Viewing the World from the Customer’s Perspective

This view is really difficult to see; there tends to be a bunch of stuff in the way.  Two occurrences in the past week reminded me of this.  Both of which had me reflect on some ways in which Seven Cycles works to maintain a customer—or user—perspective.  

The first reminder was a positive reinforcement of customer perspective—more accurately, user perspective.  I was working on a non-Seven project for, in simplest terms, customer participation recycling in a retail environment. 

It was an interesting challenge for a lot of reasons, and the company working on the project already knew there were many different paths to customer participation—everything from not having the customer involved at all, to having the customer manage the entire effort.  In fact, the company has been doing serious recycling for a long time and has a lot of experience.  They are working on their latest generation of recycling and how to involve the customer—without imposing.  I was trying to help—and I hope I did. 

One of the reasons I was invited to help was because I could play the part of the customer, rather than the part of the expert.  Anytime I’m the expert—it’s not often—it can be really challenging to get in the mindset of the user.  However, in this case, because I didn’t know the “behind the scenes” processes the company employs, I could act as the customer—primarily because I really am a customer and I don’t know “any better”.  This was a helpful perspective for their next iteration of recycling process design.

The second reminder was a negative experience, in the form of a magazine article.  The article asked ten major bike industry suppliers about their business resolutions for 2009.

1 in 2,000

I was shocked—yes shocked—that only two of the ten suppliers’ resolutions included anything about their customers!  In fact, in the entire ~2,000 words, the expression “dealer” appears only once!  Sorry for the exclamation points but what the eff!  Actually, Joe Wignall of Seven Cycles read the article first and pointed it out to me—I believe he was equally surprised.

My point here is not to self aggrandize.  My point is that what I assume is so often not the case:  It’s not easy to think like a customer.  Part of the reason it’s not easy is because it seems like it would be easy—we are all customers and users after all.  So, getting in the head of the user may seem so obvious.  Clearly, in the bike industry—based on the Resolution article—it’s not. 

The User Perspective

There exist endless resources on customer perspective and user perspective.  A few of the most helpful insights for me in maintaining a user perspective include:

• Familiarity breeds blindness.  When we get used to a process or product, it becomes really difficult to see it with new eyes—and thereby improve the process.  How would this process look to someone that had never seen or used it before?  Would it make sense?  In what ways would it be confusing?  Can you really see this process as if it’s for the first time ever?
• Expertise gets in the way of the user perspective.  While this is not always the case, I find it to be a good place to start—it’s very often very accurate.  For example, I know Seven’s order process really well.  So, when I think about that process, I think about it with some expertise.  Intuitively, it makes sense that I would be able to come up with a list of ways we can make the process better.  However, the more of an expert I become, the farther away from the normal customer I am.
• Easy for the user means difficult for the provider.  If we start by making a process easy for us, it will most likely be difficult for the customer.  In fact, an inverse relationship exists between complexity of user experience and developer framework.  It is natural—and logical—to want to make processes easier for us as “users” and to forget that our customer—the next person downstream—has a more difficult experience.
• From what perspective are we using the term “better”?  The only “better” is the better for customer.  Better for the provider is not relevant if it does not positively impact the user experience.  All that matters is the real question of, “how do I make it better for the customer?”
• Keep asking questions that are customer-centric and user-centric.  As a customer, how would I use this?  What would make it easier?  Faster?  More error proof?  How do I break this system?  Is this how I would want to be treated?  What does the user really want?
• Thinking from the “user’s perspective” is more helpful that thinking from the “customer’s perspective”.  There’s something about thinking as user rather than customer that I find helpful.  “How would I use this?” rather than, “How would I be a customer in this way?” 
• Make it easy and intuitive for the user.  How can we make it easier for the customer?  Don’t worry about making it easy for the business.  In fact, we actually ignore business efficiencies during the design phase.  If anyone suggests ways to make a process easier for the business at the expense of making it easier for the customer, it gets nixed.

Now, of course, I don’t get this user perspective concept correct most of the time.  Ever try to log into our retailer specific website?  Could we have a larger more complicated product line?  Have you ever seen our retailer margin and rebate program?

Again, I wouldn’t even have posted any of this if I didn’t read the article and become so shocked—SHOCKED—by the math of 2:10 or 1:2,000.  Either way, it’s pretty bleak.

Gotta go splash cold water on my face.