It’s big maccin’, switchin’ teams:
Why your Product team needs a CX-ursion.
Real talk.
Whether you’re on fry duty or in a high-priced suit, at Macca’s (what Australians call McDonald’s), it’s said you have to spend at least one day a year on the frontlines serving customers.
Prefer Woolworths? Top job or casual stock unpacker, you’ll need to be at the cash register, bagging them groceries.
What is this craziness we speak of and why does it exist? Some call it “Big Maccin’”, and it’s a way of helping everyone in your organization build empathy with your customers by putting them on the frontlines.
“But I don’t have a brick and mortar store,” I hear you say, “So I don’t need to go Big Maccin’, right?”
Wrong.
Real problems.
People exist both online and offline. If you work in a store, you look after your customer one way. If you work with a digital product, like me, then it’s your job to worry about how the customer uses your product and if they have a good time doing so.
For example, we designed a feature once, thinking it would make things easier for our users. To validate that assumption, we did some user testing (internal and external). And guess who one of our participants was? That’s right, the Head of Customer Experience right here at Domain.
To our delight, he agreed that this feature would be really useful for our customers, and would even cut down on the amount of phone-calls his team received. How did he know this?
Because the truth is, no matter how much data or research a Product Team can do to understand who our users are, we will only ever be watching them from a distance.
But there’s another team sitting somewhere else in your organisation that will always know them a little better.
These guys.
Real people.
Whatever your “Customer Experience Team” is called, keep them close to you.
As our Head of CX told us, “Mate, if you just talked to my guys a bit every now and then, you’ll find useful stuff out like this all the time.”
Sound advice.
A funny thing happens when real people listen to real people talking; you get insight, not just into who your customer is, but how they are feeling. How many times have you said, or heard that it’s “so hard to gauge tone in a text/email/Facebook message/etc…”? And for a product team, understanding the emotional state of our users is critical for building and designing with empathy.
So, you can probably guess what I’m about to suggest.
It’s time for your Product Team -designers, writers, product managers, everyone — to take a little CX-ursion and get Big Maccin’.
Big Maccin’ 101: How to plan your CX-ursion
- Get the timings right
We started by asking our CX team when the busiest time would be phone-wise, as we wanted to hear from as many different people, about as many different things as possible. We ended up with a 2 hour block for listening to calls, and a 2 hour debrief afterwards. Your team may prefer to do the debrief on a different day, or to split the listening into two one hour chunks. Do what works for the whole crew. - Pair Up
We each paired up with a CX call centre buddy #squadgoals. Not only did this make it easier to listen in on calls (not having a bunch of people crowd around the same station) but it also meant that when we regrouped later, we had so many more stories to share. - Listen. Note. Ask. Repeat.
Listening is the most important thing in this exercise, but don’t forget to ask questions along the way. Since you can’t interrupt the CX buddy during the phone call, jot down notes that you want to ask them later such as their pain points in dealing with customers and even the processes they use to do their jobs.
Real questions.
Our CX-ursion was eye-opening and we recommend every product team runs one as often as they see fit.
In the meantime, it never hurts to hold a mirror up to your team and ask yourselves:
- Are we too close to the product that we can’t see things that are obvious to a user?
- Our CX team is troubleshooting our apps for our customers; have we made sure they have the latest version and product knowledge? Are we communicating enough with them?
- Have the CX team found issues that are worth escalating to Product Managers?
- Are we listening to our customers, company-wide?
- Are there issues that may not be apparent during design or testing, that we should ask the CX team to keep an eye out for?
- Are CX aware of any trust issues that we are not aware of?
Real opportunity.
As valuable as it is for Product Teams to sit with Customer Experience, the reverse is also true.
Inviting your CX team to sit in on design or product workshops could help them validate the intention behind certain decisions, or flag any potential blockers that you didn’t see coming.
It would also be a great opportunity for them to better represent the needs and wants of the people they’re on the phone with all day, to the people who are designing solutions for them.
Pretty obvious right? Listen to your customers; it’s just good business, not rocket science. Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded that serving our customers well doesn’t just mean making them a Big Mac. It’s serving it to them, too.
Big ups to my partner-in-rhyme Julia Carter for her sharp editing skills!
*This blog was not endorsed or sponsored by McDonalds but I do love that place and you can often find me there.*
