You're launching new services to clients. How can you minimize potential risks?

Launch of new services always bring a ray of hope for the organization to grow. At times, orgs tend to go with gut feel. While gut feel is an important factor, but listening to "HMV" (His Master's Voice) before you let the 'experience' take final call can be the difference in successful vs not so successful service delivery. I recently met a startup which was creating product out of service without talking to core customer base, of course the A/B testing suggested a failure. The moment they took a pause talked to the clients and understood them, small tweak gave them a winning product. Listen to the TG, ask what they want and then use your experience to create a new service / or tweak old service or productize the service.

Definitivamente, el estudio de mercado y un plan de marketing son herramientas básicas para el lanzamiento de nuevos servicios y productos. Importante el dise?o de los mismos acorde a la demanda.

Testing Hypothesis is never bad. Once you have asked a small set of TG and created something new, it is always good to now take to a larger (yet small set of overall base) TG and test the assumptions. Have a control group vs test group. The control group shall have same conditions under which they are taking a call as the test group. At times product managers make a mistake in comparing test results with past data. This has potential of unrelated factors creeping in changing the results and not giving you the right picture to make an effective call

A new service/product not advertised or communicated is almost as good as not launched. A robust communication plan for customers and team, now this needs to be different for existing clients and different for those who are going to be exposed to your services for the first time. New ones, do not have any background and will evaluate on first time merit. The old ones (and your team), will compare between the two and the value it offers. This communication cannot go wrong, initial success if important here for long term success of the new service, more so if you are going to offer new service to everyone - old and new

Listening to HMV is important. be it old HMV or the new HMV, both will have different perspectives and feedback coming from different POV. Your readiness to listen and make corrections go a long way in assuring your customers that they have invested with the right organization and people and that they are not being taken for granted. Last point - even if the T&C says - no refunds, treat the money with respect. You need to go back to the person at some point of time with new service or renewal request or may be in some other organization is some other role. The world indeed is a small place - CUSTOMER SERVICE WINS, ALWAYS.