A good article by Smart Company and tapping one of the best minds in the business. I recently completed some work for a financial services firm and post GFC, the perspective of customers of independence vis a vis established and connected businesses has transformed in the last two years. Customers in Australia whether materially affected by the GFC or not have a different view of the service businesses they interact with and these businesses would do well to better understand this new mindset and what it now means to deliver outstanding service.

Of course using Service Design in Australia to address this is new, but hey our goal is to improve the service experience of all Australian customers, one service business at a time. Here are 8 rules to do just that.

The Australian economy might have sailed through the recession relatively unscathed, but don’t think that customers haven’t been changed by the GFC.

That’s the message from international marketing guru Paul Bennett, the managing partner of global design consultancy IDEO, which organisations including Nokia, Intel, Bank of America and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation go to for inspiration and business ideas.

Bennett’s recent trip to Australia saw him add to his growing fan base after a series of cheeky, insightful, clever presentations on the future consumer. SmartCompany caught up with him at the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (LMFF) and couldn’t resist asking Bennett to help create a take-home version of his keynote for those who missed out.

Bennett, who heads up IDEO’s European bureau and is its chief creative officer, highlighted how well Australia has come through the GFC, but described “apocalyptic” market conditions in Europe and the Americas over the past three years.

“For everyone else it sucked royally,” says Bennett in his take-no-prisoners style. “Consumer sentiment has radically shifted.”

This period of crisis has been much more than an economic crisis for consumers, according to Bennett. He says it has been a moral crisis, with the economic decline being a symptom of deeper problems.

“People were spending and borrowing like there was no tomorrow. Then tomorrow came and the shit hit the fan,” says Bennett.

Here are is eight new rules of customer services:

Rule 1: Consumers are really thinking about what they need, why they need it and if they need it.

There is a new morality among many consumers, Bennett says: “People are acting less like traditional ‘consumers’ and more like citizens who are expressing their values through what they consume.”

Ideo holds regular Facebook “conversations” to gather intelligence from around the world. When IDEO posed the question – where is consumerism going? – a major trend through this IDEO Facebook conversation was a focus on health, learning and knowledge. People in London, Dubai and everywhere in between were talking about fresh air, drinking water, education, equality and quality experiences.

If these respondents are the new consumer, then clearly businesses with a real sense of purpose have a competitive advantage.

Rule 2: It’s back to basics. Simplicity is what the world needs now. Embrace it.

Bennett cites psychologist Barry Schwartz’s theories in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less where Schwartz rejects the idea that freedom of choice in Western society is a sign of modern progress. Schwartz describes “an explosion” of choice for consumers that has paralysed rather than liberated them.

For example, in his supermarket aisle there are 175 salad dressings to choose from. At his local entertainment store, it is possible to construct 6.5 million different stereo systems from products on offer. (It’s well worth watching Schwartz in action on www.ted.com.

Rule 3: Have a meaningful purpose.

Ikea was on to this idea early with a series of commercials in 2007. Ikea’s “purpose” is what matters in these ads, rather than showcasing a range of flat-packed furniture, we see homes from around the world and the tagline: “Home. The most Important Place in the World.”

Rule 4: Forget about selling products, deliver service.

In March 2010, Bennett went to the Apple flagship store on Fifth Avenue to have his computer fixed during a New York trip. The Manhattan store is right by Central Park, with a glass, shrine-like box out front. Beyond the theatrics, Bennett was blown away by the service. For starters the store is open 24/7, his laptop was fixed for free, it was even polished.

“The experience was a lot nicer than those luxury stores down the street,” he says. This service, rather than the laptop, is what cements a consumer relationship. The stores have tribes of concierges that help customers find their way to the right service area, rather than just having various departments that customers must find.

In order to do this, the staff needs to be really engaged in making the customer’s experience great and they have to really understand the product. Bennett’s way of describing the right kind of staff is that “their eyeballs are burning, they have passion-filled eyes”.

Rule 5: Play well and collaborate.

Brand partnerships are also an important trend Bennett has been observing. Brand sponsorship has been around for at least a century (Coca-Cola has been sponsoring New York’s Madison Square Garden for 100 years), but these partnerships are different. On March 26, Retailer Gap Inc announced a strategic partnership with Brand Republic, a subsidiary of Busby Holdings (that operates Aldo and Guess stores) to open up to 15 Gap stores in Australia. Woolworths is in partnership with HSBC bank to offer credit cards.

