Thanksgiving Reflections

I have spent most of the week moving to a new apartment. This has of course meant dealing with utilities, leasing agents, and all the folk who help us to deal with property and moving.

I have had unpleasant or inconvenient experiences, such as having to go to the electric company with an ID to have the bill transferred to my name and setting up auto payment on my gas bill to have it say “pending” almost a month after I requested it.

(So do I pay the bill by check this time and possibly have a duplicate payment taken from my account or do I wait and have a “late payment” notice go on my credit rating.)

Life is increasingly complex and confusing!

Still, I am thankful to have a place to live, a job, enough to eat, clean water, an internet connection in my home and even little things, such as a washer and dryer in my kitchen instead of a damp old basement and a garage with an automatic opener. WHAT LUXURY!

While I focus on trying to make things easier for people in my work, I struggle with things in my own daily life. What worries me is that if things are difficult for me they probably are just a difficult or more so for others.

Improving how things work makes them more efficient, and less frustrating. It also is something that we should be thankful for.

If you encounter a process that is easy, a web site that is easy to use, or even something that works well AND is attractive: take a minute to say THANK YOU.

Someone put time and thought into making your life easier and more pleasant.

November 12 is World Usability Day

World Usability Day Logo

This “holiday” promotes making things easier for people to use, from products, to web sites, to even things in your environment.

The local Usability Professional Association group has prepared an interesting day of speakers and discussion.

The theme for this year’s event is sustainability and you will see this topic represented in everything from the discussions and speakers to our choices for lunch!!

Held at IUPUI for easy access, this is a good opportunity to meet people from many different Indiana business who are advocates for a more usable and sustainable world.

Check out the event page  on SmallerIndiana for more information or go to http://www.bsu.edu/forms/cics/wudreg09/ to register.

The $35 registration includes:

• lunch
• and a one year membership in the Indiana Usability Professionals Association Chapter.

I can’t wait to see you there!

DISCLAIMER: I do have an interest in this event.

Not only am I a member of the organization sponsoring it, I will be presenting on how psychology has helped persuade people to preserve the environment.

The downside of SPAM prevention

I am sure that the goal was to reduce the amount of spam.

When you have a web site that includes your email address, you can get flooded with requests for assistance with a million dollars from Nigeria or to “shop here” for drugs or lingerie.

Even a good junk mail filter won’t catch everything and it may catch things that you want. You should also scan the junk mail regularly for legitimate and wanted messages that occasionally get caught.

I can see where a service that would catch spam would be a benefit.

Sometimes it can become a barrier to interaction with a customer.

The Incident:

I sent a message requesting information about a product to a businessman I met at a networking event and received the following

I use Boxbe to protect my email address. While I did receive your email about “FW: my message subject”, you are not currently on my email Guest List. I’ll be more likely to see your email and future messages if you are on my priority Guest List.

Click here to be put directly on my Guest List

Thank you,
emaill of intended recipient

About this Notice

• This courtesy notice is part of a free service to make email more reliable and useful. Boxbe (www.boxbe.com) uses your existing social network and that of your friends to keep your inbox clean and make sure you receive email from people who matter to you.

• My email was delayed.
• I needed to complete an extra step in sending an email.
• I needed to submit information to a company I knew nothing about.

I was considering doing business with him, but I know several folks who will accept my email who can do the same job equally well.

Imagine walking up to a local restaurant or dry-cleaner for the first time.

A large sign next to the door flashes – OPEN.

You attempt to open the door and about pull your arm off when the door is locked.  Another sign on  the door flips over.  It reads:

Please go next door to the “Photomart” and have your picture taken for our customer identification program. This program allows us to give you better service as we recognize you as a customer and not a robot or solicitor when you come to our door

When your return after a quick digital photo, the face recognition program at the door recognizes you, the door unlocks, and you are allowed to enter.

I registered, and sent my message.

I also felt uncomfortable.

I would like to trust the people I do business with, and I would like them to trust me as well. Trust is reciprocal.

I followed it with another email suggesting that I  felt that this process made me question whether his company would provide good customer service.

I took my business elsewhere.

Do you want the first contact a customer has with you to be a barrier to a long term relationship?

User experience research addresses the concerns people have about security while making access and communication as easy as possible.

There are better ways to manage access. They may not be as thorough, but they will provide bettr customer service.

