Month: March 2014

Failure can be a good thing – more links between Agile and Improv

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“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
–Confucius

 

I decided to return to my series – how improv belly dance is a lot like Agile. I know, it's a weird comparison; however, both have something in common – how do you respond to a sudden, unplanned change? That is the nature of Improv! And Agile is a framework that addresses this too.

Here are some past articles that make the connection:

 

Whenever I perform improv I'm experimenting, even if I'm dancing to a song I know really well. There is always some nuance about the performance:

  • The musician switches up the song to include something I have never heard before
  • The floor has something on it that it didn't have a couple of days ago
  • The audience is different, sending out a different vibe – some may not want to watch me, or the audience is thrilled to be there
  • My costume may be reinforced not to break, or I may have forgotten to check it (or check a part of it) and it loosens

Every dance experience has something new to experience – either artistically or logistically.

And when you experiment, you have to have 2 things: self-confidence to try and  preparation to succeed or fail.

 

I have been told that some of my best performances came out of my improv work. I think it's because I'm not overly thinking about what I'm doing – I'm responding to the current situation. Sure, I think about what I could do a few moves out, but mostly I'm just responding to the music. I shut down my ego and focus on being in harmony with the musicians. 

Improv performances are a lot like Agile – the business requirements change and you respond. You and the team have enough confidence to pick up a story, try to solve the problem, and just do it, making sure you keep the solution open ended enough to add more features. Usually, this works out well.

However, not every decision you make is going to be awesome. Mistakes are made. 

  • For improv: You land on the wrong foot and get off-balance during a spin. Or you don't read your audience right and respond to the music in an awkward way. Or you stop – for no reason. Your brain just stopped.
  • For Agile: The prioritization was wrong. There was incorrect technical direction and the team wasn't able to scale the product. Someone on the team didn't collaborate as much as he should have and worked by himself and inadvertently blocked the team. The UX approach tested poorly and has to be completely rewritten.

And you may think this is a result of the nature of improv and Agile – if you planned better, this wouldn't have happened. However, no matter how much planning you do – you can't avoid failure. There is no possible way to think through every situation. 

As an analogy, if we were to think through every situation before taking action – driving would be impossible. We would need to memorize a 4-inch manual that documents what to do in every situation with another car. Needless to say, this would make more accidents – people would be trying to remember exactly what to do. It's just not realistic. You have to trust your instincts and intuitions sometimes to make changes now.  

According to Adapt, “success comes through rapidly fixing our mistakes rather than getting things right first time.” 

—99U, "Why Success Always Starts With Failure," Sarah Rapp

However, not all failure is bad – failure can be a good thing.

  • To do good work, you have to try a lot. And when you try, you may not get it quite right. According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes about 10,000 hours of doing something to be an expert – that's a lot of chances to fail. It's about trying and practicing. Even after that 10,000 hours of training to be an expert – you can still try and make a mistake.
  • It shows that you stepped out of your comfort zone to innovate. When you are in your comfort zone you are doing something you have done every day. There are certain moves that I'll do during a performance – my signature moves so to speak – and every now and then, I respond to the music with something out of character. Sometimes I bomb. Sometimes I do something amazing. Same with Agile. I've been on teams that try something new – and it works out great. Sometimes – not so much. Trying something new shouldn't be punished because who knows what could happen from it. There could be a great discovery for a product or an amazing efficiency.
  • Something good could be created out of the failure. Post-its are a great example of this. Here is the story from Wikipedia:

In 1968, a scientist at 3M in the United States, Dr. Spencer Silver, was attempting to develop a super-strong adhesive. Instead he accidentally created a "low-tack", reusable, pressure-sensitive adhesive.[1][2] [3] For five years, Silver promoted his "solution without a problem" within 3M both informally and through seminars but failed to gain acceptance. In 1974 a colleague who had attended one his seminars, Art Fry, came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor his bookmark in his hymnbook.[4][5] Fry then utilized 3M's officially sanctioned "permitted bootlegging" policy to develop the idea.[5] The original notes' yellow color was chosen by accident, as the lab next-door to the Post-it team had only yellow scrap paper to use.[6]

Without this "mistake" or "failure" – we wouldn't have these delightful yellow sticky notepads to place on computers, desks, books, etc.

