UI designers often fail to take the millions of novice computer users into account when creating new software or designing new websites. Dragonfish Total Gaming Services, the independent B2B arm of 888 Holdings and developer of games on bubblebonusbingo.com, takes great care to create a product that transmits well no matter what platform customers are playing on, creating websites that can easily be navigated by a few clicks of a mouse or swipes of a finger. Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to forget that novice computer users still exist. What are the problems which have caused many to revert back to Windows 7? 

The desktop

People still using desktop computers can't boot their system's straight to the desktop. Instead the operating system forces you to start from the metro screen in the same way as a tablet. While that's fine for a touch screen device, it's far simpler for a desktop user to work from the desktop menu. Microsoft have made sure they can't do this though, which makes their experience on the computer time consuming and irritating. 

Searching 

If you want to search for a program or file in Windows 7, you can scan the whole system with a quick query in the search bar which will bring up similar results to the word you searched. Microsoft has added an additional step in Windows 8 though. It searches your installed applications by default. Only afterwards can you click Settings or Files if you want to look for something else. 

Start menu

The Start menu is not as it was. Since its start in the 1990s the Start menu has been a handy tool for every user, and its uses grew and grew. The most sophisticated Start menu of the lot is on Windows 7, with more functions, short-cuts and accessibility than ever before. Microsoft have since removed the Start menu from Windows 8, and users can now only use a cut-down version called “Simplified Start”. 

Interfaces 

The two interfaces of {Windows 8} don't gel well. It's like you're on two separate computers on the same piece of technology. For example, there are two versions of Internet Explorer, and when you create a Favourite in the Desktop version, it won't appear in the Metro version. It's sloppy planning. 

In conclusion, I think it is safe to say that Microsoft should have only released Windows 8 for tablets and any other mobile devices. It just doesn't work well on a desktop. At least with a tablet you can swipe your finger across and tap at the screen to get where you want. On a desktop you're still using a mouse and keyboard, so the whole endeavour just gets irritating and clunky. 

Here's an interesting article which discusses that very topic.

Here's an excerpt:

The human species possesses a disposition towards novelty - and tens of thousands of years ago, that drove us to explore new lands, try new foods and see what happened when we struck two rocks together.

But just as our craving for sweets, salts and fats were valuable in the Paleolithic era, when such foods were scarce, but are now warped in the age of carmel-drizzled kettle corn, our novelty-seeking tendencies can lead us astray.

Variable rewards are a particularly powerful “hook” for the brain. Casinos and many games use frequent but hard-to-predict rewards to keep their players coming back for more.

In this post, I want to talk about how variable rewards work and how we can use them to drive positive behavior change for ourselves.

Follow the source link for more...

Here's a common one: The Customer Service department is banging on the IT door, because their metrics have plateaued. The IT department, in response, believe they can improve efficiency and customer service metrics by allowing front-line employees to share their work using a fancy phone system to forward and route calls between available staff.

What they haven't factored in, is that the sales organisation targets employees on these very calls and they generate the best commission for the individual. Consequently there is conflict:  there is no incentive to share this work, no matter how poor the customer service metrics.

If the fancy phone system is deployed, it will simply go under-used. 

Either way, there is a common theme - almost all pursuits come to an end, usually with a bit of a thump. More often than not it will take one of two endings. Either the roads are empty and mr. getaway ploughs his car into a field on a tight corner, or it's busy traffic and some unsuspecting motorist gets belted at an intersection.

So, a simple thought occured to me: what if the emergency services could set all traffic lights in the area to flashing red if a pursuit (or indeed any emergency situation) was underway? That would (could) keep intersections clear and help prevent innocent motorists getting caught up in one of those unfortunate endings.

Why flashing red and not red? Well, motorists would know that special circumstances are in force and not simply that the lights were faulty - I've seen people jump a red light when they think they are "stuck on red". Flashing red is used, for example, at railyway level crossings to indicate impending danger.

As a user interface concept, this seems pretty simple and effective. Rettrofitting it to the nation's roads is another matter. ☺

Lean Six Sigma is all about reducing waste (Lean) and reducing variation/errors (Six Sigma) - combined they offer powerful techniques for identifying issues and optimising contact centre performance and efficiency. All of the principles that were originally applied to manufacturing can just as readily be applied to customer service and contact centre and in this webcast it is explained how.

