Customer Perception of the Product

The customer's perception of a product never really matches reality. For that matter, the perceptions of marketing and sales often do not match reality. Even engineering's perception of the product does not always match reality.

To help you understand this concept, study Figure 5-5, which provides a Venn diagram with some interesting mismatches of perceptions that highlight classic problem areas. The three perception circles show all the different cases that can occur with mismatched expectations. Each case is labeled with a letter. Examine each overlap case separately to see potential problems and solutions for perception mismatch.

Figure 5-5. Customer perception, internal perception, and engineering perception ...

Get Growing Software now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.