New Awesomeness Feature on my list – from Meraki

I sat through quite an amount of vendor pitches. From time to time it’s the small things that differentiate the company and show you their true culture. I keep a list of these small features that have enjoyed me over all these years and I’m ready to share some of them with you.

Make-A-Wish button

The last feature that has been added to my list is the Merake Make-A-Wish button. I first saw it on their presentation for TechFieldDay at Cisco Live in Milan. It’s basically a button at the bottom right corner of EVERY SINGLE PAGE of the User Interface (UI) where you can request for a feature or UI change. It is:

• NOT a form
• NOT a phone call
• NOT an E-mail
• Just a button that opens a text box!

And in there lies the magic! Sometimes you are in the UI and you shout at your screen because you really want your vendor to use SMB instead of CIFS in that screen (insiders joke). And not only did they make it utterly easy for you, they also include automatically on what page you have made the request! Read more on their blog.

Watch the whole presentation

The Vendor Awesomeness List

So what are all those small details I have remembered and would love for every vendor to include?

• The Meraki Make-a-wish button – see above
• Compellent Co-Pilot support: Compellent (before it was DELL) made customer support such a priority that the support engineers would never drop the phone until you landed! Even if that would take them multiple shifts. Only you as the customer could decide when to end the call.
• Veeam Reversed-Roadmap: I wrote about this recently in my Veeam updates cycle post. Basically Veeam never answers the question: “when are you going to support xxx? ” Instead they show you their reversed roadmap of accomplishments which should provide you with a better satisfaction than a future guess or hollow promise.
• Nutanix Technology Bible: this is an example I am using for every small startup I meet. If you want to grow your company, you have to give other people the ability talk about your technology. The only way to do that is to share the information publicly. Every piece of information about your products and technology that is not protected IP should be publicly and freely available. So not even behind a subscription paywall!

QUESTION: which awesomeness items you’ve seen from other vendors should I look at?

What about Competition?

If you work for a vendor, whether it is as a product manager or marketing and you see one of your competitors come up with one of these brilliant inventions: COPY THAT SHIT AND GIVE THEM CREDIT FOR IT !!! After the Nutanix people came up with the ‘bible’ we should have seen a flood of Community Managers saying: “Good job, you just made us work double shifts for the next few weeks“.

Cisco Live US

It’s definitely not too late to register for Cisco Live US. Chances are slim I will be there but I have been known for last minute surprise trips 🙂

Click here to visit Cisco Live US landing pageDisclaimer: my travel and accomodation costs were taken care of by TechFieldDay.