It's Worth Noting

Do you provide good instructions?

I recently got a new table saw made by SawStop and have spent several hours over the past few days assembling it.  Although it's taken a some time, it was a pleasant experience because the instructions and packaging were so well done.  Unpacking sheets were at the top of boxes, hardware was package with color coding/numbering and instructions were on large color sheets with easy to read text and pictures.  There's a lot to assemble, but by simply following color coding and numbering schemes that matched across instructions, packaging and hardware, assembly was a pleasant experience. 

This got me thinking about all the terrible experiences I've had assembling or setting up purchases, from furniture and DSL service to opening routine plastic packages (thank you Amazon for trying to fix this).  Companies are paying a little more attention to assembly and setup design today, but it's still woefully inadequate.  They go to all this trouble and expense convincing you to purchase a product, but give little thought to the experience you're going to have trying to use it for the first time.  Do they care if they waste your time or make your blood boil?  You've made the purchase and you'll fight through like the good little consumer you are.

I believe the tide is turning here, but only market innovators realize this and are getting ahead of the curve.  Consumers will increasingly lean towards products and services that are easy to open, setup and assemble because their access to reviews and purchase options continue to expand.  (I'm reminded here about how I used to go to the library to look through magazines for product reviews before making a purchase.  Wow.)

No matter what type of product or service your company provides, consider whether you are an innovator in this area.  Are you dramatically leading rather than frantically following?  Are you letting a competitor, maybe even an unknown start-up, differentiate themselves at the expense of your market share?  Time is not on your side.  Consumers are not on your side.  If you make the first use of your product or service unnecessarily challenging, consumers will find someone else to purchase from.

Gather a small team at your company to investigate, strictly from the consumer's perspective, how enjoyable and effortless getting to the first use of your product or service really is.  Listen to their feedback, make needed changes and transform this critical interaction into an experience consumers will praise.

By the way, for anyone looking for a great table saw, and one that has an amazing safety feature to reduce the risk of injury from the most dangerous piece of equipment in a wood shop, I definitely recommend that you take a look at SawStop's line of table saws.  You'll love the saw, it could save your fingers and it won't raise your blood pressure during setup and assembly.

Make a purple cow: customer centric web and app development

I've worked with a lot of web developers over the years, from solos to mid-size and larger.  All have left something to be desired, which is probably why I've tried so many.  I've talked with peers about this and their experiences are the same.  Why are web and app development customers so consistently dissatisfied?

I believe the central problem is that most web and app development companies are staffed, run and owned by technicians.  These folks know how to program/design, but they are fish out of water when it comes to being customer centric.  Customers are a problem or annoyance to be tolerated or managed, not the focus of everything they do.  This is similar to how folks view auto repair shops.  Expect the worst: poor dollar/time estimates, unnecessary technical jargon, one excuse after another and consistently unmet expectations.  Rinse, repeat and switch when you can't take it anymore.

Whenever there's an "always" that can be applied to a product, service or industry, there's an opportunity for someone to do it differently and stand out from the crowd.  This is true in the web and app development world.  If someone was willing to make every interaction and experience customer centric, they could be the purple cow in the herd.  For the technicians, this is difficult to imagine and more difficult to execute, so few even try.  Will you?

Below are my top ten recommendations for transforming a web or app development company into a customer centric organization, which will retain customers and convert them into evangelists instead of antagonists:

