If You Use Technology, Make Sure It Works Well

With Technology, It Can Become An Ugly Habit

I rarely stay up late.  I go to sleep early each evening.  My body needs to shut down and get some needed rest, every day.  Since I do not stay up late I miss the evening talk shows that have a bit of comedy added to them.  I like comedy.  Comedy runs rampant in the world.  Human beings offer a lot of good material to comedians by making sure we continue to do stupid things in our lives.  David Letterman used to do the routine in his program that was called "Stupid Dog Tricks."  I do not stay up late often enough to catch his current program and material.  So I do not know if he still does that skit.  Whatever the case, I use his "Stupid Dog Trick" phrase often in my business dealings with technology.  Technology is an easy target for that phrase.

I have gone to many websites to do business in my life.  I use the technology they design to help those business models do what they do.  When I stumble onto a website that does some really dumb things to customers on their site, I call those events "Stupid Dog Tricks."  I might select an item to order and follow the instructions on how to order that item.  The website might ask for some additional information before it can close out the sale.  Sometimes the site will want to know more things about me than I prefer to offer.  The information they want to know has nothing to do with what I was buying.  I leave that site and go find my purchase somewhere else.  When that happens, I call that step a "Stupid Dog Trick."  How stupid can a retailer become?  You would be surprised how many I find.

The abuse of technology and its obvious power to help collect data is well over dressed.  Too many business models forget how simple selling can become.  They try to go beyond the selling machine they designed and sometimes begin to introduce a process that tries to do more than what they should provide.  They build invisible "Stupid Dog Tricks."  The art of technology is over-used and becomes a detriment to the volume they could be enjoying.  Their business models fail in the art of selling.  Consequently, they limit the volume they could be enjoying.  Unfortunately, they do not dovetail the right clicking devices into their tracking systems to count how many buying customers left their site for the stupid stuff their technology offered.  They refuse to arrange how to use technology to look into a mirror.  The villain is in the fort.

If you use technology to do your business, make sure it works well.  Do not get carried away with stupid stuff.  I refuse to shop at a K Mart store because I get tired of telling the sales clerk at the register what my zip code is.  Somehow, that just wicks me off.  I go somewhere else.  I avoid using those kinds of buying procedures.  It smacks of trying to gather more revenue, too obviously.  Consumers can become easily  offended if they sense you are digging into their personal patterns too deeply.  They can become more offended when they sense your digging is solely performed to increase their sales.  Sometimes business owners get too excited about what they can do with technology and forget to add consumer respect to the selling game.  If this process gets out of hand, which it can happen very easily, it will limit the sales the business model could otherwise enjoy.  Be careful how you use technology to do your business work.

Technology is a tool, make sure you do not add too much of it to avoid the potential for wonderful growth.  I rented a Harley Davidson motorcycle recently and the work I had to do online to secure the bike, arrange the time slot, provide the insurance proof, the licensing proof of endorsement and the potential miles I might travel was beyond what should have been required for me to transact that sale.  I was certainly the full time clerk, too.  I also found the website challenging to use.  It did not have the specific location of the rental shop placed on the website of the business.  It required that I call the 800 number to get directions to the rental shop.  Once I completed the clerical processing, I was not as excited about where I was renting my bike.  In fact, to secure my required insurance policy for the day, I was instructed to go to another website with my reservation number from the bike rental site.  Since the rental site could not completely secure my bike rental until I completed the insurance portion of my clerical responsibilities, it gave me a temporary reservation number to use on the insurance site.  Once the insurance site gave me their confirmation number for securing the insurance, I was required to go back to the bike rental site to fill out one more form to receive my final confirmation number that registered my bike to me for that date.  Truly some "Stupid Dog Tricks."  I will not use them again.  I rent bikes a lot when I travel around.  It was a cumbersome, over-worked, foolish process of the use of technology.  It did not work well.  It also timed out while I was reading the agreement stuff.  I am a pretty fair reader.  It likely assumed that nobody reads that stuff anyway.  The use of technology was arranged incorrectly in this case.  I will not even describe the stupid procedures for payment processing.  It required three personal phone calls to correct the error the payment process created.

"Stupid Dog Tricks" can kill your business model, and does so quietly.  The owner of that bike rental shop has no clue that he is using technology incorrectly to manage his business model.  When I finally met him I was turned off by his 'self-hidden' arrogance.  It was obvious that telling him about the online experience would serve no purpose at all.  A person convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.  This is a likely pattern.  He owned four motorcycles, it was a holiday weekend and two were still remaining in his possession that day.  I would consider that a clue.  Something is not working well in my model if that kind of opportunity is not being fully productive on one of the higher use days for potential.  Business owners, get serious about watching your business models "blink" like this.  The bikes were spotless, great models with amazing tune-ups.  They were fine machines that ran very well.  It was obvious he knew his bikes and loved them well.  They were taken care of immaculately.  It is too bad he carried himself so closed minded.  I would have loved to help him out by giving him some technology advice.  He was way too closed-minded to open that door.

