On Monday we launched a brand-new user dashboard at WooThemes (which felt like suicide at the time) and it's not been without the expected launch bugs.

I've learnt in the last 3 days that the best way to fail is to fail fast & fail publicly. Since launch, I've been personally answering every single e-mail from an user with an issue on their WooThemes account. This has given me so much insight into the kind of bugs that exist in the system and has empowered the team to prioritize the bugs accordingly.

Failing publicly also means that we've got some great motivation for fixing this sooner rather than later: our whole user base is watching us. I'm sure we'll be judged not by the bugs that were present, but our ability to deal (or not deal) with this situation.

At this stage, we're just being as transparent & honest as possible with regards to everything that is going on and must say that 99,9% of WooThemes users that I've interacted with have been very kind about this. I guess we could've delayed the roll out to do more testing beforehand, but that would've just delayed the project and it would not have guaranteed a bug-free launch. So we would've had to deal with this exact situation regardless.

If you're gonna fail, do so fast & publicly. And don't forget to react transparently & honestly; your customers will love you for that!

I'm typing this as WooThemes prepares to roll out on of our biggest projects to date and I can't help to remind myself of all of the articles that suggests rewriting one's code is like committing startup suicide (more here, here & here).

So we're rolling out a completely revamped and re-written user dashboard, which includes a new payment processor, new checkout-related features, major UI / UX overhauls and a brand new user admin backend. That's amongst other things. This is literally the foundation on which WooThemes has been built for about 3 years now, so we're changing a lot of history and a shitload of code.

I know this overhaul isn't product-related (which is what Steve Blank's article suggests would be suicide), but it still feels massively stressful rewriting the core of our business. As I sit here typing this, I'm both thrilled to finally launch a project that has been in the works for 18 months and that will greatly propel WooThemes forward. But along with this excitement, I'm stressed, anxious and I've never doubted any project this much.

Why?

At this stage you might be wondering why we decided to go through this re-write... When we eventually set up WooThemes, we used a proprietary platform (to get set up in the most agile, cost-efficient way possible), which we've been hacking and hacking as our needs & user base has continued to grow. This has meant that we now have a very workable platform (we wouldn't have grown this far if we hadn't), but without further hacking we've become very limited on a load of fronts.

We've also been absorbing a lot of recurring support requests, because there just hasn't been a way to fix those within our existing system. Yep, 18 months of 10 - 20 e-mails a day that could've been solved by a fix. (This another reminder of how "boring" it can be running a company.)

It's not been an easy road getting here; partly due to outsourcing problems, bad project management and feature-creep. I'm just so glad that the day (feels like judgement day) has finally come and that we can unveil all of the hard work that has gone into this. If you're reading this, the roll-out has been a success (albeit not bug-free), which means our attention is now fully focused on powering our way to the next 3 years.

I hate feeling like things are in limbo; especially in business. I guess this is a natural consequence of the fact that I'm not the most patient guy you're likely to ever meet.

At the moment, it feels like we're working on 4 / 5 of the biggest projects ever at WooThemes. And with release dates being very unclear, even though they're imminent, we're holding off on announcing the details of these projects to avoid having pie on our face if we miss promised launch dates.

These are the kind of projects that will change WooThemes and it will greatly influence our strategies moving forward. These aren't just the announcement of a couple of new features or just the addition of a new business segment. These truly are the kind of things that - as an entrepreneur - you get incredibly excited about.

The problem is that whilst we're "secretly" slogging away at wrapping up the final tasks before launching these projects, everything else seems insignificant and in limbo. We're still handling the routine stuff as well and making progress beyond just these projects, but it feels like announcing those things feels so inferior to the bigger fish that we are frying behind the scenes. The whole of WooThemes feels like a slow news day at present, even though it's probably the most exciting period of our history thus far...

How would you handle this kind of limbo?

I recently ran an extensive user survey at WooThemes to get some validation for ideas that we were toying with for a new marketing strategy. One of the aims of the new strategy is to increase customer lifetime value (and related metrics such as user engagement & user retention), and so we set out to gauge how happy our customers were at the moment (happier customers are more likely to spend more money with us).

To our satisfaction, almost 10% of our users actually completed the 5-minute survey and of those that completed the survey, 92% said that they were very happy with our products, technical support & customer service. 92% obviously means we're doing something right.

But I wanted to delve in deeper and I've slowly been getting in touch with every single user from the 8% that said they weren't very happy with us at the moment. I wanted too figure out what exactly we did to make them feel that way in the first place & how we could potentially rectify their situation or at least improve it for other customers in future.

In addition to speaking to the customers that actually responded, I also "investigated" the customers' records and the history of their interactions to get a holistic view of what happened in the past. From this, one thing stood out for me: most customers don't give you a second chance.

To elaborate, I found that most of the unhappy customers had one bad experience via our ticketing system / helpdesk and then just left. They didn't keep hammering on the ticket where they had the bad experience, heck they didn't even respond again. Neither did they e-mail us to "escalate" the matter.

This means that, that one shitty experience for the customer was never highlighted on our radar and we thus didn't know that the customer was unhappy. It also means that we never had the opportunity to prioritize that customer and fix the situation (in which case we possibly had a chance to keep them as a customer).

I know that we shouldn't have created an unhappy customer in the first place, but no company is perfect 24-7. Things slip through the cracks and off the radar every now & again...

What I know now though is that there is a small percentage of customers that will never give you an opportunity to rectify their situation and they will likely never be your customer again. 8% may not seem significant, but that's 8% that I'm not happy to lose.

I'd like to share a recent exchange I had with a customer:

1. Customer notes to us that he is struggling to achieve something with our product.
2. We explain that this is currently a limitation, but immediately update & release a new version of the product to help the customer achieve their goal.
3. Customer isn't happy, e-mails us for refund.
4. [This is where I come in.] I ask the client whether the fix worked in an attempt to determine how I can help the customer.
5. Customer says they didn't try it and won't try it, because they don't want to be a guinea pig. Insists on refund, threatens with chargeback.
6. I explain that we released a fix for the problem and hence it's not about being a guinea pig; we're just doing our job & helping them out.
7. Customer ignores last e-mail, rudely threatens to publicize this and again threatens to go the way of a chargeback.
8. I issue refund and at least attempt to explain our actions in this regard & how we actually tried to help. Still awaiting response (if any is going to be forthcoming).