Gold Medal for Listening to Customers

(Updated)
And the Gold goes to: Vyew.  

Dennis and I both posted about this free “browser-based conferencing and always-on collaboration platform that provides instant visual communication without the need for client downloads or installations.”  I also had a follow-on post, this time about product names and branding.  Perhaps that’s the reason that the lively comment-conversation these posts triggered focused more on Marketing on my blog, and product features chez Dennis.

Commenters on Dennis’s blog quickly noted that Vyew does not allow full desktop sharing, so while it’s a handy collaboration tool, it cannot be used for software demos. Oops, it was a bit  premature of me calling Vyew a “Free Webex-killer” – well, it’s not quite that … just yet.  But not for long! 

While I was exchanging emails with a very responsive Fred on the Marketing team, Tim, a member of Vyew’s development team came to Dennis’s blog and announced: “As a direct result of various conversations with some of you and on other blogs, I met with our team and we decided to push out a LIVE DESKTOP SHARING feature this week. This may not be as snappy as webex, we’ll be looking at about 3 seconds between each screen refresh. But keep in mind this is a quick fix until our real release in 2 months.”   Wow!  Talk about responsiveness!

I don’t know how well the new feature will work, but these guys are definitely market-driven, if anyone, they definitely know how to “turn customers into evangelists“. Customer goodwill can go a long way – some companies are good in earning it, others manage to lose it fast…  it’s good to be in the first camp.

Update (5/2):  Vyew just got Naked: “Talk about listening to your customers. This has to set a new record

for responsiveness for user-requested refinements. My congratulations

to vyew. My advice for next steps: start your own blog, vyew, so that

you can have more direct exchanges with customers.” – says Shel Israel.

Update (5/2):  Dennis sums up the story under A Naked Conversation with a vyew.  His conclusions in the second half of the blog are really interesting, go way beyond the Vyew story.  (Btw., I don’t get this naked thing… just got back from swimming and everyone was in swimwear  )

Update (5/2):  Vyew got TechCrunched – well, almost, on the French edition.  Here’s the Google-translated English version of the originally French article.

Update (5/4):  The Vyew team really listens: following Shel’s advice, they’ve just started their own blog.  Congrat’s .

Update (5/7):  The story reverberates:  Shel Israel talked about Vyew at MeshForum 2006 – not the product features, but their  customer responsiveness.  (souce: Christopher  Carfi and Howard  Greenstein).  Being customer-focused has already paid off for Vyew: they’ve become a “showcase”, enjoying increased brand-awareness.

Update (5/13):  Guy Kawasaki just profiled Vyew.

Tags: vyew, simulat, collaboration, webex, gotomeeting, 37signals, bloginfluence, goodwill, customerfocus, customerevangelist