What does a customer want?

In today’s competitive market where there is a scramble to get clients while conveniently speaking about offering the “best quality”, the question arises as to how do we gauge the quality of products and services in general? Simply put, the answer depends on user experience and customer satisfaction, respectively.

Recently, a customer of ours went ahead and recommended us to 2 of his CIO friends in other companies, without even us asking for it. I thanked him for the references and asked him to share his thoughts about our work, some of which I list below:

• Whether I give Zuci a 2-week project or a 6-month project, the team treats them alike and gives their best to make it successful
• Estimates match what I expect and delays are communicated well ahead of time
• Email responses never take more than 30 minutes during your day and I get a response within 4 hours for emails sent during odd hours(this project has no overlapping time support)
• I did not believe when you said you guys were all hands-on but experienced it multiple times in the last 8 months (I recently resolved an Azure issue for them on a production call)
• My codebase took 3 years to develop and your team owned it in 8 months with just 3 days of transition from the previous vendor without any formal KT process, which is something many companies ask for considering strict deadlines.

In my formative years I came across this phrase “100% Customer Referenceability” in an interview that I read. I don’t remember who gave the interview and where I read it, but I am sure it was from an Indian CEO. I just glanced at it and moved on then, however, it looks like the phrase got deeply embedded somewhere inside my business values.

Today, as an entrepreneur, if someone were to ask me what is my goal for Zuci, I would say “100% customer referenceability”, the 3 words which I would shamelessly borrow and use.