A couple of weeks ago one of the routine automated searches I run on Twitter triggered on the term on Calliflower. A new user named Steve was having a bad experience using our idiosyncratic PIN system. Calliflower is a little different from every other conferencing system on the market because we assign a unique identity (via the PIN or a registered phone number) to every user.
In any case, I reached out to this Steve via Twitter. We exchanged phone numbers and I walked him through what we do and why Calliflower’s PIN model is a better system than the conferencing systems he was used to.
Steve was excited at the end of the call. I didn’t really know how excited, until email arrived today with a pointer to a couple of sites that he runs, and a blog posting he had made about his experience with Calliflower — including 3 training videos so that others wouldn’t have the same issues.
The lesson here is pretty simple. In today’s world of social media, news travels near instantaneously. And in the world of twitter, an idea can propagate and mutate at unbelievable rates. Steve wasn’t asking for help, but by offering it I turned what was a bad experience for him into a very positive experience. He rewarded that effort with something special.
As Chris Locke, Doc Searls and Dave Weinberger said in the The Cluetrain Manifesto, markets are conversations. The only question you need to ask yourself is what kind of conversation you want to have with your market.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
