If you can’t walk a mile in their shoes, at least take a few steps
You’ve probably been told that you should walk a mile in the shoes of your customers, to see what’s it’s like for them when shopping for a service or product like yours. But can you really walk a mile in their shoes if you’re not the same demographic, with no prior experience shopping for a product or service like yours? I don’t think so, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least take a few steps as they do.
Listen to this new, 9-minute episode for some ideas on how to gain more of their perspective, to make it easier for them to do business with you.
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– If you can’t walk a mile in their shoes, at least try to take a few steps. Listen to this episode for some ideas. Hi, it’s Alan Berg, welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. I was thinking about this the other day while I was reviewing someone’s website. And if you don’t know how that works, it’s just on Zoom and I’m sharing the screen with someone who is having me consult with them or review their site. And I was going through it and I was finding friction and I was finding issues that they couldn’t see because it’s called the curse of knowledge. You’re too close to the project. You know where everything is on your website, you know how it works.
And I wonder sometimes if we do this enough, including myself, where we take a step back and say, “What is it like to be a customer? “What is it like to be a prospect? “What is it like for someone to try to find us?” I was looking for a friend’s website the other day and I wasn’t sure what the URL was so that I Googled it. And I Googled their name, their name and their city, and they didn’t come up on the first page of Google results. And I was thinking wow, that’s odd. I mean, I specifically was looking for their name, their company. And it wasn’t like a hotel or something like that where all the aggregators and things were coming up but it was other things where they were listed, other websites and things where they were listed. But their own site didn’t come up on the first page of results. And I wonder if they know that. I’m certainly going to tell them but I wonder if they know that.
So, we can’t really walk a mile in the shoes of many of our prospects because we’re not them, because we do have that curse of knowledge, because we do know too much, because we’ve been doing this a long time. So it’s really hard to say, especially if you’re not the same demographic as your client. So if you’re doing weddings and events and you happen to not be around 30 years old give or take a couple of years, depending upon where you are it could be a little younger, a little bit older, and you’re not currently looking for wedding and event services and have no knowledge of them because we do, there’s the curse of knowledge, it’s really hard to walk a mile in their shoes. But we need to try. We need to at least take a few steps. And we need to accept that people don’t see the world the way that we do, which means they don’t see our marketing, our advertising, our social, and our websites the way that we do either. So one of the things I try to do for myself is, as I’m reviewing other people’s sites, make note of oh, am I doing that same thing? Am I making it harder? Have I put enough redundancy into my website so that there’s many ways to find something instead of one? Have I realized that the further down you go on a page, the less people will actually get there?
Don’t put all the good stuff further down on the page. Put the good stuff at the top of the page with calls to action and that are going to get them to go somewhere. All right, so what’s that like to walk a mile in their shoes? Another thing, I think I might’ve mentioned this on another episode but I’m changing a doctor that I use because they’re just making it too hard. They have one person that answers the phones and whenever I call, I’m always put on hold. Takes a while till they come back, if they come back. When I go and they take my copay, they still write down my credit card number and then process it manually. You can’t go online and make an appointment, change an appointment. If you get a bill in the mail, you can’t go online and pay it. These are all friction items. Had someone the other day who sent me a document that they wanted me to fill out and I couldn’t fill it out online.
They were expecting me to print it out, hand-write it, scan it, and then email it back to them or fax it back to them. And again, I’m thinking if I was, you know, Gen Y or Gen Z, you don’t have a fax machine. You don’t have a printer. You don’t have an all-in-one. Like, I’m sitting here in my office and there’s four printers sitting next to me. Most Gen Ys and Gen Zs don’t have one. Right, they don’t even have one. So I went back to them and I said, “Hey, do you have a way “that I could fill this out online instead?” And they sent me a Word document and the Word document had the fields but it had them all as underlines. You know what happens there. You probably had this where you start to type and it just moves the underline and then it wraps to another line. Then all of a sudden one-page document became two pages. Again, a lot of friction there.
