Objective decision making

Authority and gut feeling lead to bad decisions

We've all been there: someone with more authority than you is adamant that their idea must be implemented. I've seen one executive force a product decision because his wife didn't like the initial idea.

It's not only authority that makes features appear on top of a roadmap. Most times, economics are in play.

Yet what's good for the company isn't always good for the customer. Hostility towards customers compounds. Short-term gains can lead to long term losses. Small cuts do almost nothing by themselves, but people do die from a thousand of such cuts.

A local telecommunications company of which I am a customer recently introduced an extra section in their support app. I'm now presented with "engaging content from selected partners" in the app.

Economically, this makes sense. Suppose:

• The content partner pays €.2 per click

• The telecommunications company has 3 million customers who use the support app twice a month

• 1% of app users clicks on the "engaging content".

That would mean the company can make € 12.000 per month from its content partner, just by adding a line of JavaScript to its webapp. Considering a support app is typically seen as a cost, this is a compelling idea.

But it doesn't feel right, does it? As a customer, I am irritated. But it's a small cut, and it won't show up in the management Excel files.

Feelings are a weak counter-argument to the hard numbers of economics. Except when you can turn feelings into data, and that's where the Kano model shines.

If someone were to survey a sample of the telecommunication company's customers and show them the "engaging content" in the support app, I'm sure they'd find that half of the customers would feel indifferent about it and the other half would hate it. That means that twice every month, 1.5 million customers are irritated with the app (and by extension, the company). Surely that's not worth €12.000 to the company. It'd cost a lot more than that to bring back these customers.

The Kano model ensures that decisions are based on objective data. Gone are pet features and decisions that hurt customers. Turning feelings into data creates a balance between what's good for the company and what's good for the customer and that's what benefits the company the most.