Today my mom had outpatient foot surgery, so when I was waiting at the hospital during her surgery, I strolled over to the cafeteria for a late breakfast. It was just after 10am, and when I walked into the serving area, there was nobody manning the grill ordering area. When I asked if someone could scramble me up a quick egg or two (which was on the menu), I was told that the breakfast serving hours ended at 10 and that lunch wouldn’t be served until 10:45am. “But,” the girl said in a flippant aside, “you can get some yogurt or a sandwich or something.” Not really what I wanted to hear at that moment.
If this were a Golden Arches, where they have to change over the entire restaurant for the next meal, I would understand not trying to help out a guy who arrived there 5 minutes after they started to break down the breakfast setup. But the grill was still on, and I even saw some hash browns cooking (presumably for an employee who was hungry). So to whom was this scenario convenient for? Me or the staff? That answer was obvious.
I don’t believe it was a coincidence that this happened in a hospital, because the medical profession is one of the worst offenders in making life convenient for themselves and inconvenient for the customer/patient (waiting at a doctor’s office is almost as scream-inducing as the experience at the DMV). But they certainly aren’t the only industry that makes things easy for themselves and difficult for customers. Many Web sites have complicated registration processes and one-sided policies that only aggravate users (e.g., excessive information collection, shady opt-in/information sharing practices, ridiculous number of registration screens). Credit card companies are completely screwing with customers’ percentage rates and credit limits to the sole benefit of their bottomed-out bottom lines, making life extremely difficult for customers. And lots of software seems to be designed for the benefit of the company’s engineers and without a thought to the people who will actually be using the product.
So take a look at your processes, interfaces, policies, packaging and the like and make a list with two columns: 1) what is built to be convenient for your company, and 2) what is built to be convenient for your customer. Then try to figure out how to move everything from the first column to the second. It may take a while, and it may be temporarily painful for you and your employees. But you’ll start to see yourself attract and retain more customers, and customer retention is a proven way to boost revenues.
