The Importance of Customer Involvement and Communication in Technology
The IT or technology industry is sexy in its own way – but we find ourselves more in the big-bang arena of “sexy-smart” than the more traditionally glitzy industries like music, Hollywood or PR and marketing. From Mark Zuckerberg’s literal and figurative meltdown in a 2010 interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, to Bill Gates (mocked gently by Conan O’Brien) awkward failure to successfully demo his new Windows Media Center at CES 2005, the tech industry is often considered the shy and “sexy if she took off her glasses” wallflower.
There have been many spectacular failures in the tech industry in recent years. BlackBerry fell out of use because they refused to adopt the full touchscreen customers were going crazy for. AOL went under after customers departed their paid service for free email services like Hotmail and Gmail. The Palm Pilot PDA failed to capitalize on the opportunity to bridge into the smartphone empire after selling 1 million units in its first year. Myspace is rumoured to have drowned in a bureaucratic stew after it changed hands in 2005. The stories are endless – and without exception, the one thing that big technology failed to take into account was the evolving needs of the end-user.
CEO of Vision Critical, Scott Miller agreed with this assessment in his keynote speech at the 2018 Customer Intelligence Summit in Washington DC.
“In a fast-moving world where customer expectations are constantly changing, the best way to future-proof your company is to orient your business around the voice of the customer.”
In a recent article for Entrepreneur.com, Kara Goldin, Founder and CEO of Hint, made it clear that many B2B transactions, especially those involving software, are complicated by a lack of real and lasting communication with the end-user.
“Their client is a company, which typically prevents vendors from having any meaningful contact with their real customers -- the users that actually log in to their products every day.”
Sangfor Technologies, a global leading vendor of Network Security and Cloud Computing solutions has no intention of being a technology wallflower. Sangfor’s business model involves rolling out constant updates, new versions and new products – all inspired by customer needs, feedback and technology wish-lists. The Sangfor Customer Advisory Board (CAB) met with the Sangfor R&D team in Hong Kong in April to discuss the needs of various customers like China Telecom, Macau Science Center and China Galaxy Securities.
The Sangfor Technologies International Roadshow provides a great opportunity to travel around the world and meet with potential and current customers and partners and IT leaders in every vertical, many of whom have a great deal to say about what security, cloud or optimization technology they need to be really successful. With Sangfor CAB members in every market Sangfor has entered, they keep a finger on the pulse of customer and partner needs while keeping focus on the end-user and what they are asking for!
About Sangfor
Founded in 2000 and a publicly traded company as of 2018 (SANGFOR STOCK CODE: 300454 (CH)) Sangfor Technologies is the global leading vendor of IT infrastructure solutions specializing in Network Security and Cloud Computing. Visit us at www.sangfor.com and get in touch with Sangfor Technologies today to see what we can do to custom build your IT solutions to business problems.
