We want to share a small nugget that helps unlock a problem repeatedly trapping our clients and business partners – underutilization of new platforms, tools and solutions.

We touched on this briefly in Successful digital transformation where we set out one of the two reasons these projects fail: People don’t do what you want – they don’t change their behavior in the way you want or expect. The same problem applies to individual tools and solutions.

This problem has come to a head amidst the self-service boom that’s taken place in industries from banking to laundry collection. In the rush to design self-service portals and other online tools, companies have created beautiful solutions that are shunned and ignored by customers.

In the rush to design self-service portals & other online tools, companies have created beautiful solutions that are shunned & ignored by customers.

Here’s the reason: you didn’t meet your customers where they are. The best customer experience (CX) teams dig into the psyche of customers to design incredible experiences that customers can’t even articulate. What we have found is that most companies rarely ask two fundamental questions (and even if they do ask, it’s too late):

  1. Would you use this solution?
  2. Why?

Ask these questions up front and early in the discovery and design process. Then listen.

The answers will take you into your customer’s world. Where are they? What challenges them? What slows them down? What frustrates them? What delights them? What do they want? What don’t they want? What does it take for them to choose your beautiful self-service platform over a simple phone call?

The best CX teams dig into the psyche of customers to design incredible experiences that customers can’t even articulate. 

Based on their answer, you might very wisely give up on your solution. Or you might begin to identify the levers you can pull to guide, encourage and incentivize a change in customer behavior. Meeting them where they are, not where you think they are, is the first step in seeing the behavioral changes you’re banking on.

There’s a whole raft of activities we’ve designed with our clients, each bespoke to their customers and their context. We would love to do the same for you. Get in touch.