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LBWA: listening by walking around
In today's business world, it doesn't take much to be more customer-centric than average. Most executives never observe their customers to understand the customer experience. It's easy to fix with LBWA: listening by walking around.
From a WSJ report on the qualities of good managers:
Direct knowledge about customers also helped the managers see what was most important to the customers in terms of products and services. One manager with a home-electronics retailer went directly to the sales floor to find ways to serve small-business customers better. He talked to the customers himself, asking them about their businesses. When he met real-estate agents, for example, he learned how much time they spent in their cars. So, even though they had come to the store to buy, say, a personal computer, he steered them toward other products that could improve their efficiency on the road, such as a GPS navigational device or a cellphone-speaker system.This frequent in-store dialogue taught him and other salespeople to see previously unidentified sales opportunities. Their experience, in turn, led to a companywide initiative to teach employees to acquire customer insights through interactions in stores.
If your customers are online, then go to a Starbucks or Barnes & Noble, buy some coffee for a customer, open the laptop, and sit with them - one by one - to observe their experience on your site. Done: for five bucks, and five minutes of your time, you're already more customer-centric than average.
See also:
• Don't do what your users tell you
• Exceptions to listening to customers?
• You DO talk to customers, don't you?
• Case study in customer experience
(WSJ pointer - thanks, Tom!)
Great article Mark. I really think a bit of listening is often missing and the point about sitting in Starbucks and buying your customer a coffee is fantastic.
I remember a fascinating talk by Brenda Laurel about this. When she was designing games for kids she would regularly go to the cinema and sit at the front to hear what the kids were saying about the films. She heard some kids ridicule a movie because of a very loud explosion in space - they knew you wouldn't hear it in a vacuum!
Top notch - keep it up.
Carl
I have found that there is usually a discrepancy between what users "say" and what users "do". It is important to listen to what users are “saying”, but more importantly... understanding what users are “doing” in a contextual setting is much more valuable for design decisions.
Mark, thanks for a great newsletter and a on-the-point article. The combination of broad experience and a strong willingness to get involved in your customers' business are indeed keys to successful management.
I agree with Carl, keep up the good work!
Scott
We could all use being a little more customer-centric. Management by walking around requires listening but doesn't necessarily require walking.
http://alignment.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/management-without-walking-around/