Read This If You're Getting Tons Of Useless Emails From Companies About Corona Virus
"The health of our employees is important to us . . ."
"Please, remember to wash your hands . . ."
"We're washing down all our keyboards and sending people home . . ."
Unless you are contributing some new information or notifying of some important procedural change that impacts customers in a big way, these emails are basically just spam.
That's the definition of spam, isn't it?
It's pretending to be ham.
But it's not.
So, it's spam.
Here's what I think is happening:
Someone at the office is saying "Jeeze, a lot of people are talking about this and I just got this email from Bob's Crab Shack telling me they're only serving pick-up orders. What do you think, Bill? I guess we'd better send something out to our list to let them know we are taking this seriously."
Doesn't that just inspire you?
The best email I've gotten so far has been from a financial advisor saying "don't make any moves!"
From a user perspective, getting a zillion emails is not a good thing. It means I have less time to distinguish the spam from the ham. I have less time to do useful things.
If the people who wrote the email thought of what the customer actually needs, I don't think 90% of these emails would be sent at all.
If anything, all this nonsense is an indication that the bar is low!
The bar is low for interesting, useful, and important messaging!
It's your time!
2 Minute Action:
Take one small, single thing you do today and just before you execute it, consider what your customer or end-user will actually think.
I guess another way to say all this is to "treat others the way you wish to be treated."
And the crazy part?
I bet it only takes 2 minutes or less to consider.
The Unlikely Lesson My Bike Taught Me About People
I just bought a new bike computer.It’s the little gadget that sits on the handle bars and tells you your speed.Anyway, I opened the box and look what I saw:
Do you see this huge piece of paper?Look at the size of it compared to my bike.These are the setup instructions.It took me 10 minutes to read this thing and figure out how to program it for mph, and a 24hr clock.But wait, it’s not rocket surgery.
So why all this reading!?
This is a classic example of how frustrating documentation is.This documentation is here instead of the developers of the bike computer just building something that makes sense without instructions—this is called “intuitive.”I’m paying the price, as the end user, for bad design.But, Chris, how is this relevant to me? I’m not a designer of any kind.The point isn’t about the mechanics of the computer, the point is about how the designers weren’t focused on the end user. You can take this approach in ANYthing you do.Let’s take writing an email for example.Most people read emails on their phones and most busy people get hundreds of emails a day.
How does this translate?
Write in quick, easy to read sentences. Use bullets. Hit the return key a lot and avoid big blocks of text.Reply here if you have more ideas of how to put this into action.The more we share our approaches and examples, the faster we can improve.
2 Minute Action:
Who is your end user?Students? iOS users? Chefs? Painters? Cyclists? LEGO enthusiasts?Thinking about how painful the experience is for your end user, how can your interaction with them easier?How else might you improve your interaction with them?Hit reply and let me know.