Spring Cleaning: Good for Boats, and Websites
Nautical vessels and
companies share something in common: they each tend to collect barnacles that
can harm performance. In the case of businesses, that often means websites that
are impossible for consumers to navigate without getting annoyed--or service.
Time to get your operation shipshape.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
APR 16, 2024
One of the surest signs
of spring -- accompanied by the foolishly optimistic view that the bitter winds
and cold Chicago weather are gone for the season-- is the slow and colorful
raising of the bridges and the return of the boats to their slips and buoys in
the many harbors along Lake Michigan. For sailing veterans, these quiet harbors
are akin to navigable neighborhoods occupied each summer by old friends,
drinking buddies, and generations of kids who grew up onboard their families’
boats.
While a fair number of
these sometime sailors spend plenty of nights sipping and sleeping on their
vessels, many never bother to move their craft from the slips more than once or
twice over the summer. But they do invest plenty of time and elbow grease spiffing
up their vessels to be sure that they’re safe and secure and that they show
well for the neighbors and for the throngs of inquisitive civilians passing by
on the docks. It’s spring-cleaning time and done with a vengeance.
Swabbing the
decks, waxing the wood, polishing the brass, and making sure that all the
mechanicals and electronics are in good shape is an important part of the
annual ritual. But not all the important business is visible because -- equally
critical -- is making sure that the hull below the water line is clean,
watertight, and free of barnacles and other obstructions which might otherwise
create hydrodynamic drag and slow the ship. Not too many of these folks are
going to be competing, but keeping their boats shipshape is as much a matter of
pride and tradition as it is about any concerns for optimizing speed or race
prowess.
Just like boats,
businesses, over time, develop their own barnacles and other obstacles to speed
and efficiency. Now’s a very good time to look over your own ship, think about
ablations that make sense, and ask yourself two critical questions: (1) are you
doing things in the right way for today; or are you still doing them the way
they’ve always been done whether or not that makes sense or best serves the
needs of your people, customers, vendors and partners; and (2) are you doing
costly or inefficient things that you no longer need to do-- especially when
your customers don’t notice or care about them.
One of my favorite
examples is the old-line taxi companies who still haven’t gotten the message
that Uber and Lyft have won the war. They’re toast but apparently no one has
broken the news to them. It’s not clear to me who they think they’re serving
(other than themselves) or why they’re hanging on when 100% of their drivers
will tell you that they’d love the additional revenue and volume that would
appear overnight if their vehicles were added to the ride sharing services’
menus, which many cities have done. From a single solution, ease of use, and
simplicity standpoint, there are also millions of prospective customers who are
just trying to get a lift (no pun intended) and could care less which company’s
driver shows up.
It’s been clear for
years with regard to the pervasive power of platforms in virtually any area
driven by new technologies that the end state will be one or two dominant players. It’s a winners-take-all
world and players still trying to compete rather than concede and cooperate
with the big guys will eventually be crushed and run out of business. Someday
soon, as Joni Mitchell said: the screen door is gonna slam and a big yellow
taxi is gonna come and take them away.
Other obvious examples
of folks who just don’t get it are everywhere. I can’t begin to count the
number of agencies, organizations and companies who’ve turned their websites
into digital torture chambers designed to repel customers rather than to assist
them. They try to cram so much information into their sites so that their
people don’t have to deal with the public that they end up making these tools
useless and frustrating. Apparently, they don’t understand that for millions of
digital users, their websites are the front doors to their businesses.
It doesn’t matter
whether it’s too many poorly described choices, too few clear steps and clicks
to reach a simple answer, too many dead-end paths and pages that take you
nowhere, or simply poorly designed and thought-out ways to serve and respond to
your visitors and customers questions and concerns. If I have to be a
knowledgeable pro to know where to go on your site, you can bet that I’m going to go somewhere else.
And please don’t get me
started on automated answering systems and voicemail jail. Maybe machine
learning will eventually save us, but for the current eternity, in which we all
get to wade through a chain of queries, it still appears that every single time
you call any service organization you are required to step through the same
ridiculous questions without any ability to bypass them in order to eventually
reach - not a human being - but a further chatbot tormentor that will try to
respond to your answers. Every company executive should be required--weekly--
to attempt to navigate their firm’s inbound phone system to appreciate what a
painful, wasteful, and frustrating exercise it can be.
The bottom line is
a simple suggestion for every business builder and manager. Take a walk around
your place. Call the main number from outside. Check out your website. See how
your recycling program is actually working - separate trash cans or one big
pile. Find out how returns and credits are being processed. You’ll be
surprised, shocked and saddened by how much you’ve got to re-learn about how
your business actually does business. And then get to work- - bagging the
barnacles and clearing the deck.