This trend is about big brands sharing the stage, rather than the brands fighting each other for their slice of the market.

“Innovation isn’t a one-man band,” says Bennett. “Build networks, coalitions, partnerships and alliances that add to the business, add to the whole pie, not just your slice.”

Rule 6: Have a dialogue with customers, not a monologue.

Listening to customers, really listening, sparking a conversation can lead to new business ideas. IDEO doesn’t just do its market research on Facebook. It is still a fan of wine and pizza market research nights. Its session with baby boomer mums across the US resulted in the idea for a Keep The Change account for client Bank of America, with every purchase from this special savings account, being rounded up to the next dollar, channelling extra money into the savings account.

According to IDEO, this campaign has led to more than 12 million new customers for the bank, proving that savings really is the new black. Bennett’s tip: “Keep listening to customers, keep the conversation going and constantly look for feedback; that’s where great new business ideas (and revenue streams) can emerge.”

Rule 7: One click and you are out.

Acknowledge the power of the internet, especially the immediacy of tweeting, and manage the risk. Bennett’s favourite example at the moment is the filmmaker Kevin Smith who claims he was kicked off a Southwest Airline for being too fat in March 2010. He tweeted his plight and the story went international within hours. Southwest has since apologised but the damage was done. Bad customer service travels really, really fast. It’s not about your website, it’s about the web and how people use it.

Rule 8: Small is the new big.

From little things, big things grow. A little idea from a series of dinners about a new type of savings account can gain incredible momentum if it is allowed to develop.

“Stop waiting around for the big idea and build on the small ideas,” Bennett says.

Below is an article from Seth Godin. Lots of lessons for all companies but as I see the world through the lens of service companies, imagine using these principles as a launching pad for idea generation for Service Businesses. Amazing!

Secrets of the biggest selling launch ever

Apple reports that on the first day they sold more than $150,000,000 worth of iPads. I can’t think of a product or movie or any other launch that has ever come close to generating that much direct revenue.

Are their tactics are reserved for giant consumer fads? I don’t think so. In fact, they work even better for smaller gigs and more focused markets.

Earn a permission asset. Over 25 years, Apple has earned the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to their tribe. They can get the word out about a new product without a lot of money because one by one, they’ve signed people up. They didn’t sell 300,000 iPads in one day, they sold them over a few decades.

Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what? (Please don’t gloss over this one just because it’s short. In fact, it’s the biggest challenge on this list).

Make a product(service) worth talking about. Sounds obvious. If it’s so obvious, then why don’t the other big companies ship stuff like this? Most of them are paralyzed going to meetings where they sand off the rough edges.

Make it easy for people to talk about you. Steve doesn’t have a blog. He doesn’t tweet and you can’t friend him on Facebook. That’s okay. The tribe loves to talk, and the iPad gave them something to talk about.

Build a platform for others to play in. Not just your users, but for people who want to reach your users.

Create a culture of wonder. Microsoft certainly has the engineers, the developers and the money to launch this. So why did they do the Zune instead? Because they never did the hard cultural work of creating the internal expectation that shipping products like this is possible and important.

Be willing to fail. Bold bets succeed–and sometimes they don’t. Is that okay with you? Launching the iPad had to be even more frightening than launching a book…

Give the tribe a badge. The cool thing about marketing the iPad is that it’s a visible symbol, a uniform. If you have one in the office on Monday, you were announcing your membership. And if it says, “sent from my iPad” on the bottom of your emails…

Don’t give up so easy. Apple clearly a faced a technical dip in creating this product… they worked on it for more than a dozen years. Most people would have given up long ago.

Don’t worry so much about conventional wisdom. The iPad is a closed system (not like the web) because so many Apple users like closed systems.
And the one thing I’d caution you about:

Don’t worry so much about having a big launch day. It looks good in the newspaper, but almost every successful brand or product(service) (Nike, JetBlue, Starbucks, IBM…) didn’t start that way.

A few things that will make it work even better going forward:

Create a product(service) that works better when your friends have one too. Some things (like a Costco membership or even email) fit into that category, because if more people join, the prices will go down or access will go up. Others (like the unlisted number to a great hot restaurant) don’t.