Direct link to the page if the embed didn't work for you.

Typically they are poorly designed and riddled with the questioner's own perceptions and slant - they have a particular set of things they want to measure, the questionnaire asks about those things in a way guarantees those end measures. Thus, the questions become a self-fulfilling prophecy as far as the meaning in the data is concerned.

Here's today's example which has irked me sufficiently to abandon the questionnaire part way through. It's from a retail website where I was looking to buy an iPad2 in time for Christmas. A few things about the experience were not great, though this organisation has some helpful people on twitter that gave me good suggestions; so I was keen to give balanced feedback.

But here's the question:

Again thinking about the main thing you were looking to buy, which one of these would you say was the most important in deciding which product you wanted to buy?

	The look or feel of the product
	The technical details and specifications of the product
	The practical or functional role of the product – i.e. would it be able to do what I wanted it to e.g. keep the kids entertained, help keep the house tidy, be easy to use

 

Perhaps for most products this question makes sense - purchase choices are made predominently on the basis of one or two of the above characteristics. However, not so with the iPad, or pretty much any Apple product for that matter. The unique selling point of Apple, it's very "value proposition" if you like, is that it beautifully combines all three of the above elements. I am shopping for an iPad because it marvellously scores in look and feel, technical specs and functionality in a way that most (all?) of its competitors do not.

As such I can't answer the question meaningfully - I'd be telling the researcher something they are expecting to hear, not something they haven't allowed for and that I want to say.

They could have chosen a different format for this question "which aspects most influenced your decision?" with multiple selections available. They would still get a distribution of answers that would allow the most significant result to be drawn out. But by forcing a decision of one answer, this is actually skewing the results and applying the researcher's pre-conceptions and prejudice about what data needs to be reported into the actual questions.

This is bad design and leads to misinformed statistics.

There's often talk of consumer "expectations" growing, but what is really meant by that? If you respond to a customer within 15 seconds in a call centre, are we saying next week they will want a response in 14?

I think the core principles of customers' expectations actually remain pretty constant: responsiveness/timeliness; courtesy/respect; a perception of value (both in the product/service delivered and also of the customer themselves); the ability to help creatively when something has gone wrong. And you can make their day by making the experience very personal and engaging.

I do not believe that people keep simply turning up the "pass" level of these things; what I do believe is that they are constantly let down on them in their multitude of daily experiences and so for those organisation that are failing customers, it always seems those customers are wanting more. Not really; customers just want organisations to achieve the right standard. And of course, the right standard is totally dependent on every individual circumstance (e.g. the business you are operating AND the individual customer).

However, what does constantly change is that perception of value - because as organisaitons try to differentiate and then competitors follow suit, the bar keeps being reset. This is self-inflicted by organisations constantly chasing each other, rather than chasing the customer. A lesson in focus there.

What I have found from direct personal experience with customers buying products (for example) is the biggest thing that has an impact on satisfaction is the response to problems. There is absolutely no question that this is a moment of truth - with the potential to completely turn a customer round into a loyal supporter who, despite encountering an initial 'probelm', is actually *grateful* for having chosen to do business with *you*.

I've been involved in speech recognition technologies for the greater part of the last 20 years - and despite the never-ending slew of technological advances, while speech remains the fundamental means of communicating with each other as humans, it still hasn't taken off as the means of communicating with machines.

It's quite hard to put a finger on exactly why, in the sense that there's no single obvious reason; mainly it's a complex recipe of issues involving over-expectation and under-performance, not to mention the relevance of the alternatives.

Could that be set to change? It looks disctinctly possible - It won't happen overnight, but Apple has a track record of generating the momentum for technology adoption, even where the technology is not necessarily entirely new (mp3 players and tablets immediately spring to mind). Here are some interesting views on the topic...

As I watched The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Asia interview with Android’s Andy Rubin, I was highly intrigued by his comments about Apple’s Siri. Rubin told Walt Mossberg, "I don't believe your phone should be an assistant." He said, "Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn't be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone."

