The Best Month for Customer Experience

Mar 3, 2005

While waiting at the bank the other day I noticed a sign posted behind the bank teller. The text was gray and shabby from the several generations of tellers who had photocopied the sign over the years. It read:

    The best months of the year to invest are September, February,
    May, March, January, November, August, December, July, April,
    October, and June.

I'm thinking of posting a similar sign above my desk, to hang under its own thumbtack for the ages. I'll just edit it a bit: "The best months of the year to invest in customer experience are September, February..."

Or maybe I'll rewrite it entirely - something like this:

    The best times in a project to focus on the customer experience
    are the beginning, the middle, and the end.

There's no right time to focus on the customer experience. Certainly not at the end of the project, when some companies suddenly decide to evaluate the user experience, or run customer research. Instead, customer experience should be an all-the-time activity: a constant commitment, from this day forward. For the best companies, it's a way of life.

I remember, growing up in New Orleans, there was a phrase on Election Day: Vote Early, Vote Often! (If you're into American history, don't skip Louisiana.)

Early and often - that's when you should work on the customer experience:

- EARLY: The best time to get started is ASAP. Remember that the earlier in the project, the more you're able to think strategically... and make changes to strategy. Customer experience is strategic, and the kickoff meeting is a good time to establish the customer-centric stance that will frame and guide the project.

The very worst thing a company can do - and unfortunately is done commonly - is to go through the entire development process, and then, just before launch, put it in front of the customer. At best this is an empty exercise for management to convince itself that it made all the right decisions; at worst it can confuse the developers and delay the launch date.

- OFTEN: Don't read me wrong. I'm not suggesting constant, iterative research where customer tests are run every two weeks throughout the project. Instead, I'm advocating a focus on the customer experience in each natural phase of the project - from problem assessment, through customer research, and on into initial prototyping and development.

(For a description of the phases of a customer experience project, which can run yourself within your own company, see our Customer Experience Method whitepaper.)

At its heart this is a very different development process from what has been practiced in industry for the last 50 years. Traditionally, customers are simply the last phase of the supply chain - the "consumers" - who must be convinced, via ads and marketing, to buy the product. Why bother with the customer experience at all in that process, since the ads will do the selling?

To truly focus on the customer experience, early and often, is to do something very different. Customers aren't just "consumers" but participants in the strategic process; they aren't bit players but the protagonist, the lead actor.

An awareness of customers and their goals and desires should be baked into the very DNA of the company. It must affect how every employee acts and works, and permeate the company as a whole. After all, the organization is the only entity that can create and improve the product.

As the female lead sings in "Spamalot," Monty Python's new Broadway musical, "I've been offstage for far too long." How long will it take your company to involve customers? Will the customer be on stage early and often?

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