Service Untitled posts today on the problem of getting engineers to think about customer service as part of the product development process:

The best way to make engineering groups aware of the challenges involved with customer service is to ask them to do customer service. Even if it isn’t that frequent (have each engineer answer support email one day a month).

It’s been pointed out in many places, Service Untitled among them, that everything is customer service.

Disney Parks and Resorts, which employs office executives, tour guides, janitors and engineers, understands this¹:

• All Disney “employees” (including Burbank based corporate employees from the CEO to the janitor) are referred to as “Cast Members”.
• If you were to ask a Cast Member or other employee (including a maintenance person) any question about Disney or the theme park, they are required to give you an answer. If the employee does not have an answer for your question, they must use a nearby telephone and call a Disney phone number where people are standing by with computers with information and answers to questions and report the answer back to you! You can ask them anything, and they will never say “I do not know”.
• Corporate officers, Cast Members themselves, spend time working in front line service positions within the parks as part of the job.

Disney’s substantial brand legacy has been built on unparalleled customer service that permeates the entirety of their operations. Engineers, or Imagineers, develop not products but customer experiences. There is no delineation between the product and the customer experience because the customer makes no such differentiation – the experience was either a good one, or it was not.

Engineers are inherently problem solvers. Customer service is inherently about problem solving.

The best way to make engineering groups aware of the challenges involved with customer service is not to ask them to do customer service, but rather to ask them to be customer service; to work the problem, not the product; to engage in dialogue with users as part of the development process, not as a response to a problem that arises.

1. below taken from Hidden Mickeys [↩]

Related posts:

1. Bruce Mau on Interdisciplinary Conceptualization
2. “Your users don’t care that it’s hard…”
3. New is a Product of Context
4. Facilitation and the Sound of Cracking Glass
5. Jonathan MacDonald’s First 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century