Interesting.
We would all probably agree that the actual words of the quote probably speak more to the type of experience we DO NOT want people to have when they interact with anything Saint Mary's Press. So, you may wonder why the quote is on the site and why I went so far as to write a whole post on it?
Sharing a couple positive interactions with colleagues may help to illustrate how I came to understand the truth of this quote.
As you know the 24/7 customer service phone travels with a few different people. One day, many weeks ago, I e-mailed Joanie (our customer care manager) asking if she could take the 24/7 customer service phone for me one weekend when I had to attend a class. She was under no obligation to take it and I could have understood her not wanting to take it--she's already on call on lot. But-
She e-mailed back, “I’d be delighted to.”
Not long after that, I had another experience where I asked Rosa a question.
She also replied, “I’d be delighted to…”.
Wow! What an unexpected response. My interactions with Joanie and Rosa have always been good, but this particular response surprised me (especially in the midst of attending to other e-mails that day). The response was surprising and unexpected. And nice. Both times, the response made me stop and think, "Really?".
Although I knew our customer care team uses this phrase on the phone with customers I wondered if maybe this was a new part of the brand experience they were adding to e-mail. Their response made the interaction seem even easier.
Although I knew our customer care team uses this phrase on the phone with customers I wondered if maybe this was a new part of the brand experience they were adding to e-mail. Their response made the interaction seem even easier.
Not long after these two experiences, I ran across the quote about the grumpy salesperson and immediately thought, "If bad websites are like grumpy salespeople, then good websites must be like Joanie and Rosa --delighted to help people.
I considered again my response to that interaction, the surprise and unexpectedness, the sense of "ease" just because they were delighted to help me. Upon reflection, I realized that this experience of surprise at their delight in assisting me- is similar to that feeling of surprise when a website is really easy to use or intuitive...it's like the system itself is saying, "I'm delighted to help you". So I turned Jakob Nielsen's quote around:
"A Good Website is like a Salesperson Who is Delighted to Help you"
So I wondered further, "Are all of our websites like a salesperson who is delighted to help people?
"What if all of our websites and products, processes and services conveyed through their ease of use that they were delighted to help people? How would the site or book or service look? How different would the customer's satisfaction level be?
"What if all of our websites and products, processes and services conveyed through their ease of use that they were delighted to help people? How would the site or book or service look? How different would the customer's satisfaction level be?
It's something to think about…
*Note: my thanks to Joanie and Rosa for giving me permission to share these accounts.
That's always been a favorite quote of mine. Here's my perspective on it (as a usability engineer):
ReplyDeletehttps://quotableusability.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-bad-website-is-like-grumpy.html