Kathy Sierra, the lead author at Creating Passionate Users, is probably the single best mind alive today concerned with making your users (aka your you, the customers) happy. She and her group of writers explain in brilliant simplicity how the path to becoming a great company begins and ends with making your users love what you do for them. Heck, they even make nifty charts and images to convey in seconds the wisdom of their points. If you are running a business, and not reading her, you’re missing out on some profound wisdom.

Kathy’s been a geek for years and has seen how uninspired companies make products and then try and get people to buy them. Her overarching manta is ‘help your customers feel like they are kicking ass and they will stand by you.’ For example, why do camera marketers always prepare beautiful brochures for prospective buyers, but only give forgettable instructions books to actual buyers. Companies spend plenty to get you
to spend your money, but save every penny they can once you’ve done so. Teach that new camera owner how to master that camera and they’ll love the brand as much as the camera. Hyper-competitive pricing does not matter to a person who loves a partcular company, e.g. Apple Computers. Another easy example Kathy shares is to avoid letting feature-crazy engineers and product managers stuff every possible option into a product only to leave the customer to figure them all out. Too many features often makes a user feel dumb as it raises the learning curve to master a product. Why not enable your customers to feel smart? Listen to what your customers want and implement that. But don’t stop there! Help them to excel by using your product. Help them kick ass.

So if you hear your coworkers saying that your customers are stupid; that you just need more marketing budget; that people will like version 2.0 much better; that you just need one write-up in TechCrunch; that the product must go out now even though it’s not what you hoped it would be; then change all your coworkers’ homepages to Creating Passionate Users and look for the exit door. It’s almost never about your company, it’s almost always about your customers.

(Personal to Kathy: Thanks for keeping it so real. We’d be thrilled to corral your help with Horsester. Neigh!)