Coping With Change December 22, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Customer Service, Shopping
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In days gone by, cashiers gave change by counting up. Starting from the purchase amount, you received pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters until a whole dollar amount was reached. You then got ones, fives, tens, and twenties to complete your change. Cashiers invariably counted as they disbursed the money, so you could check to make sure it was correct. In the end, you had change in your hand, topped by bills, in order. You could hold on to the change while you put the bills away, and then put the change in your pocket or purse. Simple, straightforward, easy.
Not anymore. Having eliminated basic math from the skill set of modern cashiers, the register point-of-sale terminal now computes the change, leaving the cashier to withdraw that much money from the drawer and dump it in your hand. You get handed bills first, followed by a pile of change, followed by the receipt, followed by the bag. This clumsy arrangement is impossible to deal with easily. You wind up letting go of the bag, dumping the change in your free hand, shuffling the bills, and then putting away the change. To make things worse, the cashier instantly begins handling the next customer’s purchases, giving you the bum’s rush while you fumble with a wad of paper and coins.
One solution is to dump the whole mess on the counter and sort it out, annoying everyone in line. A better solution would involve the cashier being trained to give you the change in a way that makes it easy for you, not easy for the cashier.
So much of everything we do involves working with our customers in ways that make sense to them and help them be productive. From complicated user interfaces to the simple act of making change, every customer interaction counts. Worst of all, the annoyance of getting your change dumped in your hand is your last experience as you exit the store, leaving you with a bad experience to savor as you walk to your car. What a great way to encourage customers to return!
How do your systems stack up? Do you give customers change in ways that make it easy to work with you? Or do you leave them annoyed and irritated as they walk out your door?
Dealing With Goldilocks December 19, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Automobiles, Customer Service, Interfaces
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Recently, my wife’s car wouldn’t start. Drawing on my deep technical acumen, I jump-started the car and took it to a local repair shop. They agreed with my diagnosis of a bad battery, but to be sure, they wanted to test my battery with their special equipment. This would ensure that the battery was the culprit, keeping me from wasting my money when the problem might lie elsewhere. They would even provide me with the diagnostic printout showing the exact problem.
I hate getting car repairs, and this kind of customer service was pleasantly unexpected. After a little while, the technician returned with the promised printout. Along with the date and time, the printout provided this complete technical analysis of my battery:
REPLACE BATTERY
Wow! With this kind of detailed analysis, it was clear that my $130 would be well-spent.
Where were the voltages and amps? Where was the graphical display of the cells in the battery, with one or two in red? Where was some sort of chart, showing how quickly the battery would charge and then die? Where was the link to the online version of the report that I could view years from now? How about a special code I could text to a server, or a Twitter stream for my car?
Clearly, my expectations of the diagnostic report were very different from what the vendor provided. And in the mechanic’s defense, many customers need only see that printed confirmation to verify their battery suspicions. Volts and amps don’t mean much to most people.
Every customer is Goldilocks: they don’t it want it too hot, or too cold. They want it just right. As technology designers, we struggle constantly to anticipate “just right” and deliver it quickly and reliably. But we rarely get it right, because every user has a different definition of “just right.”
What to do? Personalization may be the answer, but can be cumbersome and very expensive to implement. Presenting progressively detailed data can help, allowing users to dig in deeper as their interests dictate. Even offering a few versions of a report or interface (beginner, experienced, and expert) can mitigate a lot of user complaints.
Although it is difficult, we cannot give up on finding the sweet spot for our users. Because if we do, we may find that one day our boss shows up with a diagnostic report of their own:
REPLACE CIO
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Talk The Talk? Talk Their Talk! December 17, 2008
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Communication, Customer Service, Project Management
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We say it over and over, but it still bears repeating: IT must speak to the business in their language, not ours. We are most effective when we embrace and understand the culture of our customers, and that starts with communicating in the terms they understand.
At the highest levels, CIOs must deal with the business as a strategic partner. This means living in the world of finance, operations, and process. In any general conversation between a CIO and a business peer, specific technology terms should be few and far between. In the end, the business does not care about our geeky little world. They only care about what we deliver and how it helps them.
But the advice to “talk their talk” extends across all levels of our organizations. I was reminded of this recently when a published project status confused our business partners. We were closing out a project that updated several thousand PCs on our network. We had completed the updates but ran a special audit job to make sure nothing was missed. The update was complete but the audit was only half-done. The project status noted that 700 or so PCs remained to be processed in this last phase of the project.
The business perceived this to mean that all these machines were not even updated and got concerned about the project. It took a day of poking around to figure out the real answer and reassure the business. Had we expressed the status in language that made sense to the business, the distinction between the update and the audit would have been clear and the confusion avoided.
Those of us in IT often use the language of technology to either impress or confuse our customers. This never helps in the long run, although it lets you get away with a lot in the short term. In the end, another old adage holds true in our world: People don’t care what you know. They want to know that you care. And that starts by speaking to people in a language that they understand.
The Effective CIO 