Microspeak: The funnel

re: Microspeak: The funnel

EE — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:57:29 GMT

Awesome Unix reference, just woke everyone in cubeville by laughing out loud!

re: Microspeak: The funnel

lefty — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:03:05 GMT

"customers that got a problem, cannot find self help, but too lazy / think it doesn't worth the time to ask"

In other words, the FoF customers who "F"-off.

re: Microspeak: The funnel

Cheong — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:58:06 GMT

> I've always thought it was funny that the Microsoft support funnel is drawn sideways. Wouldn't the support incidents just spill back out?

I know. This is used to represent customers that got a problem, cannot find self help, but too lazy / think it doesn't worth the time to ask.

re: Microspeak: The funnel

Alexandre Grigoriev — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:27:10 GMT

Light in the end of funnel?

re: Microspeak: The funnel

James Schend — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:11:28 GMT

The word funnel (and that identical diagram) is also widely used in web design to describe a multiple-step process. As users progress through each step, a certain percentage give up and leave the site.

re: Microspeak: The funnel

Ens — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:22:50 GMT

It's sideways because time is the independent variable, whereas the number of customers remaining at that time is the dependent variable, and the independent variable is customarily on the x-axis.

Then, just for effect or to show off that the support engineers also took first year calculus, we decide to rotate the line about the x axis so it looks like a funnel rather than a waterslide.

re: Microspeak: The funnel

Chad — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:21:21 GMT

I've always thought it was funny that the Microsoft support funnel is drawn sideways. Wouldn't the support incidents just spill back out? And why is it "front of the funnel" instead of the more intuitive "top of the funnel?"

But, I guess thinking like this explains why I'm a support engineer instead of a manager.

re: Microspeak: The funnel

Maurits [MSFT] — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:28:58 GMT

The term "sales funnel" is also in common use outside Microsoft.

re: Microspeak: The funnel

DWalker — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:25:41 GMT

"Driving levers across the entire funnel"? That's one of the strangest phrases I have heard in a while.

The Act contact management system (called ACT! by its creators) uses a "sales funnel" model, with large numbers of prospects at varying levels of committment at the top, and the smaller number of closed sales presumably fall through the narrow end. It's kind of like an inverted pyramid, I suppose. I have never encountered a funnel on its side for any kind of metaphor...

re: Microspeak: The funnel

Stephen Griffin - MSFT — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:52:36 GMT

> Is it pronounced foff?

Yes - that's exactly how we pronounce it here. While we tend to make fun of it ourselves, it does provide a good metaphor for how cases get handled, and how our resources should be allocated. The FoF model is what justifies the time I get to spend blogging and developing support tools.