Experience Design: the New Battleground for Revenue Growth by Kelly Erickson

ISO-PODB and Beyond

When Shaun contacted me to write a guest-post about Experience Design, I was up to my ears in work. I dug out immediately and started to think about what I’d like to say to Capable Blog readers, because of one thing Shaun wrote:
“…experience design is becoming more and more important because the customer expects everybody’s product to basically “work,” so this will be one of the new battlegrounds for business”

The new battleground. It is indeed. I love quality improvement, the methods and the results. As I told Shaun one of my first proper jobs was as director of TQM for a branch of a home improvement chain. W. Edwards Deming’s theories have been with me ever since. Better procedures, better products, measurable improvements, all great — but all on the inside. The battle is for the hearts, minds, and (let’s be cold) wallets of the customer, and quality improvements are not the battleground

The Bad News

TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma… your customers don’t care. Even the ones who are required to make sure they deal with companies who are certified don’t care. Nobody buys because your productivity is awesome or you’re down to 2 flaws per zillion. Let me repeat: Your customers don’t care

“Quality Is Job 1” is a tired tagline (even Ford doesn’t use it anymore, as far as I can tell from a quick internet search) that is just not in tune with what your customers are begging you for

Quality, folks, is everyone’s job one. That’s the Price of Doing Business,
or as I like to call it, PODB. The customer expects your product to be right, your people to be efficient, and your price to be competitive. Justraising the quality issue can sometimes backfire. Quality is so expected that saying “we are quality” makes me wonder if maybe you’re not. What if a hospital said, “we are clean?” – would you worry less, or more? You can’t compete on quality because the customer isn’t listening to you. In a marketplace crowded with messages, shouting “we’re really, really good” along with everyone else is really, really lame
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