1. Don't take clients that have an insatiable appetite for being dissatisfied.  They're bad profit and tips 2-10 below won't make any difference to them.
2. Develop a customer interview process that ensures you understand the business objectives (e.g. a site isn't the objective - web marketing is) and a key decision maker or influencer.  Help them translate the technical task into a business objective with an assigned value.  If someone jumps in halfway through the project and disrupts things, your interview process failed you, not the customer.  Improve your process or toolkit.
3. Following the interview, and as part of your written statement of work (which you should be doing if you're not already), put the business objectives on paper.  That becomes the goal post - the project is just a means to that end.
4. Storyboard sites and apps.  Don't waste time or money programming/designing something that can be sketched, flow charted or mapped out first.  Seek the feedback on the front end, not after all the heavy lifting is done.  Ad agencies don't record commercials and then pitch them.  They storyboard, seek feedback, obtain buy-in and then produce.  You should do the same.
5. Develop a time/module matrix that allows you to track and communicate where the project stands at any moment in time.  Update the matrix daily based on % of work completed for each module and share it with your customer.  This will force you to prioritize the work, will introduce accountability and will improve communication.  If you and the customer can't accurately assess where a project is at on a daily basis, you cannot consistently meet deadlines or know whether you can take on more work.
6. If your customers ever email or call you wanting a "status update", you've failed in your communication.  They're not the problem - your communication practices are to blame.  If a customer wants status updates daily, direct them to the matrix, but never go more than a few working days between contact for an active project.  Setup a system to handle this and make it easy for you execute day in, day out.
7. Get on the phone.  Email is efficient, but it doesn't build relationships like face to face or telephone conversations do.  If it's just about the project for you, it'll just be about the deadlines and budgets for them.  If you build a relationship, you'll build some cushion for rough spots and increase the likelihood of repeat business and referrals.  It's also more fulfilling.
8. Speak up.  You're being hired to execute a project to move the ball forward on a business objective.  If you're perplexed by a request, don't know why it's not being done a simpler or more cost effective way, say so.  If you don't, your customer won't get the full benefit of your perspective and expertise and you're likely to waste some of your time and their money.
9. Don't assume.  I once had a home builder tell me that I should have caught a framing mistake.  I told him that's why I was paying him to build the house.  He just shifted blame because he assumed and developers consistently do the same.  Be mindful of the information gap.  Develop a set of questions or techniques to assess whether what they're saying and what you're hearing are the same thing.  They're frequently not and it's not their job to correct this - it's yours.  Good communicators listen intently and ask inquisitively to understand what someone means, not what they've said.  The point isn't to hear words, it's to understand why they're being spoken.
10. Don't permit you or your team to complain about customers anymore, whether internally or externally.  It's cancerous.  If they are a challenge to deal with, you've most likely failed to adhere to one or more of tips 1-9 above.

Why do you annoy your customers and prospects?

Why is it that when a friend invites a guest to their gym, the gym is committed to annoying everyone by making the guest jump through endless hoops and listen to sales pitches just to try out their product?  They could make it easy: (1) have guests sign a simple waiver, and (2) let them enjoy the facilities with a member who already thinks it's worth paying for.  Seems like a recipe for success until management starts worrying about free riders and the lost opportunity to make an annoying sales pitch.

My advice to the gyms: do whatever you can to make members want to bring guests and make guests want to come back.  Reasonable restrictions are okay to maintain the desired member experience and prevent abusive free riding, but that leaves a lot of room to make favorable impressions and to move your members from being mere consumers to being your most effective marketing arm.

Consider whether your company annoys customers and prospects.  If they say you do, then you do.  Fix it.

p.s. Sam's and Costco, consider applying the same lessons to your "theft prevention" procedures.  Every other retailer has figured out how to mitigate theft without accusing every exiting customer of being a thief and forcing them to prove otherwise.  Your parting interaction with members is annoying and unnecessary.  What about putting someone at the door that says, "We really appreciate you being a member and look forward to you returning.  Have a great day."  Sounds a lot better than, "Let me check that receipt [you thief]."

Can you leave work for five days?

If you or your colleagues believe you can't leave work for five days without important responsibilities being neglected, you all have a problem.  Unfortunately, many employees work hard to make sure they're irreplaceable and their companies encourage and support this behavior.  The problem is that this suggests both are investing time and energy into developing responsibility silos rather than developing scalable and replicable systems and processes.  Make yourself irreplaceable, not by ensuring you're the only one who can do something, but by repeatedly developing systems and processes that can be executed by others.

A healthy company leverages its employees to amplify the effect of its systems and processes.  An unhealthy company uses employees as a proxy for systems and processes, so when one of the employees is gone, so is the system and process they represent.  This makes it difficult for employees to take time away from work, planned or unplanned, and makes it difficult for companies to replicate and scale.

Can you take five days off without you or others worrying about everything that's going to be neglected?  If the answer is not a resounding "Yes!", figure our where you're missing the mark and develop systems and processes to sure things up.  You and your company will be healthier for it.

On being an entrepreneur: 60 second video

Do something surprising

Just checked into a hotel, Affinia, last night to discover that they have pillows with built in speakers and provide a cord for connecting them to your iphone, ipod, etc.

