How to Delight – Not Confuse – Your Customers
I just spent 3 infuriating hours on the phone with a slew of customer service representatives, trying in vain to fix my son’s laptop. Slamming down the phone, I wondered about all the other companies that inadvertently anger customers with products that are too confusing to use.
According to a recent study by technology consultant Accenture LTD, the U.S. electronics industry spent about $13.8 billion last year to re-box, restock, and resell returned products. 68% were returned because consumers “didn’t understand the product;” only 5% because they were defective.
James Womack and Daniel Jones, authors of Lean Consumption and Lean Thinking, argue that many companies wrongly assume they’ll save time and money by offloading tasks to consumers. They force customers to waste valuable time tracking their own orders, struggling with complicated technology. The result? Consumers are angry and companies spend more resources — not less — handling complaints, reworking botched repairs, and replacing customers lost to competitors.
The solution? Lean consumption: streamlining the way you provide goods and services, so customers can use them more easily. How? View consumption as a process, not an event. Identify steps in your customers’ consumption process where they expend time but get no value. Then revamp your processes so that you provide exactly what customers want, where and when they want it.
Here’s a great example of lean consumption: Some office equipment — copiers, printers, etc – now have built-in diagnostic software that tells when a part will wear out and remote sensors that convey this information to the manufacturer, enabling its repair person to replace the part before it malfunctions, and before the customer thinks it’s broken and needs to be returned.
Have you experienced lean consumption as a consumer? Does your company practice lean consumption?
How to Delight – Not Confuse – Your Customers
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