“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”
– Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury

Image courtesy of @fakegrimlock and @ericries blog

It’s a new year. And even though it’s mostly an arbitrary point in time, there’s a distinct you-should-do-something-important-right-now feeling to this time of year. Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking about making some changes for quite some time.  As the title of this post alluded to with zero subtlety, I’ve resigned my position as Director of User Experience at TheLadders. I’ve spent a rewarding three and a half years over on Varick St. helping make the job search and placement world a little bit more effective, efficient, easy to use, friendly and hopefully successful for hundreds of thousands of job seekers and employers. In the process I’ve built an amazingly talented team (of whom I’m incredibly proud), integrated UX as a core discipline, built and honed an effective Agile UX methodology and earned a seat at the management table. I’ve learned much during my tenure and the time has come to take those ideas to a broader audience.

I considered many options when thinking about the next thing and, not surprisingly, it was the entrepreneurial spirit of TheLadders that inspired me to start my own business. Along with two ridiculously talented and smart partners, Josh Seiden and Giff Constable, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Proof. Proof is a product innovation and design studio applying lean principles to traditional product development. Our goal will be to work with corporations seeking innovative product design but unsure how to achieve it within their current processes. We will be product focused (not deliverable focused – no surprise there) and intent on not only building products but also teaching the process along the way. In addition, we will offer workshops and coaching for select clients.

I’m very excited about this new venture and what 2012 holds in store for us. It’s a new set of skills to master and a new way of working from which to learn. Like every other entrepreneur out there, our success is in our own hands.

I’ll miss the friends I made at TheLadders and the camaraderie that grew out of my time there. I wish them the best of luck. Time for me to build some wings.

If you’d like to work with us or just learn more, email me at jeff@proof-nyc.com and please follow Proof at @proof_nyc so you can keep track of what we’re up to.

Happy new year!

[Jeff]

I recently bought a car. It’s a 2007 Mustang GT. It’s metallic gray with custom wheels and I loved it the minute that I saw it on the Paramus Chevrolet dealership lot. Not too long after that serendipitous sighting I was the new owner of that car. The Mustang was perfect inside and out with three exceptions:

1. The custom after-market stereo seemed to work but did not emit any sound
2. It only came with one key
3. The manual (hey, I love manuals) was missing

Hotness from the right

My salesman at Paramus Chevrolet promised that all three of these things would be taken care of after I purchased the car. We even wrote a “we owe you” slip to ensure that no one at the dealership “forgot” what was agreed on at point of sale.

I returned a week later to have an amplifier installed in the Mustang to make the radio work. Turns out that the radio was also a CD player (nice) and a navigation system (even nicer) but, although now making sound, the face plate would not retract fully making it impossible to place a CD in the player nor was it possible to switch out the West Coast navigation DVD for an East Coast one. This rendered the navigation system unusable.

Hotness from the left

So, to recap — I am now the proud owner of a beautiful sports car (the kind I dreamed of as a teenager) and yet the three things that were agreed upon for post-sale disposition have gone unresolved and have left me with an unsettling feeling about the dealership’s motivations and legitimacy. After many unresponsive email attempts and phone calls, I tracked down the sales manager. He told me that I should go to Best Buy and find out what a new version of the car stereo would cost and that they would split the cost with me — $300. Installation was another $200. So, at this point the dealership is squabbling with me over $500, a key and a manual — ALL of which was promised to be taken care after I purchased the car. I spent over $20k at their establishment only to have my purchase experience and ANY word-of-mouth praising I might do eliminated in an instant — over $500, a key and a manual.

I continued to send emails, voicemails and the occasional drive-by to see if I can get them to move on any of these items but the result is always no response or no budging on any item. So, Paramus Chevrolet, you’ve lost me as a customer. I will not tell my friends to purchase cars in your lot. Here’s why:

• In an information-at-the-ready world where anyone can provide any product or service to anyone else the CORE differentiation is customer service. That service can only be delivered by humans and it’s those interactions with those humans that drives the perception of the experience with your dealership.
• The best type of transaction is one that instills trust. As a used car dealer you are starting in the red. You must work extra hard to earn a level of trust from your customers that make them feel good about dropping tens of thousands of dollars in your establishment.
• Hassle-free experience. That is your goal. That’s what you should strive for. Making it nearly impossible for me to get a hold of my salesman, his manager or anyone else to resolve this only exacerbates the issue.
• Any sales or influence book will tell you that word-of-mouth referrals are THE MOST valuable thing you can gain from your customers. Why would you risk so much future revenue over $500? In retrospect, it makes even less sense than before.

