Unarticulated needs and Skype 4.0

By Josh Silverman on July 16, 2008 in Life at Skype.

Today, Skype's President Josh Silverman picks a lesson from Communist-era dissident communication that is equally relevant to companies that seek to become - or remain -- innovative. In fact, there's even an connection to the recently-introduced beta version of Skype 4.0 for Windows as well (which, for the traditionalists among us, will also have a compact mode).

When a Polish dissident read a letter from his East German friend, he didn't take those handwritten lines at face value. He knew that to make it past eagle-eyed officials, the letter had to appear innocuous. The how's-your-father-doing-oh-he's-fine kind. But using his finely-tuned antenna, he decoded and amplified the subtle hints judiciously sprinkled here and there. By drilling into the subtext and picking up on the unsaid, he used a skill we've largely forgotten in the West. He read between the lines.

Now think of your customer. He doesn't need to worry about a Stasi agent in the mailroom or a recorder in the vase. If you're lucky, he'll tell you exactly what he thinks of your product. Or you read it in a customer-feedback form. Or he blogs about how it could be improved. Which is fabulous. The only problem: you're scratching at the surface.

Customers are good at telling you about explicit, or articulated, problems. There may be call-quality issues. Or they can't figure out how to use Skype to send an SMS. It's not the customer's job to fix these things, obviously. That's our job. By tweaking the audio engine or improving usability, these problems can be solved.

But this is hardly genius. Yes, it can take embarrassingly long to even get the sub-genius thing right. But that's no excuse. Genius is realizing customers' unarticulated problems, needs and desires. Stuff that remains invisible to most of us, because we're too used to the way things are. But think of books, typewriters, mp3 players, umbrellas, teabags, and free calls; all of these disrupted one market or another. But I suspect it took people who didn't feel like tinkering at the edges. Who then proceeded to shatter the status quo.

Sometimes such innovation explosions happen (semi)accidentally – penicillin and vulcanized rubber come to mind. But you can't count on happy accidents. When I was at Evite, the fundamental innovation was not to make invitations look prettier, take them online and help people save on postage. We realized that people had a much deeper, albeit unarticulated, need. They wanted to know who else was going to a party before they committed to Friday night. No one expected or asked for this kind of functionality, but when they saw it, it was an absolute aha! moment.

Today, I work at Skype, a company that grew on top of an extraordinary innovation: free worldwide calls. And let me tell you, at this very moment, we have folks twiddling with their monocles, microscopes and X-ray machines to see the invisible ink. To figure out what the world is telling us. And we have folks who try to translate the message we think we've read into the next innovation. Often, it leads us nowhere. It's a tall order. But we'll doggedly keep at it. And when we think we're onto something, we'll invite you to play with the thing.

You may have noticed the mid-June launch of Skype 4.0 beta 1 for Windows. While creating this revamped version of Skype was partly a practical move – not unlike moving from a tiny student flat to a more spacious home – it also belies a significant effort to analyze Skype's evolving role in people's lives and to see the findings reflected in how it looks, behaves and interacts. As one user put it, these days, Skype is "more than just a chat program".

Before we began to sculpt the new face of Skype, we looked at the more obvious stuff that you told us. And then we dug deeper. We read between the lines. Drilled into the subtext of what you were saying – and doing. That's when the concept of integrated communications began to take shape. Previously, text chat, voice, video, file transfers etc. have been separate channels organized by time. The central idea behind 4.0 is to organize conversations by person, not by channel.

At first, it may feel counterintuitive. (Although I think intuition here probably isn't innate, but has been conditioned by the mechanics of the current channel architecture.) Millions of people depend on Skype, and have invested time in getting comfortable with how it used to work. So change naturally sparks resistance. But it's immensely satisfying to see initial skepticism wane after a few days with 4.0.

Is the current iteration of 4.0 a fait accompli? No, which is why we're looking at your reactions: gathering behavioral data and listening intently to what beta users are telling us. We even run a weekly Feedback War Room to keep things right – a first in our almost five-year history.

The next version of 4.0 will be much closer to its final form and best behavior. Don't worry, it will indeed include "compact mode", so you can reduce the real estate that Skype takes up on the screen. Among other things we're working on, instant messages will be more visible and alerts and notifications will be improved.

