It appears Digital Media receivers keep on selling well and more consumers are considering to cut off the cable for their entertainment needs. We have published results of Voice of Customer analysis six months ago and it is still one of the most visited posts on this blog. The comments are also keep coming, and the one sent yesterday caused me to write this update.

This time we used Opinion Miner® software to discover:

• WHAT attributes of their customer experience are important – based on the stories and reviews these customers published on-line;
• HOW important are these attributes to them – based on the percentage of opinions expressed about an attribute compared to total opinions expressed;
• MEASUREMENTS of a difference between customers expectations and their experience for each attribute. It is expressed in a two points scale from “0″ (unacceptable) to “2″ (delighted) with “1″ that can be interpreted as 100% satisfied (expectation=experience).

We selected the following DMR’s, listed alphabetically, for this customer feedback analysis:

1. Apple TV 2010 (593 customer reviews)
2. D-Link Boxee Box (425 customer reviews)
3. Logitech Revue (367 customer reviews)
4. Roku XDS Streaming Streaming Player (1,186 customer reviews)

The number of opinions expressed by these products’ customer reviews does not match, and usually exceeds by a wide margin, the total number of customer reviews, as our software often extracts multiple opinions from a single customer story.

Keep in mind that no questions were asked about their experiences and no customer was ever contacted by us to solicit their opinions.  Surveys is not our business!

Our customer feedback analysis shows that Reliability is the most important attribute of customer experience for Digital Media Receivers, as 16.79% of all opinions expressed were focused on it. Unfortunately Boxee Box disappointed substantial number of their customers by shipping defective units, connectivity problems and firmware related stability issues. The details are available on request free of charge*. Reliability problems often put pressure on Support organizations and the D-Link customer support experience have also earned negative ratings from their customers. Apple TV and Roku reviews have generated below expectations score as well for the Support with comments like these

The CustomerSpeak! sample is from Roku reviews

Usability is the second most important attribute of customer experience with 10.96% of all opinions expressed. All analyzed products delighted their customers with their usability experience.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we focused at customers’ perception of Operating System for tablets they purchased. These metrics are extracted from 1,352 customer generated content pieces published on-line  on or before June 15th, 2011 using Opinion Miner software.

The difference between customer expectations and their experience is measured from 0 to 2, where 1 represent a point of experience matches expectations and can be interpreted as 1=100% satisfaction.

The importance indicates a percentage of opinions about this Attribute weighted against the sum of all opinions expressed about the analized set of products. Considering the ratio of customer reviews published on-line against the number of units sold, any Attribute that carries importance over 1% may be experienced by tens of thousands of customers.

— CustomerSpeak! —

Android customers are also quite happy with their purchasing decisions depending on the version supplied with their tablet, while iOS do not have anything specific to say on the subject.

I am honored to present this webinar sponsored by Grandview Product Management community on June 22nd, 2011.

There is a heated debate in a Product Management community about the Role of Market Research in creation of innovative products and I have mused on this subject earlier on this blog.

Product managers, who subscribe to a “thought leadership” (as oppose to “customer participation”) model, love to quote Henry Ford who supposedly said – “If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.”  The “customer driven innovation” camp proponents are swearing by Customer Feedback and Voice of Customer based methodologies. However there is no clear evidence that either site consistently out-innovate their opponents.

During this webinar we will explore and analyze traditional methods of product definition process, their limitations and their applications that often lead to incremental improvements as oppose to true innovation. We will talk about

• What separate a successful product from INNOVATIVE product
• What are differences between a Product Manager and a Star Product Manager , and
• How the knowledge of the market helps to close the gaps between the two.

Please click on this link to register