more goods / services, which will lead to higher incomes (unfortunately, not a fact that to higher profits).

1: who evaluates the product

Immediately thesis: a good product is praised by the specialists who work with it; a bad product will be praised by people who have not even touched it . Or in other words - if there is no reason to consider the product to be good, then the recommendations will be from people who did not work with the product at all. Often these are the same people who received a bonus for the successful implementation of the service.

If you go back to the article about the magnificent Service Now , then you can see that the odes of praise come from "the representative of the medical company Magellan Health" (to quote verbatim). And continuing the retelling: "reduced the time of administrative work, and the doctors were able to focus on their main purpose." That is, instead of the doctors, a conditional “representative” arrived, who told the doctors how they felt good.

Life story: in one of the old insurance companies in the Russian Federation (unfortunately, I cannot name a name, since NDA, etc.) uses a self-written system for accounting policies (plus for automating business processes). In most cases, insurance agents work with this system (in fact, it was developed for them), however, there are a number of nuances:

• Insurance agents hate this system. Not only does the product work only on Windows, it also likes to throw errors like "no free licenses", "Error ORA-12345", etc., even at the peak hours.
• The technological state of the system is so high that:
  
  • To configure it, you need to register several certificates as trusted on your OS.
  • Due to the fact that a number of operations take place on a terminal server, the system by default does not see the connected printer (really, why should an insurance agent print something?)
  • The system is not able to do standard routine things, such as scaling photos, etc. Insurance agent should be able to independently squeeze a picture to N Kb
• The quality of the system is such that people try to work with the product to a minimum. In particular, I once asked a broker, "Did you give me prices for six insurance companies. And can I get another for company M?" And in response, I heard that setting up the system is too complicated, so the broker simply does not work with this insurance company, if possible.

Interestingly, in this insurance company, only the bosses were proud of the system, and above a certain level. That is, the system was praised strictly by those who do not work with it.

From these conclusions, we conclude that if the product is praised by the one who does not work with it, then the quality of this "product" is lower than the baseboard .

2: how to evaluate the product

Briefly, the idea: if there are no positive feedback from users on a product, then the program is infested with flaws that are artfully plastered . Or in other words: if users do not praise the product, then this is a sure sign that the product has no feedback. And it is often not there, where users will only answer evil in the style of "what a misery you have done," etc. From here we get: in order to limit the number of negative, at the same time we cut off all the positive.

I'm usually angry with the phrase "no complaints." After all, almost any service, product, service, you can find complaints, if you carefully ask users. However, the idea of ​​"no complaints" is often used in the context that "there are no registered complaints", then the user simply does not have a way to "leave complaints". Will the developers of good products complicate their feedback? No, of course, it is not profitable for them. Unlike the developers of problem systems.

Continuing the example of the insurance company: in a great system that allows agents to work less with clients, and more to sit at the computer, there are several ways of feedback. And they are made just perfect (as I think):

• In the system itself, you can "write a message to developers," in which in theory you can paint all the details. But the trouble is: there is no way to monitor the status of the message, because it is sent as if into a black hole. By the way, there are no formal complaints about the system.
• You can write a letter to the developers, which ends in nothing (even if you read it).
• And of course there is no official bug tracker, no one publishes information about releases or new features.

As you can see from the example above, it is incredibly difficult to reach developers. As a result, on the one hand, feedback is lost, on the other hand, the middle manager can gladly report: "No complaints, we are not messing about." For comparison, you can easily complain about these products: IntelliJ Idea , Artifactory .

Teams with low quality products often intentionally complicate user feedback. At a minimum, this allows you to do what the development department wants, instead of helping the user / business. At the same time, if the person who does not work with the “product” is responsible for salaries and promotions, you can almost always juggle feedback from users.

3: how to successfully present a bad product

Despite the clickbate header, I will write out only a couple of techniques that will help in the sale of a bad product. That is, one that the users don’t like in principle (it hurts them and forces them to spend more time on the routine, moreover - it doesn’t help to optimize and structure the work).

• The first is no contact with users. They should not be on the presentations, on the introduction of the product (at all stages: the purchase, etc.).
• Secondly, you have to show that quite a few authoritative people from other companies use the product. The main thing is a person, not a profit. If you are talking about Apple - show the photo of Steve Jobs on the background of an apple.
• And the last - you sell the product to managers, not to specialists. You should not help "simple workers". Focus on "systematization" (not so many directors know what distant subordinates do there, and everything will be under control with your system), "automation" (because in the future it will be possible to reduce the staff). And do not forget about trends: instead of the phrase linear regression, you can use Artificial Intelligence or ML.

How to implement:

• Sale: first of all it is necessary to show that the product is used by many . Any manager should have an excuse that everyone works (i.e. when the manager shows the report to the boss, the document should clearly show that "half of the TOP-500 companies have successfully implemented a product," or " 30% of fast-growing startups have introduced a product ", etc.). This is the most important point of sales (except for the obvious). You must remove the information from the efficiency figures (if we are talking about automation, then fundamentally there should not be any calculations of what work time is spent on, which makes it difficult to work faster / better, etc.). No personality, no close analysis.
• At the beginning of implementation, you need to find the department that first goes to your system. Ideally, if it is not very loaded (it’s not just that they don’t get tasks, right?) And with people who are motivated to introduce a new one (they need to repeat more often that they are innovators, etc.). Ideally, promise them a premium for assistance (it works, obviously, not always). Important: the department that will use the system first should not in any way be interested in criticizing the system. That is, the motivator should be the introduction of the system, and not the quality of work or the effectiveness of the department.
• After implementation: all communication with developers should be strictly through your channels (of course, they should not be the most convenient, with a long and slowed down support service, which advises you to first reinstall the system before starting to study the issue).

findings

I hope this article will help good products to move in the market. I strongly hope that if you participate in product development, then after reading the article you will be closer to users (and not to managers). Ideally, if you make a questionnaire for users (or better, periodical), where all fields will be optional, and at least half - in the style of "if you want to add something else on the item above, write in this text field".