Customer Experience Crossroads

Legal agreements: how simple systems evolve into nightmares

When I'm not blogging, I actually run a research + consulting enterprise. One time some years ago we bid on -- and landed -- a contract for a large municipality. They required us to have insurance. And so it began.

Somewhere in the distant past, insurance had its origins as a way of pooling risk. Everyone pays a little, and then if your ship sinks or your house burns down, you have that major loss covered. Absolutely brilliant idea.

I like to imagine that these early contracts were pretty straightforward. Then some fool or crook set fire to their own house, and the first exclusion clause was created. 

You can see how these things work, really. First, a few simple exclusions. Then some contracts are disputed in court, so the language becomes more precise. Then other things happen and more exclusions are needed.

After a few hundred years of this dance, we now have insurance agreements no-one can understand. My commercial policy has a printout of dozens of pages, and this is the short form! Even the summary document is mystifying.

It might as well be Latin

We pretty much have to take it on faith that there's something there for us if disaster strikes.  And it's not just insurance contracts. I feel the same way when I click the "Agree" button with every application or online service. Not to forget the waiver you sign whenever you go skiing or rent a canoe. Then there are the multi-page confidentiality agreements that large clients insist we sign. 

Like parishioners before the reformation, we know there's some important message in the service, but we never learned to speak Latin.

And it's just as well. Because when you do know what it means, it can scare the heck out of you. I've seen a few of these that are pretty onerous. I told one client something like this: "If you don't like what I do, you don't have to pay me. But you can't take my house." Thank goodness they agreed to remove the offending clause, because we wanted the work.

There's an opportunity here

This year, another massive policy increase has us shopping around.

All of the forms and questionnaires seem to have been created for people that drive dozers around, build bridges, and otherwise do concrete STUFF.  When you work in the airy-fairy world of ideas, which is pretty much our stock-in-trade, it's hard to connect.

I think there is a huge opportunity here for some innovative organization to clean up in this industry. Hire us, and we'll help you figure it out. And I'll be first in line to sign up for the policy.

Catching up: immersive experiences, bathroom blogfest and simplicity

I've been away from my office for a week, but it feels like a month, things are so backed up.

This morning, trainer TK (aka the princess of pain) wanted to know why I didn't get any hotel workouts in... at the time, just getting enough sleep felt like a victory. Some experiences are very immersive, and don't leave much room for anything else. A good vacation is like that, but so are some conferences, and some of my work projects are like that.

Immersive experiences and simplicity

Here's the thing - many of your target customers are in some kind of immersive experience. Their day to day life is often pretty immersive if they have children and work.

They simply don't have any mind-share to spare for you or your needs. Maybe it's some procedure that seems simple enough to you (a mail-in rebate form, for example), but that bit of effort has to displace some other important thing. 

My take: no matter how simple you think your form, your procedure or your communication is, you need to make it simpler. If we have to set it aside for later, later might never come.

Bathroom Blogfest

The Bathroom Blogfest pretty much plunged on without me this year, and there was even a sponsor!! [Although I did get to dabble in logo design again, see left. It was more fun than the reports I needed to write].

I rather liked CB Whittemore's post about simplicity, here. Her recap of the week is here.

Simplicity of operation seems to have gone too far in public johns, IMHO. We all stand waving our hands under automatic sinks that don't come on, trying to get soap from automatic dispensers that won't dispense, and waving frantically at automatic towel dispensers that aren't whirring.

Mostly the automatic dryers seem to work, but you have to hang on to small children lest they get blown over by the high speed fans.

Inside the stall, it's much worse. If the automatic flush doesn't happen, you may look in vain (as I did a few days ago) for a manual button. Why these little buttons are so well hidden is a mystery. As often as not, these units flush twice, which is hardly a water saving. 

Encountering these mysteries in several airports, I empathized with the newcomers who must be mystified by these devices. If we can't figure it out, what hope does a foreigner have?  It's not like there are signs that explain what to do.

My take: We have a lot of weird obsessions about bathroom fixtures that could keep a team of anthropologists busy for years. I strongly suspect that the automatic switches have more to do with not touching the untouchable than with any real efficiency.

Good bathrooms are good for business

McDonald's is one of the few places you can count on a good bathroom, and that's motivated me to stop there on many occasions. And in the spirit of reciprocity, of course I buy something too. 

Linda Wright has actually written a book about this topic,

Skip to the Loo: Bypass Big-Ticket Advertising and Build Business with Better Bathrooms.

My take: I haven't read the book, but I totally endorse the concept. When you are talking bathrooms, you are talking about a need felt by 100 per cent of the population.

