You are not your customer
Keep it simple. Thoughts around customer experience.
I read this extract from PCMag in a review of Notion, the popular note taking app, and it was impactful:
Have you ever used an app and slowly realized it wasn't made with you in mind? That's how I feel when I use Notion. The app is full of language that's cryptic to anyone who hasn't worked inside a software company…
The app itself isn't much better. Use Notion, and you will notice that every example of how to use the application is oriented around the software industry in general and Silicon Valley startup culture in particular…
It's as though Notion were built by people who've never worked anywhere outside the Silicon Valley software industry, and never even talked with someone who has. All kinds of businesses have information that needs organizing. Why aren't there templates for local retailers or law firms or—I don't know—farmers? Notion comes across as being built by people who don't have much regard for other kinds of businesses.
Because of this, Notion may feel unwelcoming to the vast majority of people, most of whom don't work in tech. I'm a technology journalist who used to work at a software company, and I still struggle to comprehend much of the jargon in the user interface. I can only imagine how users who hadn't been exposed to the industry would feel.
Let me start with my Notion experiences, which don’t contradict the authors’ viewpoint in any way. I used it a couple of years ago, begrudgingly. I absolutely loved the concept of combining notes and tasks and organisation beyond the level of notebook apps. It seemed to be a perfect place to store work and life admin, to manage projects at a rudimentary level, and so on.
In fact I was such a fan of using it myself, I tried to roll it out to my team with a view of using it as a customer collaboration tool as well.
There was one big problem. It looks bloody scary.
Now, I stumbled across this review as I wanted to know how it works nowadays. I secretly hoped that it would be a Yammer to Teams transition, rather than a Slack situation of a bit of kit stuck in the way it was built, seemingly by coders for coders.
I get why this happens. People who start businesses, and people who create cool stuff, tend to have an overwhelming enthusiasm for what they do.
It’s a concept that was coined ‘the E-Myth’ by Michael E. Gerber - the myth of the entrepreneur. Anyone who has read that book knows of the story about Sarah’s pie shop.
Whilst many entrepreneurs (and indeed CTO’s) might be closet technicians at heart, the very best thing that they can do is:
Acknowledge that fact;
Remove their blinkers; and
Accept brutally honest advice from their parents / grandparents, or if budget allows or a funding round is burning a hole in their pocket, a ‘UX expert’ (although I suspect Nan would give the harshest but best advice)!
You are not your customer.
Your customer is nowhere near as passionate about you as your product or service. That’s a given. But, they are also nowhere near as educated as you in what you do, they likely don’t know what you know, and so on.
The easiest way to avoid this trap is to “say it as if you’re talking to an eight year old”. Simplicity never hurts anyone. But, I get that some people will be rightly cautious, and / or have their head up their backside, and will believe that they have to use jargon and fluff to appeal to their market.
So, without wanting to teach you to suck eggs, this is what you should do. Create some avatars of your ideal customers. Simple, huh? You’ve probably already got one avatar?
One is not enough.
There’s a saying around neurodiversity, which is “if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person”. You can never bundle different people, different experiences, different paradigms, different ways of life into one category and expect that they all are the same. Even if your product or service is hyper focused, there are likely several avatars that you could create.
I’m not suggesting you go bespoke for everyone unless that’s your strategy. I’m suggesting that you look at the market you want to serve, find intelligent groupings (ideally split between the estimated size and value of each), and then reflect.
Do all of your avatars have the ability to understand your offering immediately?
Would all of your avatars find the product or service a true no brainer?
Does it tick the emotional drivers for each of the avatars? And so on.
It’s about hitting a reasonable middle ground that helps to avoid the ‘by us for people like us’ trap, whilst minimising the work involved when you go to deep on this stuff.
If you are in the B2B world, you probably want to think of the avatars of all stakeholders - not just those who sign the cheques.
And if in doubt, dumb it down to the lowest common denominator. A good sales and marketing team will be able to fluff the proposition out sufficiently if you need to play the corporate willy waving game of big words and sounding important for certain avatars. But remember, no one gets sacked for buying IBM, and no one gets sacked for making things simpler and easier to use.
Carl Reader is a WH Smith Bestselling Author and international keynote speaker with a real passion for helping people do better. There are two ways to learn more about Carl! You can either follow him on Social Media if you’re just curious (@carlreader on most platforms), or if you’d like to learn a little more about what he does on stage, through content and in the media from a commercial perspective, you can visit his website at www.carlreader.com
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