Back to articles page

Delighting Customers
By Daniel Szuc
Published - 8 April 2008

What does it take to delight customers? Here are a few thoughts you can refer to when working on products to help make them more usable, delightful and profitable for your company. It takes more than just a checklist to make great products, but think of this as something quick you can refer back to when designing for your customers.

1. Keep the solution simple (if its takes too long to explain to people, its too hard)
2. Put yourself in your customers shoes (what would they do? what would they say?) Test your assumptions with customers.
3. Think about the end goal (what is the customer trying to achieve, how will it help them and how it will help your business)
4. Make technology do the hard work (if you dont need to add it to the design and you can make the technology do the hard work behind the scenes - then great!)
5. Understand the customer context (would they really want to do it that way and in the place they are using it?)
6. Show customers something they can use & play with - dont just ask them what they want
7. When designing - Fail, fail and then fail again (don't be afraid to fail many times to get it right)
8. Talk to your customers or find ways to speak to people who speak to customers (don't design in a vacuum)

What could you add to help delight your customers?

Thank you John Rhodes for reviewing :)