As you wait, think about your own interactions with friends, colleagues, ideas and objects. Go ahead. Look beyond the obvious and the articulated. It's worth the effort.

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סקייפ לעסקים | skypeisrael

Hello, It sounds promising. When we can expect to see the corrected Beta (v.4)? Will it be returned a possibilty to have a free chat in writing?
Thanks.
Vitaly.

That all sounds great... but what would be truly an innovation is to have a Skype Client available on my iPhone! Even if it only worked on Wi-Fi. I'm still looking for the announcement that it will be available at least in September when Apple releases their push notification. Please Skype! We need a Skype App for the iPhone! That would truly be the "Killer App!"

PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP ME????
SKYPE HAS WITHDRAWN A BIG AMOUNT OF MONEY FROM MY BANCK-ACOUNT, AT THE SAME TIME AS SKYPE HAS SAID "PAYMENT FAILED, BUT NO MONEY HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM YOUR ACOUNT". WHEN I CHECKED MY BANCK-ACOUNT, THEY HAD WITHDRAWN THE SAME AMOUNT THREE TIMES (ON MY VISA)!!!
HOW CAN I GET IN TOUCH WITH SKYPE?? AN E-MAIL OR PHONENUMBER?? I CAN´T SEEM TO FIND IT ANYWHERE! HOW CAN I GET IN TOUCH WITH THEM?
IF ANYONE OUT THERE CAN HELP ME WITH THIS INFORMATION, PLEASE E-MAIL ME: m_bfly@hotmail.com
I´LL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL!
M.

Dear Josh Silverman,

Yes, Skype needs to listening customers!

I really agree with you, and I hope that you improve this.

But, why is so difficult to contact Skype support?

Skype support is the worst support than I already contacted.

It's not easy to contact Skype support through webpage.

Skype support does not have an e-mail.

Skype support does not have a phone number.

Skype support does not have a skype number.

Skype support does not have a chat online.

I live in Salvador (Brazil). I use Skype to contact my friends who have Skype in their computers.

Next september, I will travel outside my country, and I would like to use Skype to make and receive phone calls.

I have some questions about Skype, and I can't found all the answers in the Skype help webpage.

I sent 4 times in 15 days the same message to the skype support in portuguese. I still didn't receive any message from portuguese support.

So I translate this message to english, and sent 3 times to the english support, and I still didn't receive any message from portuguese support.

Why Skype support only has this way to contact http://support.skype.com/?_a=tickets&_m=submit ?

Why Skype support does not have an e-mail?

Why Skype support does not have a phone number?

Why Skype support does not have a skype number?

Why Skype support does not have a chat online?

Why is so difficult to contact and receive an answer from Skype support?

As a global company, why Skype does not have representative offices and some countries around the world?

I will wait that you change this!

Regards,

Uxio
Email - uxio69@hotmail.com
Skype - uxio69

I fully agree with the expressed opinion about Skype support. I want to add: it is a regular way that they are using - to cite the already published Skype materials disregarding to the point of the question. They use standard texts to save their time and demonstrate their activity.But they don't care how these texts match the question. It is impossible to reach the management or seniors. Only blogs is the place where you can hope to have a real support.
vitsom

I'm guessing PayPal Send Money and SkypFind were just such "unarticulated needs"?

Uxio69,

Yes, exacly! It´s impossible to get in contact with anyone within Skype - it´s outrageous!! Specialy since we customers PAY to use Skype on many ocasions!
Skype has taken 680,-NOK (134,-$) from my bank-acount, Skype said multiple times that the money had not been withdrawn and my skype-account is still at 0!
I will not tolerate this - it has been over two days since I sent a support request and I still haven´t got any answer!

I urge Mr.Josh Silverman or any other of they Skype-staff to please contact me!

Maria

I urge SKYPE to contact me via e-mail: m_bfly@hotmail.com!
SKYPE has withdrawn a big amount of money from my bank-acount, at the same time as it said no money had been withdrawn and my skype-account is still at 0!
I have tried sending a support request, but it has already been over 48 hours and I still have got no answer!
I think it´s quite outrageous that it is so difficult to get in touch with Skype-personel when you guys profit from paying customers!

sinceraly,
Maria Goncalves Braaten

You can reach Skype customer support by going to http://support.skype.com/?_a=tickets&_m=submit

Or, you can go to the top right corner of the Skype homepage, click on "Help", and then click on "Support Request" in the right-side column.

