David McQuillen

I wrote this article some time ago for Darwin Magazine. They’ve since been bought out by CIO, so I wanted to re-post the article here. Usability professionals need to expand their thinking – and their influence – to their entire business.

The Usable Business
The easier it is for your customers to interact with you, the more likely they are to do business with you.

YOU’VE DONE THE market research. You know who your customers are. You’ve done the marketing. They know who you are. You’ve built a great product. And people want to buy it. There’s nothing standing between your customers and your product now.

Except, that is, your customer experience. No matter what, people still have to enter your buildings, use your website, call your employees, read your materials, comply with your policies and follow your processes. And how easy each of these things is to use – how usable your business is – has a direct impact on your bottom line.

Does does it really matter if your website is a little difficult to log into? Or your ordering instructions are a little unclear? Because your customers aren’t robots. They won’t plow mindlessly through all obstacles, going through hell and high water just to get to your product. They will get fed up, confused and, in the worst cases, downright angry. They will stop, saying “it just wasn’t worth the hassle.”

Companies that provide a great customer experience, let’s call them Usable Businesses, understand this. They know that a great customer experience means not just useful, but also easy-to-use for the customer. They know that if they make doing business with them more straightforward, their forms more intuitive and their service more proactive, they will get more, and more loyal, customers especially when those customers find it “a hassle” to do business with the competition. 

Focus on Interactions, Not Channels
Usable Businesses know it’s important that their channels are easy to use. They spend a lot of time improving Web navigation, testing signage in buildings and ensuring that the information in brochures is clear and easy to understand. But, above all, they place more emphasis on interactions rather than these interfaces. They work hard to make sure that the interactions between themselves and customers are simple, fast and, most important, without hassle.

Of course, some interactions are more important than others. If you’re trying to make your business a Usable Business, then start with interactions that are important to both you (because they get you revenue) and your customers (because they get them what they want – your product). Usually, there are five business-customer interactions which are key:

• Getting information. Before someone chooses to buy from you, she’ll probably want some information to help her make a decision. This is where a Usable Business sets the bar with customers. This is where it can, with one interaction, let customers know that this is the easiest business to deal with. To do this best, you have to know how your customers would like to receive the information, not necessarily how you would like to deliver it. For example, I know one business that didn’t want to provide walk-in customers with product brochures because it felt it was better to sit down in a one-hour meeting to explain all the product nuances. The competitor across the street provided clear, simple-to-understand brochures with the phone number of a knowledgeable employee who could answer any questions if necessary. No prizes for guessing who got more business from busy, in-a-hurry professionals trying to get some product information during their lunch break.
• Buying. When customers want to give you their money, make it easy to do so. Usable Businesses focus relentlessly on improving the buying process, ensuring that there are no unnecessary steps, no confusing instructions and no intimidating sales clerks. This is especially true for those products that people only buy once or infrequently, such as mortgages, wedding rings and vacation cruises. For these kinds of purchases, where customers have to learn a new process, businesses must be extra careful about explaining how to do it. People like to feel smart and in control, and if your purchase process makes them feel ignorant or frustrated, they’ll get anxious and leave.
• Using. The easier it is to use your product, the more people will use it. Common sense, right? Not common practice. One business I know just launched a brand new security system for clients to access their accounts online. The system, which includes a 20-step tutorial for first-time users, has surely made their security team proud – it is undoubtedly secure. It is also so difficult to use (requirements for log-in at the website include a special calculator, a smart card, a user name, a password, a PIN and a second randomly generated access code) that you can easily imagine a dramatic drop in customers accessing their accounts online, and a lot more calls to the helpline. You can also bet that there will soon be a drop in customers. It’s pretty difficult to build a loyal customer base among people who find your product a hassle to use.
• Getting Service. Once someone has your product, you really do want them to be happy with it, don’t you? If the customer has a problem, getting help can’t be difficult. Usable Businesses make it easy to get service. That may require empowering all your employees to provide customer service if necessary, regardless of their role, or ensuring that there is an easy way for customers to reach you if they have a problem. And, if customers can get service from you easily, it’s quite likely that they will…
• …Buying Again. The repeat purchase is the holy grail of any business and the first sign of a loyal customer. Usable Businesses make it easy to buy again and again, providing contact information at all customer touchpoints, such as monthly statements and Web pages, and reducing the amount of effort it takes to make additional purchases by having key customer data available when a customer places an order. When people buy more than once, all the key metrics, such as cost of acquisition, cost of service and customer profitability, improve.

Begin with Understanding
Your first step in becoming a Usable Business is gaining an understanding of what your processes feel like to a customer. Talk to some usability or customer experience professionals – there are likely some in your IT department — about how to apply usability techniques, such as user observation, expert analysis and prototype testing, to analyse and improve things. Involve other customer stakeholders, such as the people in marketing, in your Usable Business goal. Once you do so, you’ll be well on your way to creating a more Usable (and successful) Business.