Furthermore, when questioned about Siri, Microsoft’s Andy Lees said it "isn't super useful." At the same time, he noted that Windows Phone 7 has a degree of voice interactivity in the way it connects to Bing. Thus, it harnesses "the full power of the internet, rather than a certain subset."

What are these two guys smoking? They both seem to ignore the fact that Apple has just introduced voice as a major user interface. Its use of voice, coupled with AI on a consumer product like the Apple iPhone, is going to change the way consumers think about man-machine interfaces in the future.

But I think their responses were rooted in jealously and the fact that, based on what it will soon become, Siri will ultimately threaten their businesses.

[continue reading]

I feel a great sense of loss of such a wonderful role model; many would say in the field of business, marketing, user experience - and clearly Jobs had so many talents in so many areas. But for me, all that rolls up into a genius for insight, innovation, simplicity and change. It is absolutely immeasureable the influence Steve Jobs had on so many lives in the digital age. He may not have solved World hunger, but you can bet your bottom dollar that his legacy in bringing digital information to the masses marks a turning point in history.

So much has been said about Steve Jobs over the 48 hours following (over 4000 tweets per second) and will no doubt continue to do so, that it's hard to add a fitting tribute.

So, I'm going to play back some of Apple's own words, words that have Steve Jobs' DNA all over them. Words that, to me, are poetry.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Rest In Peace Steve

And yet the overwhelming feeling I've seen (and have myself) is one of great underwhelm-ment. How so? Isn't this a great device?

Yes, it is. But you have to remember how high Apple traditionally sets the bar. Rumours abounded about a new iPhone 5 with lush new looks and a bigger screen. In light of this, surveys were suggesting that almost 70% of existing iPhone users were looking to upgrade - an astonshing figure representing pent-up demand. If Apple could have translated this into action, it would have blown the sales figures sky high. 

Will Apple translate this into conversions? I doubt it.

So what went wrong?

Two things.

First, they broke one of Steve Jobs' cardinal rules. He's quoted as saying "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them". That's right, designs so good you want to lick them.

Apple failed spectacularly here by launching a phone with identical looks and form factor to the iPhone 4. Sure, it was good enough to lick when it was first launched 16 months earlier, but expectations have moved on. A whole generation of iPhone and non-iPhone new users want to proudly display and caress their new swish (and expensive) pocket companion. Think I'm exaggerating? People actually seem to love their smartphones.

Apple totally let them down. It's almost inconceivable how they managed to. Design is everything at Apple, and yet what Apple did yesterday was play with features. Features. Features, in fact, that users are not even sure they need, want or know how to use: like the Siri speech recognition. Who was aching for this? (I was aching for features that simplified clumsy workflows, such as rotating and cropping photos - totally basic stuff that was missing onboard - thankfully they delivered on that).

Second, they didn't fully tap into the user ownership experience. This needs careful definition. The user experience of the iPhone is wonderful. World class, world leading. From an interface point of view it is the slickest out there. And clearly Apple hoped to slap a bit more slickery onto it with the speech recognition, improvements in iOS 5 (such as the message centre) and so on. All good. All very good.

But what it didn't do was tap into the emotional part of how that experience manifests for users - what it feels like to own one. Their joy, passion, advocacy for the product that comes from using and adoring it. In recent years Apple has been the leading technology company that's melded all the aspects of good design, good service, good marketing, good experience into one happy melting pot of customer enjoyment of, and enthusiasm for, the products and the Apple experience. It's a tough feat to pull off, but Apple had licked it. (Licking is a recurring theme. )

It failed on this yesterday by calling the iPhone 4S the iPhone 4S. The hopes and aspirations of would-be iPhone 5 users were dashed. Something as simple as the chosen name communicated to the world: we didn't do so much this time; we're not being revolutionary any more. Apple, not being revolutionary? That used to be pretty much Steve Jobs' mantra.

The choice of name communicated so much more than any feature list could ever hope to do.

So, what we have here, is a world class product that failed to connect with its users. For me, that suddenly shines a light on a chink in Apple's armour.

There are interesting times ahead.

