Last Friday, Andy and I took some time out of out day to visit a customer who had emailed us with a problem he had using the Isle of Man Government’s Online Services. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not part of a crack team that flies around the Island solving people’s problems, we have a helpdesk for that 😉 But it was a concerned user, who had some valuable feedback and we wanted to engage at a level that was useful both for him and for us.

And why shouldn’t we? This individual took the time out of his day to put his thoughts down on paper (email actually) and send them to us. His input was more valuable than any focus group we could put together, any survey we could send out. It was a genuine sentiment of someone who was trying to use something we built and failing. We could turn that energy into something positive we could use to improve what we were delivering. This is true for any industry; whether you are selling ballet shoes or offering Colonix reviews as a service. Engaging with your customers is paramount, because that’s how you know whether you are succeeding in what you set out to do .. or if you are failing.

Failure is not the issue; the issue would have been not learning something from the failure.