Conversations with many friends, who are building communities for social businesses or are in other customer-facing roles, reveal a shared frustration. It appears that community builders and customer facing persons, and designers in a business are singing from different hymn sheets. Often, once the beta or whatever the business deems a shippable version of the product (web, mobile, app or a physical product) has shipped, some sit back thinking the job is done.
Customer feedback, that then comes in, is often sidelined to make good of the already existing technology infrastructure. Worse, it is sometimes disregarded altogether.
As the face of the business, community builders find themselves in a tough spot.
“It is as if we not only fail to care, but that we are actually contemptuous of the customer,” one said to me.
The contempt for the customer shows in the design of the customer experience with the business. From web design, to the product, to packaging and in all other ways the business and the customer interact.
Often the customer cannot find the information she wants, or she cannot find the product she intends to get to know a bit more, or the worst, she cannot really buy your product. And as seen in the case of frustrating clamshell packaging, sometimes she just cannot get to the product!
Why does this happen?
Because not enough attention is paid to understanding the customer’s journey or her desire behind engaging with the business. Insufficient work goes into testing how the customer might feel while trying to do business with the company. Efforts are made to defend the costs already incurred, not to acknowledge that that investment was not producing any returns.
In other words, not nearly enough respect is accorded to the thought that the business wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the customer.
This is what I call contemptuous design.
Contemptuous design privileges technology and sunk cost over customer journey, experience and engagement. Respectful design, on the other hand, privileges the customer’s desires and experience over everything else, so the business can continue to exist and possibly thrive.
No checklists are required to distinguish contemptuous design from respectful design. As customers, we know how we are being treated when we make first contact with a business.
As business owners, we need to be honest about the conversations we are having or enabling or hearing about our customers. If the customer is seen as an encumbrance, we are squarely in the realm of contemptuous design.
But if we feel the customer’s pain and want to deliver a good experience to her, we are making strides towards respectful design.
It really is that simple.