We live in an application-driven world. Contact with one another, contact as a customer; or contact with a potential business partner will be facilitated by an online application. The best of these encounters are invisible; the worst shatter the experience where the results can be catastrophic and costly. Any application, no matter what the intended functionality requires a clear and concise set of business rules to delivery the right experience, to the right user at the right time.

Beyond the fringe of core services provided by traditional agencies, application development is often pushed to the tactical realm long after a strategic plan is in place. This afterthought approach in fact defines the customer relationship experience as an afterthought and as such, in today’s connected universe, you’ll hear about it.  

In the world of IT, application providers build applications; some include assessment of current business practices where translation to a technical solution is required, often without regard to the brand or the customer experience. Others choose to offer up boxed solutions, where one size never fits all. Again promoting compromise of the customer experience.
Forrester Research makes a great case for strategic process to address the classification of users and the subsequent rules to ensure an appropriate and successful online brand experience: POST, an acronym, that sets up the assessment process: 1) People, 2) objectives, 3) strategies, and 4) technologies. It is not at all unusual to see companies seek out technologies, and then fit the customer to the system. This never works, and dilutes the value of the customer relationship. It continues to surprise us that the customer is the last to be considered at a time when a customer’s voice can so easily be heard – and shared.

Defining business rules can be straightforward, and resolving the structural definition of a sales organization is imperative as the first step in building any application intended to serve a distributed sales organization, a specific group, as well as a single individual.  We have found that companies are secure in their belief that their channel organization is well defined by criteria such as geography, product, and a channel management hierarchy. However, these criteria can be ambiguous and usually require moderate restructuring to articulate an absolute picture of the organization, its partners, and customers.  Once in place, the foundation is set for the development, distribution and targeting of applications to serve the sales organization, channel partners, and most importantly the customer.

If an agency is not speaking in these terms, and targeting is limited to a demographic discussion, focus groups and test markets, it must be 1990.

At Pivot + Levy we focus on the last mile—the final points of contact between your brand and your customers. There are multiple facets to the last mile that encompass consumer facing web sites and the experience at the point of sale. But one issue that overarches everything when it comes to influencing how people actually behave is the user experience—or how well things work.

A simple example from my personal life illustrates this point. About a year ago I was called for jury duty. Rather than pay the ridiculous parking rates in downtown Seattle, I decided to use mass transit for the first time. One of the things that kept me in my car for so long was, frankly, my intimidation about learning to use the Metro system. Metro’s web site does offer a trip planner but I found it clunky, difficult to use and not that helpful in making my route visual to me.

And then I found Google Transit.

The Google Transit system uses the exact same data as the King Country Metro trip planner, but the interface is so much more elegant, easier to manipulate, and, critically, blends Metro data with Google’s excellent maps. As a result of using this tool, I overcame my reluctance to use Metro and have become a committed user of mass transit (and this was long before gas nudged near $5 a gallon).

The key idea here is that it wasn’t data that changed my behavior, it was a superior interface. It was a better user experience that got me on the bus. In this example, Metro failed in the last mile (no pun intended) because, despite the massive investment in resources and advertising to increase bus users, they failed to convert me due to my online experience with their brand. Fortunately for them, Google came to their rescue.

The issue of usability is at the core of what makes a truly effective business extranet or consumer web site. Often it’s not the capabilities of the software that define whether a solution will be a success, but how quickly it is embraced by users. Well thought out and implemented user interface and user experience design are key to driving user adoption. Tremendous efficiencies can be gained by automation. Communication can be made much more timely. Prospects can be responded to more quickly and at lower cost. But only if the system is actually used by the people it’s intended to benefit.