The NEW new economy: Respect THY customers

The reason why the "new economy" has failed is because it is based on sky castles and wrong assumptions on consumer behaviour. How you treat your costumers has nothing to do with it, you have to get those customers first. More proof for my theory that marketeers are plain idiots.

/me goes read the article

Very, very, nice article, Brad. It's visible you put your heart into it, and I agree with all the things you say in there.

Jorge Coelho
NextSTART 2.70 - Windows your way!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies
IRC Chat: #winstep on AustNet

/me read it

See, you're missing it too. Good aricle on how consumers should be treated. You have to gain customer and brand loyalty (very important marketing principle)[1] in order to maintain. But before you do that you have to create that consumer base first.

You say StarDock was saved because of loyal customers who supported the unseen Object Desktop [2], but where did those loyal customers come from? They might have become loyal because of good treatment over the years (good software and support for example). But where did they come from? That is the issue of .coms.

A .com requires huge investments to pull off and loads of PR in order to create that consumer base. They all assume the consumers will come and purchase their services, but that is a wrong assumption. That is why .coms failed. How they treated their customers is a later phase. I agree that it matters, but only in the long run.

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(notes)

[1] I've had numerous marketing classes, which is one of the reasons why I despise it

[2] Subscription is a logical step, by the way, you never "own" software, you have a license to use it. SUch a license might expire. Ergo, subscriptions

that is where stardock were so terribly devious
they wrote and then released windowblinds. i havent the foggiest idea where i first encountered it, probably a minor article on line somewhere.

a "minor" product that soon i just cannot live without. and if that wasnt enough, they actually listen to what people say on the newsgroups, and help them to! *sigh*

obviously no hope for me, i am addicted

craeonics - most of these .coms didn't have trouble racking up numbers of customers. They had problems keeping them though.

If you can keep customers, then you can potentially sell them more stuff.

From my experience on IRC many potential customers have visited. Stardock staff have sat back and let the other users do the selling. Now THAT is good marketing.

Craeonics: As a professional marketeer I don't delude myself that marketing is a remarkable science. It is common sense. The tragic thing is that most companies lack this basic common sense. Stardock have the right attitude; the right people in the right places.

1) A CEO who is a figurehead who exudes confidence in his product, commands respect through his professionalism and LISTENS
2) Programmers who listen to customer needs and deliver the goods
3) A tight team of support staff (marketing/customer service/qa) who function efficiently

Not often do you find a team, who ask for opinions, work all the hours God sends, and don't display an arrogance that so many of the large corporates do.

If there are shares in Stardock I want some. Long live Stardock!

I have to agree. You can create a huge marketing campaign that really sells your product up big time and it can be the best product in the world but at the end of the day if the service and customer care is not there you can fall flat on your....
I worked for a paging company that was in a significant amount of the US market. They had very comptetative pricing, some huge accounts, massive marketing campaigns, and did quite well in keeping employees happy. Unfortunately they missed big on customer service. Customers got hung up on, sent wrong equipment, yelled at, called names, etc. Sales reps had to turn to giving equipment out "free" and going the "extra mile" to keep large accounts who had been abused by a "customer care representative". This landed the company into losing 16-20million per quarter until finally they had to sell out to another company just as we were starting to turn the service end of things around.
You'll find that for every praise you have there are two complaints. And while there are two very vocal complaints there are three people walking away never telling you anything but telling every single one their friends about their bad experience. Net result being a significant loss of potential customers. Any business needs the customer to be their sales person, some do it through referral programs and others doing it by just being good to the customer. It works as both a long term and short term program.