Are We Conditioned to Tolerate Mediocrity?

I learned a long, long time ago while decorating the exterior of my home for the holidays that you should test the strands of lights BEFORE you put them on the house. Well, geeze, you don’t want to be looking for the broken bulb outside, on a ladder, on your roof in November in any climate but especially not in Minnesota. While you’ll probably agree that testing the strand before you put it up is a good thing, I ALWAYS hate it. I have to go through each bulb, one at a time, to find the Dirty Little Culprit (DLC) that was keeping the strand from lighting - limiting the capability of the entire strand. By the way, this is an example of the Theory of Constraints; but I digress. This generally requires a meticulous exercise of removing each little bulb, one at a time, from the unlit strand and inserting it in the socket of a strand that I know will light. I have broken more than one bulb over the years just trying to determine if it was the culprit that was limiting the other bulbs in the strand from fulfilling their state purpose.

Last year I realized I had had enough of this nonsense. I splurged for a bulb tester; I really splurged - it was marked down at an attractive AFTER-Christmas price. So, this year while carrying out my strand testing ritual, just as I expected, I found a strand that would not light. Out comes the new toy, the bulb tester, from last season. I dutifully read the instructions (yeah - really) and, after inserting the batteries backwards once (hey, you just try to read the + and - indicators inside the battery compartment of this device without high contrast lighting and a magnifying glass) I tested the strand. Wow! All I can say is WOW! It worked. In just a few moments I found the DLC, replaced the bulb and - I’ll say it again - WOW, the whole strand lit. So why am I surprised? Well here’s why…for once, the product worked as advertised and I did not need an engineering degree in electronics to use the product. I guess I’ve been disappointed so often that I’m now conditioned to expect mediocrity in the products and services I buy and use. And therein lies a few lessons for IT services. If you want your customers to be in awe of your services think of the service you provide in context of what you’re trying to accomplish with the service.

1. Understand the need you’re filling for your customer. The bulb tester fills a very specific need. But you have to go further. You need to know how the customer will use your product. The designers of this little device not only understood my need but understood how I would be using the device. In addition to testing the bulb, it has a slot to test the in-line fuses that are common in decorative lighting. And, it has a bulb extractor that will save your thumb and fingernails. I suspect they had their own personal moment of truth each holiday trying to find the DLC and designed a product to meet the all the varied activities that are part of getting a strand of lights to, ah, light.


2. Simplify. Make it easy for the customer to use. The tester I have uses a series of very intuitive and idiot-proof red and green lights. Except for the battery alignment indicators which are tiny and scribed in the same color as the plastic device, the product was indeed simple to operate.


3. Don’t burden your customer with the complexity of the service. As curious as I am about how exactly this bulb tester works (inductive fields or something), the product literature was probably not the place to include this information. From a user or customer perspective it is enough that the device works.


4. Set the customers’ expectations. Make it clear what the service will do and will not do. The bulb tester tests the line voltage and the bulbs. It also works as a bulb extractor. But it is not designed to test household current, the viability of a cable television outlet or the presence of a network.


5. Deliver against the expectations. Make sure the product does what it says it will do. This little device did meet my expectations. OK, so I’ll say it again: Wow.


6. WOW your customer. It’s not enough to just meet expectations. Exceed them. I was astounded at how easy this product was to use, the price point at which I acquired it (remember-I bought this last year at a very attractive after-Christmas discount) and the scalability of the item (it will work on any length of strand or type of Christmas bulb or lighting configuration).


7. Make the customers’ lives easier. The product should solve a problem (see number 1 above) and should be designed in such a way that the solution is simpler than the problem it is meant to solve (see number 2). I no longer dread the annual testing ritual.

In these seven points we have highlighted the importance of key aspects of IT Service Management:

• Availability and Service Level Management
• Service Level Management
• Financial and Service Level Management

Further, the instructions, or the training if you will, were legible, made sense and used illustrations. As customer, I made the effort, budgeted the time, to read the instructions. Funny how the product works if all parties, the service designer and supplier and the customer or user, both make a commitment to do their respective parts.