How Microsoft Ireland Home And Entertainment Division Builds Customer Feedback Into Localized Products Liam Cronin :

1. Liam Cronin 1 19/11/2003 How Microsoft Ireland Home And Entertainment Division Builds Customer Feedback Into Localized Products Liam Cronin :Microsoft EPDCWednesday 19-November-2003

2. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 2 Agenda Who Are The Works Product Customers? Primary And Secondary Research Product Support Services (PSS) Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM�s) Usability Testing Newsgroups

3. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 3 Who Are Works Product Customers? Retail market : Households with a Windows PC Consumers that have low to intermediate PC skills Typically not influencers : technology (less enthused) Those that do NOT conduct work using the home PC Have at least two people in their household OEM market : OEM partners HP, NEC, Fujitsu Siemens, Dell, Toshiba, Medion etc�

4. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 4 Primary Research Background & Objectives Microsoft wants to understand more about Works users to aid in product feature planning and positioning within the marketplace. To this end, online quantitative research was conducted in the United States, Germany and France in June-2003 The primary objective of this research is to identify user wants and needs for key features/components to be offered in future versions of the Works software Other objectives include: Identify the value of Microsoft Works or Works Suite among users Determine primary product usage applications Rate impressions of Works or Works Suite on key product dimensions

5. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 5 Who Uses Works

6. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 6 First Works Version Purchased Or An Update User?

7. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 7 Usage of Works Features

8. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 8 Usefulness of Features

9. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 9 Frequency of Use

10. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 10 Importance of PC Tasks

11. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 11 European Product Support Services Relationship PSS are based in-country though Microsoft is currently evaluating placing 1st and 2nd line support in India PSS place bugs / problems directly into Ireland team Raid (problem) database throughout the product cycle PSS provide Ireland with most popular features being used in the product, which helps our future planning PSS can review the product team�s specs and give feedback at an early stage in the planning process PSS will review Beta software before we release Microsoft Ireland will always look at the top 20 PSS call generators before planning for the next release of a product

12. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 12 Original Equipment Manufacturers Relationship Key European OEM for Home and Entertainment Division are HP, NEC, Fujitsu Siemens, Dell, Toshiba, Medion etc� The key method we use to achieve our objectives is the annual visit by a Microsoft team to the OEM. During these visits, key OEM employees meet with the Microsoft team for anything from 3 hours to a day long event The site visits to OEMs are scheduled in June/July time-frame and enable HED to get to hear OEM customer problems first hand which can be fed back into future iterations of products through bug fixes or new features Advantageous to see OEM operations through touring their facilities to better understand their structure and processes. Learn from OEM experience and input this back into the retail product

13. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 13 Brief Overview Of Usability TestingUsability in the product cycle

14. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 14 Brief Overview Of Usability TestingUsability questions Questions usability testing can answer Can users discover how to do a task? Which design is better? How many errors do users make and how serious are those errors? Questions usability testing can�t answer Is there a demand for the product? Will people buy the product?

15. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 15 Brief Overview Of Usability TestingUsability testing process Define usability goals Select participants Develop test scenarios and tasks Decide on measures and plan analysis Run test in a lab environment Communicate findings to product teams Follow up on issues with product teams

16. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 16 Why Usability Test?General usability benefits Reduce development and support costs Find and fix problems before shipping Increase productivity and efficiency Higher productivity and efficiency saves money Increase user satisfaction Build brand loyalty with easy-to-use products Show leadership in interface design Ease of use is a key differentiator today

17. 19/11/2003 Liam Cronin 17 European Newsgroups Relationship Although the newsgroup represents only 1% of our customers, they are our best 1000 customers. These are �influential� in that other people look to them for advice Newsgroup information helps us make better decisions about our business, and also gives better feedback to the team on the product and the features Understand any linguistic issues from European customers Understand what upgrade problems customers encountering Understand what version of product customers are using In Conclusion we should all be spending more time talking to European customers, �feeling their pain�, and making sure they know the truth, which is that we care about their experience with our products