I guess that most of us in the industry know that the whole 3G consumer experience still has a way to go before it becomes genuinely compelling.  Whilst out and about shopping last Sunday afternoon, I decided to do a little spur-of-the-moment market research, to see how well Vodafone was doing (I think they have the best 3G phone of the moment – the Sony Ericsson V800).

First the good news.  I was really pleased to see a large “self-service” demo display, where potential customers can try out a 3G phone (the afore-mentioned V800).  Before people can appreciate just how fabulous 3G is (or is going to be), they have to try it for themselves. So, we gave the demo a try.  We followed the instructions to press the right buttons to access Vodafone live.   It all seemed so promising.

Now for the bad news.  We scrolled down to access the Video/DVD/Movie Trailers option.  We pressed the “select” button… and… were hit with an error message saying something like, “Error connecting to network. Please contact your service provider”.   My response was. “No. I don’t so. I can think of better things to do, than stand in-line to inform someone that their demo doesn’t work”… and we walked out of the store.  Had I been a potential customer, I’d have been left with a really terrible impression of 3G.

If there’s one thing that I learned in years of demonstrating complex networked software applications to important potential customers, it was to make sure the demos always, and I mean always work.  And if you’ve done everything you can, and they don’t work, you need to use a little humour to diffuse the situation.  Customers can be very unforgiving (just as I was in the Vodafone store), especially if you’re not trying to sell to early adopters. Of course, it’s not at all easy to make sure that software demos – especially networked software demos – work.   The rule is: if something can go wrong, it will.  So, I’m not saying that what  Vodafone is trying to do with its in-store demos isn’t hard. It is. But, you really do have to go the extra mile to succeed in making a positive impression.  That means planning for different scenarios, and even writing special additional software, if that’s what it takes. I’m not sure that Vodafone have done this (yet). Check out a recent example of Microsoft demo’ing Media Center at CES 2005, to see a great example of what I mean by a team going the extra mile.  If the demo team is anything to go by, Media Center deserves to succeed.