Case in point — recently at my workplace, TheLadders.com, we reworked our refund policy so that getting your money back from us was hassle free and painless. We want to provide good service but in the event it doesn’t meet your needs or expectations we want you to leave happy as well. As soon as the changes for this policy went into effect, our customer satisfaction ratings jumped over 30%. Even customers who were not happy with our product, left happy with our service.
Losing a customer is easy. Gaining and keeping a customer is hard work but the payoff is exponential if done right. Customer service is for the long term. Thinking about the short-term gain/loss ensures that you’ll continue to work even harder to gain new customers. For me, it’s too late. Paramus Chevrolet has lost me as a future customer but perhaps the next time this happens, $500 won’t be too much to spend to keep that customer and earn their trust.
[Jeff]

I own two cars – a Chrysler and a Volkswagen. Periodically they both need to be serviced. I go to the dealerships because of warranty requirements. The Volkswagen dealer is also a Porsche and Audi dealer making it a far more upscale place to visit then the Chrysler (and Dodge) dealer. The facilities are radically different in quality, setup, appearance and amenities. Yet, I despise going to the VW dealer and really don’t mind going to Chrysler. Why? Customer service.

At Chrysler, I have the same representative helping me every time. He knows me, my wife, my kids, my warranty and most importantly my car. I walk in and am instantly greeted with “hi, Jeff” and “what can I do for you today?” The estimates are clear, expectations are properly set, the conversation is polite and friendly, issues are resolved quickly without hassle (and typically in my favor) and the occasional “oh, I noticed your wiper was bad so I swapped it out, no charge” -type of things also go on. The facility is grimey, old and there’s nowhere for my kids to play. Yet, I really don’t mind going there.

Contrast that with VW. The reps there don’t know me (though I’ve been there at least half a dozen times), force me to make appointments that are not convenient to my schedule, ALWAYS find something to jack up my estimate to several hundred bucks, talk shit (seriously) about other customers while we wait and do a horrible job of setting expectations about work and timing. I hate going there. I hate giving them my money.

The difference is customer service. Your service can be the most well-designed, upscale, modern and smooth experience but if the people you have staffing that service don’t uphold the ideals of that design the whole thing is flushed down the toilet. The interpersonal interactions we have with your service – whether in person or virtual – determine our perception of that experience. And, as my blog title notes, perception IS the experience.

Customer service can manifest in a variety of ways — it doesn’t have to be purely interpersonal interaction. For example, your web site can remember me, what I’ve done before, what I usually do, what I’ve bought before and offer pre-emptive support based on those activities. That’s customer service. And that’s the differentiator.

[Jeff]

In a startup environment the mantra of “push early, push often” is often heralded as the right product development course. The theory is one driven by the Agile model – get value to customers in the form of working code as quickly as possible, get feedback, iterate and push more code. This also jives well with another popular mantra, “Fail early, fail often.” Similar? If we were to use (ok, not really) the transitive property (if a=b and b=c, you get the rest of it) you come up with the following formula:

Push (early, often) = Fail (early, often)

I’m not interested in getting into a debate about the merits of Agile. I’m actually quite bought in to the value it brings to a software shop and believe that UX design can be properly integrated into the process. What I think this equation speaks to is the image of your newly-birthed company in the market. This is also known as your brand.

Getting to minimal viable product and pushing code live may get you “to market” fast but the risks of doing so before you’ve reached minimum desirable product can outweigh the benefits. Prior to launch, your startup’s brand is a tabula rasa. It’s yours to own and shape and, as the old slogan goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Even early adopters are sensitive to the presentation of a new product. It doesn’t have to do 50 things. It only has to do 1 thing but it has to do it elegantly, efficiently and in a manner that speaks to its audience – sophistication, fun, exploration, etc. Early adopters (with the blogosphere counted among them) are often the loudest voices on the Web and can easily make or break your debut. At the very least they can put up enough of a stink to create a brand and PR hurdle to overcome before you’re even out of private Beta.

Consider the whole experience you’re pushing live before doing so. Yes, your product does what it’s supposed to do but how does it meet the minimum desirability standards of your target audience? The push early/often mantra gets your team focused on the details. But is anyone looking at the big picture? The whole experience?

It’s critical to involve design thinking in this process (as Dave McClure points out here) from a variety of angles. Ensure you’ve considered that first impression before actually going out in the market. Make a good enough one and the market (and blogosphere) will be far more forgiving to the updates you continue to push out. Make a poor first impression and each move will be attributed to you “fixing your product/brand/image” in the marketplace.

[Jeff]