October 2011

Sprint comes out swinging from last quarter

Sprint earnings announced yesterday were better than expected. Still bullish on the iPhone impact, Sprint wisely shows its prudence to stockholders with plans for network upgrades. While the iPhone on Sprint’s network changes the game for carriers, that $7 billion of new financing is intimidating. In the largest iPhone launch yet, let’s take a look at Sprint’s chance of delighting its customers and impacting carrier share in the market. If it’s any indication, Sprint is sold out of the 16GB phones and the large-capacity models have yet to hit shelves.

Judging from Sprint’s positive sentiment from users and Connectivity at the top of user interest, we believe the carrier has a good chance of taking market share. Users frequently review Sprint’s plans, phone selection, and pricing with glowing remarks. The planned network upgrades are a needed investment to delight existing and potential customers. Like they do with battery and graphics performance, users depend on connectivity to access content promised by the smartest of smartphones.

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In the Delight Landscape below, you’ll see each consequent iPhone model increase in user Delight. The Buzz, represented by the size of the bubbles, shows that Apple’s latest model is (1) receiving an amazing amount of user responses and (2) these users are saying great things.

Our data shows that iPhone 4S reviewers from Sprint and Verizon are more delighted than Best Buy or CNET reviewers. For the baseline of smartphone Delight, Best Buy customers are the happiest overall, AT&T is the most “Delightful” carrier, and Sprint customers are happier than those at Verizon. AT&T has a legacy of iPhone—you could guess that its millions of iPhone customers are indeed delighted. When we observe variation in delight feedback between carrier and retailer, it’s a great reminder that service and customer experience are also affecting consumer purchase behavior. The variation seen here could indicate that the iPhone means more to Verizon customers than AT&T customers. Tune in next week to find out.

Sprint is stepping up. iPhone 4S—check. Phone and plan selection—nice. Speedy connectivity—coming soon. Will the iPhone-ready Sprint topple AT&T and Verizon at the top? The signs are promising.

Siri, how can I filter insights from chatter in social media?

eCommerce expert Sam Decker says “iPhone Siri is ‘social by design’ as so many users share the funny/interesting responses, thus marketing the product.” But if you’re a product marketing manager, you can’t base the success of a product purely by it’s social response. No doubt people are going to express their delight from a great user experience, but let’s look at the nitty gritty. What tools do you use to pull constructive experience-based feedback from the mass of “LOL, OMG, Siri said a, b, and c”? Go ahead, search for ‘Siri’ on Twitter. There are thousands of mentions per hour. “Siri mode causes my speakers to get louder” is useful. “Siri is my new best friend!” is positive, yet not constructive. “Siri says the darnedest things” is the unuseful norm. “I’m in love with Siri. My wife better watch out” is perhaps a larger and true social problem.

So your product is not as ‘social’ as any Apple experience. The content in social media is still available and useful. While the PR team is getting excited about mentions, you, Ms. Product Marketing Manager are interested in whether your products user experience is going to ensure you the revenue projections you made eight months ago. This means taking a look at the competitive landscape, user expectations across the segment, and user feedback.

Here are three key things you can do with Real-Time Product Analytics upon product lau

nch that you cannot do with Social Media Analytics:

Measure delight – Are you meeting the changing expectations of users? What’s working and what’s not? Where should you invest resources? What exact experiences should you fix in a firmware update?
Compare to the competition – How does your product stack up? Who is winning and who is missing the mark? How can you expose your strengths?
Evaluate your messaging – Is the product message resonating? Have you targeted the right user base and marketing channels?

Voilà, the product lifecycle has become more iterative than ever before. Found a glitch? It can be saved! Prove the analysts wrong for predicting the impending death of your product—your blood, sweat, and tears over the past year! Argus Insights CIA can tell you in great detail how your product is performing—features and attributes, top usage models, retail preferences, strongest user groups, as well as the positive and negative aspects of each. Now imagine what you could do if you had this information before a product launch. Siri can’t tell you, but Argus will. “Siri, remind me to call Argus Insights.”

iPad 2 Sales Exceed Expectations as Predicted

Over a month ago, just two weeks after the Q3 close, we predicted that Apple’s iPad 2 sales would be larger than expected based only on the surge in both buzz and sentiment. Tuesday, after the market close, Apple announced their earnings results. While they missed the mark for iPhone sales, they exceeded expectations for iPad unit sales. The summer surge we saw bore out the prediction that Apple would have a bumper harvest.

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We are now collecting the early consumer responses on the iPhone 4S, just available last week. Look for an update where we will compare the launch of the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 4 and make an assessment as to whether the 4S is as game changing as Apple hopes it to be.

Access to this early consumer feedback can help refine both messaging and inventory planning. Wouldn’t you like to have early knowledge as to how market share is playing out before companies announce? Contact us to see how we can improve the accuracy of your crystal ball.

Netflix receives the corporate bronze medal in backpedalling!

I got a ‘Dear John’ letter from Netflix today. Most people would find that annoying, but my name is John so I get them all the time!

Dear John,
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.
We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.
We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.
Respectfully,
The Netflix Team

Netflix realized after making a colossal mistake of fragmenting their normally beloved user experience for the sake of potential spin-off later, that the hearts and minds of their customers were worth keeping. If you look at the note though, it is a form of Dear John letter. There is no remorse, not apology, and it exudes annoyance that these targets of economic rent extraction activity (their customers) would dare question their strategy. “We’ve listened, we’ll stop b

ut we are not changing the prices, so there, pffffttt.” This has been the year of User Experience snafus. Netflix and HP, between the two of them, have generated enough material to keep Harvard Business School case writers busy for years!

What’s the lesson here? Listen to your customers (but not too closely according to Clayton Christensen) and treat them with respect or at least amusement. If Steve Jobs was able to address customer concerns directly, occasionally apologize, and even shift corporate strategy in the face of blinding growth compared to the competition, what makes any other company feel they can successfully ignore what the market? By market I mean the people actually providing the capital to run the enterprise, not the market where fortunes are made on innuendo and rumor. We would not have a vibrant iPhone App market if Apple had not listent to the demands of its developer network to open the gates to the garden for all to enjoy. When new iPhone users found out they paid full price for a phone that dropped in price 24 hours later, Apple listened to demands, apologized, and gave customers store credit to recognize their loyalty (and wounds) as early adopters.

It comes back to what we all learned in Kindergarten, listen to others, respect each other, say you’re sorry, and if you cannot get it right, spend some time in the Naughty Spot. We will see if the market continues to make Netflix stand in the Naughty Spot. This letter is just the latest move that extends the duration of their time out.