There is no average customer: Why ease of use breaks so often

Sharon (00:00)
when she’s trying to use her banking app. not being able to see means that she uses

screen reader. So she’s came across trying to make a payment. But when she goes to press the button,

to make a payment. She literally cannot do that because the developers doing the coding behind that button haven’t coded it

Dave Heywood (00:16)
do you think we therefore actually severely underestimate how hard it can be for people to…

process information and make decisions when some of these barriers are in the way.

This is Marketing Careers Uncovered and i’m Dave Heywood most organizations would say that they want to be

easier to understand, easier to buy from, easier to stick with. And that sounds really obvious and self-evident. But what we see in practice is that an awful lot of that gets lost

is what we’re putting out into the world actually workable and usable for the people we want to reach? And I’m really thrilled to have Sharon Flaherty with me today. she spent years working across that really exciting intersection of content, customer experience.

Inclusive communications, accessibility, both in-house and now running her own agency. Sharon, just to kick us off a little bit, it’d be great just to hear a little bit more about you, what you’re up to right now, and the kind of work you’re getting involved in.

Sharon (01:32)
Yeah, okay, well, hello. As you said, my name is Sharon and I am the CEO of Folk, a strategic comms agency. we work across B2B, B2C, have a really big interest in health and financial services, but at the heart of what we do is ⁓ putting people and the real perspectives of real people, which ironically becomes even more important now with AI.

And I think people are starting to realize that a little bit more.

I’m very passionate about fairness and how that shows up in society and at brands. And there’s lots of different ways that that can show up or not show up. We set up about three years ago something called the Real Folk panel.

And that is a panel of ⁓ comms professionals. but advocating for a community.

because no matter at any point across any organization, we don’t have the diversity that we would like. And, you know, it’s really important then to make sure you’re getting these perspectives that you don’t have yourself. And I think it’s important to realize that I don’t, you don’t, we don’t all have the lived experience of everything. How can we, you know? So that’s why you need to make sure you’re getting different thoughts.

into the work that you’re doing because otherwise we tend to create work on assumptions rather than actual truth in people’s experience. So that’s something that I’m really passionate about.

Dave Heywood (02:46)
So let’s start on that thread, then of ease of use. I think we talk a really good game about ease of use. I’ve run various customer client feedback initiatives over the year and it’s one of the most common value drivers that come through from the market. Be easier.

be easier to use, easier to access on all fronts.

But I’m really interested in your view from your work and experience. Where have you seen and experienced friction most commonly showing up in the customer journey? And why is it, why did we seem so blind to it?

Sharon (03:25)
mean, gosh, I mean, that’s a question. So where do we experience it showing up? It shows up in so many places. And I guess I think one of the things is it’s, can be often be hidden, because your needs when you’re, know, when you’re buying from a brand would be different from mine. so I got an example here. So one of the, mentioned the Real Folk panel a moment ago and one of the members of that panel. So she, ⁓ she became

blind. So she wasn’t born blind, but she lost her sight as a teenager. And she, so that’s actually really interesting in her perspective, because she knows what it’s like to have seen and now not be able to. But she has experienced, she experiences quite a lot. And one of the things she’s come across a few times is

when she’s trying to use her banking app. So obviously not being able to see means that she uses

her screen reader. So she’s came across trying to make a payment. But because the people developing websites and apps, if they’re not developing it from a place where they’re thinking about screen readers, then things get missed. So when she goes to press the button,

to make a payment. She literally cannot do that because the developers doing the coding behind that button haven’t coded it

So I think that’s probably a really good example and illustrates the point that it could be anywhere, but you’ll only see it or bump into it when it’s something that impacts you.

Dave Heywood (04:42)
do you think we therefore actually severely underestimate how hard it can be for people to…

process information and make decisions when some of these little barriers are in the way.

Sharon (04:52)
I think we massively underestimate it and I think that’s the problem. I think we somehow have this view that there is like…

The masses are all this, like we’re all the same and this, you know, this, the most things work for everyone. And there’s this fringe cases, but it’s not, it’s just not true. We’ve done our own research and the thing like, it shows that like over 58 % of people in the UK are what brands would see as their minorities, right? So whether that’s from an underrepresented group or we have a protected characteristic,

People just don’t realize that, you know, you’re, you’re actually not designing for an average user. It doesn’t work like that. Like we need to, because nobody is an average user. Do you know what mean? There’s, there is, you could have ADHD.

Dave Heywood (05:32)
Yeah,

it’s a bit of a fallacy really, isn’t it? But we’re not homogenous.

Sharon (05:34)
Yeah, it’s it’s lazy.

