Where have we put our hearts?

Where have we put our hearts? White papers, programme designs, algorithms behind applications, frames of reference all reduce clients to numbers that can be managed. People become dehumanised and placed in nice little boxes that make it easy to create and manage theories or attempt to predict customer behaviour. Once you have reduced someone to a statistic it becomes easy to believe that we have all the answers for them-in fact that answer would be to buy our product. Once the client is reduced to mere numbers then it easy not to care about them as much as you once did but, rather, you can begin to care about other statistics like profit margins and bank balances.

Sometimes this is simply a side effect of corporate growth. Your little two man establishment serving twenty clients, who you all know by name, grows into a fifty employee business with a couple of thousand clients who you never even interact with. Somewhere in there your metrics and measures have to shift to help you make decisions. It is at this point that it is easy to forget about your client. It sounds fairly stupid, right, that you would forget to pay attention to your client’s needs and emotions, after all they are the ones bringing you revenue. Yet company after company falls into the trap.

Blizzard Entertainment’s ‘World of Warcraft’ was one of the first online games to dominate the market with a peak of 12 million users. A pay-to-play service they have had a steady core of users over a decade of play. The game has made a number of changes in the last year for reasons that are largely unknown but that I suspect are to do with tapping into a new generation of players as their older ones grow up and stop playing. Also possibly contributing to this was a shift in 2013 in the company structure that saw it breaking away from under a parent company. Many of the changes have been a radical shift against core elements of the game. Ten years on though one has just to look at the comments section of their website to see that players are not happy. Player numbers have plummeted and while steps are being taken to bring players back into the fold there is this feeling that maybe the heyday has passed.

So how do you avoid this happening to you? Clearly growth and sales are things that we want to happen in our companies. The dilemma is how we keep our hearts and passion as we develop. Here are some options.

Commit to delivering something that works. The basic product needs to work, the repairs department needs to work, and the feedback systems need to work. If it does not work then fix it-quickly before your ship it out. It takes a lot of guts to step back and look at something and say ‘this is not working for our clients’ and make the appropriate changes.

Commit to your word. Trust is a rare commodity. Be careful of making promises you will have to keep one day. Finding clever ways around your promise is viewed as breaking it. World of Warcraft’s in-game currency is gold-you could only earn it in game and never officially exchange real money for it. It was one thing that kept players on an even field and Blizzard cracked down hard on anyone offering such transactions. Then Blizzard found a clever way to allow people to get gold from other players by buying them game time. Technically it is not a direct money-for-gold exchange but players view it that way-it breached trust with many of them.

Commit to listening to your clients. I mean really listening. If people are telling you that they would like to access your service after normal hours when they finish work then maybe you should consider it. What is the point of listening if you are not going to act on it?

Commit to creating a support and faults mechanism that really works. Build a system that allows a personal touch like allowing your Twitter team to respond using their real handles and not just a generic company name. Solve people’s problems not just band-aiding them with corporate speak and checklists but really getting them up and running again. Be wary of having too many levels of bureaucracy for them to go through to get genuine help.

The other option which is harder to do as you have to go against the trend and desire of shareholders is not to grow beyond a particular level. Make your name by being exclusive and justify your prices by delivering the exceptional to those who are willing to pay. This means you have to deliver with an uncompromising standard undergirded by a passion to do so. Keep your heart open to your client.