Make it cheap enough or powerful enough that organizations buy a lot at a time. To give away. To use as a tool.

They are brilliant as usual

That is why organisations need to stop leaving  the delivery of outstanding service  as an accident and set about using a process like Service Design to intentionally design the environment and interaction so that the experience is outstanding. Its the only way that we can ensure that our customers derive great value from our service offering, they stay with us year in and year out and we increase our profitability by factor of 7 times over 7 years.

If your customer is worth $1000 in year 1, look after them well and they will be worth $7000 after 7 years. Now isnt that a recipe for guaranteed revenue and margin growth (see yesterdays article below on the dollar value of customer experience)

Do you have a plan and a process to ensure you deliver Outstanding service every single time? if you would like to discuss how, please contact me on 02 8113 2311 or email me at damian.kernahan@protopartners.com.au .

What’s expected vs. what’s amazing

I visited a favorite restaurant last week, a place that, alas, I hadn’t been to in months. The waiter remembered that I don’t like cilantro. Unasked, she brought it up. Incredible. This was uncalled for, unnecessary and totally delightful.

Scott Adams writes about the cyborg tool that is coming momentarily, a device that will remember names, find connections, bring all sorts of external data to us the moment we meet someone. “Oh, Bob, sure, that’s the guy who’s friends with Tracy… and Tim just tweeted about him a few minutes ago.”

The first time someone does this to you in conversation (no matter how subtly), you’re going to be blown away and flabbergasted. The tenth time, it’ll be ordinary, and the 20th, boring.

Hotels used to get a lot of mileage out of remembering what you liked, but it was merely a database trick, not emotional labor on the part of the staff.

Today, if you go to an important meeting and the other people haven’t bothered to Google you and your company, it’s practically an offense. We’re about to spend an hour together and you couldn’t be bothered to look me up? It’s expected, no longer amazing.

On the other hand, consider Dolores, a clerk with kidney problems at a 7 Eleven, who broke all sorts of coffee sales records because she remembered the name of every customer who came in every morning. Unexpected and amazing.

You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless.What

It just means that those of us who work to improve the customers experience for the the purpose of increasing customer retention and hence revenue, need to work harder to communicate the message.

This is an excellent article and a proof that increasing focus on Customer experience through Service Design is not only valuable, but a requirement for leaders of businesses if they are to deliver on their mandate to increase shareholder wealth.

Lets keep spreading the news, in the “tipping point we trust”.

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Return On Customer Experience Investments

In some business circles, getting people to believe in a return on customer experience investments is a lot like getting them to acknowledge the existence of Santa Claus.

Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers—more robust “voice of the customer” programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc. The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions.

Of course, that doesn’t mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. It just takes a little more work to quantify it. And, frankly, in some cases, it requires a leap of faith.

Leap of Faith?

I know what you’re thinking. Most Chief Financial Officers won’t look kindly on a business case grounded in a leap of faith.

The fact of the matter is, though, there are plenty of big business decisions that are routinely made with limited quantification and a healthy leap of faith. Corporate re-brandings, advertising programs, synergistic mergers, and even the hiring of highly compensated, star CEOs—these are all examples of initiatives that bring with them a good deal of risk and expense, yet must be green lit without the benefit of a precise, quantifiable business case.

…there are plenty of big business decisions that are routinely made with limited quantification and a healthy leap of faith.

How does a senior executive, CFO or Board member give their assent under such circumstances? They complement what limited hard data may be available with gut instinct. They get comfortable taking a leap of faith because they simply believe in the concept behind the investment, whether it’s the power of a reinvigorated brand, the potential unlocked by an acquisition, or some other venture.

So when executives push back on customer experience investments, citing the absence of an iron clad, quantifiable business case, their reservations may actually reflect a deeper skepticism about the true value of customer experiences strategies.

One way to address such underlying skepticism is to elevate the dialogue, getting executives—even for just a moment—to focus less on project-by-project justifications and more on the macro impact of experience-oriented business strategies.

Is The Market Rewarding Customer Experience Leaders?