The social graph, in a nutshell, is a conceptual map of all the people and things that are socially connected to each other. The people you friend with, the brands you follow, the things you 'Like' all build out this graph. It's unique to you and some would argue, it pretty much defines you.

Over the years, behind the scenes Facebook has been building out ways for this graph to grow, by increasing the range of things that can be added to it. At first it only contained people - "Friends". The big change was to introduce the "Like" concept - now status updates, announcements, media, "pages", brands and so on could be added to your graph. It exploded.

Sadly, while Facebook was plotting world domination of social information, it wasn't paying quite as much attention to the user experience. Access to these features were being bolted onto the user interface bit by bit in a myriad of apparently disconnected functionality. The latest additions to the facebook experience, the "live stream" window alongside the "news feed" seems to have tipped the balance in terms of user horror; for every one person I hear say they like it, I hear four say they don't. Ouch.

Fast forward.

Behind the scenes Facebook has continued plotting its world domination of social graph data, starting from the ground up with a taxonomy that allows them to model and capture the data in many more orders of magnitude. In simple English, this means they'll be able to let you not just "like" things, but capture data about any activity you do, such as watch you read, listen to, watch, eat etc. You can see where this is going. The apps and applications that you use to go about your daily life with be "socially" connected and have the ability to log everything you do.

You are either going to love it or hate it or be completely scared by it, but it's going to happen.

This mass of data on the input side needs a way to be viewed and this is where Facebook have finally put some deeper thought into the user exerience and, I think, played something of a trump card.

First, they are encapsulating all the data about you as a person - your profile - in a timeline. A dynamic, living timeline that can extend back to the year you were born. It's organised in time order so that you have (if you want) a complete story of your life, based on all the things you do and document (from the trivial to the lifechanging), all the photos you upload and so on. Importantly, it can be curated easily, so that you can keep the important stuff and remove the things that shouldn't be seen.

What's more, applications can be embedded in this timeline. For example, I have electronic weighing scales that automatically capture my weight data and store it online where I can see my history and progress. The viewer application for these scales could be embedded in my timeline in a small window, so that at-a-glance I, or anyone I choose to share it with, can see the chart of my last year's weight loss. While you may question how useful this is, it serves to illustrate the concept and demonstrate how connected and "social" our worlds can become.

That, of course, is only half the equation - the timeline is a view of the profile, and the profile is an inward looking view of one person. The other half is the outward looking view of who and what that person is connected to. This is where some of the latest concepts Facebook has been rolling out come into play.

Social data will need to be classified into importance and relevance. This is a huge challenge to automate, although Facebook has continually been attempting it and will continue to do so. My weight data is pretty unimportant and irrelevant to most people, except me. It shouldn't be appearing in their stream everytime I get on the scales, even if it is logged to my profile. But other status updates are highly newsworthy: moving house, getting married, births, deaths, career successes and so on.

Facebook will (and is) splitting data into two types of stream.

First: the transient, real-time, 'socially' generated data - such as what I'm listening to right now, what I just photographed, what I'm watching. It's calling this "serendiptious" data and sticking it in the "ticker" that appears along side the main stream. This gives users an unobtrusive view of realtime activity of friends and (here's the new bit) the ability to join in. You might, for example, see your friend playing a new music track you've not heard, click on it, and immediately start listening in sync. In fact, for music, this concept is being touted as the next big thing to drive music discovery and grow the music industry.

Second: the newsworthy, interesting, 'sticky', non-realtime information - such as news stories, important events in people's lives, updates on items of special interest. This is your more-classic "wall" or news-feed, designed to filter out all the low-level noise. You'll be able to control what type of things you see in there (as indeed you can to a degree now) and as you extend your social graph (e.g. by liking and interacting with things), Facebook will get better at learning what it should show you.

The future

When you look at all these components in totality, you can see that Facebook has been dabbling round the edges with this, trying to patch up its broken User Interface/Experience and get to grips with these concepts. Finally, it seems to have taken a step back and started from the ground up to build the next era of social connectedness.

There are definitely some exciting concepts in there that not only play to the apparent social desire in human beings, but perhaps to a degree drive them too, by encouraging users to connect all their activity back to the Facebook "mothership". Certainly this will continue to raise alarm bells for those concerned with privacy and Facebook's attempt to monopolise this whole space.

