Create Your Own Easy Button
December 8, 2020
by Shannon Simmons

Remember the Staples “Easy Button”? We keep one around the gym so after a grueling set of squats or KB swings I can go over and press it, with the cheery voice saying…

“That Was Easy!”

Clients love it, really!

Seriously though, Staples was on to something. They were communicating to their customers that doing business with us is better. Simpler, hassle free, pleasant. Easier. It was a big brand promise, and you can decide for yourself if they live up to it. 

I was reminded of the Easy Button as I worked my way through the “Order” level of the Business Hierarchy of Needs (BHN).

Need #1: Minimize Wasted Effort

Question: Do you have an ongoing and working model to reduce bottlenecks, slowdowns, and inefficiencies?

In other words, are you actively looking and working to make things easier?

This applies to both the way your customers do business with you, and the way your team delivers your services. As we discussed last time, documenting and following systems is important. The danger is we get caught in the “that’s just the way we do it” trap. Look, I don’t like change any more than the next person, but when you discover a way to do something that makes someone else’s life easier and it still accomplishes the end result, try that instead!

And remember it’s not all about you and your team. Sometimes in our attempt to make things easier for us, we make it harder on the client. Not a good idea. For years in our gym we took attendance manually, you know, on actual paper. That meant the client never had to do anything except walk in the door. Sometimes we would check them off as they made their way in, or make a mental note and check them off later. It worked pretty well, but it wasn’t perfect. We would invariably miss one or two throughout the day. Eventually we moved over to a new software that had attendance built in. This would surely make things better! We explained to our clients it had an app for your phone, so when you walked in the door all you had to do was open it up and check that you were here. Easy peasy, right? People are used to using their phones for all sorts of things, surely this would not be a problem.

Except it was. Clients left their phones in the car, “forgot” to do it, or just didn’t care. We had added one more thing to their plate in order to get it off ours. The new system ended up being less efficient and less accurate than the old one. After a few weeks, we tweaked the system so we were doing the input again, just using software this time. The important take home here is we listened to what clients were saying. If we were stubborn and insisted it be done our way, it would have just led to bad feelings on top of it not getting done.

Often reducing bottlenecks and being more efficient is amazingly simple, if you are willing to listen to what your clients and team are saying. Sometimes “complaints” are key insights into what is causing friction with the way you do business, and wisdom listens, not dismisses.

If you want a happier team and happier clients, what is the one thing you can do today to make them want to press the “Easy Button”?