Cynthia and I sat down to lunch on Sunday and turned on the TV for a bit of background. "The Stepford Wives" was playing on FX and we found ourselves starting to get into the story.
There is a part of the movie where Nicole Kidman is talking with her movie husband, Mathew Broderick. It's quiet, with a bit of piano music playing in the background.
SUDDENLY, A LARGE NOISE INTRUDES AND THE BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER OF THE SCREEN IS TAKEN UP BY AN AD FOR AN UPCOMING WILL SMITH SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mood gone, enjoyment gone, TV off, two more customers gone.
I don't know if TV systems use these pop-up ads in other countries, but they seem ubiquitous in the US. Perhaps they work to increase viewership for the shows they plug. Or perhaps they just annoy viewers, as this one did us, and drive more of us to DVDs, conversation, biking, household chores, or books.
It's tempting to write this off as just network folks being dumb. But I suspect I do things to annoy my customers, and I bet you do, too. And I would not be surprised if you and I lose some of those customers we have managed to annoy.
The only way to know for sure is to be your customer once in awhile.
In the TV example, if network executives sit down to relax with family and watch a movie on their networks, then they know what it feels like. If a doctor tries to get an appointment for herself with a cross-town specialist, perhaps she finds out what it's like for her patients. If an internet executive tries to get on-line help with his service (and doesn't let on who he is), perhaps he finds out what a pain it can be. If an HP executive attempts to cancel a PC order, perhaps she feels the same annoyance her customers feel. Or if a Cox executive attempts to get his non-functioning bundled services to work again with only one (bundled) call, perhaps he finds out how fragmented his customers feel.
On the other hand, if you never try to walk a bit in your customers' shoes, you'll never know what you do that annoys them. They'll leave you, and you won't have the slightest idea why.
[Photo downloaded from Google Image Ripper. Original came from DrDriving.org, a website devoted to driving psychology and hosted by Leon James, Ph.D., and Diane Nahl, Ph.D. I cropped the image to eliminate all but the road sign.]