Blogfest Blogger list

Participating bloggers for the Bathroom Blogfest ’09 include:

• Susan Abbott at Customer Experience Crossroads http://www.customercrossroads.com
• Reshma Anand at Qualitative Research Blog http://onqualitativeresearch.blogspot.com/
• Shannon Bilby at From the Floors Up http://fromthefloorsup.com/
• Shannon Bilby and Brad Millner at My Big Bob’s Blog http://blog.mybigbobs.com/
• Laurence Borel at Blog Till You Drop http://www.laurenceborel.com/
• Jeanne Byington at The I mportance of Earnest Service http://blog.jmbyington.com/
• Becky Carroll at Customers Rock! http://www.customersrock.net
• Leslie Clagett at KB Culture www.kbculture.blogspot.com
• Katie Clark at Practical Katie http://practicalkatie.blogspot.com/
• Iris Shreve Garrott at Checking In and Checking Out http://circulating.wordpress.com/
• Julie at Julie’s Cleaning Secrets Blog http://cleaningsecrets.greatcleaners.com/
• Marianna Hayes at Results Revolution http://www.resultsrevolution.com
• Maria Palma at People To People Service http://www.people2peopleservice.com/
• Professor Toilet at Professor Toilet’s Blog http://www.professortoilet.com/
• David Reich at My 2 Cents http://reichcomm.typepad.com/
• Bethany Richmond at The Carpet and Rug Institute Blog http://www.carpet-and-rug-institute-blog.com
• Carolyn Townes at Becoming a Woman of Purpose http://spiritwomen.blogspot.com
• Stephanie Weaver at Experienceology http://experienceology.blogspot.com;
• C.B. Whittemore at Flooring The Consumer http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com
and Simple Marketing Blog http://www.SimpleMarketingBlog.com
• Linda Wright at Lindaloo.com: Build Better Business with Better Bathrooms http://lindaloo.com/

New methods for a digital world: agile, iteration + prototyping, not top down plan

I'm no expert on the Agile development process, but I love the concept - - that every small piece of work that is done in the development stage should yield a usable function. I like this approach to customer experience too, but give me a sec to explain how I see the connection.

I was trying to explain about Agile development to someone recently, who likened it to the auto assembly process. But it's not, really.

With auto assembly, you know what the finished car is supposed to look like. You have a detailed plan. You divide that plan up into small pieces of efficient manufacturing, and assemble all the pieces. The leather steering wheel cover, the aluminum rims, the radio and the formed steel -- all come together in an amazing dance of assembly like a ballet.

If you were building a car using agile methods, you wouldn't even consider the radio in the early going. You'd be thinking about the simplest moving vehicle you could get on the road. It wouldn't have a roof in the first iteration. It would have some kind of propulsion system, and it would have wheels, and something to sit on. 

As you kept building the agile car, you would build better bits on it as you understood the user needs more perfectly. And the user needs -- and their early experience -- would help you figure out what to add next.

This method is actually the way people used to build homes -- and still do in some places. You start with one room, walls and a roof. You might cook outside if the climate permitted. Then you add a second room. You might know you will want a second story someday, so you make the foundation strong enough for that, even though you have no immediate plans.

Coming back to customer experience...

Organizations that try to "get it right" inevitably get stuck on the plan. It's complicated, and there are a lot of moving parts. They keep driving the old car waiting for the new and perfect blueprints.

A better method involves rapid prototyping. Here are some of the principles you use:

• Pick a few things to change, and change them. Not everywhere, but in a few locations.(The prototypes)
• Accept that the plan will have giant holes in it until people on the ground are actually involved
• Involve people on the ground in a collaborative way to develop solutions and refine the bare bones outline
• Insist that every day you make a step forward, no matter how small, towards the vision
• Involve customers. Watch how they are reacting to the changes. Ask what they think. Bring their ideas into the process
• Roll out the good ideas into your network as you have them -- don't wait for the "branch/store of the future" to be ready -- evolve
• Recognize that you are never done where customer experience is concerned. The innovations of today will be the buggy whips of tomorrow.

Other views on this topic

When I went looking for illustrative images for this post, I came across some other views on this topic. If you read a few, you will see that there are arguments for both approaches.

The Agile Manifesto - some interesting principles  (Their association is here: Agile Alliance)

Rapid Application Development: Fast Car No Map and 50 Laps to a “Who House”
Makes the case for having a plan. Some of the comments are very interesting.

Ten Steps to Organizing a Bar Camp -- this is the Agile method applied to conferences. Compare this to the traditional conference organization method with lots of committees, speaker deadlines months in advance of the event, etc.

Iterative Development - a bit heavy going, but has interesting graphs that illustrate the ideas

And the photo came from here: AHS American Home Shield Warranties