Consumers Hate Excuses

If you use technology to help you operate your business model, make sure it works well.  I watch clerks at sales counters fight with the input requirements of their selling system designs.  It is frustrating to stand in line and watch the sales clerks delay their processing for some silly data input requirements.  As a customer, it can become one of the determining factors why we choose where we do our business trade.  Most business owners do not have this consideration in the front of their mind when they sit down to evaluate how their business sales are slipping away.  Technology issues are not one of the items listed on the top ten roster for challenges they must repair.  They work on everything else they can find wrong with their business model and employees, but skip right over the issues of misuse within the design of their use of technology.

For example, I was standing in line at a sales register of a famous office supply chain store and the telephone rang.  It was obvious that the sales clerk at the register was the first person designed to answer the phone.  She picked the phone up to answer the call while she was checking the lady customer out at the front of the sales register line.  The caller had some questions about a printer.  The clerk transferred the call by paging the computer sales clerk in the back.  Then she returned to complete the register sale for the customer she was processing at the front of the line.  I was the third customer to step up to the counter.  I got to see her grab another in-coming phone call.  I waited for her to finish doing that work.  When she transferred that call to someone else in the back I asked her, "Are you 'first up' on the phones?"  She replied, "Yes."  I asked, "Is that by design?"  She looked up with surprise and replied sheepishly, "Yes."  It was almost as if her light just went on.  I glanced obviously over to a clerk standing alone doing some tedious paper shuffling in the copy printing area and stared for a moment at that 'customer-less' employee.  Then I glanced back to the sales register clerk and asked, "Why is that employee not first up on phones?"  She said, "Good question."

If you use technology to help your business model do its business, make sure it works well.  Wrong use of technology can and will quietly kill your growth potential.  If your software, your method of use for technology aids, your program designs, your policies and procedures for processing sales and your over-use of data collection is cumbersome and unfriendly to consumers, get to work on improving it.  Stop glossing over the technological damages you are permitting to take place.  If your remote phones do not work well in your warehouse portion of the business building your business occupies because the wireless waves develop some kind of interruption, by all means, immediately fix it.  Do not put off technology wrongs.  Fix them immediately.  Do not tolerate out of control working systems.  Make sure your technology works well and is under full control.  Do not give your technology the steering wheel without limits on where it can drive.  If you do not control this area of your business model well, it may drive your model right into a terminal ditch.  Consumers do not like to wait for technology to frustrate them.  They will tolerate it for a small period of time, then they will quietly jump ship.  Good bye consumer.  Nice job, "Stupid Dog Trick."

I do not go to bed with my IT.  I expect my technology to work well.  Any glitches that surface I jump on immediately.  I have learned how to get irritated about how poorly my technology can become designed.  I do not want to ever see a customer face the challenges my technology can deliver.  I have back-up systems in place to deal with those kinds of things.  Have a reliable "B" plan placed on reserve at all times.  Technology is part of life and most understand this truth.  I just want to make sure we do not take the frustrations it can deliver for granted.  Consumers can be very fickle.  They will jump ship for a hang nail.  Work extra hard on eliminating your technological bad designs and performance challenges.  Quirks are part of the technological landscape, just make sure they do not bleed over to the customer selling process.  Remove your technological frustrations away from the consumer view.  Do not expect them to figure it out or to endure its challenges.  They will reward you by quietly slipping out of sight.

Get a good IT person sitting nearby.  Start looking around to find one you can trust.  It ain't an easy process.  Good ones are not a dime a dozen.  They are rare to find.  Go get one anyway.  Watch what they do and make sure they keep you informed of what they are doing.  You need to remain in control.  Make sure they know this.  They love to control all of your technology.  It gives them a sense of pleasure for what they like to do.  Be serious, be aware and be in control.  Above all, view every single step you design from the consumers perspective.  Remain perfectly friendly to the consumer user.  It is vital to the success of your technology use.

Step on the wrongs you are doing with the use of your technology processing.  Get rid of the wrongs that are making your model perform "Stupid Dog Tricks."  Start looking for the ways you use technology to interfere with the consumer sales process.  Simplify how you use technology.  Make technology work well for you.  Get help when you need it.  Assign someone in charge of the controls for IT work.  Stay simple, stay consumer driven and keep your business model away from becoming lost with the multiple ways we promote "Stupid Dog Tricks."  Make sure that when your customer is clicking your checkout cart online that they have a way to return back into your store to buy something they forgot to get.  I see this mistake often.  Once in the checkout cart part of the website, they cannot easily return to the store to add more.  What a tragedy.  What a "Stupid Dog Trick."

I watched a customer come back into the retail store recently and ask for a receipt they forgot to get when they made their purchase.  The clerk said, "Our computer cannot do that, sorry.  Once we run a new sale, the older one is lost in the queue.  I can write you a written one?"

What do we learn how to tolerate?  Get serious.  Get better on consumer driven technology.

Until next time...