It’s I think it’s lazy. Like how many people have been diagnosed with ADHD? Right. So you add up all these different things. Like it’s, you can easily see how it’s no longer the minorities, you know? So people with ADHD, you know, like say you’re, you’re getting a letter in the post. Well, was well known that people with ADHD don’t open their letters that often. Like how’s that? you know, so that, you know, you see there, that’s like, there’s friction there and in that comes in that process that could.

could cause a problem if someone doesn’t open a letter and misses something. So it’s actually understanding actually the nuances of customers,

Dave Heywood (06:07)
If you wind the clock back for yourself, did you underestimate the impact of all this early on? What changed for you to build this quite strong viewpoint?

Sharon (06:13)
Yep.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s my personal story. So I, in all honesty, probably didn’t think about it at all, very much. If I go back about, if I go back to 2019.

We had experienced some challenges with pregnancy. know, no, no, that other people wouldn’t have experienced. know, for example, early miscarriage is really common in the UK. But we were, was a pregnancy where we were at hospital and the consultant said, you know, we think that there’s a risk that the baby has Down syndrome. And what that led me to was leave the hospital and go, you know, get your tests and they, you

figure out what, what, if there may be a disability or not. And it was the further, that was the first time where I actually started to think about, guess, things outside of my own bubble. So I went and did loads of research and I thought, I actually have never spent any time with anyone with Down syndrome. So what does that mean? What does that look like?

And that experience led me to see things in a different way.

Dave Heywood (07:16)
It’s almost like you’ve been given a different set of glasses, put them on and gone, whoa, hold on, everything, this all just looks completely wrong.

Sharon (07:22)
Exactly that.

Exactly that. And I think that’s probably part of the challenge because unless you have, I think, a moment or experience something, it doesn’t have to be as big as that, but at somewhere at work, it’s kind of hard for you to understand it. So it’s trying to figure out how to get people to see that. you know, sometimes that’s in hard numbers, sometimes it’s in other ways, but that is the challenge.

Dave Heywood (07:44)
Yeah, perhaps the concept of linear customer journeys are a bit at fault here. we really don’t clue into the surrounding context, the 20 different things that are going on.

in someone’s life that could absolutely derail that. it’s lack of empathy. Isn’t it really?

Sharon (08:06)
Yeah,

I’m understanding, I think, and I don’t know what it just is, you where’s this gap come from? But I think what we still do is, I don’t think the fix is that hard.

I think what we still do is we bolt on maybe this thinking at the end and maybe we’ll do some testing. It depends on what we’re talking about, but let’s say it’s customer journey, because it’s probably the simplest. Like you do some testing at the end with customers.

I don’t know how, you know, I was thinking about that design of that. How do you decide who’s testing? How frequently do you do it? Also, you don’t do it at the end. You do it at the start. You co-design at the start. That’s where you avoid these issues. It’s not changing anything. You’re just moving it to earlier in the journey rather than at the end when it’s going to be, well, okay, well, that’s when things don’t happen or get deprioritized or that will go into that sprint, for example, you know, for that to happen at another time. So.

Dave Heywood (08:50)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Do you see a common set of assumptions that well-intentioned teams and businesses make that divert us away from thinking about this stuff too early?

Sharon (09:06)
Good question.

I think possibly, it does really depend on the sector. And I suppose that’s where it gets interesting. But if we were looking at sectors that are regulated,

We have compliance, have consumer duty, we have the FCA. Whereas, and so that might be where we end up assuming that actually it’s, we need to just focus on vulnerable customers and vulnerable customers are often people who have low financial capability, people who have less chance of understanding terms and conditions, for example.

But there are all those other things that I haven’t just said and there’ll be loads that I don’t know about. We don’t know it until we speak to people and different people and it gets surfaced,

Dave Heywood (09:43)
You’ve got to really go and seek out and understand your customers and the assumptions you might make about who your customers are and how they interact and what they feel. That’s what I’m hearing.

Sharon (09:52)
Yeah.

And that’s just,

This doesn’t have to be hard. This is consulting more with people with lived experience. This is listening to the calls that you record in your call center. If you have a call center, like the data and information is there. It’s just what you choose to do with it.

You know? So

Again, you know, removing this from it just being these edge cases or fringe cases, like we’ve said, it’s not, it’s just, this is about improving your customer experience. I’m improving. Because actually, if this is not enough for people to think it’s worthwhile, maybe what’s coming down the line will help because with AI it’s really changing things on its head. Customer experience is going to change massively. And you know, how brands,

show up for the customers is going to be really important because some of that choice is to be taken away from them. yeah, making sure that you you’re getting a really good customer experience will be more important now than in the next few years than it ever has. So that’s a really good commercial reason to make sure that you are understanding your customers and the nuances of them.

