When Efficiency Wastes

by: stacey - February 8th, 2012   Filed under: Customer Relations, Management Add Comment

Efficiency is one of the mantras of the IT world.  Repeatable, efficient processes.  We all strive for them.  We all want to do things better.  Faster.  Cheaper.

Let’s ask ourselves for a moment, though, what that efficiency really gains the business.  The truth is, it can gain two things:  1) Save money in department’s budget, and 2) Reduce the time it takes to do things (which is the same as saving money).

The thing is, efficient for IT is not always effective for the company.  Let’s consider your IT helpdesk.  Which is more efficient- reducing your call times so that your people can handle more calls per day, or spending the time on each call to ensure that the user’s problem is solved and that the user is provided training that helps prevent the problem in the future?  Is it more efficient that your software development project is finished on time and on budget, or is it more efficient if the project overruns by 10%, but adapts along the way as more details are learned, in order to better meet the company’s needs?

I’m not saying to abandon efficiency for perfect customer service.  This is a mistake as well.  The company has only so much budget for IT, and you have to spend it wisely.  It’s the same conundrum as the old “the customer is always right” scenario- there is a point you reach that it can cost you too much to satisfy a given customer, and it’s no longer economically sensible to do so.

IT is like sales in a way- it’s all about delivering what the customer needs, for a price that they can afford.  Strive for finding that balance.  Don’t fall blind to why your IT function exists and what its real goals are.

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Four Biggest Fears of Customers

by: stacey - January 27th, 2012   Filed under: Customer Relations Add Comment

I find myself focusing more and more on customers lately.  A project’s success is so much more than successful execution of a project plan.  It is about the customer’s satisfaction with the end results of your project.  If you execute your project plan successfully, on time and on budget, but the client hates the end result, no one uses the software you implemented, and ultimately the customer considers the money they spent on the project a failure, did you really succeed?

In most cases, you did not.  This is especially true if the customer is a customer of your company, and your implementation was of your company’s product.  One of the ways to help ensure success of your project is to address your customer’s fears.

What are the customer’s biggest fears?  Here’s a brief list of the top four I’ve dealt with:

1.  Can you deliver what we really want, on time and within budget?

You have to be able to explain, confidently and in simple terms, how you will achieve the goals of the project, on time and within budget.  You have to show that you are open to changes as well (within the scoped process for change requests, of course) to change.  You are to deliver what they really want, not what they asked for.  The client does not always in the beginning understand what he is looking for.  You may have to change paddles mid-stream.

2.  Will the deliverable actually work and fulfill my needs?

At some point early on you need to be able to explain the change to their business process that your product will bring to them and how that change will make things better for them.  Show them the value.

3.  Will I see value from this project?

Projects are long and often difficult.  You have to be able to articulate over and over how the deliverable is going to bring value.  More than that, you need to be able to explain exactly what that value is.  The customer and the team has to be able to remember why they’re doing what they’re doing.

4.  How hard will this be to maintain?

After you finish your project, the deliverables involved have to be maintained.  As the client gains confidence in you and your ability to deliver, their own confidence to do the same may wane.  The more that you appear to be an expert, the less they may feel like an expert.  You need to provide them with a quality, easy to understand maintenance plan that makes them feel confident in their ability to maintain the product in the event that you are no longer available to them.  If you are to maintain the product later, be transparent on exactly how much time, effort, number of maintenance activities, and cost of maintenance involved.  Let them know that the maintenance of the deliverables will not be too expensive for the project to be worthwhile.

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Knowing When to Respect Your Customer

by: stacey - January 13th, 2012   Filed under: Customer Relations, Product Management Add Comment

Facebook is a classic example of two things:  how word of mouth marketing can drive huge amounts of adoption to your product, and how failure to respect the basic values of your customers can ruin your product.

There is no question that word of mouth has done great things for Facebook’s adoption and in turn its value.  People have loved the application for allowing them to do a very simple thing:  talk about themselves, keep in touch with friends, and make new friends.  I daresay that items 1) and 3) there are the key driver of any social app; people want to talk about themselves, and people want to think that what they say about themselves is so interesting that people can’t wait to be friends with them.  It feeds all of our inner egos and/or self-esteem.  Their original target market is teenagers, who are, as we all know (particularly parents out there), all about trying to identify who they are and wanting acceptance from peers.

That same word of mouth recently bit Facebook.  Their Beacon program’s online tracking showed a gross misunderstanding of their customers by violating several important tenets:

1) Users in today’s internet are nervous about privacy

2) As any parent knows, teenagers (one of Facebook’s major markets) are really paranoid about their privacy

3) The way that Beacon worked, sooner or later it was going to show up as spyware in any number of security apps- and people were going to block the service anyway, and then they were going to fear Facebook as a result (my security software told me it was bad!)

Facebook broke an even bigger rule with this program, however:  at some point, they stopped thinking about their customers as people, and started thinking of them as sources of information.  Many companies have done this.  You know of a way to get information from your data sources, and you decide on a new feature or revenue source that you can generate from that information.  Too often in this situation, companies think of revenue rather than the customers.  Facebook did this when they decided to make people’s purchases public for the world to see without the ability for the customer to approve or edit the feed.

I am all about revenues and making money from customers.  That’s what free enterprise is all about.  Still, you must always remember what your customer’s core values are.  Evaluate them.  Write them down.  Put them on your wall.  Violate their core values, and not only will they abandon you, they will rebel.  Word of Mouth is the number one advertising method out there.  Don’t turn it against you.

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