Don't Just Observe Customer Pain Points; EXPERIENCE Them!

When I joined Staples as a young MBA graduate, I spent part of my first week working in one of the retail locations.  I worked in the checkout lane, unloaded shipments, stocked shelves, and answered customer questions.  Tom Stemberg, Staples' founder and CEO, believed that we had to walk in the shoes of our store associates and interact directly with customers to understand the business. He was right.  I was reminded of that experience when I read a recent Fast Company story by Christine de Wendel, CEO of sunday, a company that provides a payment platform to restaurants.  De Wendel insists that every employee must work a restaurant shift during the onboarding process. She explains why: 

Using our industry as an example, the restaurant space can’t be disrupted from a distance. It’s intensely human. A server manages six tables, remembers who wanted dressing on the side, tracks which kitchen orders are running late, and still needs to radiate warmth when checking on the anniversary couple at table twelve. When we ask them to adopt new technology, we’re not just changing their workflow, we’re asking them to trust us with their tips, their table turn times, and their relationship with guests.  You can’t design for that kind of stakes without understanding them viscerally.

De Wendel argues that there is a critical distinction between OBSERVING customer pain points and EXPERIENCING them yourself.  It is not sufficient to just interview users or watch them in action.  You have to live their experience, filled with its obstacles, emotions, and frustrations.  

Perhaps the most interesting point that De Wendel makes in her article is a statistic about employee turnover.  She explains, 

"Here’s what surprised me most: this policy has become one of our best retention and recruiting tools.  We’ve had a 94% retention rate among employees who complete the restaurant shift program, compared to 78% at my previous tech companies. Employees consistently rank it as one of their most valuable onboarding experiences."