Peg Griffith — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:42:50 GMT

This is an excellent topic to explore and discuss, because it happens often. I disagree with Praveen: as a paid consultant, it IS our job to be a good partner to the clients. Part of being a good partner is warning them (politely) that they are about to make a mistake, and to suggest alternatives. Those alternatives can be hardware, software, business processes, or even staffing or staff training. In my experience, clients often do not listen, but I try to go on record as saying “This may not be the best approach.” On one or two occasions, I’ve even let the client fail, and once, they even called back and said “You were right. Will you please come in and lay out your plan for us?” It was risky, but it worked. The point is not being right, but trying to do what is best for the client. Building that relationship and commitment to their business is good business for US, in the long run.

Peg Griffith — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:59:57 GMT

Fantastic article! Dead on.

But how to sell the notion of integrated UX throughout large corporations? I once was asked to figure out why customer satisfaction ratings were dropping for a particular product. What became clear was that 2 things were happening: 1) there was inconsistent support for various user personas (the client could fix that pretty easily by developing new tools and processes. 2) Users viewed the full company (not just her division) as “those guys”. So even if she fixed her tools, if there was a billing error or a customer service error (things she didn’t control) customer sat would go down. She needed to share the personas and the findings of the research across the full customer experience life cycle, and get her management peers to buy into the notion that customer satisfaction is a shared responsibility. She did not. She hoarded the research findings, and ultimately she failed, and customer sat continued to fall.

Any suggestions on how, as a consultant to one division, take findings across divisions and share them with others?

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Peg Griffith