Recently I had a conversation with a prospective client about the user experience of internal applications.  The question was about the ROI of having a good user experience of an internal application.  While I may write another article on the math side of the ROI question, the conversation revolved around how the ‘internal’ application and experience isn’t always internal.

In my last blog post, I wrote about the need for your software / personnel / any customer experience to provide a consistent user experience. I wrote about an airline attendant who was less than helpful to me.  That said, this rep was saddled by a computer system that clearly made it difficult for her to do her job.

David Armano wrote a short piece about Randy Pausch’s $100,000 salt and pepper shakers, and quoted Randy:

“If I sent a child into one of your stores with a broken salt and pepper shaker today, would your policies allow your workers to be kind enough to replace it?”

To paraphrase that, “if a customer called your call center with a problem today, would your software allow your workers to take care of the problem.” This is my single biggest reason why I believe the user experience of internal applications are so critical.  Very few applications today, whether ERP systems, time sheets, or CRM systems, are so silo’d that they only impact the users themselves.  A bad user experience, e.g. rigid rules, antiquated systems, disconnected systems, bad data, etc., for a user of the system, rarely impacts that user only.  If that user has to interact with the customer, make decisions on behalf of the customer, or provide customer data to a manager, then a bad user experience will have downstream impacts on your customers.

The next time you are thinking about whether to improve your internal systems, ask yourself how internal those systems truly are.

I just finished up a solid month of travel, and my experiences during my travels led me to write this post. Whether a personal user experience or an online one, the consistency of what you present to the user is critical.

I had flight plans with my son set up in March. Two weeks before I was to leave, I had to reschedule the flights to a day earlier, and use some frequent flyer miles to offset the large increase in price. I called the reservation desk and spoke to a customer service representative. The call took a painful 45 minutes for her to accomplish the task of rearranging my flight and applying the frequent flyer miles, but here is what she did during the 45 minutes that made what could have been a painful experience a bearable, if not pleasing, experience:

* She was pleasant. It is amazing how far this can go to help.
* Several times she had to put me on hold, but I was never on hold for more than 5 minutes before she would “check-in” on me and let me know she was still there, and still working on my request. This is critical. Think about when you are stuck on a plane and the pilot says “it will be about 5 minutes” and 20 minutes later he has not come back on the PA to let you know what is going on. Users do not like losing complete control whether on your web site or in any interaction. Her simple act of checking in with me calmed me down because I knew she would be back on in another 5 minutes to give me an update.
* She sincerely apologized. Not every time, not for everything. But for the amount of time the process took and for having to place me on hold for so long.
* She didn’t blame her company, her manager, her software application to try and get me on her side. Because I am like most users, at the end of the day, I don’t care about who is to blame, I just want my request fulfilled.

So I began my trip feeling very positive towards my airline. Those good feelings would not last the trip. On my return flight there was bad weather. The flight was delayed and I had a connecting flight. The gate agent would not provide any updates at all and said we needed to go back out to the ticket counter to get updates and reschedule. I dutifully went to the counter, waited one hour in line, and waited another 30 minutes at the desk with the agent. She was rude, and acted as though I was the problem. In addition, while I gave her all my information she could not or would not provide me with any information whatsoever about my connecting flight.

Photo owned by specialkrb (cc)

I went back to the gate (having to go through security again) hoping that my connecting flight would be delayed as well. On a whim I called my wife and asked her to do some additional research for me. It turns out that my ‘connecting flight’ was the same plane that I was on, i.e. if my plane was late, it didn’t matter, because the same plane was taking me home!

The frustration here is that either the gate agent or ticket agent could have spent one minute, looked at my information and told me that, and I would have had no anxiety because I would know I was getting home.

Now I’m not here to tell my airline horror story, everyone has them, and it’s a tough business. My point of this story is that it is not enough to have a good user experience here and there at your company, or on your site or your software application. The goodwill can be easily washed away if the consistency of the experience is dramatically inconsistent.