Sticky labels, apples and internal CX
Recently, I was listening to this Ted talk, hosted by Tony Fadell, when he brought up the subject of sticky labels on fruit. They were introduced to solve one problem, that of checking out faster at the supermarket counter, and by doing so, transferred the pain further down the experience. When you are ready to devour that delicious Royal Gala. That darn label gets in the way. Good luck trying to remove it. And I won’t judge if you like so many have struggled to flick that label off your finger tips.
In Tony’s words, by the hundredth time, you are so used to this design malfunction, you have become numb to the pain. I am here to remind you that there are so many things we do everyday. The painful, wasteful, redundant, inefficient, and just plain stupid parts of our jobs that we can solve for, but don’t because we have simply become accustomed to it.
I’ll draw on another example from his talk. When you go visit a friend on vacation. And are ready to take a shower. That first blast of water is either too cold, or scalding hot. And you spend the next 5 minutes fiddling with the knob to get it right. What a joke! Shouldn’t there be a marker which says “Perfect temperature” or perhaps a range which accommodates variances in preferred water temperature? I know I’m going to grab a permanent marker and get this done as soon as I’m back in Sydney. You’ll thank me later.
The point, of this rather long winded preamble is that we seldom stop, zoom out, or zoom in and look at design malfunctions and process inefficiencies in our day to day lives at work. I am lucky enough to have some time everyday to think about these things.
At a very broad level, I consider improving customer experience a core function of my job at Havas even though it may not be explicitly defined as such in my role. My customers are internal stakeholders from various departments, with varying degrees of seniority, functions and outlooks. When it comes to solving for internal customer experience via tools, systems, technology, I need to, in consultation with my CTO, prioritise, and where we can’t buy a solution off the shelf, work with teams to build lo-fi hacks that solve for the short term. The reason is simple. Tools are not cheap. And there are no guarantees when it comes to adoption or quality of fit.
In my third week on the Havas program, I got to meet Laura McElhinney and her A-team, Jennifer Bubluski and Derek Carpenter. If you are ever in Boston, visiting or on the next batch of Lofts, find the time to meet them.
Laura’s team is several steps ahead of us in terms of tools, systems and process adoption which gave me a version of the future if you will along with insight on their challenges and successes to date.
I felt like a kid in a candy store. I had simply no idea of the diverse assemblage of tools Havas has, both proprietary and syndicated. From end-to-end media planning systems that integrate directly into vendor platforms to send RFPs and receive detailed recommendations, sync into ad servers and buy side platforms so that we can compare planned metrics with actuals, and finally, seamless integration with finance systems so that invoicing and reconciliation can happen smoothly and efficiently. I understand that what I’m attempting to cover in this article is not sexy. It is not about campaign strategy or results. It is the nuts and bolts, the internal engineering that can make or break an agency’s success and propel us forward towards becoming a truly agile, responsive and efficient partner to our clients.
Whilst the right tools and tech give you a head start, making it works takes collaboration. Consulting stakeholders is so critical to getting to truly understand their pain points and challenges. The Havas Village model intrinsically enables and facilitates collaboration. I recognise from my experience here in Boston, and from back home in Sydney, it is indeed a privilege to work in this space. And I know that after spending time on the Lofts program, I feel empowered to go back, and start deploying some of tech I’ve picked up here.
Some closing thoughts on this subject, and this is more a note to self. Don’t try to solve everything. Sometimes duct tape and WD40 will do. And whilst we continue to use duct tape, there exists opportunities to improve design and customer experience, albeit at a later date.
