1. Keeping a customer is cheaper than finding new ones.
2. If you have high churn, you are viewed as selling a commodity not a brand people care for. You will need to start to compete by lowering price which is not a winning game unless you are a volume behemoth like Walmart.
3. Happy customers are more likely to become loyal customers, and loyal customers tend to become cheaper to maintain than servicing the needs of newbies that are partially willing to “try” you out.
4. History is littered with brands who became too big for their own shoes, and started to forget about who made them big in the first place. The happiest brands are those that keep their customers close, and value their experiences as they do their bottom-line.
5. What can your brand do, to make people say “I love [name of your brand here]“. Make people become irrational about their feelings about your brand. The glow that radiates from people in love is infectious. Try telling a Harley-lover that a Honda is better.
6. In the lean times, it’s your brand advocates that will stick by you. Loyalty is difficult to create, and once you have it, you must hold on it, by frequently checking every customer service point within your company (At Rouxbe, the CEO of the company reads every contact form that comes in).
7. Marketers should be part of the design process, so they understand the product that is being built and who it will satisfy. Slapping on marketing messages after the fact doesn’t work. It’s simply too late.
8. Designers should be part of the marketing process, they are trained to be stand-ins for the end-user. Tap into their knowledge to keep the design and the message unified. Apple does this best.
9. Do things differently. The best way to beat your competition is to stand out and be different. Be less annoying than your competition (maybe my bank machine can start to remember what language I speak, and not ask that question each time?), be more caring (don’t tell phone customers they will get through faster by staying on the line, offer to call them back) and more human (WestJet flight attendants crack jokes when making the same old boring “fasten your tray tables” announcements).
10. Be your own customer. Use your product before you unleash it to a market. Design things for yourself, and design the after-sales service for your family and friends. People who don’t know jack about the intricate details about your product. You owe them a good experience.
11. People talk. And in a myriad of new ways. If you run a business that has customers, you ought to be keeping an ear to the ground to listen to what people are saying about you. You should know about the various (new) ways people communicate.

And now a story:

I am on the phone with Fido (BC, where I live, has only 3 major cell phone carriers, sad). I have a nasty customer experience. The agent is unprofessional, absent and not helpful. He has asked me to repeat my mobile number 3 times now. I have been handed from one department to the next, and no one seems to be able to be able to tell me why my account balance is not being accurately displayed online. The call ends with me hanging up in frustration when they finally decide to blame my computer (Mac) even though I KNOW that there is no way that could be the problem.

My tweets during this call:

Sweet revenge.

Flash back, it used to be that when we would have a bad customer experience, we’d grumble about it to others, if the topic came up. Now, I tweet.

Generation Is uses Twitter. A Tweet refers to messages exchanged on Twitter to let people know what you are doing right now. Or what you think or feel about a particular subject. (Learn about what is Twitter and why it’s so popular and stats on it’s usage). So get searching and find out what people are saying about you on Twitter!

So be good to your customers. Bad stories are more fun to tell than good ones. Revenge is more important at times than spreading joy, and more and more,  your consumer understands the power she wields, in this hyper-connected world.