For me, however, I'm delighted to see that a whole load of design thought has gone into the underlying concepts, information architecture and (if the presentations are to be believed) the user experience. It even helps just to understand the motivation and aspirations of what Facebook is doing here in order to get a handle on what you can expect to do with it and how to be able to use it. I think to date much of that has been lacking.

Whether you consider this as radical and groundbreaking as the pre-hype led us to believe is a moot point, but it is certainly taking our social instincts to the next level. Is that good or bad? Like all things, I suspect that is going to depend on how you use it.

Nik Sargent - Self-Service Product Manager, BT On Self-Service Technologies

What do you think are the three biggest mistakes managers make when choosing a self-service technology?
A common mistake is getting too bogged down in the technology. It's important to remember that the technology is a means to an end, a way of delivering a better service to customers. The three most important things to consider are usability, usability and usability. It is also important to have a framework that can grow and adapt with your business without holding you back. But that's as much about your people and processes as it is the technology.

In your opinion, what criteria should be used when evaluating different self-service solutions?
It's easy to be lured by cost alone, both in terms of cost of the solution and the promise of cost savings.  This should absolutely be part of the decision-making process, but it's also necessary to understand that your self-service solution is an important customer touchpoint: it can win and lose customers for you.

From a service point of view, how are you going to be able to deliver a slick customer experience: is designing this your core business, or do you need to buy this in? What flexibility will you have to modify your solution as your business evolves – and who will ensure your service works as well after it is changed as it did on day one? From a technology point of view, are you getting robustness and flexibility to shrink and grow and handle the volume you need to? If customers like your solution, then they will start to depend on it.

Within the next five years, which self-service technology do you think will have the biggest impact on the contact centre industry?
Speech Recognition will have a huge impact. Adoption rates of the technology are steadily increasing and organisations are seeing significant benefits. The availability of mass-scale solutions demonstrates that the technology is totally viable, and also educates the public about these types of services and how to use them. As we have seen, anything that can transform the cost base of the contact centre industry – such as outsourcing – can have a big impact, and Speech Recognition fits this profile.

What types of questions do you believe online self-service technologies should be able to answer?
I think the days of the Internet solely being a glorified brochure-publishing medium are over. Users are increasingly savvy and looking for more. What organisations shouldn't forget is that consumers are using this medium to educate themselves and to ask and answer complex questions. As a result, consumers that call your organisation may actually have more knowledge than some of your employees, which then results in frustration and wasted cost.

Traditionally, self-service only catered for the "average" consumer, yet the technology can now segment and analyse customers to provide personalised experiences. This is a major boost for companies that want to offer a more comprehensive web service. For example, if I'm looking for car insurance, but cannot get an answer online because there is no way to ask if my particular circumstances are covered, I will have to revert to speaking to an agent. This costs the organisation a series of calls that could have been answered online, and costs me my "web discount" – so effectively results in a lost sale.

What do self-service technologies aim to accomplish?
From a user's point of view, self-service should be simple, speedy and satisfying.  From our own personal experiences we know this is what makes for a good self-service experience, be it a vending machine, a cash machine or a telephone transaction. From a service provider's point of view, self-service technologies shouldn't divert you from your core business – they are a means of extending your customer touch points to offer choice, capacity, flexibility and reduce costs. A good self-service solution reduces costs, but a great one also delivers a rewarding and effective user-experience.

How can a contact centre utilise its self-service technology to increase contact centre capacity?
It's about finding the right business processes, or parts of them, that are simple and repetitive enough to automate, and driving volume through this. This might be self-evident for certain businesses, but for complex technologies like speech recognition it usually needs an expert to analyse processes.

The important thing to realise is that a self-service channel and an agent are not the same thing, and do different tasks differently. Rather than using self-service to try and fully replicate your agents and create capacity that way, have it do the tasks that it is suited to, and take those tasks away from agents in their entirety. This changes the balance of how your run your contact centre, and the roles agents perform – to get maximum value from them.

