Here at Balihoo we have an intense focus on our customers.  If you are a follower of Kelly Mason blogs (thanks, mom) then you've seen numerous blogs about our ongoing effort to find new and effective ways to take in all the feedback we can directly from our customers.  We've got some good processes in place, and we continue to improve on them every day.  So the next logical question is, how do we ensure that our product is the best it can be even before it gets to our customers?

We realized that that we have a reliable group of 'customers' right here at Balihoo.  That group being our entire smart, passionate, and customer-centric team.  So a few weeks ago we started a User Representative team.  The team is made of people from all different teams within the company, from the sales team to the creative team to the development team. 

Before a new feature goes live, it goes in front of this team and they will be advocates for our customers.   We're not discussing how something should work or the benefit it provides - that has already been hashed out.  What we're discussing are the details - the small things that can make or break a user's experience with our local marketing software.  And because we have a passionate team, this meeting might turn into a heated debate about whether an option on the page should be a link or a button, whether it should be at the top of the page or the bottom. 

Our CEO sent out a blog to the company this week that highlights the fact that putting in the last 10% of effort is harder than the first 90%, but it's also what separates you from the other guy.  I thought first about this group, and its purpose.   It's easy, after building a massive new piece of functionality within our ad builder software, to say who cares if it's a button or a link?  But it's the details in the last 10% of the work that's going to take the product from being liked by your customers to being essential to your customers.