Had a discussion yesterday and my brain kept flipping back to this picture:
So how do we deal with lazy customers who won’t RTFM? Make a better FM? Really
Two cliches I think apply to this:
- Doing things RIGHT is not the same as doing things BETTER.
- GOOD is the opposite of GREAT. (Paraphrasing Seth Godin I believe.)
So how much BETTER does the FM need to be? Or should we just skip the FM and do something different (and potentially GREAT)? Or is that too out of the box?
I’ve painted myself into a corner with two of my favorite marketing gurus. They have both written about learning curves for users. But how should we get our customers down the curve?
What do you think? What’s worked for you?
The biggest challenge I have is to get my “customer” to engage in electronic technology. I’m doing contract work for a small manufacturing firm where the owners (man and wife) are in their 70’s. The president is barely able send and receive e-mail and find his way to his own company’s web site. Teaching the old dog a new trick that involves internet or even client/server technology is a challenge. So yes – I grapple with this question every day – how do I move my customer down the learning curve.
I have learned to do this in two ways. First, I have identified another individual in a key role in the company and have garnered his support for using technology to drive sales and after sale support. This serves two purposes for me – it allows me to leverage the use of new technology via peer pressure and it also gives me insight into just what will fly and what won’t. Second, I have found that I can isolate the principles in their own “paper” world – to an extent. While I attempt to build a more electronically nimble company, I also print a copy for the bosses file folder. My thinking is that the two can co-exist for the short term, while the technology will support the company for the longer term.
Which leads to yet another topic for Dave – Business Continuity Planning.
See ya.
Heavy-D makes some great points. While there are some pretty savvy customers out there, there are still those baby boomers who have no technological skills and no desire to learn them. This can be very frustrating, especially if they are a good customer. I guess we have to learn to deal with the bad and the good.