Talking to your customers is pivotal to success

Before, I have written about how valuable positive customer reviews can be for our websites and business. But what to do with the negative ones - because there will undoubtedly be some? Even if these are simple comments, they can easily jeopardize our desire for further business development.

I thought I would share our story and how we turned clients' complaints into an idea for the next business.

In addition, maybe I will answer a question I see a lot on this and many other platforms.

What comes first?

• Dream the Idea> Validate the market.

• Validate the market > Dream the Idea

Find the problem, give the solution and not the other way around.

I would like to point out that there is no only way to succeed, but validating the problem first turned out, in our case, much more profitable.

Before BOWWE was founded, we created Honaro (a marketplace that lists and offers services for local businesses). This project had the mission, probably one that was always my primary mission in life, to enable companies to grow and express themselves on the internet and attract potential customers.

I had thousands of meetings with customers to convince them to join us - the answer was often the same - I don't want to, I don't need to.

They said that the solution is awesome, but not now, not here - "I prefer it on my site." In no way did they accept our proposal.

Profitable problem - Positive side of complaints

Instead of using the marketplace we created, they came to us with pages. They wanted us to design them, add our solutions from Honaro to their website and maintain them.

It had nothing to do with our business, but we accepted the request as a startup that wants to profit.

Many clients came to us with WordPress sites asking to develop and maintain them. To run a few additional projects for them, optimizing, updating and designing portfolios, vouchers, etc. These brought them effects, and they expected more from us.

Back in 2013, there weren't many website builders. And the ones existing on the market were undeveloped, limited, and allowed designers to have very little originality and flexibility with their projects. WordPress was a heavy tool at the time; sites were slowing down, updates and security were a long process. Customers who came to us complained about these exact problems and sought our help.

Our first goal of helping businesses grow through the marketplace was gone.

So instead of only convincing them to join us on the marketplace. I started asking detailed questions and talking to them. I listened to their complaints, ideas, and after many such conversations, I concluded.

Ideate - problem solve - profit.

We created BOWWE as a way to productive our WordPress services, which we didn't even want at the beginning. If our goal was to help businesses grow and our clients wanted a website from us and none of the existing solutions appealed to them - why not create our own builder to fulfill our mission and let clients have what they want.

BOWWE was the answer to all the conversations I had, to the positives and problems that businesses found in our or others' solutions.

Conclusion

My way to get ideas? Listen to your audience even if they complain and don't want exactly what you give them. There may lie the success of your Idea.

It's just our nature... we like to complain. Talking to the customers was pivotal in getting off the ground for the business. Even if they didn't want our first concept, we found a new way to sell it.