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24 DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS

TOPdesk believes that customer feedback is essential during the design and

development phase of our new products. But what do we do with this input?

YOUR WISH IS OUR PRODUCT

Text: Milou Snate

Renske van der Heide and Erik Pols are TOPdesk

product managers. They visit customers throughout

the development phase to fully understand their

wishes and needs, and use this knowledge to improve

our software.

IT’S ALWAYS TRICKY TO

BALANCE TOPDESK SO

THAT IT’S PERFECT FO

EVERY ORGANIZATION

 ▲ Erik Pols and Renske van der Heide, product manag

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DEPARTMENT IN FOCUSPhotography: Robin Kuijs

Preliminary researchProduct managers prefer to visit customers

before the development of a new product has

even begun. During these visits, they see how

and why customers use TOPdesk and they use

this information to improve the product.

Pols and Van der Heide often visit customers.

“We have customers tell us how they use

TOPdesk,” explains Pols. “Some nd that odd,

but concrete information about our product

is invaluable to us. For instance, it’s really

useful to know which information people

would want to add to certain forms. Do they

want extra elds? Or do they want to not be

limited to the standard elds, allowing for

more exible data entry? Answering these

questions helps us improve TOPdesk forms.”

However, TOPdesk is interested in more than

 just how the product is used, as Van der Heideexplains. “We also want to know what other

tools and products our customers use to do

their work. This can vary from making notes

on post-its to other software. What we want

to know is, why not just use TOPdesk? People

are experts in nding solutions, but each

post-it a customer uses is a sign that we can

improve our software.”

TOPdesk is used by organizations and

departments with a wide variety of sizes

and requirements. It is a challenge for

product managers to adapt the tool to

suit each customer. “It’s always tricky to

balance TOPdesk so that it’s perfect for every

organization,” says Pols.

Customer feedbackduring developmentThe product managers formulate a product

vision based on the preliminary research,

for instance by creating product sketches.

After analysing the product vision they

ask two questions: are we heading in the

right direction? And are our solutions good

solutions?

Customer feedback is key to answering these

questions. “We could get feedback during the

design phase, but also when our development

department has already created something,”

says Van der Heide. The product managers

show the customer design sketches, or

demonstrate a preliminary product design on

a computer. This enables customers to provide

feedback early on in the development process

and help improve the product.

Organizing customer days is one of the

ways TOPdesk involves its customers in

the software development process. Twenty

customers attended the May 2011 session in

Delft. The objective of that particular session

was to check whether or not the product

vision and accompanying sketches resolved

the problems that TOPdesk customers faced.

The product managers also wanted to gain

insight into which TOPdesk components

customers thought were the most important.

Each customer was given twenty cards stating

wishes about TOPdesk use. The customers

could then select ten of the cards and

arrange them in order of importance. “The

information we gathered during that session

was extremely valuable,” says Pols.

Evaluating the product

Have we been able to improve the product?

End users can best judge whether or not

we have succeeded. That is why product

managers also visit customers to evaluate

the software. “It’s good to see how custome

receive our products and whether theyfeel anything is missing,” says Pols. The

information gathered during such visit is us

to further improve the tool.

The product managers do their best to visit

a wide range of customers. “Diversity is very

important,” says Van der Heide. “It’s good

that we interview TOPdesk users in differen

elds using varied applications. Smaller

organizations have different needs than lar

organizations, for instance. Enthusiasm and

constructive criticism are great during thes

evaluations, no matter your size.”

EACH POST-IT A

CUSTOMER USES

IS A SIGN THAT WE

CAN IMPROVE OUR

SOFTWARE