Imagine having developed a great new product. Your so excited to let people use it. You’re there the day it’s made available. It’s taken years of your time to create this new product and your excited about how it will make people’s lives better.
As you stand there watching the first person use your product you see them begin crying. Not because they are overjoyed with what you’ve made. No, the experience of using your product has brought them agony and distress.
What went wrong? The same thing that goes wrong so often. It just usually doesn’t lead to tears. At least not for the consumer. You ended up getting consumed with the idea of what your product could do for people. Even if your focus was on the consumer did you ever stop to think about what it would be like to use your product? Your service?
This is what so often gets left out when people develop products and services. How will people experience using this? Will it be difficult? How will it make them feel?
I got some new insurance the other day and was logging into the website and they wanted me to verify it was really me. So they had several questions that were supposed to filter out anyone else from passing this step. The only problem was that their questions were so inaccurate that I couldn’t even answer them. I tried two times. Some of the questions were simply irrelevant and didn’t apply to me so I had no idea how to answer them. Other questions I answered correctly but it wasn’t the answer they wanted.
I had to end up being on hold waiting to talk with someone. Later during the interaction of the phone, I brought up the difficulty of the online process and suggested he pass along my frustration he implied no one would be listening. However he did mention other people had also mentioned the problem. Another unempowered employee, but that’s another story.
Wow, I was left wondering if these people even understood me. Maybe they had the wrong information connected to me. At the least, their system was frustrating and seemed to ignore how the customer might experience the moment. It definitely dampened my view of this company and their ability to take care of me. Trust was diminished. It wouldn’t take many more incidences where I feel that they aren’t there for me and I’d be thinking about going elsewhere. I’d be looking for a company that made me feel different when I interacted with them. I’d like to feel like I actually mattered to them as a person. That my time, feelings, and experience was important. What a great way to stand out from the crowd.
Have you thought about how people interact with what you offer? How much time have you put into it? Did you just gloss over it or did you really explore how customers might experience interacting with your business? It might be eyeopening.