When Customer Requests a Feature
Written by Roman on February 21, 2008 – 3:26 pm
Couple of months ago one of the largest healthcare organizations in the World downloaded the trial version of our product. Since then they asked thousands of questions which was good as we understood more why they’re interested in getting the software.
In one of the last e-mails they asked to add a feature that we already had in our list planned for the near future. Formally, I asked them about how many copies they would need as it would be kind of an indicator for us to decide adding this feature now or wait until its planned time. But it is not so important how many licenses they will finally purchase – that feature is now on the top of our list. Even if they need one license only, we still will do this feature now.
The reason is simple – having such very well known and respectful customer might help us increasing our sales. We would even give away that license to them for free, but it just does not sound to be right 
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March 18th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
When a customer wants a feature he should pay the development process. Your software becomes automatically customer specific from the moment you decide to follow customers requests.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Your statement is true when it comes to the features specific for one single customer only.
Otherwise, the majority of shareware software development is driven by customer requests - who else would know the best what features are needed other than your customer who probably uses your software daily?