From Zero to Xamarin – Part 1 – First contact
In order to evaluate Xamarin as a potential platform for developing our mobile app, myself and a couple of co-workers downloaded and installed the free trial edition at various points in time. A little while later I got an email from a Xamarin “Customer Success Engineer” who noticed that a few people from the same company had downloaded Xamarin and wanted to know if there was anything they could do to help us get going. Okay so a couple of things here:
- What an awesome piece of analytics and marketing from Xamarin. I know it’s not rocket science to work out that multiple people from the same domain downloaded the trial – but holy crap – it sure sends a clear message that they care about customer support right from the get-go.
- “Customer Success Engineer” is a fantastic job title and I should know, I’ve had a few in my time (“Product Evangelist” and “Development Coach” spring to mind). You might consider it a little “wanky” but there is little ambiguity on what this guy’s job was. His job was to make us Successful in our implementation. (If only I could replace our current PB / KPI system with some simple mission statements like “Guy Who Gets Things Done” or “Writer of Awesome Software” then life would be just a little bit better.)
We shot a few emails back and forth regarding the type of project we were working on, our timelines, and what challenges we thought we might face. We then organised a quick phone conference between San Francisco and Melbourne so to get an overview of the Xamarin offering and allow our developers to ask any technical questions they had.
One thing he suggested was that given our tight timelines and limited experience in the mobile space we consider getting in contact with a local Xamarin consultant to see if one could assist. But that’s something for another post.
It’s so nice to have a positive experience so early looking at a product. Well played Xamarin, well played!