  • And when you fail, it's not about the failure – it's how you respond to and recover from it. Sometimes we fail and sit in our misery, contemplating the fail. Sometimes we fail and bounce back by changing direction and still trying to make something happen – and that's the response we should have. When I dance and do something wrong, I just don't stop and stare at the audience. I keep going as if nothing ever happened. And most times, the audience don't even know it was a mistake. Technical teams joke about such things being "features." And sometimes people don't even notice what happened – in fact, they like it.
  • It can be a lesson to the team to be open to all options and ideas rather than basing a decision upon 1 or 2 voices. Sometimes failure happens because there are only a few strong voices on the team – not enough minds are involved in creating a solution. When I dance, this happens when I don't really listen to the music and expect what will be next (I listen to the melody more than the beat) rather than live what is next (possibly a neat twist to the song). Same with Agile projects – an off-beat idea may be rejected by a few because the rest of the team doesn't see what that person sees. When the "plan" fails, the team usually comes around and learns to listen to that person more.
  • Then again, is it really failure? Isn't it really learning? There is a belief that everything we do is perfect and leading us to where we need to be. Our ability to achieve great things is only limited by our knowledge. And the path we take to reach a solution is most important to reaching a "better" answer. It is a powerful idea and repositions what "failure" is. We all don't know everything – and every day we learn something new. And maybe we need this failure to get to something else? 
  • It shows that we have enough self-confidence and trust to take responsibility, admit we were wrong and change. It's easy to continue down a wrong path and keep making mistakes. It takes guts to admit that you were wrong, someone else is right and you must change direction. When an Agile team changes direction – the team is taking responsibility for the problems and correcting course to make a great product. When I perform and I mess up on stage, I own it and fix it and salvage the performance. 

There is a perception that a well-defined, detailed plan will give you automatic success because you thought through everything. That's just not true. Depending on how you define success or failure, you may stop a great innovation from happening, stop team learning, continue a team structure that doesn't include the entire team, or a number of other lessons. 

The beauty of improv and Agile is that you can always repair a mistake or "failure." It's how you respond to that mistake or "failure" that can make you shine.

_________________________________

I just realized that I write about my belly dance activities quite a bit but never really share them with you. 

If you are interested in this part of my life, here is my performer Web site (fayruzdallas.com) and my Youtube channel. Enjoy!

Failure can be a good thing – more links between Agile and Improv

How did I get into Customer Experience? My call center days.

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Many of us fall into our professions – we don't actively seek them. I originally wanted to be an English professor, researching Edward Albee plays and being a loyal disciple of Jacques Derrida.

Instead, I dropped out of academic life and got a real-world job.   

I worked in a technical support center as a receptionist, making sure engineers answered the phones and customers got help. I was probably the most over-educated receptionist ever, but it was a pretty good job, and it felt good to help these callers who couldn't get their software to work as they wanted. And these engineers had a lot to do – help customers solve their problems, work with software engineers to get issues fixed, general paperwork. 

Phone was the communication medium of choice at the time. We only got a few emails or faxes asking questions; most people called. The challenge was the availability of the engineers – 3 were scheduled to answer the phones – more than enough staffing based on typical call volumes – but they were so focused to resolve customer problems that they would sometimes leave their posts for hours to talk to the developers. This was ok if only one wandered away, or a second went away for a few minutes. During a rush of calls if there was only 1 engineer available for 3-4 hours, that soon became disastrous.

One engineer got 19 complex support calls over 3 hours while the other two engineers were off fixing issues in their queue list. And yes, there was a huge argument that night about it amongst the entire staff. 

It wasn't just the team dynamics that suffered through this. Customers who called could't reach an engineer on the first try and were forced to leave a message. At the time, leaving a message at a call center was the equivalent to submitting an email form – good luck with getting a response.

It was painful all the way around – and the metrics showed it.

We needed to answer about 90% of the calls upon first contact, fix problems in a specific timeframe based on complexity, all of the standard metrics for a call center. We were doing ok – kinda sorta making the numbers – but it could have been better.

I decided to help the team resolve some of these issues – and this was basically my first Customer Experience project. I didn't know what Customer Experience was at the time. I thought I was doing a form of process engineering to help the engineers be more available to talk to customers.

How did I do this?

