ideas worth stealingThe client that matters most
As a consultant, there are two clients on any given design project. One is the business that hired you. The other is the end user.
Both are important, but one matters more than the other.
Today, I was involved in a conversation about a company that intentionally maintains a poor user experience on its commerce site in the interest of driving people to call customer support. Once they call, those crafty customer support people can start in with the up-sells. You may have called to get a problem solved, but their hope is that you’ll spend some cash on a few other things before you hang up.
When posed with this insight into the company’s business model, one designer suggested that we perhaps feel some unease because the model appears to be in opposition to the best interest of the end user. He asked where that leaves us as designers. After all, the business is our client, not the end user, right?
Well, no.
The business that hires you does so for a reason: your design expertise. If you churn out designs based purely on what they want, you tell your client that you’re essentially a factory worker with a copy of Photoshop.
If you do what they hired you to do—be an expert on something—then you’re worth every penny, and you build your reputation and credibility.
Yes, you need the business to inform your decisions and share information about its market, audience, history, and so on. You need them to share their insights and ideas. You need to work together to achieve the goals of the project. But if those goals are aimed at anything other than a good end user experience, then you’re working for the wrong client. The people who sign your checks won’t have checks to sign unless they provide something valuable and good to their customers.
The businesses that hire you want you to be honest. They want you to tell them what you really think. They want you to talk them out of bad ideas. They want to put out something that’s great for their customers.
The end user is always your client. If not, you should fire the one that hired you.
Posted by Robert on May 7th, 2008
2 comments
[...] his blog post “The Client That Matters Most,” Robert Hoekman talks about a company who intentionally maintains a bad user experience on [...]
The hard part is showing a business client that is convinced their misleading user experience is misguided and likely less effective.
In the example above you mention a client trying to get potential customers to call their call center via misleading user experience. I would wager a more direct approach promoting the service/expertise of their call center would be more effective. The problem isn’t that the business wants to up-sell, the problem is in the dishonesty of the experience.
It’s a design problem that can be solved, but only if the business philosophy changes. I wonder how many return customers they have.