Dave Heywood (10:50)
What’s the commercial gain you see for…

brands of business that you work with that get this right.

Sharon (10:57)
I mean, if you’re asking, can you track an ROI? I think that would be wrong because, you know, that…

But the clients that we work with who really care about this, there’s two parts to this, then go back. I suppose the first part is you may have less customer complaints, right? That’s kind of an obvious one. you’re depending on the sector, if you’re regulated, then if you don’t want to be getting in trouble with the regulator and the FCA,

I guess the issue is measurement, isn’t it? We’re often not great at measuring anyway. Something like this would be quite hard to measure.

A lot of it’s about reputation as well as making sure that you’re having these issues with customers and complaints and reputation.

Dave Heywood (11:37)
Yeah.

My biggest question wrapped around all this, because we’re really talking about organisational change. A change of mindset, change of approach, change of ways of working.

In your view, what do people really underestimate about what that really takes?

Yeah.

Sharon (11:57)
I mean, that’s yeah, that can be quite hard. my experience, you know, this would go for whether it’s, you know, it’s around accessibility, vulnerable customers, even innovation, you know, it does come a little bit down to culture. It comes down to culture, comes down to leadership, you know, the openness, the willingness to for change and to be hearing different points of view.

to do things differently. And we see that actually so differently in the organizations we work with. So some organizations will be so open to wanting to make sure they’re really accessible, doing the right things by all of their customers. But they’re often what we find already there. So nationwide building societies.

really good example of that. I’m always quite impressed with them because they are proactive. It seems to be in their DNA, they really want to do the right thing by their customers and whatever that looks like. Whereas others, it’s a bit more pushing water upstream and that’s where it becomes difficult because if they don’t already understand

course you can educate, but it may just never be a priority for them, you know? And that comes down to leadership, priorities, because there’s always lots of stuff going on in the business. It’s question of the size of the business, know? This can get very complex. You could have thousands and thousands of employees or you could have 50 to 100. So depending on where you work on your level, that really changes how much of an impact you can have.

the priorities of the business. But often we do see that people are in a camp that are either really open.

or it’s gonna be really, really hard work. And generally when it’s like that, I’ll be honest, it doesn’t, it’s hard to go over the line. but yeah.

Dave Heywood (13:42)
But yeah, it can be such a gargantuan thing that you look at, yeah, sort of unsolvable puzzle amongst everything. think reflecting on everything that we’ve just talked about, the single most pragmatic thing anyone can do to start to shift that mindset is to run some really deep customer research.

really get under the skin of a diverse set of your actual customers who are using your product, using your service and finding out where are you falling short? Where are things a little bit harder than they should be?

regardless of who you are within an organization. I mean, if you start down that.

Sharon (14:19)
Yes.

Dave Heywood (14:23)
you naturally open the door

Sharon (14:25)
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I think, I think sometimes we, what we see is people default to customer surveys, right? So we’re quantitative when they’re trying to understand the customer’s experience, but the qualitative stuff’s really important. So, you while you may be looking at slightly smaller numbers is actually understanding the behavior, you know, so survey doesn’t tell you that.

You need to understand how, uh, how customers are interacting with the brand, where they’re getting stuck, where they’re not, where’s the moments of delight. Cause it isn’t all negative, right? There’s gotta be some, there’s some great stuff here. Um, and that again, which I talked about a little bit with AI, becomes so important because, um, I think, you know, the future or where we are right now is like, how are people even using, um, Claude GBT, Gemini, uh, for their research. Well, we know that, uh, people use a lot for health.

that’s got risk but that’s got opportunity. We know that they use it for travel. Again, lots of opportunities for brands and then financial services. so brands need to think about that.

And so if there’s ever been an argument to understand customers and the nuance of them and their behavior, it is more important now than ever because the landscape is so, so fragmented.

take time to understand your customers, you know, and that’s going to that’s going to be much more beneficial with, yeah, with the landscape we’re in.

Dave Heywood (15:44)
Yeah, because

it comes back to the eternal ubiquitous marketing principle of have a deep understanding of your customers and your market. Bake this in by design. It becomes easier to deliver and then it becomes far, far easier to win.

Sharon (16:01)
Yeah, they can exactly at the start just, you know, speaking to customers, but just not defaulting to what your assumptions are of the average customer, because there is no average customer. I think once soon as we get that out of our heads, I think that’s when things open up and become more interesting. There’s no average.

Dave Heywood (16:17)
Well, thanks so much for joining us, And thanks to you as well for listening. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, don’t forget to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review or share with your friends and colleagues and we’ll see you next time.