To that end, Watermark Consulting recently conducted an analysis of stock market performance for customer experience leaders and laggards over the past three years, a time period encompassing the market’s run up to its all-time high in late 2007, to its Great Recession-induced nadir in early 2009, to its more recent bounce back.

To identify the leaders and laggards, we used Forrester Research’s 2007 Customer Experience Index study, picking the top ten and bottom ten publicly traded companies from Forrester’s rankings. Then we compared the total return from investing in an equally-weighted portfolio of customer experience leaders to that for customer experience laggards and the broader market (as reflected by the S&P 500 index).

The results were quite revealing:

From 2007 through 2009, through the best and worst of times, the customer experience Leader portfolio outperformed the broader stock market, generating cumulative total returns that were 41% better than the S&P 500 Index and 145% better than the customer experience Laggard portfolio.

During each of the three years, the Leader portfolio always outperformed the index and the Laggard portfolio always underperformed the index. Looking at these data points, it certainly appears that customer delight and customer misery have very different influences on company stock performance.

In addition, while the Leaders portfolio declined in value during the depths of the recession, the decline was less pronounced than that for the broader market. As the recession abated in 2009, the Leaders portfolio also proved quite resilient, more than doubling the return of the S&P 500.

This performance profile supports the notion that customer experience leaders are somewhat cushioned from the most severe impacts of economic downturns, because they represent one of the last places consumers cut back and one of the first places to which they return.

What The Numbers Really Mean

There are plenty of criticisms that could be lobbed at this analysis: the three-year time period is too short, the Leader and Laggard sample sizes are too small, the Forrester study isn’t a good measure of customer experience excellence, stock market returns aren’t good indicators of long-term company performance, etc.

No analysis is perfect and this one is hardly meant to suggest that any company embracing a strategy of customer experience differentiation will outperform the S&P by over 40%. There are many variables at play, not the least among them pure execution (embracing a strategy and actually implementing it are two very different things).

Companies that successfully bring great, end-to-end customer experiences to the marketplace are rewarded—by consumers and investors.

These results are also not meant to preclude attempts to cost justify customer experience improvement efforts on a project-by-project basis. That rigor must remain; this data merely provides some much-needed air cover.

What this analysis does suggest is this: Companies that successfully bring great, end-to-end customer experiences to the marketplace are rewarded—by consumers and investors. Their operational excellence and attention to detail, their simple and straightforward communication, their well-equipped and genuinely helpful front-line staff—the sum of these parts pays off in the end, even if the precise impact of individual components is uncertain at best.

Hopefully, by framing the return on customer experience excellence in terms executives can easily understand (stock price and market value), this analysis will begin chipping away at the lingering doubts that some of them harbor towards experience-oriented investments.

And with that target of skepticism removed, all that’s left to figure out is who eats the milk and cookies on Christmas Eve.

How do you rejigger an $8 billion company to catch up to rising customer-experience expectations that have passed it by? That’s the task facing eBay.

In the 11 years since the dot-com darling went public, the e-commerce world grew up — but eBay looked stuck in its 1.0 past. Unlike Zappos, which built a name using customer service as marketing, and Amazon, where shoppers can log on and find virtually anything at a clear, set price, eBay didn’t control the fulfillment chain. That often leaves its customer service, a component key to branding, at the mercy of its sellers. Moreover, it was riddled with auctions, a type of transaction that has garnered less and less interest from the mainstream consumers who account for much of the $130 billion in annual online-shopping sales.

While the company’s marketplaces unit, which includes eBay.com, is in the middle of a three-year turnaround plan to fix those problems, “I doubt they can ever catch up totally [to competitors like Zappos and Amazon],” said Larry Witt, an analyst with Morningstar. “They can’t directly control the customer experience, though they can influence it.”

Yet that’s exactly what eBay has set out to do. It’s giving top buyers and sellers access to a phone service seven days a week and allowing them to submit queries online — a service being expanded throughout the holiday and 2010 to more sellers and buyers. It’s hired talent to improve its search-technology capabilities to make eBay more consumer-friendly and has begun incorporating user feedback more quickly. And it’s taking steps to add more fixed-price options for its customers.

It all adds up to what Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay marketplaces called “a sea change in customer service,” going from “an offline function to much more hands-on.”

