Managing Great Expectations in a digital age

A few recent events have triggered conversations with clients and industry colleagues on the topic of expectations, and expectation management. It sounds like (and probably is) a clinical, political even cynical term, but yet it plays such a vital role in our everyday lives.

Three separate scenarios arose over the last few days:

1. The online senses in Australia

2. The reaction to website user feedback amongst one of our clients teams

3. The nervousness that often occurs around user testing time in the project lifecycle

Yes, these are all web related, but more importantly they are expectation related: Exactly what does a ‘good’ outcome look like?

A recent article in the age highlights some of the perceived difficulties with the online version of the census, the article title reads: More than 670,000 households fail to submit census correctly. Which at a glance sounds pretty poor; that’s a lot of houses, individuals and data. But not so dramatic in light of the fact that over 2 million people used the system and that 30% of the Australian population is expected to submit their details via the web. The error rate is relatively high, but the engagement rate is fantastic.

Taking the census online is a bold initiative; it is not one that is going to be glitch free. Let’s be honest, nothing new (or old for that matter) is glitch free, not even the mighty Apple.

In a more modest example that is closer to home, we have recently been in conversation with clients who are worried about to indicators within their business:

1. Complaints from users about their website
2. Level of uptake of certain online payment options

I cannot go into detail, but the principles we can explore.

It is important to remember that ‘feedback’ is predominantly negative where there is a relatively low level relationship in place; we have road rage at one end of the spectrum (no relationship) and careful treatment of friends’ feelings at the other.

Website users seem (to us) to express discontent consistently not because they are all enraged, but because the ones that were happy or even content are off doing more important things than patting us on the back.

Usually a tiny proportion of people provide feedback, and unfortunately the desire to leave it is often generated from a negative experience. To make things more confusing the negative experience does not even need to be connected to the website, it could just as easily be the nagging child in the background or a crappy drive to the office.

I argue that adoption rates are the antithesis of complaints; the fact that people are using a system is a good indicator that it is working and they are relatively happy with it. There are many caveats to this which I will not go into here, however if you have a system up and running and it has been adopted by a healthy percentage of your target audience (30% for the census – I would say >50% for other systems where a processes is not optional), then it is time to stop and see the woods as well as the trees. This is particularly true if you have created a new system that your users have never seen before.

The expectation issues here are:

1. We see established systems everyday, and the look simple… from the outside. So therefore we tend to expect our new systems to be simple, easy, cheep and error free …. but the reality is that they are often none of these
2. Regardless of how close to perfect your systems are some people will always hate them with a passion. We actively resist change; our lives are busy enough without the unexpected need to learn something new just to interact with you on a website. Even though we might love it later (ATMs, Internet banking etc) change is not generally enjoyed, so be ready for push back

So, take-aways:

• No system is perfect, particularly new ones – get used to the idea and let others in your organisation know too. It is key that execs and senior project staff understand this and communicate it to others
• Complaints are inevitable – but our reaction to them is not, particularly if we are expecting them
• Feedback is one source of ideas and inspiration – it should not be ignored or swept under the carpet. There is a cost to the customer giving it which we should value, even when the feedback is negative
• Wide spread adoption of a system will take time – it requires moving people to change and that is not a system function, but it can be helped by good communications and assistance

If you need with system adoption or getting your organisations ‘corporate mind’ around imperfection, please drop us a line. Our phone and email systems are up 99% of the time!