The simple to use and administer open source time tracking system by Lunar Logic Polska has seen a significant update in its reporting features for administrators and product owners. Version 2.1 adds RSS feeds, a calendar view of team activities, and a much improved client reporting site.
This tool was designed for flexibility and simplicity for time tracking and billing by any team that charges by the hour.
There is one thing in common with all customers of bespoke software, we want to make them happy. You do that by being as efficient as possible and delivering what the customer wants. That’s where the similarity ends. Customers come in all flavors, and I’ve tried my hand at delighting a lot of them, and with quite a high degree of success. At least, I haven’t made any enemies and I get almost exclusively repeat and referral business, so I must be doing something right.
Like I said, I’ve seen a lot of different customers and one distinction I’ve learned to make is something that I call the Customer Quadrant.
Customers can be placed in a quadrant with technical competence on one side and degree of involvement on the other.
I’ve had them all, but the easiest to please are the ones that are easiest to work with, and those aren’t always what you’d think. I love the customers who are highly technically competent and very involved. These customers don’t just raise issues, they solve problems. They know exactly what they want AND they’ll help you to give it to them. You can learn from them, and there’s the satisfaction of having your skills appreciated by a worthy peer.
Interestingly, I really like the polar opposite. This is the guy who doesn’t know exactly what he wants and knows little about the technology involved. When this guy trusts you, you can do extremely efficient work for him, because once you understand his vision and motivations, you can make the best decisions for him and he’ll back you as long as he trusts you.
The next group, technically competent but uninvolved, isn’t bad if you do the same thing that you do with the techno-illiterates and get on board with their vision and then keep them well-informed. These guys are like the techno-illiterates while you’re developing, they stay out of your way and don’t question your judgment, but at least they appreciate your technical accomplishments.
The scariest are the highly involved techno-illiterates. This customer has no understanding of the technical difficulties involved but has strong opinions (and often, rapidly-changing opinions) of what he wants. This customer will always be surprised by the feature price tag, over or under-estimating the technical complexity of every feature. He won’t pat you on the back when you code something remarkable, but he gets really excited by a new graphic or a nice drop shadow. He also tends to inflate his own costs, by making change requests at every opportunity without consideration for the impact his changes will have on the product architecture. These clients need to be handled very carefully to avoid creating a disgruntled customer. The best thing to do, I’ve found, is to try to settle as much up front as possible. I talk to these people a lot, testing out lots of ideas on paper. The more you draw out of them before coding begins, the less likely they will be to hit you with a real humdinger halfway through, like, “I know you’re been doing this in Flash, but I really think we should make it using AJAX”.
However you decide how to segment your customers, it’s important to remember that every customer has unique needs and if your approach is generic, you won’t delight all of them.
My former partner wrote this CRM that is perfect for our small companies. We just want to track a handful of ongoing leads and store and search a larger set of past contacts. Most CRMs are much too complicated and address books don’t let you assign sales calls and manage salespeople. This solution fits the bill the me.
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