Sometimes it helps to talk to someone with some experience to help you to decide how to manage the flood of unwanted information in the virtual world.

A FULL MIND can provide that objective ear and help you to decide on the best services and tools.

We can help you to keep things under control while making it easy for customers to do business with you.

Social Media and Time Sheets

“If you build it, they will come.”

Photo credit: kakisky from morguefile.com
Maybe this is true of a baseball field,
but not for most social media platforms
or most business processes.

Most of us need a reason, a motivation, before we take an action.

• The Twitter feed has to have content we want or a connection to someone we care about.
• The Time Sheet has to provide something we want after we fill it in.

If not, we forget to check twitter  and fill in a time sheet when it is the end of the month or the project.

Use a little basic knowledge about how people behave.

If the outcome is something we want every time for a while, we come to expect this outcome and we are unhappy when it fails to please us – so we STOP, very quickly.

If it is great sometimes and we cannot predict when we will get something, we will continue checking those tweets and entering hours, even long after the rewards disappear.

To get people to listen to your tweets,
make sure that they occasionally get something they really want. (The first access to the latest gossip, a coupon for a discount at a favorite business, a note from a friend.)

To get people to fill in time sheets correctly and in a timely manner,
a paycheck at the end of the month may not be enough. (A thank you for submitting at the end of the day, a suprise bonus, public recognition at the next team meeting.)

(By the way. Each of us finds different things rewarding. While you might enjoy public recognition, it may just embarass others. A $10 bill might work for one person, but another might prefer a really good chocolate bar.)

The keys are:

• Expectation that reward is possible
• As soon as possible after what we did
• Unpredictable in time

Ask A Full Mind about more ways to encourage the behaviors you want to see.

Thanks Blog Indiana and Firebelly for the idea for this post

Selling art and artist

I love beautiful things and I enjoy a wide variety of styles of art. Over the years I have become friends with quite a few artists and I know how difficult it can be to sell people something they don’t really “need”.
(I would argue that there are times we “need” art as much as we “need” a good meal – but that is for a different post.)

I spent some time this afternoon with a friend, Matt Kenyon,  who is a glass artist.
I wanted to brainstorm with Matt to see if we could come up with some ways to help him to sell his work.

If your product is ART
sometimes you need to do more
than just sell the product,
you need to sell
the ARTIST as well.

I took a workshop with Matt last year at the Indianapolis Art Center and was fascinated and humiliated to learn that for me, making a pretty little glass paperweight was not only difficult, but impossible!
I now have a lovely blob of clear glass with some colored bits in it. I keep it to remind me that glass blowing is HOT, HEAVY, and REALLY HARD WORK.
I can more vividly appreciate the skill that goes into creating those lovely hand blown vases on an entirely new level.

Anyway, we were discussing how to market his glass more effectively.  One aspect of our discussion applies to many products.

Selling art is often more about the relationship with the artist than about the object itself.

If a want a pretty paperweight I can pick up a rock on the beach.

I bought a paperweight from Matt at a recent Art Fair. I wanted a paperweight that my instructor had made because he was so patient with me in my extravagant ineptitude and I was impressed with HIM as well as his work.

That blob of colored glass means more to me than just something pretty. It has memories and ideas attached to it. I like being able to say that I tried making something, but here is what it was supposed to look like. I like pretty lumps of colored glass, but this special paperweight has more value to me.

On a small scale, this sale was about my relationship to Matt. It is about my appreciation of his skill. It is about my desire to learn. It is about his patience.

So relationships may work for Matt.

What if you can’t talk to the person that produced or designed the product?

Companies that have made an effort to have a relationship with their customers and/or to build relationship BETWEEN  customers often not only find that they have repeat business, but there is a brand loyalty that boggles the mind!

We buy not just the motorcycle, but Harley Davidson.  The brand has associations that are important enough that I have seen TATTOOS of Harley logos. Now THAT is a relationship!

Get other tattoo design here

While I doubt that Matt wants his name tattooed on your head, he will be more likely to be able to sell his work to someone who knows him and knows the work he puts into his product. I recommended he put effort into getting to know his customers and students and that he keep track of them, building the relationship over time.

While this is especially important for artists, it is an important part of all product sales.

Building  a personal relationship with a customer has multiple benefits.
It is not just about sales and money.
You not only have a loyal customer who is likely to continue to buy from you, you may also have a new friend!

Thanks Matt!