  • Surveys and interviews with the engineers. I talked to every engineer about the phones to understand how they viewed their shifts and their jobs. I wanted to learn how they wanted to work, their challenges and frustrations, and what made them happy with their jobs. 
  • After the interviews, I organized the information into a document and distributed the draft for review. I wanted everyone to give their thoughts and feedback and make sure this change was headed in the right direction. After all, this was to help everyone on the team work better together. 
  • Everyone was encouraged to give comments and feedback – it was a collaborative effort. This came from management too – I wasn't working alone. Everyone wanted to work in a better way.
  • We didn't want this document to be "rules" so we called it an "etiquette." It was guidance as to how to work better together and give customers better service. No one was being forced to follow it, they were choosing to follow it to work better with the team.

 

What happened as a result?

After everyone agreed to the "etiquette", the metrics improved significantly – and the team was happier.

  • Increased respect between team members – no more leaving anyone hanging, making that person feel "punished"
  • Greater collaboration – the engineers talked to each other more often 
  • Stronger teamwork to achieve a goal – exceeding expectations for metrics and setting new standards

And after a few more months, the team didn't just achieve the metric goals – they far exceeded them and set new records. Needless to say, this made for happier customers.

In the end, the team won an award – Best Complex Support.

 

Why was this so successful?

  • The team wanted the change. I don't think this initiative would have worked if the team didn't want to work better together and achieve their numbers. They wouldn't have collaborated to create the etiquette or followed it.
  • The team cared about the customers. We had a few regular callers and people knew them well. They cared that their customers were able to do a good job. If the team didn't care and want to help, this wouldn't have worked.
  • When I say "the team", I include management. If I didn't have the support of my manager and the VP to work on this – this would have gone nowhere quickly. Their support helped make this change happen.

 

When I think back to what I worked on, I thought I was helping the team, when in fact I was really helping improve the customer experience. They got better response time and service – and a happier voice at the other end of phone. 

While I was doing this, I was also working on the Web and dipping my finger into UX. I wouldn't say I totally left customer experience after this, but I did shift my focus to the customer experience in the sales cycle – just keeping a Web focus. More on this later.

How did I get into Customer Experience? My call center days.

Ask and you shall receive – even the type of customer you want

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I believe in the Law of Attraction – "like attracts like," or rather the universe provides you with what you ask for. This includes "bad" customers. This is why people tell you to carefully choose your words – it's up to you to ask for what you really want.

I got inspired to write this after reading an article by John Jantsch, Customer Loyalty Is Mostly About Choosing the Right Customers. What he wrote that got me thinking about this more:

Now, you may not exactly love the clients you’ve attracted, but that’s because you don’t realize the power you wield when it comes to “choosing” your clients. Far too many business owners feel powerless in this regard and subject themselves to serving “anyone with money” or worse “anyone they hope will pay.”

Just following money won't give you the customers you need. Sure, it helps you pay the bills, and that's important, but it's not you creating something you love and a business that will grow. You shouldn't be afraid to ask for what you really want – in fact, creating a business plan forces you to do just that.

 

Business 101: choose a target market for your product or service. In some ways, creating a business plan and getting a business started is basically asking the universe for something. 

You determine what you want to sell, refine your ideas, create a plan to get customers, get an appealing logo for your company and start emailing, promoting, and selling. You do your marketing and get the word out there. You believe that you are well on your way to get the customers you think you want.

And then the type of customers you thought you were going to get don't show up. Why?

As Jantsch writes in his article, if you re-evaluate your plans, you may realize that you are actually targeting the type of customer you want based on the experience you designed. And you realize that what you designed will not get the type of customer you originally wanted. (Read about the kids and the dance company – that's a great example of this.) 

However, looking at the customers you are getting – you did, in fact, get the customers you asked for.

I've often witnessed a company believing that they know the target customer, but the logo, Web site, messaging, etc. just aren't where they need to be to attract the type of customer desired- it is attracting someone different. Sometimes, the collateral attracts someone like the owners or manager because they are making decisions based on their own preferences rather than what is best for the business. Sometimes there are other factors involved – cost efficiencies, shaving schedules, and more.

Remember, most customers get over 5,000 marketing messages per day. They don't have the patience to absorb another message or the time to try to figure out what your message is. Keep it simple and direct. But like everything – the devil is in the details.