Part of that charge is being led by Christopher Payne and Dane Glasgow, search technologists brought in from search startup Positronic, and Hugh Williams and Eric Brill, who arrived from Microsoft. They have reshaped the process in which eBay works: When you used to search eBay for an item, results would be listed by auction-expiration dates, with ones expiring soonest showing up first. Now, it’s taken a nod from Google, which pioneered the use of quality factors in its paid-search ranking system to improve the kinds of ads and offers people see.

Beyond auction
Today eBay search looks not only at auction end date but also rewards the stature of the seller, factoring in things that matter to buyers: the price of goods, the reputation of the seller and free shipping offers. The improved site functions, paired with a broader selection, will improve the overall experience, Ms. Norrington believes, which should actually end up cutting back on the need for customer service.

“You’re beginning to see some of the differences,” she said, of the upgrades eBay’s new tech-savvy hires are making. “It’s about making sure the buyers have great-quality sellers and items surface. It’s making sure the search experience is one suited to what the buyer is looking for.”

In order to increase the quality and variety of goods on its site, eBay has also lowered sellers’ fees and is focused on adding fixed-price options. Several years ago, the mix was 80% auction and 20% fixed-price sales. Today it is almost evenly split, and, in the future, eBay expects 70% to be fixed and only 30% auctioned.

Not all of these changes have rested well with sellers — an important and powerful constituency for the company. However, it has taken pains to communicate developments to sellers through e-mails, discussion boards, seller summits, web seminars, web radio Q&As and small group dinners.

“A lot of the changes were necessary. Hardcore eBay sellers are not happy with them, but they were necessary,” Mr. Witt said. “Take search, for example. You want to bring up products people are looking for. Delivering more-relevant results is the most important thing they had to attack.”

Positive results
And the changes, which have been communicated to consumers through a mix of events and media outreach, have instilled more confidence in the site. “There’s no question that eBay is safer than it was 18 months ago,” Ms. Norrington said. “Two big proof points are that our highest-quality sellers are growing substantially beyond e-commerce, up 14% in the second quarter in the U.S. And where we use a net promoter score, we’re seeing good results on trust and confidence. Our top buyers are buying more than ever.”

Wall Street is taking notice. In the past month, a number of Wall Street analysts have upgraded eBay’s stock. UBS, one of the firms issuing an upgrade, said that it believes the company’s marketplace business has “turned a corner.”

What you can learn

Remaking a business that’s as entrenched in the consumer psyche as eBay takes a lot of hard work, some risk-taking and a bit of chutzpah. Here, a few tips on how to tackle it.

Invest in talent. It’s a tough economy and eBay, like everyone else, is hurting. But that hasn’t stopped it from bringing in well-regarded tech talent.

Don’t be afraid to cut loose dead weight. Yes, eBay has angered and even lost some sellers, but the changes it’s making are rewarding its best sellers and best customers.

Look for partnerships that will upgrade your image. Teaming up with fashion icons Narciso Rodriguez and Normal Kamali on fixed-price lines instantly elevated eBay with the influential fashion crowd.

Don’t lose sight of the end customer. Both sellers and buyers are essential to eBay, so it added customer-service features to benefit both groups.

Communicate change consistently. To avoid seller confusion when it makes changes, eBay now rolls out changes twice a year, instead of on an ongoing basis. It gives sellers 60 days notice, and it reaches out in mass communications, as well as one on one.

The research showed that consumers/customers may not frequently visit your brand’s web site, but once they do, a frustrating interaction can lead to a lost customer. Perhaps even more frightening is the opportunity to lose a customer at the call center, where too many companies in the study saw their experience ratings drop compared to other touch points. Yet the opportunity to strengthen the customer relationship exists along every step of the brand value chain, particularly when one step leads to another.

The study by researchandmarkets.com  showed that a positive call center interaction that includes an introduction to valuable online services can leave the consumer satisfied after that one call, but more engaged with the brand over time. A web site that helps customers navigate the instore shopping experience can pay brand dividends far beyond a satisfying online interaction.

The biggest challenge facing service organisations today is delivering a consistent customer experience. The amount of ways a customer can interface with the organisation has rapidly increased. There’s no system to ensure front line employees deliver the right experience every time. There is no skillset and toolset designed to efficiently deliver new and better services.

