The Power of Customer Complacency in Software?

I frequently use Piazza, a web-based education platform, for class. It is very effective as it publicizes all questions and answers, while keeping anonymity.

I have essentially no issues with the product. And while this is true I don’t feel a strong sense of loyalty either. It feels like I am in a no-man’s land.

With this said, it would still be hard to get me to switch products if I started a class of my own. The reason is I am af least unaware of any pain points. So there is not much to fix per se.

Perhaps if features were added in another product, I could see utility in switching. The thing is I do not know what features I want. Also any features added needs to warrant the switching costs.

I think that is the hard thing to crack. How do you overcome these switching costs? Learning a new UI, creating a new account, password management are all posts that I do not want to deal with. And showing me something to get me to switch is hard when I couldnt tell you a pain point.

To some extent I think user complacency can breed power. The issue is without any strong network effects, low switching costs are easy to overcome in due time.

So if products start to converge and market share is at stake, do not give your users a reason to complain about your offering.