Recent Posts by Peter Armaly

If you work in high tech, or even if you don’t, you would probably nod your head if asked whether the following is on the top five list of most asked questions. Is artificial intelligence (AI) a good thing or a bad thing?  AI is a hot topic and it’s probably because, as with any subject where potential impact is mostly unknown but highly anticipated, a broad spectrum of scenarios has been imagined resulting in an equally broad set of predicted outcomes. Whether it will be seen...

Way back in the Mesozoic Period of IT (about 1989) I had a boss who, while clenching a lit cigar between his teeth (yes, there was that back then), uttered these immortal words, “Your job is to automate yourself out of a job.” That master of inspirational communications was on to something. He seemed to believe in motivating his people by obviating the eventual need for ever having to have us around. At first, it was confusing, I’ll admit that, but after a while it made sense....

“We tend to fight the next war in the same way we fought the last one. We are prisoners of our own experience.” Sam Wilson, Lieutenant General US Army He spoke those words a few years before the Vietnam War plummeted to its nadir (from America’s perspective). The conflict was gradually slipping out of control of the US government and a thought was emerging amongst a circle of military leaders, troubling and difficult for many to accept, that the US involvement had been...

There exists probably no more despised phrase in the Customer Success lexicon than “one throat to choke”. Ironically, it’s often used in a positive, inspirational way, as in, “This is critical. You’re our best and we need to prevent that customer from defecting. We’re going to give them one throat to choke. You.” As if what customers really desire is to commit an act of murder. They don’t. What they really want is for the products to work and that they live up to even half the...

You’re a customer of business software. Your company spent a lot of money on a product it hopes will improve the speed with which you do your job. Um, great. Pressure. Spotlight. Those things you try to avoid. You think to yourself, “Why is it me who’s under the gun?” Which leads you to ask, “Isn’t this a two-way street?” Then you say, with some irritation: It would help if the vendor would improve the speed at which I could learn their product. It would help if the...

  You’re a customer of business software. Your company spent a lot of money on a product it hopes will improve the speed with which you do your job. Um, great. Pressure. Spotlight. Those things you try to avoid. You think to yourself, “Why is it me who’s under the gun?” Which leads you to ask, “Isn’t this a two-way street?” Then you say, with some irritation: It would help if the vendor would improve the speed at which I could learn their product. It would help if the vendor’s...

As a customer success leader, how many times have you been in a meeting where the VP of sales asks what you’re doing to get strategic customer, ACME123, out of the ditch so that her salespeople can more smoothly pursue and close a growth deal? Once? Twice? Dozens of times? From an industry perspective, product problems are often cited as a primary reason customers find themselves in that ditch. That’s followed closely by poor responsiveness of support and a perception that the...

We in the vendor world like to talk about ourselves. A lot. We like to talk about how our products are so smart, so user-friendly, so useful, so valuable, and so mission-critical. So many pats on our own backs. I find it educational and humbling to sit back once in a while and observe the vendor activity on my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds. To be fair, my company is as guilty as any other company in the way product information and its importance to business is trumpeted across...

There’s a great line in this Wall Street Journal article about airlines and the way they structure and price their fare classes. The CEOs of Delta Airlines and American Airlines were interviewed, and at one point, were each asked to comment on the size of the seats in coach or economy class. Here’s the reporter’s line: “Neither apologizes for packing in more, skinnier seats. Their message: If you want more space, buy it.” Being a frequent flier myself I know that’s the choice...