About a year and a half ago, Emily Yellin popped into the Customer Experience offices of Credit Suisse. Emily was, is, an author and working on her new book about customer service. She’d come all the way over from Memphis. She sat down with me and other members of the CX team for some lively discussion about what makes companies, and people, customer focused. It was a lot of fun, and we had a good time sharing with her and learning what she was learning at other companies (She had was profiling Zappos before it was so cool to do so).

Her book is out. Your Call Is (not that) Important To Us, a journey into the inner workings of how companies deliver customer service, has started pulling in great reviews. It’s an honor for us to be profiled in the book (she closes out the last chapter with our story – and nicely calls us “masters of the art of the customer experience”) and quite humbling to be in the same company as a lot of companies we look up to.

We’re all really happy for Emily, currently touring the US promoting the work, and eager to read the book – she’s sending a few copies in the post to us.
If you’d like to buy a copy, it’s available at Amazon here.

Check out the book at Amazon

You’re wonderful and we’re so thankful you’re part of our world. We love you, Mum and Dad

Claire, Isla and I went out for a nice fall walk, and Claire snapped this photo of Poss and I.

The Olympics are done and one of the biggest winners was the UK.
They took 19 gold medals, and 8 of them were in cycling.
The director of British Cycling explained: “We focused on ‘performance by the aggregation of marginal gains.’ Even when you’re nearly perfect, you keep looking for a one percent improvement in every single thing you do. That’s what we try to do from the mechanics upwards to the rider. Some teams neglect the little bits. Not us.”

It made me think about customer experience (as I always do, you know) - where no detail is too small…where every experience can be made that little bit easier, more useful or more enjoyable.

I put this to Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good (www.creativegood.com), while dining with him the other day. Creative Good is a customer experience pioneer, and Phil is one of the most interesting characters in the industry. Among other things, he’s organized a book club that will take you the rest of your life to get through. Take a look - www.readingodyssey.com.

But, back to our conversation…

Well, I never thought I would get so into this, but I’ve become a bit obsessed with my new site, The Sufferfest. It’s a site dedicated to indoor cycling/spinning, since that’s pretty much my workout routine now that winter’s coming. I’ve produced two of my own workout video podcasts, which are no available in iTunes (just search for The Sufferfest in the iTunes Store), and written a bunch of reviews of other spinning podcasts. It’s been a lot of fun, although Claire thinks I’m a little crazy, and it’s been really cool to discover so many other people with great spinning sites and blogs.

Finished the video, and finally finished the site. Anyone who’s looking for good spinning workouts, music and reviews, head over to my newest hobby – The Sufferfest. (Guess I should start training myself now, since Claire is really killing it on the spinbike…)

Just finished working on my first Sufferfest Spin video.

Since I had just about bored myself senseless on the spin bike two years ago, I started writing my own workouts. Then I started adding them to iPod playlists. I had played with the idea of doing my own videos after buying and using the woeful Carmichael Training System podcasts.

I started with a basic workout that I wrote for a 45minute spin session. Then I started looking around youtube for cycling videos that fit the workout segement – for instance, the Olympic Pursuit Final between Bradley Wiggens and Brad McGee for a 4minute time trial effort or the finish of the 81 Paris-Roubaix for a series of 1minute intervals.

After cutting the videos to the workout, I started adding music – which was a lot of fun as I could mix it with the sountrack from the videos (Paul, the elastic is starting to snap on Menchov and Sastre is riding away! – cue sound up on Muse Black Hole). Putting in a few title slides adds the workout instructions and, viola, it-s done!

The next project is to get the Sufferfest website up and running so I can post some of the videos for any of you who want to download them – once I figure that out, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some classic Hinault….

Went out today with the Garmin and mapped out a training loop that I intend on using quite a bit this fall. It’s got 150m of climbing per 3.6k loop. The first nine minutes or so are flat out, granny gear climbing, with a couple of (too) short flatish bits. The rest is a fast, twisty downhill followed by a rolling/flat part. A great course to work on maximum climbing efforts. You can see it below…

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.do?episodePk.pkValue=6588538

Now, we’ll never say she’s not the most talented baby in the universe, but she’s not quite there when it comes to picking up small objects….like cheerios. Not to be outdone, our Red Rascal has developed her own unique solution to the problem.

Jens, Martina, Scott and I were having dinner last night and got to talking about having more…uh…meaningful dinners. Something more cultural, more exotic and more ritual – something like the Hash House Harriers have with their whole running traditions (well, not quite, but sort of). From that, The Country Club was born. We’ll see where it goes….