Here are some subtleties that I observed over the years that can subconsciously change someone's perspective about your product or service for the better.

Make sure what you are selling comes is easily communicated on your Web site, marketing collateral, messaging, logo – the works! It sounds simple – but it isn't.

  • Your logo should connect to what the company does. It's subtle, but it confuses customers when they don't understand how your logo represents what you do and your company's name. Most customers subconsciously connect a logo with what a company does. If the logo doesn't do this, people won't understand what you are doing or why – they will be confused at a subconscious level and just leave. The price you pay for being vague in hope of greater opportunity may be high – no opportunity.
  • Be clear and specific about what your company does. How many times have you gone to a Web site to learn about what a company does and all you learn is – well, you don't quite learn anything. There is no product or service list. There is no executive summary paragraph. That's because the company doesn't want to risk losing out on your business. But to a customer – he doesn't see the company as reliable or responsible because it can't simply explain what it does. This should be easy enough. Confusion can cost you opportunity and dollars.
  • Do you dress nicely to visit customers? If you do then you need snappy marketing collateral. Even the best players in the word-of-mouth world need a great Web site and business cards. Your marketing materials are like clothes for your company. If your clothes don't look nice, people won't take you seriously. Investing $500 on a decent logo will shift the perception people have of your company. They will take you seriously and be more open to work with you. That $500 investment suddenly is invaluable. It's like a good suit – and who complains about buying a great suit for work?
  • You have a professional business – have professionally designed logo. Sure, you may not have budget to get a great logo, Web site, or a brochure. But at the same time, someone could be subconsciously driven away because they think you have a hobby company that is only open on the weekends or crazy hours. Or they may assume that you don't take your own business seriously enough to invest to get a half-way decent professional logo done.  (See the suit example – employers sometimes think this during interviews). There are a number of do-it-yourself sites out there (Wix, Squarespace, Site2you, Homestead) that you can use to create a professional looking site. There aren't a lot of excuses for this anymore.

Give your customers what they need to be successful when they work with you – not what you think they need. 

  • Make your contact information easy to find. My pet peeve – companies that hide their phone numbers on their site.  When I can't find a company's phone number to call them about a product or service, I figure that it doesn't want new customers. I also figure that it doesn't value its existing customers – they just don't want anyone to reach them. Your message to them is loud and clear – don't call us. 
  • Respect your customer's time – organize your Web site and store so that it is easy to navigate. No one wants to waste a bunch of time trying to figure out your business and how you work. Doing this makes it clear that your business is about you – and who wants to work with that? Look at this from a customer's perspective – if a site or store is complicated and confusing, what would it be like to do business with you? Customers do think about such things. 
  • Ask your customers how you can help them  so you can serve them better. Asking customers how you can help them – either in your store or online or through surveys – make them feel like they are part of your business. You care enough to get their opinions, and it builds a relationship with them. The best feedback comes from customers you have "wronged" so to speak. Take that as an opportunity to improve. This is the only way to know if you are truly serving them and that they are happy. Otherwise, you can only assume, and we know where assumptions get us.

These are just a few ideas for taking your business more seriously so that you get the customers you want. If you communicate clearly to customers what you are offering, most likely, the customers you truly want will find their way to you. 

How have you found the customers you wanted? I look forward to hearing your stories!

Ask and you shall receive – even the type of customer you want

Give customers a place to rest in your Zen-garden customer experience

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We hear or see at least 5,000 marketing messages per day. This is probably why we don't listen as well as we did in the past – we are constantly being presented with information. If we don't learn how to pick and choose what we listen to, we will be overwhelmed and drown in the noise. 

Even Mr. Universe from Firefly knew this: "You can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere."

I think many of us in this messaging deluge get reconditioned, learning that it is more valuable to keep talking – pushing messages – and add to the noise. Looking at the phenomena of Facebook and social media, many of us are trying to get noticed (so a search on Google for "getting noticed on social media" and there are a number of results…and look at all of the blogs – me included!). We, as individuals, become like most companies issuing marketing/branding messages and continue throwing our own information and messages out there in a desperate attempt to be heard; when in fact, the more we communicate, the more we blend into the white noise.

And by continuing to push our personal brand/message out there,  we continue to train our children to listen only to their own voices rather than listening to the wisdom offered from each other. Our old ways are lost. 

