Give the customer what they want

It's surprisingly easy to give the customer what they want. First, think like a customer. Second, figure out what you, the customer, want. Third, find a way to make it happen.

I'm continuously amazed at how often businesses can't or won't do this. They defend their bottom line, they don't want to disrupt their current profit model, it's too much work they say, it's not necessary, or, even worse, they don't even know they aren't doing it.

One of the mobile projects I'm working on, was pitched by my agency, basically as a technology concept. It looks like a marketing concept or even a revenue idea, but it isn't. It's simply "we have the capability to do blah blah blah for you" and because "blah blah blah" is mobile, the company thinks we're hip and it's a cool idea.

Here's the stupid part. Instead of providing a MARKETING STRATEGY to justify the technology idea, my agency is allowing the CUSTOMER to dictate how this new technology should be incorporated into their product. How much sense does this make? The agency came up with the idea but has no backbone when it comes to making recommendations on how it should be executed. And the company, of course, has not the vision nor the guts to take a risk. But companies can be convinced, if you have a compelling argument. All you have to do is try.

So I wrote up an argument for how I thought this mobile app should be implemented at the theme park. It was so obvious to me when I heard it that there only one way that makes sense to the customer. Am I endowed with some kind of special power that I should know this and no one else does? No. It's just that I think like a customer, like a person, and not like an executive. I went online to find support for my idea and in a message board posting of a theme park, users were discussing exactly what I proposed as something they wished was available. Of course, we're not doing it that way.

Even worse, one of the posters says "They're probably working on a system now." Sigh!

I'm going mobile

My first project at the new job is a WAP site for a theme park. I've heard about short codes, seen American Idol and know that people can download things to their phones (and are apparently pretty excited about it). In other words, I don't know anything about mobile. So I got online (where else!) and found some amazing resources, thanks to dotmobi (an independent industry group).

They have a blog, a developer's guide, a list of .mobi sites to check out, and the coolest of the cool, a mobile site simulator where you can interact with these sites online as if you were on a phone! I'm so excited (and grateful for dotmobi!)

Diving in now.