Once again, it's about having a user-centric view. Getting it wrong can end up generating more work for your contact centre. This was one of the great "shocks" of the web for early adopters – they ended up generating even more support calls.  Businesses should also tread carefully when thinking about forcing customers to use a self-service solution. This means you may take your eye off the usability ball, and in the long run this could backfire. On the other hand, a well-designed solution will have customers sailing through it and completing tasks that used to require an agent. If you can automate 30 seconds of a 2-minute call, then you've effectively increased your capacity by 30%.

For those unfamiliar with the property, it is a sprawling tangle of construction, that during the lifetime of its owner was in a continual state of unplanned extension

I love this quote from its Wikpedia entry:

The Queen Anne Style Victorian mansion is renowned for its size and utter lack of any master building plan.

I may be being a little unfair to Facebook. I'm sure that in a smoky dark room somewhere there is someone with a vision, even if it's simply to "copy everything twitter and Google Plus does".

The end result, however, is not good, not from a user experience point of view. Users have become frustrated over the years with Facebook's incremental meddling with the user interface and experience and lack of explanation of what it delivers/provides (e.g. security controls). The chaotic array of controls and lack-lustre attitude to user privacy has become the standing joke of Facebook.

Despite shuffling some of those controls around into marginally more cohesive buckets, it seems Facebook still hasn't really learnt any lessons. The latest barrage of changes are being thrust on users at a bewildering pace with absolutely no justification in the users' eyes. A few "tool tips" over new features by way of explanation and training and it's back slapping all round at Facebook for another Google+ feature ripped from cyberspace and planted haphazardly in the Facebook workflow.

Facebook is missing some core principles, the kind of principles that drive good user interface design, good user experience and aid technology adoption.

Firstly, it does not, or seems not to consult users. The latest swathe of features are most obviously a reaction to the innovation over at Google Plus and as such has probably been thrown together at Facebook in a blind panic. Users have not been asked whether they want or need these features and what seems distinctly lacking is any study or research into how they should be smoothly integrated into the whole user experience. The reality is, they are not. A typical facebook page is now an eye-watering explosion of streams, memes and unrelated themes. It's ghastly. Users are not bought into it, users are confused by it, the senses are cluttered by it: 3 basic errors in one fell swoop.

Secondly, the meta-model, mental-map, mental-model, metaphor (or whatever you want to call it) for the information structure it is a complete mystery to the average user. It was never that great to begin with, but at least with a model of "friends", "networks" and "lists" you had some idea where your information came and went. Facebook has been so busy bolting on copied concepts to this model, that it has lost all connection with reality and any hope of being understood by the average human being. I doubt even a paint-by-numbers visualisation of it permanently stuck to the wall would help much. 

The information model has been sticking-plastered time and time again, to now also include "subscriptions" (i.e. twitter-style following of anyone); classifcation of updates into pre-defined types ("important", "most", "life events"); classifcation of users ("friends", "acqaintances", "restricted") - nowhere have I seen a model of how all this inter-relates; and more importantly, a slick visual tool to control it.

Compare this with Google Plus - built from the ground up with a simple information model: Circles. You control who you publish to by modelling your contacts on a concept we are all familar with in the real world: different circles of friends and acquaintances.

In contrast, facebook has welded together both subscription control models (e.g. I follow you, and I only want to see your life event updates) with publishing control models (e.g. This is only intended for my family) and overlays all of that with its own filtering, ranking and sorting framework. Finally, it splatters it all over your web page. Consequently it's practically impossible to figure out who will see what and very hard and time consuming to get to grips with what all the various settings should be to suit your needs.   

This level of confusion and complexity raises the barriers for users: it increases their effort requirements, it lowers their understanding of benefit. Both these factors are key elements of recognised technology adoption models, serving to reduce the likelihood of adoption, or drive defection.

While Facebook thinks it may be defending itself from the challenge of Google Plus with the right hand, chances are the left hand is shooting itself in the foot.

In human factors terminology these are called “loads”. The theory is that there are basically three different kinds of demands or loads that you can make on a person: Cognitive (thinking and remembering), Visual, and Motor.

Not all the loads are equal....

[continue reading]

The Apple and IKEA way

Take Apple. One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love."