Needed? No. Surprising? Yes. Is there something small you can do to surprise your customers? Good surprises can put a smile on their face and give them something to take note of, which means they're more likely to be come back and spread the word.

Are you expanding at the expense of consistency?

During the past few months, our family has been traveling to and fro through small towns in Texas. Good or bad, I've become accustomed to the pleasure of a homemade cappuccino early in the morning. Since my cappuccino maker doesn't travel easily and these small towns have limited options, we recently decided to give McDonald's coffee a try. I've ordered four coffee drinks on two different occasions now. Three were latte/cappuccino varieties and one was plain drip. The only drink that was prepared correctly was the plain drip, but that was after a ten minute wait for them to brew a pot. The other three drinks were all incorrect. Flavored instead of plain, unsweetened instead of sweetened, etc.. 75% ordering failure rate and I bet the corporate office would consider the 10 minute wait for the one correct order a failure too. I'll round down and call it a 99% failure rate. It was enough for us to call their customer service number for the first time.

McDonald's has made its name and fortunes on being consistent. Regardless of what you think of them, you know what you're going to get each time. Same food, same menu, etc.. Have you ever been apprehensive about how that Big Mac was going to taste? No. Their business is delivering the same experience no matter where you are. As you consider expanding the products or services you offer, can you assure customers that the results will be consistent and in line with what they've come to expect from you? Your customers may quickly grow tired of being asked to roll the dice. We'll skip the McDonald's next time and head across the Louisiana border where the casinos offer better odds.

Do you understand your job?

Our family visited the Statue of Liberty this past Memorial Day. First off, the monument is impressive and the visit to both Liberty Island and Ellis Island are well worth enduring the long lines. Security is tight at the monument and a Nat'l Park Service employee was at the front of the line. We watched him bark orders, sigh in disgust, reprimand parents and the like. The irony was thick.

The messaging around the monument focused on how Lady Liberty was a symbol of hope, a welcoming sight to those yearning for a new life in America. On Monday, one key person made it feel very uninviting especially for foreign visitors who didn't understand him any better because he was rude or loud. What was his job? He clearly thought it was to establish and maintain control as if he were working a protest line. I submit that his job was to protect the site and the people. Neither required his behavior. Both could have accomplished with patience and grace. He could have added to the experience and history. Unfortunately, he detracted from it.

Have you or any of your employees forgotten why your job exists? Has the task become more prominent than the purpose it serves? If you ensure tasks and attitude serve the broader purpose, your customers are more likely to have the experience you desire. If it's the other way around, you're headed down the path of airlines, cell phone companies and perhaps the Nat'l Park Service security team on Liberty Island. Levi Sent from Blackberry

Avoiding Credibility Creep

I was speaking with some friends this week about how companies and organizations can be duped by individuals they believe to be one thing, but turn out to be quite another.  Insert your favorite villain here.  From Madoff duping the world of finance to George O'Leary duping Notre Dame (at least for a while), I think the reason why it takes so long for these individuals to be found out is the same: credibility creep.
As time passes, credibility creeps when potential employers or customers rely on a due diligence process that only includes a candidate's more recent employer/customer history.  Since prior employers/customers did the same, if one employer/customer in the chain is duped, it's likely that subsequent employers/customers will also be duped since they're relying in part on the due diligence of a prior employer/customer.  This is especially true when the employer/customer list covers a long period of time or contains an marque name.
How do you avoid this?  The next time you hire a key employee, advisor or vendor, start your due diligence at college graduation and work your way up to present.  Do not make any exceptions.  It'll take a few more hours and dollars to complete ($25-75) using a background check service), but you'll avoid being the next victim in a credibility chain precariously held together by a weak link introduced some time ago.

Link returns to credit cards, not just slips of paper

Retailers, get with the program and link receipts to credit cards.  No excuses.  For the best example of this, I'd point to the Home Depot.  I can easily return items from multiple purchases on multipe cards all in one transaction.  It's simply because they link credit cards with receipts for reverse lookups.  Their return process is consistently the best I've experienced for brick and mortor retail.  The returns sometimes take a while because the of the number or size of items involved, but it's not because they haven't invested in their system.  The same can't be said of many other retailers.

p.s. equip local stores to efficiently process online orders

If it's hard for your customers to get out of a transaction, they're less likely to enter into it in the first place.  Avoid contributing to your own extinction.