A few seemingly unrelated experiences over the weekend made this a must-write-about topic for today. Summary: If your “helping” the customer makes it harder for them, then stop helping.
Example 1: Chipotle’s “new” menu that’s trying to help, but is really just confusing to everyone (customers and staff).
My two-year old daughter is a Chipotle nut – she loves the black beans, cheese, chips, and guacamole (sometimes we manage to get other foods past her lips, but if she was ordering she’d just get those select items.) And, one of the reasons we love Chipotle is that you can pretty much order any of their ingredients in any format and they’ll figure out how to charge you at the end. For example, if I order a burrito with rice, beans, and cheese they can ring that up as a “line-item veggie burrito” and save me $1+ over the standard veggie burrito (’cause unlike my daughter, I’m not a guac fan.) Or, when she was just getting beans and guac, we would just pay for beans and guac.
So, imagine our surprise when we walked in to our local Chipotle last week and… tada, there’s a kids menu. Hmm, okay I like that her meal would now come with a drink (previously, they didn’t have milk or little boxes of juice) and “kids”-sized chips (which is good because she was typically the chip-eater in the family), but how do I fit her black beans/cheese/chips/guacamole menu into one of the set menu choices?
This is a perfect example of trying to help (by providing some new and helpful choices on a kids menu) that ends up making it harder on your customers (if I just want these 4 items, how can I get them for the affordable kids menu price when those items aren’t specifically available in that combination on the kids menu?) A much better solution would have been to model the kids menu after the standard adult menu with the option to order a la carte or in a meal-type package. (“Mommy wants chicken soft tacos, Jane wants a kids’ soft taco meal with kids chips and milk.” ) This would allow the parents to order the same way and the workers to prepare food the same way for the adults or the kids, and would still provide great benefit for parents who want to round out their kids meal in an affordable fashion. Chipotle, are you listening?
Example #2: Your new customers probably shouldn’t know more about your product than your sales or customer support staff.
I’ll be setting up a wiki for a local non-profit over the next few months, but we’re still in the early stages at this point and trying to determine the best way to set up and manage users (cost and structure). We’d been working on the free version of the wiki for a few months, but would be moving to a paid version when we were ready to flip the switch and formally launch it to the organization.
Here’s what I’d come up with…
- This would not be a “public” wiki. Only members of the organization would be permitted to view it, so the free “public” wiki plans were out.
- This would be a hosted wiki.
- We would have ~1800 users who would need at least “read-only” access to the wiki.
- We would have 30-40 users who would need “read-write” access to the wiki.
- Based on the plan we were considering, “users” were $8/mo/user. But, read-only users were 90% off of that price (<$1/mo/user), and there were discounts for “qualified” non-profits (nothing specifically stated what these discounts were).
- Based on the plan we were considering, we could implement single sign-on for the wiki.
- We could use a combination of generic and specific users (wikireader@abc.org, jane.doe@abc.org)
- We would like to use the avaialble “free-trial” of the upgraded service so the organization leadership could work with the tool before launching it to the whole organization.
So, I “upgraded” the wiki – which required filling out a “contact us” form (into which I put the info above) and resulted in a sales call from the company. The first response I had from the sales guy… “With that many users, have you considered the public wiki option?” Um, no because as I mentioned in my email, it’s an intranet site. On our first phone conversation, I reviewed the list above and managed to get info on the non-profit discount (typically 20%) and a 60-day free trial, but really no input or advice on how to accomplish the best balance of users and price. Instead, I got the typical pitch of “we have great customer service, that’s why we charge per user, because we have to support all of those users.”
Ok, I understand I’m paying for support and I think the product is valuable enough to pay for, so I do plan on paying *something*, but if you’re the wiki experts, can’t you suggest some ideas on implementation? If you’re doing so much work with educational institutions, small businesses, and other organizations with very limited funds, then how have those people rolled-out their wiki. Don’t expect me to believe that they either 1) paid for everyone, up-front, all at once, or 2) paid only for one or two people, and trickled them in over time.
Again, how were you trying to help me on this one? Either put all the info on your website and let me figure it out myself (in this case, they’re already about 90% there) or make me request a quote and then work your butt off to help me create a custom solution (or at least, custom-ish priced solution) for my organization.
Example #3: Switching cell phone plans: Aaaaaa!!! or Aahhh…
We’ll have to switch to a new wireless plan before October, so I’ve been scoping out the options online and wow, what a pain! My husband and I are both tech-y people, but not-so-much cell phone people (example: after he washed his cell and its replacement within the span of two months, we switched to the ”free” phones on the cheapo plan) so trying to navigate through all of the options currently available is a nightmare. Except for one…
The Cricket Wireless site is a breath of fresh air! Okay, they don’t have a huge selection of phones, but at least I can understand their plans!
- Feature 1+2 = $X
- Feature 1+2+3 = $X+$5
- Feature 1+2+3+4 = $X+$5+$5…
- You can add features / buckets of minutes / etc. to any plan
Wow, you mean I dont’ have to figure out who my favorite 5/10/15 people are? Whether I need 400/500/600/700/1000 minutes each month? How many calls I make on “nights and weekends” (or is that 7pm-7am?) And, should I get XYZ phone from this vendor or ABC phone from that one? Either way it’s a 2 yr contract. Ack! I just want to have a phone to carry with me that I can make and receive calls and text messages on.
I know the phone companies engage in this obfuscation to supposedly compete against each other (because it’s too hard or time consuming to make real comparisons against them), but I just can’t imagine that they’ll be able to sustain the camoflauge too much longer. Until then, we’re going to go with the company that helps us to make a decision that we understand and can feel good about. Thanks, Cricket!
To sum it up…
I like the first two companies and have been long-time customers of each and even with the experiences above, I’m probably not going to stop eating my burritos or creating wikis. I’m new to Cricket, but they’re definitely starting to win me over. The lesson I’ve learned is if you’re making customers significantly change their behavior, or work harder to make a decision, then you’re really not helping them. Provide clear, concise, and helpful information. If they need help, make sure you can help them (instead of ignoring or confusing them or reciting corporate babble). That’s how you provide real help and make your customers happy.
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