As an American living abroad, I’m in the unique situation of having to pay not only Swiss taxes, but also US taxes. Why unique? Because no other developed nation in the world requires its citizens living abroad to pay taxes. German living abroad? My expat friends and colleagues from other countries look at me with bewilderment when I mention the US tax situation. No German taxes. Australian living abroad? No Australian taxes.  Each year, I have to pay for US services, infrastructure, education and government that I don’t use. It’s a double burden, and one that makes being American abroad a disadvantage. My daughter, who now has an American passport, will have to pay US taxes even if she never lives in America. US lawmakers seem to think that all expats are on generous packages that pay for our housing, food and travel – which simply isn’t true. I’m a local hire on a local contract here in Zurich.  The “expat” package is a myth. What’s going on here? A fantastic insight into this situation can be found at the Amcham blog, and the American Citizens Abroad website provides a forum for Americans abroad to be heard.

Claire and Isla are still down in Tassie, while I’m back in the brisk, gray days of Zurich. Thought I’d post another photo of Isla, so that you, and I, could see her face a bit more! Thanks goodness they’ll be back next week!

Back in 2004, strolling down the dusty streets of Lhasa, Tibet, I wandered through an uneasy mix of Chinese entrepreneurs and Tibeten families.  It was hard to see how the Chinese would ever leave, but also hard to see how they could ever stay. As we rode out of town after a few days, and on toward Kathmandu, I felt like Lhasa was slipping away and being replaced by something else entirely.

Today, the Herald Tribune reports on violence in Lhasa, as protests against Chinese occupation erupt for the first time in over a decade. I thought of my sister-in-law, and how she must feel, watching this happen in her homeland. I’m thinking of you Jamyang, and I’m thinking of Tibet and its continuing struggle. As we get closer to the olympic games, the world’s attention will be ever more focused on the rights of Tibetens – how the Chinese will respond when violence isn’t an option remains to be seen.

…well, not really. But it’s 34degrees celsius here in Hobart, and blowing a gale. Hot and sweaty, with no air conditioning. Isla was getting a bit fidgity, so we filled up a plastic tub, took it outside and gave her a little dip. She’s always loved the water, from her very first bath. She’s also a very good stander (well, with a bit of help), so between dips we stood her up to cool off in the breeze.

I’m not a fish guy. Or at least I wasn’t. Growing up on the shores of Lake Erie you got to thinking that all fish were poisonous. But since being in Tasmania, I’ve changed. Tasmanians, who have the ocean within sight no matter where they are on the island, seem to have it in their genes to love seafood. In the last few weeks, I’ve had Stripey Trumpeter (didn’t know there was such a thing), Abalone (on the BBQ with a bit of chili), Squid (as a matter of fact, it was the same squid that we hauled up on a wobbly fishing trip and which, once on deck, promptly attacked me with a massive spray of salt water and god knows what), Whiting (white-ing, as I found out too late after ordering a whit-ing), Barracuta (spelled differently, sounds the same, is different), Flathead, Oysters, Mussels and, lastly, Flounder.

 My father-in-law, Chris Fuglsang, is a man who has not ever tasted a fish he didn’t like. Every single fish that has ever been on his plate is a fish that he has been happy to devour. He’s also a master fisherman and a master cook. Tonight, he brought out a Flounder, which he’d BBQd on the grill outside and instructed me how to eat it (as I’d never been confronted with an entire fish on my plate before). 

Being half Australian, it’s important that Isla gets to know her homeland a bit! We took her out for her first bush and beach walk, just down from Orford, Tasmania, starting in Sandy Bay. She must have loved it as she stayed awake for almost half the walk! We didn’t see any wombats, but the scenery was stunning.

I’ve been a fan of Monocle magazine since I picked up the first issue in Zurich airport early last year. The cover story that issue was about bicycles, and how more and more cities are becoming bike-friendly. Thanks to the hard work of Tiia Tuisku, and the other members of Credit Suisse’s Five Senses Team, we’ve recently been featured in Monocle. Their “Euroscents” article captures some of the details about our Five Senses project, where we created the first multi-sensory branch banking experience. We also won the European Front End of Innovation Champion Award in Vienna back in January. Well done guys!

This week, my brother-in-law, Jarrod, and I took the short trip from Orford to Kellevie, Tasmania, to ride the course for the Kellevie 24hr MTB race. We weren’t doing the race, just checking out the course (you have to be crazy to be a 24 MTBer). The 10k circuit goes down as the most fun I have EVER had on a bike – it’s incredibly technical, with about 180m of climbing, through bush, rainforest, riversides, fields and the very occassional fire road. Not a momet to relax, either physically or mentally – as one of the guys who was on the course with us said, “There aren’t ANY skills that aren’t examined on this course.” Tight turns through dense bush seemed to be Jarrod’s undoing, though, as he crashed three times in three attempts at the same corner – the video above shows attempt number three (which resulted in three sliced fingers and multiple bruises)…and the video below shows some of the very tight track through the rainforest section of the course…god knows how anyone is going to do this in the dark!

Words can’t describe it. She’s here. She’s perfect. We’re joyful.

…and she’s already got a bike waiting for her!