competitive advantage

1. We are curious. The best designers are those that bring knowledge to a project but gather perspective from the end-user. Designers are trained to know that they don’t know all the answers and the best solutions to problems lie in examining context and defining the target. To design for a better future, a designer must uncover how the people lead their lives today. Ask questions, uncover truths and dig to find out who they should be designing for.
2. We create brands. Don’t hire a designer who uses the words logos and brands interchangeably. Instead look for designers who think logos are only as important as lipstick on a beautiful woman. Creating a brand means adding true market value that transcends features or benefits.  I paraphrase and borrow liberally from the Brand Gap but the idea is that imagine Coke without it’s brand. It’s worth half it’s current market value:
3. We create distinction in crowded marketplaces. Clever design and niche products have made Apple successful again. Good design has always been the cornerstone of what Apple has been known for. Everyone knows that the soon to be available iPhone has nothing amazingly new about it. But we also know that Apple will make access to the features and the shear visuals so appealing that the iPhone will make other phones look like Stone Age tablets. Apple understands and leverages the fact that design is the ultimate competitive edge.
4. Designers are excellent translators. Got business goals? Got technological constraints? Designers can uncover user goals and then find the sweet spot where business goals and user goals converge. Even better, they can ensure that technology can be leveraged to meet those goals. Designers help business dream big and beyond what exists today and also ground those dreams by presenting a set of very real, tangible user goals. Sure you want to build a flying pig but no one wants one! Good design means building products and services that are useful. Less wasted time, less bad products.
5. Design = Innovation = Design. When Business Week wanted to launch a section on design their research told them that their readers assumed that the section would be all about architecture and interior design. So they renamed that section to be called Innovation. A sign of the times we live in. Design walks around wearing a veil called Innovation. Whatever you call it, you are dead in the waters without it. Design not keeps businesses alive, it helps them float to the top and be seen as victorious over their competition.
6. Design saves lives. My Treo’s tiny buttons have caused me to have many a close-call car accidents (I know, I know, no multi-tasking while driving). That said good design has probably saved my life many a time. From my steering wheel car stereo controls to the 3 point safety belt that keeps me from kissing my windshield. ABS brakes that don’t require me to do anything different than just use a brake like I always would. Designers dare to think different and when they do; they reward us with products that work. While your badly designed website may not kill people, it may contribute to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) or just good ol’ web rage.
7. Designs are user advocates. If you ever have the pleasure to be in a feature discussion meeting, they start to sound like a religious debate . I would never…I always…My mother has said…My girlfriend swears she would never…People use whatever anecdotes they possibly can to prove their point of view and ‘win’ the debate. A ‘good’ designer would bring good research to the table. Research based on fact, research based on user goals to validate direction. Use your designer as your stand-in for the user you should be designing for, and trust that they are the voice of the people. That’s who they want to please. That’s who makes you money and keeps you in business.
8. Designers make things pretty. Human nature: “If it looks good, it must be good”. Test this: try using a black and white monitor again.
   We are highly visual creatures who make snap judgments on the basis of how things appear in that moment. This is how we survive, hunt and gather and marry people who will make use beautiful babies to carry forth our civilization. Designers understand this and use this knowledge to make us products that fit in with our idea of beauty. Beauty is not skin deep, it is the knife’s edge.
9. A design process is a good process. You don’t develop a brand, you design a brand. You don’t develop a software application, you design a software application. Having a user experience focused design approach means that the entire production cycle should have design validation at key points throughout the entire process. This keeps the focus where it should be. On the paying customer.
10. Designers love constraints. Tell a designer that they have complete freedom to do what they want, there is no target market and there are no financial or technical constraints. They go crazy. They literally go nuts. They become artists creating for themselves. Designers are defined by constraints and embrace them with open arms. After all, to design for a fixed target, to design for a set of rules and goals is what defines design. It’s what we do.

So I propose to you, get designers to rule the world and we will be happier, waste less by building products and services that we actually want to buy and use well. Fire your local self-serving politician, hire a designer and we will live in closer harmony with the planet which we happen to inhabit.

P. S. I apologise to my high-school English teacher. I realise that the title of my article is grammatically incorrect, but what can I say. It’s ambiguity was seductive!

Here are a few things that I believe are worth focusing upon. Whether your business serves up a service or a product. Whether your customer is the end-consumer or another business. 

Before I continue on, I am going to mainly use the words product and user. Replace product with service, if that’ what your company serves up. Replace the word user with customer, consumer, vendor, purchasing company, enterprise…whoever ends up paying your bills by buying what you sell.

I suggest we need to consider two major elements to focus on when it comes to creating successful businesses

Context and the User. This month’ article will focus on context. We will move our attention to the user in next month’ article.

Context.

How and where will it your product be important to your user?

When will it be used? Studying the context of your product’ usage can bring back some unexpected gems. Someone recognized that this was a problem: Every time someone uses a spoon to stir pasta sauce they are making, they end up making a mess when they put their spoon down. The folks over at http://www.woodspoon.com/ improved upon the existing experience.The lazy spoon, has been celebrated on the Oprah show and raved on and on by famed cook Rachael Ray.

