I don't think you are a Hasselblad customer yourself, so it's really WEIRD for you to be rushing to the defense of the real customers....getting all up in an arms about a camera you have no interest in. Hmmm. You wouldn't happen to be a loyal member of the Fuji fan club?
Doesn't matter if I am a Hasselblad customer or not. What matters is that I make my living teaching and facilitating teams in a business best practice known as
Voice of the Customer for product development for technology companies. My views and sensibilities expressed here are strictly from a professional perspective and are borne out of respect for Hasselblad's customers, and the respect and transparency that they should be showed by Hasselblad. So, no, it is not weird that I am rushing to the defense of customers. What I get up in arms about is companies that take advantage of or treat customers badly. From a professional perspective, Hasselblad over-promised and has, and continues to,
under-deliver. This is unacceptable. To make matters worse, they have not been forthcoming, honest, or transparent about this in their communication with their customers.Timelines have continually slipped, and customers are not receiving the products they ordered in the time-frame Hasselblad stated they would and Hasselblad says nothing. They are exhibiting exactly the set of behaviors by that I teach that companies
should not do in developing their products. Practicing Voice of the Customer means above all: 1)
RESPECT FOR THE CUSTOMER; 2) listening to and honoring your customers needs as being valid, despite what the company may think internally 3) being honest and
accountable in how you go about understanding and delivering on your promise to meet customer's needs and 4)
following through on that implicit promise by delivering products that create quality and value. And in the process, they need to be transparent, open, and most importantly, *in touch* with their customers. Hasselblad has done none of this, at least not here. Where are they? Are they here? No, they are not.
Fuji on the other hand, embodies the best VOC principles, has a vigorous and robust VOC process for developing products that provide value and quality, and...continue to support their customers after the sale with a robust Kaizen approach to continuous improvement, continually striving to provide more and more quality and value to their customers that actually bought their products. They have, for example, released firmware updates on more than one occasion that increases the functionality of cameras
that are discontinued and out of production, to continue to support their existing customers. They have acknowledged that they were under no obligation to do so for cameras that are out of production, but they have stated they did so because they wanted to and they knew
it was the right thing to do. Name me another camera company that has done that as consistently as Fuji has.
Yes, I admire Fuji. They produce exceptional products that provide value and quality for customers. They continue to improve that quality by practicing Kaizen, one of the key principles of Shingo. They actually listen to customers, and more importantly, they ACT on what they hear to make their products better and better. They create a fully thought-through and meaningful product development strategy (contrast that to Sony, whose product strategy is a mish-mash at best), they publish lens roadmaps and most importantly, they follow through on them in the time frame that they say they would. Lastly, they actually do what they say they are going to do.
None of which I have seen from Hasselblad regarding the X1D, how it treats customers, or more importantly, how it is communicating with its customers who actually placed orders for the X1D.
