Is it convenient?

Convenience is an important thing. It allows us to be more productive. It allows us to use our time more wisely. It allows us to service more customers in a brief period of time. The problem is that in our effort to make things more convenient for us, we end up making it more complicated for our customers. When we try to automate the customer experience with things like a telephone auto-attendant or a website, we can cause more grief than it is likely worth. When you call a company and get an automated response ("press 1 for sales and press 2 for service"), how does that make you feel? Do you like that no one is available to talk to you? How about when you call for some information and you have to go through hoops to the get the information you want? My wife had to get information from our insurance company. When she called, she was told to go to the website... that wasn't written anywhere. When she went to the website, she didn't have all the information she needed just to get into the site in the first place, so she had to call the company back and finally convinced them to simply give it to her over the phone. Both times she called, she had to wait through the list of call prompts. I called the city (I know... government) for some information on the code for the new house I am building. I was told to go to the website. I had to get in my car. Drive a mile away. Open my computer. Open the website to find the information not there. Call the city back and have them give me the information. I know it is hard to remember that it is about your customer and not about you, but if the customer experience that you are trying to foster is that of frustration and contempt for the way you do business, please continue to automate it. If you want customers that are loyal and appreciate that you are considerate for their needs and wants, then you might want to find a new way to do things.

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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.