So what do you need to learn from messy/clean sauce spoons? It’ all about context? You need to know the environment that surrounds your relationship with your customer. Some examples of why studying up on context is good:

1. Context highlights the little things

   How is your product used? Where is it used? What are the key benefits associated with your service? Software that is used in noisy environments should probably not rely on audio cues. Daycare facilities should hire people who genuinely like kids (even the Janitor). Dental receptionists should have nice teeth and bank tellers should not tell you how bad they are at math (I have actually had that happen). Consider the wide circular halo that surrounds each of the perceived benefits that your product aims to offers your users. Even the smallest omission within this circle can spell death for your business or at the very least reduce some of that magic brand glow you were aiming to spread. Provide your product’ benefits everywhere. If you offer a service that relies on speed as one of its key benefits, it is probably crucial that your website servers never fail and have high bandwidth to serve pages at blazing fast speed even though your business is not directly web related. If you provide software product that features ease of use, your office layout should feature that same attention to ergonomics.

2. The Market has answers (some you don’t want to hear)

   What makes your user’ mouth water?

   What are some of the other products your customer will probably want to use? Doing a moodboard research about what turns your user’s crank could lead to some interesting alliances. The Four Seasons hotel in Vancouver lets its preferred guests park their cars in front of the hotel, bypassing the need to use the valet, a much cherished benefit for their customer. What does the hotel get out of this? Chances are that their prominent clients drive high-end luxury cars. Having passerbys and other guests see the high-end cars parked right in front of the hotel adds to the brand promise of the otherwise aging hotel building.

   Drink in your competition’ Kool Aid and then spit it out.

   Don’t make your own website, your browser’ home page. Instead try and focus in on your competition. Where is their message clear and where are the opportunities for you to make that message clearer on your own marketing and technical material? The better you know about them, the more authority you have in your voice when you clarify why you are better.

   Help your users do their market research.

   Your customer will shop around. Don’t pretend that your competition does not exist. SurveyMonkey is lists their competitors Urls right on their pricing page and tells you why SurveyMonkey is better. Easy projects™ provides their potential customers with a form they can use to compare performance of other project management tools. The Pricing page on most product and service selling websites is a top exit page. People come to do the research and leave if they don’t find a compelling reason to stay. What are you doing to help them research and in turn make up their mind to use you over your competition?

3. Street Cred & New Marketing Channels

   What are your user’ watering holes for information?

   Stop thinking narrowly in terms of traditional methods of banners and print ads to reach out to your potential users. Find places that they still believe in. Using trusted sources where people turn to find information leads to focused marketing efforts such as tryvertising. Consider what P&G is doing with the ‘mum’ market. It is giving mothers free products so they will refer other mums to try it themselves. It makes their marketing channel authentic and believable for that target user. A marketing channel inner circle if you will. The Ya-Ya is telling the sisterhood what to buy.

   What are they saying that you aren’t telling them?

   Besides the marketing message that you put out, how does your customer find out about you? In other words, what is the word on the street about you and your product, outside of your direct marketing efforts? Check out news groups and bulletin boards. Also be ready to find out things you didn’t want to know. People can use public forums to rant or to express love, but it’ the ranters that are more vocal. We found that out when researching VFS’ street cred in newsgroups. Smart companies from Adobe to the many 2 person tech companies in Vancouver have paid employees and well-wishers (read volunteers) troll news groups and quell negative talk by stating facts and solving problems.

   Some like it hot. Some like it cold.

   How do you serve up information? What information is best served cold? If your user is busy and multi-tasking when they come across your site, for example, they might be looking for snapshot information (hot information). More detailed information such as technical specs may be best served as downloadable PDFs to be referred to later (cold information)?

   The importance of consistency and inconsistency.

   What is the user going to be feeling when they call your sales hotline? What will they feel when they call the support hotline? What are commonalities and differences required in how you serve that customer, in those two instances? I would suggest a wait period in answering either of those calls is not going to help matters. Your website should be a good place to provide both pre-sales and after-sales support. Your brand should stand for something. And that message should be reinforced, no matter why your customer is reaching out to talk to you.

Recognising that people don’t access products in a vacuum and actually finding out the true context of how your product is used, helps make them more meaningful to your user. If you fit in well into people’ lives, they will thank you for it, by telling their friends about you.

technorati tags: business, ux, branding