A client said a funny thing: “When we get your voice tracks, we don’t have to do anything to them.” It had never occurred to me that a client should have to “do anything” to a track. That’s my job. I’m the alleged audio specialist.
More recently I was trying to download a piece of software I’d bought. I clicked for Step 1 (out of about 17) and the page that was supposed to appear, didn’t. Now I’m lost. After literally hours of talking to the dealer, looking at the FAQ, starting over from Step 1 and getting nowhere, I finally got the file somehow by clicking links at random.
“How frustrating,” I wrote to the software company. “I’m not a software giant, yet my clients can download files easily.” That’s when I understood that the reason the Colors FTP download process is so easy is that I kept pressure on my web guys to make it easy. We did the work on our end. We made sure that you don’t need a certain kind of computer, or this afternoon’s version of the software. You just click it.
We all learned this concept as children, right? When someone asks for the scissors, you don’t fling the shears across the room, ninja-star-style. You close them, and pass them handle-first. You make it easy and safe and painless for the other person to receive the scissors. Maybe this is simplistic, but it seems to me that sometimes we can get too wrapped up in thinking outside the box about continuous improvement. The customer isn’t going to be impressed, if we don’t do the basic things we’re supposed to do.
Like grasping the blades and passing the scissors the right way.
Handle first.