You may have the greatest product or service in the world, but if your customers are let down at any point in the chain, it’s all academic. Most companies I work with are extremely confused. They’ve tried everything they know, but it’s not working. Using a Service Design firm helps them figure out what it takes to succeed in profitably delivering a great customer experience.

This research by researchandmarkets.com piqued my interest and reinforced for me the value of Service Design and it’s contribution to ensuring that companies deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience for the purpose of creating, building and monetising Customer Loyalty. There are other types of companies that look to  create a “great customer experience”,  but more often than not, it is one or two isolated “customer experiences”. The more I examine successful Service Design case studies (both our own and others) I realise that it is the ability to deliver consistency across every touch-point  is the true and unique value that Service Design provides service based companies.

or visit Proto Partners here

In a recently published research report called “Customer Service Trumps Price,” 4,600 consumers were asked how they choose the companies they do business with across 12 mainstream industries.

In particular, it asked consumers to rate the importance of two criteria: good customer service and low prices. Here’s some of what was found when the data was analysed across five generations of consumers:

* Across all 12 industries (and every generation of consumers), good customer service was selected more frequently than low prices as being important.
* When it comes to the gap between good customer service and low prices, seven industries have double-digit spreads, led by banks (31%) and health insurance plans (18%).

Given nearly everyone has pulled or is close to pulling the price lever, this month I thought I would share with you an approach which is proven to reduce reliance on price discounting.

In a great 12 page mini-book written by Bruce Temkin who is the Vice President and Principal Analyst at the respected Forrester Research focusing on customer experience, he has used his extensive research to compile the 6 laws of customer experience.

1) Every interaction creates a personal reaction.
2) People are instinctively self-centred.
3) Customer familiarity breeds alignment.
4) Unengaged employees don’t create engaged customers.
5) Employees do what is measured, incented, and celebrated.
6) You can’t fake it.

While some isolated situations may not follow these 6 laws, they accurately describe the dynamics of customer experience for large organisations. Anyone looking to improve customer experience must understand and comply with these underlying realities.

With all companies challenged and marketing budgets cut back in this environment, keeping how to keep your customers (and keep them happy) is the key currency.

Whether you lead a service organisation or you are looking to find ways to add services to your product range to generate new opportunities for growth, if you are looking for ideas on how to improve your customer’s experience, I know you will find this article extremely valuable.

What Your Company Needs: More Elegance
By Jessica Stillman
May 19th, 2009

* The Find: It’s usually a quality associated more with evening wear than management, but one expert is arguing that businesses should up their elegance quotient to succeed.

* The Source: An interview with Matthew E. May, the author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, conducted by blogger and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and published on the American Express Open Forum blog.

The Takeaway: Whether it’s a mission statement, a strategy, the formulation of a goal or a product design, May argues you should aim for elegance in your ideas. First things first, what exactly does he mean by the term? “Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One without the other leaves you short of elegant,” he says. Great, so why is this quality so important?

Elegance cuts through the noise, captures our attention, and engages us. The point of elegance is to achieve the maximum impact with the minimum input. It’s a thoughtful, artful subtractive process focused on doing more and better with less.

Certainly it’s easier to remember an idea that’s short and punchy and minimalist products – think of all those little iPods nestled in everyone’s pocket or purse – certainly seem to earn consumers’ loyalty and love, but have other companies succeeded by focusing on elegance? May offers the surprising example of “freakishly popular” hamburger chain In N’ Out Burger – an establishment not usually associated with elegant dining. He explains:

The menu offers only five items: a hamburger, cheeseburger, double burger, French fries, and a short list of beverages. By keeping things simple, founder Harry Snyder says he is able to provide the highest quality food in a sparkling clean environment.

In ‘N Out understands that seduction, and that subtraction can simply mean “not adding.” By resisting formal menu expansion they’ve avoided the self-defeating overkill seen in consumer electronics, with its “feature creep,” and the resulting “feature fatigue.

Microsoft Word, famous for its seemingly endless features most users never needed nor wanted, is cited as a classic example of a feature fatigue inducing product, but how many managers have induced a similarly sleepy feelings in their teams by failing to reduce their aims down to a simple, streamlined and compelling idea and instead throwing a messy list of duties, goals and responsibilities at their employees?