A lot of work where if it had been a PDF where I could just go and fill in the fields, which you can also do on Word by the way, or if it had been some other online, a page on a website or something where I could just go fill it in, it would’ve been done in five minutes. Instead, it was a process that took longer because I had to keep fixing this document as it moved these lines. I had to first go back to them and ask them to send me a document I could fill in online. And I wonder if they were on the receiving end of that, if they would get that same thing and say, “Oh gosh, “now I have to print this out and I have to hand-write it,” and go, “That’s a lot of work.” I wonder if they would’ve felt the same way if they were a customer of their own business or another business that was doing the same thing. And that’s the at least taking a few steps in the shoes of someone else if you can’t walk the whole mile.
So, look for those things in your business where you’re creating the friction. Think about it every time you’re a customer and you encounter these types of friction or things that they’re making it harder or another episode I did where they’re making it easier for themselves but they’re making it harder for you, right? Every time I have to fill out something by hand, I’m thinking they’re making it easier for them and harder for them because what if my handwriting isn’t so good, which mine’s okay but I know a lot of people who have lousy handwriting. And if you have kids, you know that they’re not using, correcting penmanship in school, at least they weren’t with my kids and they might still not be now. And you want somebody to hand-write something and now you’re going to have trouble making it out, especially if it’s an important document where every letter matters. Right, if they need to have your address, your email address, your phone number, things like that, your Social Security number if it’s a doctor or something. Every character matters. And every time somebody has to hand-write that is a chance for error. Sure, people can type things wrong. I get it. But the chance for error is greater when someone’s writing it because now it has to be by interpretation of the other person.
And then, you know, don’t write it in cursive, in script, because maybe they can’t read it. I had a woman who told me recently when she sends her grandson’s birthday cards, their mother has to read the words to them because she writes it in cursive, in script, and the boys don’t know how to read that, which is just kind of a shame these days because it’s part of hand-eye coordination. It’s part of caring about what you’re writing. But that’s getting into a whole ‘nother subject.
So, let’s talk about, again, are you taking a few steps in their shoes if you can’t take the full mile? because we really probably can’t take the full mile. But think about the ways that we can make it easier or harder. I take a payment when people are buying books or signing up for consultations at my trade show booths. And I have Square, which I would take on my phone. And Square has now made it that I can use a credit card and tap right onto my phone with no device, nothing plugged in, no device. That’s taking away friction. And then Venmo comes along and says, “Hey, here’s a QR code “and here’s a little stand with that QR code.” And I put that right in the booth and people come along and go, “Oh, Venmo, great.” And they scan the QR code and they pay just like that, again, reducing the friction. And then yet you still go to other places and either they don’t accept credit cards or it’s just making it harder, right?
So, it’s hard to do it but it’s important to do it that don’t worry if you can’t walk the full mile but try to take a few steps and try to go through the process, right? Fill out your own contact form. How many fields is that and what does that do? How is that on a mobile device? I don’t think many of you have done that, where you actually go to your own website, go to your own contact form on a mobile phone, and try to fill it out and see what are those fields like, how easy it is to type, and what happens with those.
That’s one of those taking a few steps there. I have a note in my calendar. On the first of every month, I go and check my contact form because it broke. Was it last year or the year before? It had broken and for could’ve been a few months, it wasn’t working but it was letting you fill it out and you were getting a confirmation but I wasn’t getting the lead. So now on the first of every month, I get a reminder and if I haven’t gotten a lead in the last month or at least in the last few weeks, I’ll go fill out my own contact form and make sure it’s working. Right, that’s just something I do for myself to reduce that friction but also to make sure I’m getting those inquiries because if someone takes that time to fill it out, I want to get it. Wouldn’t you? But what is it like to fill out your own contact form on a phone? So take a few steps if you can’t take the whole mile. And I hope you don’t find any friction but I’m pretty sure you will. So I hope this helps. Thanks for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora:
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