A complicated problem has emerged.

This is why simplicity is key to user experience and customer interactions and interfaces. We crave zen interactions in our lives – places to rest and meditate, listening to silence and nature. Rock gardens. Coi gardens. Places just to think and be. 

Believe it or not, being zen with your customer interactions will benefit you.

  • Help the customer listen to his own needs and help him communicate them to you. Guide the customer to complete key actions on the site. Make them easy to find, clearly communicate in direct language. Basic UX principles that we all know work.
  • Keep the customer focused on getting his needs met – one step at a time. Only provide links and options to customers that are directly related to the action at hand. Same as the previous bullet – basic UX.
  • Provide the customer a place to rest from all of the messaging and information inputs – provide the right information at the right time. Don't over-communicate. Keep instructions direct and simple. Provide messages to customers to help them make the next decision to complete a task. We know from usability testing that customers don't read. At least put what's important on the page to get them there.
  • Encourage the customer to slow down and focus on you for a few minutes. Make the experience enjoyable and visually appealing. Keep it simple, direct and clean. Cut the clutter. We all know that clean designs are more effective at keeping customers engaged rather than too many colors or images. Keep it simple.
  • Get a dialog going with a customer, learn what he wants and needs and provide information about how you can help. Online chat helps (it's an effective tool to help customers get what they need). So do customer forums and other social tools. Ask customers for their feedback beyond surveys. They will appreciate your efforts to include them and listen to what they need (again, listening is becoming a lost art today).
  • Listen to your customer's actions on a site or call center – stop all of the words. Customers tell you what they want through their actions at your site. Read your metrics. Get a customer interaction tool. Learn what they want and make incremental improvements to give it to them. Tealeaf exists for a reason – as do other metrics companies. This is why – it's cheap usability testing.

Being more zen with your customers will get you more attention – and your customers will appreciate the rest from information overload. Most likely, they will appreciate that they don't need to communicate over you to get what they need. 

Give customers a place to rest in your Zen-garden customer experience

Bad customer experience – or just bad business?

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Recently, I called IBM on behalf of HP to get information about Tealeaf. I think Tealeaf is an awesome product – and HP could really benefit from it. When I went to IBM's site, I tried to find a phone number to call. After searching on their site for about 15 minutes to find a number for sales – and finding nothing of the sort except a form – I filled out the form in hopes someone from sales would contact me.

Ah – the dreaded sales form that often goes off to a black hole and no one contacts me – ever.

I didn't get a phone call, but I did get a nurturing email a couple of weeks later, inviting me back to the site to read another PDF.

And they asked me to fill out another form. *sigh*

After poking around their site for 30 minutes or so, I finally found a way to contact sales on their site (as well as contact any employee I could think of – but commentary for that experience will be held for another day). I called the number on the site, a human answered the phone, and then the human told me it would be a few days before someone from Tealeaf to call me back.

Hmm. 

Now, some people would say this is a bad customer experience. I disagree. I think IBM is just practicing bad business.

What is good business?

  • Having a phone number/chat window easily available for a customer to contact you
  • Answering a sales call
  • Calling a prospect back within 24 hours of initial contact

These aren't things out of the ordinary. These are baseline operations that any company should do to get business.

What's good customer experience?

  • Someone answering the phone in a pleasant way
  • The company helping a customer out – after purchase
  • Customers can find answers to their questions easily on the site or thru a phone call with someone who is prepared to answer his questions

What's the difference between just doing business and customer experience? 

  • Doing business means that you are doing the bare minimum to get sales. 
  • Customer experience is going that extra mile beyond the basics to get more money or repeat sales.

Not calling back a lead is in my opinion, plain and simple stupidity – bad business.

Calling back a lead and being unprepared and uninformed about a product is boneheaded – but it really is just a bad customer experience.

We need to stop giving excuses for bad business practices, classifying those problems as bad customer experiences.

  • Bad business is people not doing their jobs, causing a company not to be as competitive as it could be
  • Bad customer experience is people not doing their jobs well enough to help the company get ahead of the competition. They compete – minimally.

Customer Experience is how you do something – not just doing that activity.

Thoughts? I look forward to hearing your opinions. 

Bad customer experience – or just bad business?