It’s not you. It’s us. Give us another try, please.
Three key lessons for product managers to design a better customer experience
Recently, I was browsing LinkedIn when my wifi network went down. This has happened to me a few times in the past. I was expecting the obvious connection error message, but instead, I saw something totally different. LinkedIn was apologizing to me with the following message:
The first thought that came to my mind was “no, LinkedIn, it isn’t your fault. It is my Internet connection and if my Internet is down, you cannot do anything about it. You do not need to apologize.”
Or should you still?
I am a frequent user of Uber and often times and I resort to Uber pool to save some money, especially when I am not in a hurry. I recently took the Uber pool and met a really nice 76-year-old gentleman who was my Uber driver. As he was helping me to reach my destination, we got an alert for another person (it’s a pool of course). The new person joined the pool and his destination was on my way. As we dropped him on our way, I got a notification to rate my journey.
Hang on, I am still in the car and my destination was still 10 miles away! Before I could say anything, I saw the frustration on the face of my Uber driver. He was extremely apologetic when he told me that he accidentally completed my journey as well. He said that it was his fault and that he is too old to operate this technology application. He also told me that this has happened to him in the past and he still had not learned from his past mistakes. He was very sure it was his fault and it was.
Or was it?
These two very distinct incidents can teach three key lessons to product managers, as they design a better customer experience:
1. How to show true empathy towards your customers
Yes, customer empathy is now a cliché in product management space. Everyone is talking about it, but how many product managers design their products with customer empathy at their core? How many really believe that if a user cannot effectively use their products, it’s their product’s fault and not the user’s? How many would have thought about a 76-year-old person, who hasn’t used technology for a better part of his entire life, is dependent on your technology for his livelihood? True customer empathy comes with a strong belief that the user is never at fault. The product should be able to cater to all its target users and all user needs should be built into the design. It is not you, it is them.
2. Thinking beyond constraints
Often you hear product managers saying or complaining that they are constrained by technology, system limitations, etc.. “How can you even expect the system to work when there is no Internet.” Of course, this is true, after all Internet products depend on the Internet working when the consumers are engaged with the product, which is outside the control of product managers. After all, GM or Ford wouldn’t have apologized to their customers if their customers forget to fill their cars with gas. Would they? I call this an “excuse mentality” where product managers easily accept the limitations and exonerate themselves from any fault in the external environment.
However, there are a few who decline to restrict themselves within these boundaries and are laser-focused on providing an amazing experience to customers, come what may. What LinkedIn is communicating with the above message is that soon there will be a day when someone could have the ability to seamlessly browse their site even if there is no Internet. After all, they said, “it’s not you, it’s us.”
3. Being humble
Lastly, humility. Product managers without humility cannot be customer-centric. They exist because of the customers who are using their product. The sooner product managers can learn this, the better they will be able to serve their target customers. Accepting fault is the first step towards bringing a change, towards developing the “growth mindset,” in the words of Carol Dweck. It is rightly said, “humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”
So next time when we, as product managers, are designing a product, let’s ensure we think like a customer, we feel like a customer and if we cannot make customers say “wow” at the least make them say “no, it isn’t your fault. You don’t need to say sorry.”
Thank you, LinkedIn. No thanks, Uber.
