We're Listening...

Lots of interesting comments in email and online from the posts about the Xbox brand. Of course I can't comment on any unannounced product (I'll leave that to others...), but I can tell you that the conversations in our hallways are just as passionate as the conversations online.

As someone who has been around Microsoft a while (15 years!), I've been part of lots of different teams, and have seen lots of different approaches to "listening to customers." I can tell you--without any reservation--that we're doing more to listen to and respond to customers--by far--than at any time in our company's history. Not only are we doing the tried-and-true "market research," but we're actively building our culture around the idea of making the experience for the customer (and our partners) better. We're nowhere near perfect, but I think we're making more progress than even I expected.

A day never goes by that I don't hear a co-worker talk about the impact of a decision on a customer or partner. More and more, metrics on scorecards reflect issues that are important to customers, rather than numbers that are important to managers. (Someday, metrics that are important to customers will be the only metrics that are important to managers!) We're even hiring people whose job it is to become part of our customers' communities. As a marketer, it's hard to imagine how we managed without such a concerted effort before.

It's one thing to have enthusiastic employees hanging out on newsgroups or online forums, but another to actually pay someone to do it. Our Xbox Community Managers, Trixie and Major Nelson, not only help us in our effort to speak to customers, they unquestionably help our developers and marketers know what's really important to our customers. In that regard, they're less of a "marketing" tool, and more of a "development" tool. I have a feeling, they're just getting started!

Ya, we still do focus groups and surveys and monitor how many clicks we're getting on Xbox.com. We still focus a lot on what the press are saying, and weigh the response of a journalist or analyst more than the response of an individual customer. And often, we'll make decisions based on criteria that may not be completely evident to everyone. But as we make those decisions, we're not ignoring the response of our customers. We are listening. I'm listening. Robert's listening. Larry's listening. Peter's listening. J's listening. Robbie's listening. Even Steve's listening.