We’ve been talking a lot at work about customer expectations. Not just what they expect from us but what we expect from ourselves and how that maps to what our customers expect from us. The notion of customers’ expectations outpacing the expectations of ourselves is frightening. I recently came across an article from a professional friend who runs a content marketing firm that tied our conversations into simple words. If you don’t know who Chris Spears is at Arke Systems please look him up…I would love to take full credit for all below material but some ideas I’ve plucked from conversations with Chris and reading his articles.
Let me start my stating the obvious, we live in a tech world of constant change. And that overwhelming theme never seems to change…..disrupt or be disrupted. But here comes the hard part; disrupt the current state but do it in a way that’s simple to understand, simple to use, all while drastically improving the customer experience. And in doing all that, keeping customers’ expectations aligned with what you’re going to deliver and when you say you’re going to deliver it.
Forrester Research warns that customers’ expectations are outpacing companies’ abilities to evolve or invent experiences. In 2018, “30 percent of companies will see further declines in customer experience and those declines will translate into a net loss of a point of growth,” the report warns. Customers “demand what they demand,” Forrester concludes. “And when companies fail to deliver experience by experience or live up to their brand promise, customers will take flight.”
So what do we do now? Maybe we should start by refocusing the conversation on actions and outcomes instead of words. We need to do more and talk less. Most importantly, when we talk, we need to talk explicitly about the outcomes we want to achieve instead of hiding our confusion in technical jargon. Then explain, in an extremely simply way, how those outcomes make life easier for the people who will be using our technology.
Last year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made some excellent points around imprecise language in his letter to Amazon shareholders. “Customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better. But providing that something better requires more than a specialized idiomatic vocabulary. If someone comes to you with a business plan they claim is disruptive you should ask them to explain it to you in simpler language. And the simpler language is, Why are customers going to adopt this? Why are they going to like it? Why is it better than the traditional way?” Bezos said.
To improve our business operations and provide more value for the marketplaces we serve, we have to start with outcomes in mind. We need to not only know what we want to accomplish, but also remainlaser focused on it. We have to be willing to talk simply about using technologies in new and better ways to improve convenience and efficiency. That, combined with a sincere commitment to serve our customers and be stewards of goodwill in our communities, each of us individually own the routes that will ultimately clear the way to better technology experiences.
The technology is terribly complicated to develop on the backend. Why not make it simple on the front end…