[read more]

I was amused this morning to receive some direct mail from my favourite coffee company. Aside from anything else it contained a fairly well disguised and weak promotion: free shipping for larger orders (they already offer half-price). Certainly not enough to tempt me off the sofa.

But more noteworthy was the fact they had obvisously gone to some lengths to profile me and figure out the pattern of my recent orders, and come back at me with an attempt to change that behaviour (i.e. spend more). You see, what's happened, is I've been ordering a lot of decaff. Mainly decaff in fact.

So, some bright spark has come up with a database query to spot this and created a campaign to tempt me back into ordering all the other coffees they have. Nice campaign it is too - lots of plush brochureware and a well-thought-out approach to explaining and grouping all their coffee blends and flavours and so on. Almost good enough to lick.

It's all very admirable, all very expensive, all very nicely done and I'm sure there has been much back-patting over how cleverly targetted this campaign is - as if it's just for me, the decaffoholic.

But the problem is, it won't change a thing about my behaviour: it won't achieve its objective or call to action. So why on earth not?

Because they haven't asked me why I'm ordering decaff all the time. They haven't understood my motivation and needs. They haven't understood why I'm going to keep doing the same thing regardless.

And that's the problem with these traditional marketing approaches: there's no feedback loop. Marketers tend to observe a consumer behaviour pattern (to a greater or lesser degree of granularity, refinement and sophistication) and make some assumptions about what's going on and how to change it.

Get that assumption wrong and you've wasted your time and effort. It never ceases to amaze me the time, effort and cost organisations plough into this type of marketing with such little return and reward. Not to mention the carbon footprint. It's so easy now to engage with most consumers, it ought to be the mainstream approach and yet we are still in an age where the organisations that engage more intimately with consumers (over, for example, social media channels) are still heralded as trailblazers and innovators.

Barely a day goes by without my twitter stream being inundated of reports from "social media conferences" reporting the latest exciting trends and ingenius developments in social marketing and branding. And yet in reality, this is schoolboy stuff - this pares down to long-established simple concepts, such as good customer experience, meeting the customer where they're at, engagement on appropriate channels.

What the new tools and new-connected-world order offers marketers is the chance to engage one-on-one with their customers and, for the first time, to properly listen - i.e. complete the feedback loop. Have conversation, not broadcast. And yet so few organsiations seemed to have grasped these basic ideas that the social media industry feels compelled to slap the backs of those that have and do "get it". What they (and we as consumers) should be doing is kicking the backsides of those that don't! 

Instead, I'll be making one extra trip to the recycling centre and ordering my decaff as usual.

I won't even begin to go into how the late charge occurred as that was to do with a whole load of crazy processes for claiming back expenses - I'll save that piece of analysis for another day.

What surprised me about this particular interaction was that there were no questions asked (by the agent). Within 10 seconds the representative had cancelled the objectionable charge. Brilliant!

If there was any complaint to be levelled, it was that he didn't really explain the implications (if any) of doing so - for example, I had been told earlier that you had an allowance of once for this goodwill gesture. I.e. don't make a habit of incurring late charges. (I don't intend to. Whether the expenses claim process will live up to this is another matter.)

What pleased me even more was the customer survey form that came through afterwards.

It contained the usual stuff about how I rated the transaction. That of course is the bit that is least useful for driving out any failure in the organisation. If you just ask how the transaction with the agent went, then what you find out is they are very good at handling failure, but you never find out why the failure is occuring.

So, I was even more pleased to see that the survey also asked me how many attempts it had taken to get my enquiry resolved. This is a good start, because the organisation at least has the chance of learning a few new things:

1) That this agent actually finally SOLVED the problem for me, it having been unsolved previously. He deserves special credit for that. Solve-rate is a really key concept for organisations, especially contact centres, for understanding customer experience, failure modes and performance. Few measure it.

2) By understanding that this call was part of a sequence of interactions, the organisation can see that failure occurred somewhere else in the process previously. They can begin to look at the root causes of that failure and start to address it.

However, where this survey fell down and really missed a trick, was in asking me about that sequence of events. My last call occurred, not because the previous call was unsatisfactory or didn't resolve my problem - indeed, to all intents and purposes, the original call did solve my problem. So, on the surface it looks like I have two completely satisfactory calls with the organisation. How, then, can there be any sense of failure? Surely if we look at this chain of interaction, it will come out as first class?

