I absolute love the new Smiley campaign that 37Signals has implemented to track (and publicize) their customer satisfaction. Absolutely genuis!

In a recent article, they also share some insight into the data that they aren't publishing and the analysis makes for some interesting reading. As a 37Signals customer and someone that has tried to build his own business using the best of 37Signals knowledge, I love how I can actually see the team make a massive effort to get to 100% customer satisfaction. That is absolutely immense and I really appreciate how they are going about this in a very public, transparent and honest way, which just installs so much faith into them as a team and a company.

I so believe in this mantra, yet to execute & implement that in exactly the way DHH advocates is something which I fear only 37Signals can do. If you're a fan of their business philosophies, you'll know that there are many of those philosophies that just seem unattainable to the Average Joe and their business.

Read this article by the 37Signals folks and whilst I agree with them 99% of the time, I’m just not feeling very agreeable today…

See, I can agree that an obsession over a product name isn’t worthwhile as that time could be better spent doing stuff (i.e. developing your web app) that will create a bigger return on your investment / effort.

But the thing is, those product names become your brands too, which means you do need to put some initial thought into how you want to brand, market & position those products. If you go with a shitty name from the start (because you’re taking the approach of not obsessing), then it’s definitely gonna limit the space you have in which to tweak & market in future.

In the end, it comes down to finding a balance in terms of the things you spend your time on. So do spend time on deciding your product / brand names, but don’t be overly anal either as that is just valuable time being lost…