All projects: Gel, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Bit Literacy
Customer experience includes distribution
One of my favorite lessons in customer experience came via the Loch Ness Monster hunter. Back in 1995, in my last semester in grad school, I signed up for a class in patent law taught by the late Professor Robert Rines (see Wikipedia), an engaging, friendly lecturer who also happened to be a pre-eminent hunter of the Loch Ness Monster. (Professor Rines passed away a few months ago and the Economist wrote a respectful obituary that's well worth reading.)
As interesting as Professor Rines was, I learned a key lesson about customer experience from a guest speaker who told us about his experiences starting a small business. He was young, late 20s, I think a former student, who had invented a new type of helium balloon - I forget the details, but something that offered an improvement over the standard balloon that you'd see at parties.
Given that his innovation met the three key requirements of being new, useful, and nonobvious (hey, I guess I did pay attention!) he had acquired a patent and was building a business around producing and selling these balloons into the market.
Then he explained the steps he had gone through so far. He drew a block diagram on the blackboard, something like this:
[concept] -> [design] -> [prototype] -> [production] -> [distribution]
What was the most important step in the process, in his experience? Well, he said, the concept phase was definitely the most fun. Playing with ideas, thinking about problems to solve, dreaming about business models. That took a small amount of time and effort but was enjoyable. Now he had his concept: an idea for an improved helium balloon.
Next, the design phase. It took a little more time and effort, sketching out how he planned to create the balloon, but he worked it out fairly quickly.
Then he had to assemble some tools and make the design real, in the form of a physical prototype. This proved his concept and allowed him to show it to production facilities to see who could make the product - at scale, within a budget, adhering to quality standards, and so on. Suddenly he was spending a lot of time in meetings and evaluating partners. This took much more time and he was no longer innovating - he was concerned with details upon details about execution.
Finally he had his production lined up and he went to get the product into the market - into party stores, and supermarkets, and gift shops - via various distributors. Here he had to explain to mostly uninterested people why his product would sell, how they should display it, what his fulfillment terms were, and so on. It took forever - or I should say was taking forever, because he was still months into this step when he came to talk to the class. Long hours, tough work, all yielding slow, small steps forward.
And now, he said, you can probably guess what's the most important phase: distribution. Yes, dreaming up the concept and designing the invention was fun. Those probably took up 1% of my time so far. Creating the prototype took another 5%. Getting production going took another 20%. And getting distribution has taken up the rest of my time. It's the hardest and most important challenge.
As a 22-year-old grad student, I thought this was a strange outcome. With all the emphasis on big ideas, and elegant solutions, why was this guy spending almost 75% of his time on a decidedly low-tech, non-innovative problem space? Why was he saying this was the most important task in his entrepreneurial career?
I started my own business a couple of years later, and I've been experiencing ever since the truth of his lesson. For my consulting firm, Creative Good, the customer experience we create is for our clients - and fortunately our concept, design, prototype, and production are all excellent (if I do say so myself). But distribution has always been a challenge. Adhering to our own core principles and methods has often made it harder to fit the square peg into the round holes that the market is looking for. There can be a pressure, in other words, to compromise the concept in order to open up distribution. (View almost any well-distributed Hollywood blockbuster to see this in action.)
Then later I tried, with some success, to get my book Bit Literacy into bookstores, without signing a bad publishing contract - more on that in secrets of book publishing I wish I had known. Suffice to say that distribution is a major determinant of success in publishing, even in this shiny digital future we're entering.
But here's the thing: distribution is part of the customer experience. If the customer doesn't have any access to your brilliant idea, they can't ever experience it. Access itself is just as important - or perhaps, in the words of the balloon entrepreneur - more important - to the success of the idea than the idea itself.
For the customer experience you create, consider the stages your innovation goes through - from concept, to being experienced by the end user. What are the most fun points? What are the most time-consuming? And what, if you're being honest about the process, is the most important?
It depends upon what you lump under distribution. Are you including marketing (awareness)? Just because I get it on an aisle in target doesn't mean folks will know it exists. Along those lines, channel partners are critical. I've seen a product shown at two large trade shows. At one show, when told the item would be $15, the response was generally, "Who would pay $15 for THAT?" At the other show, the response was "$15? That's it?" Turns out that the anchoring behavior of many folks makes for comparison points that provides for a value associated with an item.
That said, the prototype is the linchpin in my experience. In a large company, managers won't necessarily "get it" unless they see it, touch it, interact with it. The prototype can be slideware or vaporware, but if you successfully convey the experience, then you can switch folks from "huh?" to "yeah!" Again, I've seen ideas languish for years, then become greenlighted and shipped within months of a prototype.
This is a fascinating topic.
There are countless examples of many companies / business ideas that are seemingly one type of business, but when you peel back the veneer they're really a distribution and logistics org. For better, or worse, the product they're selling is almost inconsequential (as it relates to logistics).
PETCO, Wal-mart, drug stores, retail superstores in general.
Distribution involves (reaching your customers) how the product is delivered to the customer - and hence packaging (and unpacking, out of the box) is very important for a great experience.
Fascinating!
I actually met professor Robert Rines, I found him to be a very interesting character
This actually outlines perfectly the problem with wanting to be a designer.
In that line of work, and in my part of the world, more than 90% of us tend to be one-man companies, and that means that to succeed is to immediately stop being a designer.
This isn't some kind of worst case scenario - I personally know three guys who ran face first into the very product they spent years developing and perfecting, one of them had a litteral breakdown and two no longer work as designers, and they all ended up with one hell of a love/hate relationship with that product.
I've heard of many others having trouble of this kind.
Why? - because all of a sudden, the continued success of that original idea hinges on doing a more-than-fulltime job you neither wanted to do nor, in most cases, are any good at, leaving no time or energy to do anymore of that creative stuff you wanted to do.
It's that, or let your darling die in obscurity because, as Mark says, no access means no experience, and nobody will like your product if they don't know it exists... I have no cure for this dilemma but I wish someone did.