Tag Archives: waiting

Don’t Make Customers Do These Seven Things They Hate

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Don't Make Customers Do These Seven Things They Hate

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Recently, I had an experience with a company and thought, “I hate this … Why do they make me do this?” This question wasn’t because of curiosity. No, I was thinking that this is something other customers must hate as well, but they make them do it anyway. So, I started a personal brainstorming session to list various processes, requirements, policies, rules, and more that cause customers to question why they continue to do business with these companies. Of course, my mind immediately went to customer service and experience issues, but there’s much more. With that in mind, here are seven practices, steps, processes, and policies that customers hate, but companies make them do it anyway.

Customers Hate:

  1. To Wait – Long hold times and long lines are frustrating and send negative messages, such as the customer’s time isn’t valued or the company is understaffed.
  2. Repeating Anything – Calling customer support and being passed around to different people, having to repeat your story again and again, isn’t fun. Nor is filling out forms that repeat the information you’ve already filled out on previous forms.
  3. Finding Hidden Fees – A stated price should be the price – with no extra fees. I recently checked into a hotel. They told me I had a $30 food and beverage credit as part of my stay – a nice surprise. Upon checking out, I noticed a $30 charge referred to as a “Destination Fee.” I asked about it, and the clerk said it was to cover the $30 food and beverage credit.
  4. Filling Out Bad Surveys – Customers are learning to dislike surveys, especially if they are long. There are right and wrong ways to do surveys. And a bad survey shouldn’t be the last thing a customer experiences when doing business with you.
  5. Listening to Complicated Phone Options – If you’ve called a company and been told to “listen to the following as our options have changed,” so you listen to the many options, and once you choose one, there are even more options … Well, I think you get the picture. There’s better technology to get the customer to the right person or the information they need.
  6. Annoying Pop-Up Windows – If you’ve been on a website and are reading information or an article and pesky pop-up windows keep interrupting you with irrelevant messages and advertising, you’re a victim of annoying pop-up windows.
  7. Anything that Requires Unnecessary Effort – Maybe you have a simple request or question. Why should it take a long time to fill out forms, answer unnecessary questions or more to get an answer?

There is a theme to this list. All of these imply the company doesn’t respect the customer’s time, energy, and effort. The goal should be the opposite: to respect and value your customer’s time, energy, and effort. Don’t create friction and put customers through anything more than necessary to get them what they want. In short, have a goal to be the easiest company to do business with. If you’re serious about it, you’ll find ways to eliminate and mitigate friction. And this list is far from complete. There are many, many other things customers hate doing.

So, here’s your assignment. Sit down with your team and brainstorm all the things they hate to do when doing business with any company. Then, ask what they think customers might hate about doing business with you. This can be processes, steps, policies, and more. Once you have the list, you know what to do. Eliminate all that makes doing business with you painful – or at least make some of the less painful. Don’t make your customers do things they hate doing!

Image Credits: Shep Hyken, Pixabay

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2024

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are September’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Three Reasons Nobody Cares About Your Ideas — by Greg Satell
  2. Six Key Habits of Great Leaders — by David Burkus
  3. Are You Leading in the Wrong Zone? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  4. Projects Don’t Go All Right or All Wrong — by Howard Tiersky
  5. How to Cultivate Respect as a Leader — by David Burkus
  6. What is Your Mindset? Fixed, Growth or Hybrid? — by Stefan Lindegaard
  7. Embracing Failure is a Catalyst for Learning and Innovation — by Stefan Lindegaard
  8. ISO Innovation Standards — by Robyn Bolton
  9. The Hidden Cost of Waiting — by Mike Shipulski
  10. AI Requires Conversational Intelligence — by Greg Satell

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in August that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

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The Hidden Cost of Waiting

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The Hidden Cost of Waiting

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you want to do a task, but you don’t have what you need, that’s waiting for a support resource. If you need a tool, but you don’t have it, you wait for a tool. If you need someone to do the task, but you don’t have anyone, you wait for people. If you need some information to make a decision, but you don’t have it, you wait for information.

If a tool is expensive, usually you have to wait for it. The thinking goes like this – the tool is expensive, so let’s share the cost over too many projects and too many teams. Sure, less work will get done, but when we run the numbers, the tool will look less expensive because it’s used by many people. If you see a long line of people (waiting) or a signup list (people waiting at their desks), what they are waiting for is usually an expensive tool or resource. In that way, to find the cause of waiting, stand at the front of the line and look around. What you see is the cause of the waiting.

If the tool isn’t expensive, buy another one and reduce the waiting. If the tool is expensive, calculate the cost of delay. Cost of delay is commonly used with product development projects. If the project is delayed by a month, the incremental revenue from the product launch is also delayed by a month. That incremental revenue is the cost of delaying the project by a month. When the cost of delay is larger than the cost of an expensive tool, it makes sense to buy another expensive tool. But, to purchase that expensive tool requires multiple levels of approvals. So, the waiting caused by the tool results in waiting for approval for the new tool. I guess there’s a cost of delay for the approval process, but let’s not go there.

Most companies have more projects than people, and that’s why projects wait. And when projects wait, projects are late. Adding people is like getting another expensive tool. They are spread over too many projects, and too little gets done. And like with expensive tools, getting more people doesn’t come easy. New hires can be justified (more waiting in the approval queue), but that takes time to find them, hire them, and train them. Hiring temporary people is a good option, though that can seem too expensive (higher hourly rate), it requires approval, and it takes time to train them. Moving people from one project to another is often the best way because it’s quick and the training requirement is less. But, when one project gains a person, another project loses one. And that’s often the rub.

When it’s time to make an important decision and the team has to wait for missing information, the project waits. And when projects wait, projects are late. It’s difficult to see the waiting caused by missing or un-communicated information, but it can be done. The easiest to see when the information itself is a project deliverable. If a milestone review requires a formal presentation of the information, the review cannot be held without it. The delay of the milestone review (waiting) is objective evidence of missing information.

Information-based waiting is relatively easy to see when the missing information violates a precedent for decision making. For example, if the decision is always made with a defined set of data or information, and that information is missing, the precedent is violated and everyone knows the decision cannot be made. In this case, everyone’s clear why the decision cannot be made, everyone’s clear on what information is missing, and everyone’s clear on who dropped the ball.

It’s most difficult to recognize information-based waiting when the decision is new or different and requires judgment because there’s no requirement for the data and there’s no precedent to fall back on. If the information was formally requested and linked to the decision, it’s clear the information is missing and the decision will be delayed. But if it’s a new situation and there’s no agreement on what information is required for the decision, it’s almost impossible to discern if the information is missing. In this situation, it comes down to trust in the decision-maker. If you trust the decision-maker and they say there’s information missing, then there’s information missing. If you trust the decision-maker and they say there’s no information missing, they should make the decision. But if you don’t trust the decision-maker, then all bets are off.

In general, waiting is bad. And it’s helpful if you can recognize when projects are waiting. Waiting is especially bad went the delayed task is on the critical path because when the project is waiting on a task that’s on the critical path, there’s a day-for-day slip in the completion date. Hint: it’s important to know which tasks and decisions are on the critical path.

Image credit: Pexels

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