The reason is, that the first call made a promise about something that would happen and then it didn't happen. The first call apparently resolved the problem, but then something broke and it never followed through.

Sadly, said organisation are going to struggle to decode this because they haven't asked whether the failure was in the ability of the representative to solve my problem, or with a behind-the-scenes process issue. That one single question could tell them whether their efforts need to go into improving the performance of their individual agents, or whether they need to look at system and process failings.

This again is another classic case of "you get what you measure". (I.e. The world takes on the shape of the window you view it through.) Because they are measuring my interaction in terms of the experience with the representative, my survey response is going to imply that the first representative did not perform satisfactorily. This is in fact untrue, the first agent was superb too. It was something unseen in the background that went wrong.

So, sadly, by questioning me in the way they have done, they've set themselves off in the wrong direction, looking at agent performance, rather than systemic and process failure. Shame, it could have been so easy.

Let that be a lesson to all who design customer surveys.

1. Click / tap the little wheel icon in top right...
2. Choose Privacy Settings
3. In  "Who Can see my stuff" choose "use activity log"..
4. Review what you've liked, and if necessary, unlike the posting.

The original article, for reference is below: 

You need to go to

Profile
Edit Profile [here's the first mistake, I don't want to edit anything, I want to view]
Activities and Interests
Show Other Pages

and you'll be presented with a tincy wee pop-up box with a massive scrolling list that you can't sort or can't search or can't filter.

What you'll also notice here in that entire chain of action, there is no mention of the word 'like'. I.e. the very action you took to create this list. How is the busy user meant to even begin to connect the two halves: creating their 'likes' and maintaining their 'likes'?

Really, I've rarely seen anything so ridiculous in a user interface - but of course, Facebook is the master of the unintelligible interface! And to make matters worse, it can't even stop meddling.

Seriously, Facebook, if you're hiring I'll come and sort it for you. You know what, I might even do it for free. We'll start with a few simple use cases and a little understanding of some users tasks, and we'll actually build the interface around what users actually want to do. Voila!

It was about the local railway station, propensity to use it and what needs to be done to improve it to generate more usage.

Well, you see, therein lies the first problem: a hypothesis from the researchers (or more likely, clients) that colours the entire line of questioning and expectation, even subconsciously. I can think of a dozen ways to improve the station, but not a single one of them will make me use it more - I use it based on need and suitability for my trip; and frankly, the presence of a self-service under-arm-sweetening pie machine won't change my need. 

I also had to remind the researchers that the intent of their question mattered. For example, their original framework was what would stimulate us users to use it more. But towards the end of the session this has drifted into "what improvements should be made and how urgently". Well, for whose benefit? I had to challenge those who said that improved tropical spa waiting facilities would be wonderful for people having to change trains here on their journey through. Sure, but will it change what you do.

And then there was the final round of conclusion making - that wonderful concept, the consensus. Yep that mythical creature that finds its way into so many wayward decisions and ill-informed conclusions.

There is no such thing as a consensus. Repeat after me. Altogether now (geddit?)

What there is, is a group of individual needs and opinions, half of which conflict. Trying to find a consensus is like trying to shove 18 bowls of fruit into a rucksack: it will still come out rucksack shaped, if a little sticky and damp. 

Unsurprisingly, most recommendations came out A1 - high priority, now! (can you have A3? High priority, any time next decade?). Apart from being fed "medium" as the starting point on most issues, in order to achieve consensus the baseline was taken from the first person who spoke, until basically everyone nodded. Because, of course, if you don't all nod, you don't have a consensus. 

Seriously, this will tell the client nothing useful about true need and what response they will generate by 'responding' to it. They will get a list where everything from a new information poster to a £30 million refurbishment are all urgently needed to turn the place round. 

Go on, stick a semi-automatic hair-cutting shoe-polishing machine on the platform if you like, but I'll still be working in the Atlantis end of outer Timbuktu, so I'll still be driving there, nowhere near your spangly half-empty railway station. 

(The cash in the envelope was all right though.)