đ” People and Products, workinâ together đ¶
One time I was at a party, met some guy working on his robotics Ph.D, and was trying to describe my current job. (Remember parties, everyone?)
Peter: âWell, some of what I do involves pricing, some business analysis. A lot of it is market research for new features.â
Some Guy: âCouldnât a machine or an algorithm do that?â
P: âWell, someone would have to define the behavioral triggers, or tell the algo what a good outcome isâŠâ
SG: âI mean, you could design a program for that.â (and so on and so on)
I think he was trying to make a point about the nature of jobs, but it was a little frustrating. I felt like the guy who gets feisty in Office Space when the consultants question him about his job.
It did make me think quite a bit about the value that each role in a company creates. Some functions can and should be automated more â freeing up the teams to handle edge cases, strategic planning, or other project work.
But really, one of the biggest areas of opportunity for your product team? Itâs the business tools that let people skills shine, and enable human problem solving for customers. Seriously, think about how to grease the wheels there. Sometimes youâre building from scratch, sometimes configuring an out of the box solution to your needs, sometimes integrating the two.
When most people think of products, they may be thinking of what gets sold to customers, or optimizing for growth, or features of an app. âProducts for internal business usersâ roll up to a cost center for plenty of people, something to minimize if possible. And I think itâs a short sighted view. Boosting human employees is a major win for customers. And not in some distant future with Google Glass, self driving cars, android workforces and other futurist predictions. Major win, today.
I worked at Starbucks HQ for a few years, and they understand this incredibly well. If youâre a customer, youâre familiar with the app, the loyalty cards and star program. But thereâs a backbone of internal tech that helps those baristas sling drinks, accept payment and send you home with the right caffeine fix.
The point of sale machines (aka cash registers), the card scanner tool, the series of ipads and iphones that let supervisors track inventory and report errors. When these go down, you as the customer, feel it. And when these get upgraded or changed, they check with the baristas FIRST â to understand the impact in the field. âWill changing this menu actually help you be faster, or get in the way?â etc etc.
Those baristas are the engines of the whole company. Starbucks focuses on good benefits and retaining these folks â because they have the technical coffee skills and the personal relationships with each customer.
As a result the average barista sticks around for a much longer tenure than most retail employees. Tons of SBUX HQ employees âcame from storesâ â aka spent time in the trenches as a barista or supervisor. And they ALL have stories about keeping customers happy.
The result is that the Starbucks app is one of the highest ranked in North America for $ spent.
One story that still shocks meâŠone former barista used to open the store, and when she saw certain sets of headlights at 5:30 am outside she knew it was âa specific regularâ and to start their specific drink. Imagine that, but all across North America.
Iâve been plenty of other places where this is true as well. Take Nordstrom. I spent the better part of 2 years working at headquarters to launch an exciting new fulfillment center (or FC) with next gen technology and new processes. FC management was building new teams from scratch, to serve a large market at scale with ecommerce shipments. I led one aspect of the product team for the supporting technology. Our BEST resources when we designed these processes were the people in our existing FCs, serving customers there for 20+ years.
Existing power users gave us an efficient model for âproblem solveâ - basically how to set up the detective work these packages would need, to make sure the right item got to a customer and that any mystery label/item issues got fixed. We were able to set up technology for new users based on these recommendations. These folks in existing buildings were VITAL, and their ongoing work is a big part of why Nordstrom blew analyst expectations out of the water for Q3 2020. Even during COVID.
Improving the technology used in warehouses can impact your margin in a big way â basically making the sales you DO get more profitable. Imagine the same team of hands able to handle 2000 outbound packages in a day instead of 1500. Or bringing down a failure rate by 20% across a million foot FC.
And itâs more than FC technology for ecommerce. Retail storefronts, technology and processes matter just as much. Plenty of people (like, every millennial I know) âshowroomâ in stores before buying online.
Iâve heard the actual Nordstrom family, talking about how online sales in an area are often a function of performance in the store. And some people are always going to shop in a store then buy online, so why focus on âchannel coercion.â (their phrase)
Rather than building tools and processes to drive a sale on the spot, the Nordstrom internal products let sellers focus on the individual customer with things like tailoring tools, a recommendation engine, and point of sale tools & processes to enable returns, browsing and in-store pickup.
Itâs not just Fortune 500 companies where this is true â Iâve seen the right tools show a 10X impact in the Nonprofit sector as well. One of my first technology projects was a complicated cloud CRM solution for the American Red Cross as part of an agency marketing program. Customer Relationship Management is a huge boost to marketing and mass fundraising teams in the right hands, with the right database.
And when that CRM breaks? Boy do the fundraising teams hear about it. âYou werenât supposed to email me. You sent me something with the wrong name. You asked me for $10,000 in junk mail!â Bridges get burned by a bad customer experience due to this internal tool. Even if the homepage is up and a donation page works fine.
And when everything goes right â with the right donor stewardship team and the right techâŠthe results are something else in fundraising. I had a local market client at this agency who built custom database apps to drive quick onboarding and upgrading of new prospects. An example: routing all first time donations of $100+ from over the weekend to a relationship managers desk on Monday morning for personalized outreach.
In another case, one local market nonprofit client of mine had a significant boost to all their mass fundraising campaigns that coincided 100% with one particular office managerâs tenure. It started when she joined, and ended when she left. It was a head-scratching mystery for montths.
It turned out, that every day she would fill the hours between some office tasks by calling the highest value new donor that day personally just to thank them, with no ask. For the small, local, donor base of this nonprofit, that extra effort was a huge hit. In turn, the next piece of fundraising mail was 2x or 3x more likely to be responded to. Once the nonprofit figured this out, they set up tools to recreate this effect on purpose.
Right now I work at a startup. Iâm excited, I love what we do, and I feel like part of the team after 5 months in role. Startups are always looking for automation tools, and how to be scrappy with resources.
In the direct to consumer world, the right customer support is essential. Especially when youâre selling perishables with a narrow window for arrival and delays. Our Customer Care team knows the specifics of the farms, different cuts of meat, grades of wagyu, even the oz. bands of lobster tail size. They understand our shipping practices, our shopping experience and how to keep subscribers happy.
The best thing we can do for these frontline experts is give them the right tools. And it also happens to be one of the best things we can do for our customers. Without going into too much detail, we focus on getting out of their way so they can make the magic happen.
High, high correlation between positive customer outcomes (retention, net promoter score, etc) and how well we set up this team for success with the right internal products.
Seriously, if you havenât looked already â how are you empowering these human users with the right technology? You will thank yourself later â if the good vibes from delivering value for colleagues isnât enough!