Josh:
I think you may be missing the point here. Your concept of unifying the experience to the user rather than the communication type is logical, however you make a number of assumptions that I don't think are valid. You assume that most of your users communicate in all three ways - voice, video, and text chat. I think this is off base, especially for the video. I don't personally know a single person who uses Skype for video communication, and I honestly don't know many people who use video communications at all. Sure, it may be the wave of the future - but I think that future is a long way off and forcing an interface change that makes video chat its obvious top priority is ignoring the way most of your users actually use the software.

You seem to have acknowledged this blunder by backstepping on the previous statements that the "compact mode" would come out after the 4.0 release, and deciding to include it in the official release. This is a great sign that you are listening to our concerns. However, I think it is important to take a huge step back now and realize that you may not be heading in the right direction with this interface change (not to mention a dozen or so other tweaks I feel are missing the mark). Your customers seem to have made it clear that they don't like the full screen interface at all, and that it provides no benefit to them and actually makes using your product more cumbersome. Perhaps Skype should go back to the drawing board and drink some more genius juice - or just ask customers what they think would make their lives easier.

To: uxio69

I am a skype user and read your concern about support. Could you try this address? : support@skype.net

They always reply to me at the email address I use. Use the email addres that you have on record with Skype.

Larry

Josh,

I appreciate it if the two modes are available, this gives choice to every one. Skype is the best so far especially with the way it works seemlessly in the background but still integrated into the net to allow calls during surfing. We don't want it to be the main focal point on our computer screens. It is a tool we can use both for personal and business purposes. So, please include the compact mode for us current users. The screen wide mode could be in Skype's interest as new users might need constant reminder.

Larry

Here is an innovation I would love to see. Individual sound settings in a conference call. Sometimes one member of a voice chat is really quiet but the others are loud, it would be great to have the option to raise the volume of the quiet caller without having to turn up the volume for the others.

Thanks,
Karen

When will Canada get Online Numbers? It seems very strange that you do not support Canada!

Josh what fantastic word of wisdom you speak, the problem is that none of it is true. You DO NOT listen to what your customers are saying other wise why would there 2 pages of complaints about the new V4.0 with about 1% saying anything good about it and 151 pages of complaints about billing and payments. You need to come into the 21st Century where what the customer says is right not stay in the 18th saying you WILL have and use what we provide, that concept was throw out when Germany lost the war and many communist countries broke away from Russia.

You may well have a weekly feed back but it would seem that you look at this information say yes we have read it then just throw it in the rubbish bin.

You made a quote in your post "Before we began to sculpt the new face of Skype, we looked at the more obvious stuff that you told us. And then we dug deeper. We read between the lines. Drilled into the subtext of what you were saying – and doing. That's when the concept of integrated communications began to take shape. Previously, text chat, voice, video, file transfers etc. have been separate channels organised by time. The central idea behind 4.0 is to organise conversations by person, not by channel." There is no need to do this don't assume you know what people want unless they have told you because if you do that you will NEVER get it right. Remember the very old and true saying in this modern world "the customer is always right" even though you might not think so.

Someone needs to address the problems on the prior posts.
I have issues with dropped words, echoes, delay and distortion.
I should mention I have none of those problems with t-mobile@home.
Where do I address the problem I have with numbers that are
the same except for the extension?

Josh, a wonderful article that left me wondering why my experience of Skype's customer service doesn't reflect your cutting edge thoughts and insights about innovation. In your article you state "Genius is realizing customers' unarticulated problems, needs and desires." Josh that comment is so true but can I encourage you to come out of the realm of the 'genius' for a short time and lead the responsibility of just dealing with customer's articulated problems, needs and desires in real time and in the real world.

For a company that has such a great product that is wonderfully evolving and innovative the flaw of skype as an enterprise is the interaction and response to customer problems. Please don't be so faceless, so hidden and so damn difficult to communicate with. For an enterprise that is in the business of innovative communication your Achilles heel is your own communication.

My sense of frustration grows - read between the lines

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Unarticulated needs and Skype 4.0

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