Customer Expectations

Advancements in software design and deployment strategy have shaped customer’s expectations about what quality software ought to be like. Expectations are so high, many argue that there is a whole range of software products that will not be developed because they cannot be made profitable. The less-depressing counter-point is that high customer expectations demand thoughtfulness from designers and excellence from developers — both good things. Some of the customer expectations are

• User-centric design – Software must be easy for everyone to use, not just tech-savvy power users. If a 13 year old cannot easily navigate through your software while simultaneously surfing Facebook, watching YouTube and texting, it’s too complicated. Successful software in the 2010’s is easy to use.
• Instant Availability – Customers demand to hear about, try for the first time, and understand the software immediately. A “coming soon” message takes a lot of trust capital that most young software companies just do not have.
• Universal Availability – The cloud is here to stay. Customers are annoyed if software asks them to download/install/update. Those things should happen automatically, invisibly, and software should jump to a new device as seamlessly as the customers.
• Clarity – Providing partial assistance with things you are not clear about is not a good practise. If customers face some difficulty with the software, they should be directed towards the right team, and not provided incomplete information from some non relevant team.
• Customers should be kept in loop – Customers don’t like to kept in dark, they should be constantly updated about the developments taking place in the process and in case of resolving an issue and they should be provided timely information about the work being done to resolve the issue.