The complexity of simplicity

We all talk about 'keeping things simple' for ourselves, our prospects and/or our customers because we've all got enough going on already.

I'm fairly confident that every company I've worked with, whether permanently, as a consultant or on a fractional basis has talked about 'keeping things simple'. The problem is that things are complex and creating even an illusion of simplicity can be really, really difficult (not to mention expensive and time consuming). So let's see if we can unpick why things get complex and come up with some strategies to reduce complexity.

So why do are some experiences just so complex for our people and our customers? As with most things it's usually a combination of factors and it usually comes from a good place. Companies want to provide lots of functionality so people can self-serve, have context and background information and that they feel completely enabled to do things for themselves.

These are all good motivations for doing something. What often happens though is that something that started small, with great intentions, starts to grow in size and drifts trying to solve multiple problems and moves away from its original purpose and design. This leads to additional requirements and increased complexity. Scope creep anyone?

Let's take the example of deploying a general FAQ chatbot. On the face of it this sounds great. Customers can get answers quickly, 24/365 and without the hassle of having to contact someone. Great reasons for doing it. The problem is that a general FAQ bot will be just that- general. Therefore the likelihood of giving a simple, great experience is reduced because it's trying to do all the things, rather than focusing on doing one, or at the most, a couple of things brilliantly.

Another reason why 'things get complex' is that we all love a bit of tech and because we've invested time and money in it we feel obliged to use it, and use all of it, after all we've paid for it. This in turn makes solutions more complex - like offering every contact channel possible to customers, when probably offering a few will do. There's research that shows that if a customer's preferred contact channel isn't available to them it has no impact on their satisfaction, so making the choice simple is the right way to go. To read more about the risks of this, see my blog on buying tech and why overbuying is ironically simple to do!

I also think that with the desire to improve things, companies, completely understandably, get lots of clever people together who have the knowledge about processes, systems, ways of working and so on. This creates a risk that designs get overly complex by trying to incorporate everyone's wants and needs. The collective clever brains can get over-enthusiastic about the art of the possible. When I design I start by learning from the frontline.....in my experience they can easily articulate problems and have great potential solutions.

I remember when I worked at Virgin our focus was always on making the working lives of our frontline as simple and free as possible so they can deliver the same experience to our customers.

So what are some of the impacts of making ways of working and experiences overly complex?

• Effort increases for customers as they try to navigate through information and processes that are built with internal inherent knowledge that customers don't have.

• Costs increase internally as more complexity means future changes and development is also more complex, taking more time to get things done.

• Satisfaction drops, internally and externally, with your people and customers finding it overwhelming (too much like hard work) to navigate and therefore they opt out.

To limit the chances of making things more complex than necessary and to dodge the potential pitfalls above, have the following in mind - a simplicity checklist if you like:

• Buy technology solutions that deliver what you need - not more or different.

• Resist the urge to use all the tools all at the same time - less can definitely mean better.

• Regularly check the solution design - remind yourself what you're trying to achieve and why.

• And obvs think like a customer and an advisor and their needs and ways of working.

Because you can doesn't always mean you should.

Keep focused on simple design, simple processes and offering clarity to customers and your people. It's amazing how compliant we are as customers when something is simple, low effort and we have a sense that we're achieving what we need to.

In one company I worked for we build a network of bots. One acted as the concierge which directed customers to a different bot depending on the customers need. The bots answered questions, resolved issues and collected data when the conversation had to be passed over to the team. All simple, logical and always on. Customers complied and our handling times and resolution rates shot up. A win:win.

Sounds simple right? If we can help you with your ways of working, blending technology and people to deliver consistently great service in a simple and cost effective way then just get in touch - we'd love to have a chat with you.