How many
times have you found yourselves discussing some customer experience
issue, only to have someone say, “such a small percentage of our
customers try to do that,” or “that’s not a typical situation.” So, you
agree that it’s not that important. But what if it were important? What
if customers only do easy transactions because it’s too hard to do
complex ones?
What would happen if you dissected
all the “edge cases” and the “one-offs” and discovered that the
complexities that stymie customers (and break your processes) share
common characteristics? That’s exactly what “smart customizers” do.
They don’t just make it easy for customers to custom-design simple
things; they take into account the difficult things that many customers
need to do occasionally or that a few customers want to do a lot.
For example, customers may want to pay for different parts of an order
with different payment types, or change a part of a complex
configuration, or get guarantees about availability of critical
components—even those being delivered by third-parties. When you
realize that these one-offs aren’t really one-off, but are patterns of
needs that are driven by the complexity of the context in which
customers find themselves, you can begin to design your solutions to be
more flexible, yet still low-cost and simple to configure.
The best way to wrap your mind around this concept of designing to
accommodate exceptions is to take a look at a complex transaction that
you’ve probably done yourself—a multi-city business and family trip.
Take a look at what’s involved. Then ask yourself, “what if we designed
our processes to handle these kinds of subtle, but real customer
requirements?” Wouldn’t your firm be a lot easier to do more business
with? Wouldn’t you attract customers who had particularly valuable,
complex transactions?
The Not So Friendly Route to Flying the Skies
Lessons Learned from Customers’ Moments of Truth in Multi-Leg Travel Planning
By Ronni T. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, April 1, 2010
