UPS has over 94,000 delivery vehicles, 282 airplanes (the 8th largest fleet in the world) and over 425,000 employees across the globe. Over the years they have developed one of the most sophisticated hand held devices ever devised. There are well over 70,000 of them deployed worldwide. They call it the Delivery Information Acquisition Device, DIAD for short. The latest iteration has 3 different radio types and is the instant entry point for a tracking system that averages over 10 million tracking requests a day.

So how do you put a device that sophisticated in the hands of so many people without bringing the company to a crawl or opening a small university to train everyone? Make the interface dead simple.

Every time I see those DIAD devices in the hands of my UPS delivery person it reminds me of an experience I had with a UPS driver almost 8 years ago. As I watched him click clack away at the large array of buttons on this intimidating notebook sized device with such extraordinary speed and precision I had to ask him “How hard is that thing to use?” What he showed me has stuck with me ever since. On the small monochromatic screen, just above 2 sets of blue up/down arrows were the words “Hit the blue up.” — “It’s great” he said “totally dumbed down.”

Now, he did not say “dumbed down” in a negative way. He was clearly proud about his speed and proficiency on this complex piece of electronics that anyone would be overwhelmed by at first (or tenth) glance. The story has stuck in my mind because that phrase, “dumbed down,” continues to come up so often over the years.

When I tell this story to clients, audiences or prospects the response I often hear is:

“No, no… I don’t want to dumb it down. Our customers are smarter, more savvy, more…”

When we work on marketing, new products, business ideas, web sites, presentations,etc...  We spend a lot of time making sure that everything sounds as complicated as it can be. Complicated has come to equal uniqueness. Why? The more complex we can make our offerings (Or make them sound that way) the more differentiated we will be. I believe the opposite to be true. Now more than ever.

When we get worried about dumbing something down, whose intelligence are we worried about insulting? Do you think the UPS drivers think the IT group has dumbed things down for him or her? Or does the extreme simplification make the cumbersome manageable? When someone visits your web site and there is language that makes each move incredibly clear do you think the visitor feels insulted? When someone can understand what you are offering and why they should care without having to go through 68 slides, they will thank you.

The challenge we all face is to make something so incredibly powerful and complex, like the UPS DIAD, yet make it so extraordinarily accessible that it takes seconds for the user to put that power to use.

Whether it is a multi billion dollar global communication system or making it extraordinarily clear where someone can find something in your catalog, website or store you are not insulting their intelligence, you simply give them ones less thing they have to work through.

Not dumbing it down would have caused the tightest ship in the shipping business to sink just when they were trying to make a huge innovation leap. How many businesses do not embrace new technology because they fear that doing so would bring the company to a grinding halt? If the new way is more painful than the old way then the old way will always be too easy to fall back on.

How much did UPS save in training/support/complaint/re-training costs by dumbing it down? Hundreds of millions at least. How much did making the interface dead simple change the kind of real time information it wanted back from the devices? None.

Whatever it is you are offering, selling or trying to convey, no matter how complex it may be, how do you explain it as easily as Hit the blue up?

Your customers are busy. They no longer like to do a lot of reading (If they ever did) and they want to understand what is in it for them in as short a time as possible. Do yourself a favor and dumb it down for them.

I met with a client a few weeks ago and got into a debate about what it was like to be a client of their firm. As I kept banging my head up against their story... I persuaded them to humor me and try something new....

I asked the President of the company to go outside and come in as if he was a client arriving for an appointment. Within 5 minutes of sitting in his own reception area he didn't like how uncomfortable the chairs were, hated that he could see a bunch of old boxes in a cubicle down the hall, didn't like how dark it was and we stopped right there.

Stupid exercise?...perhaps. Definitely simplistic. But it was a start.

It will all seem unimportant until it is you waiting in the reception area or stuck on hold.

What if you took some time away from trying to figure out what your clients want next and spend time every month experiencing how they actually see you today.

How many business owners take some time each month being anonymous clients of their own companies?

The always great 37Signals Blog points to an interview with John Gruber.  In it, Mr. Gruber mentions the importance that Steve Jobs(Mac) places on the first start up experience a user has with their operating system:

In particular...

Your first-run experience — the experience you encounter the first time you boot the machine after taking it out of the box — therefore constitutes about one-thousandth of your entire experience with the machine. I think that’s the sort of logic that has driven most companies not to put that much effort into designing the first-run UI — it’s only going to happen once, and if it isn’t smooth, so what?

Whereas I think Jobs looks at the first-run experience and thinks, it may only be one-thousandth of a user’s overall experience with the machine, but it’s the most important one-thousandth, because it’s the first one-thousandth, and it sets their expectations and initial impression.

Exactly!  It is also exactly true for:

The way your company answers the phone
The way your invoices look
The quality of your business card
The way you (and your team) dress when visiting a client or prospect
The first impression of your web site
Your office reception area
Etc, etc, etc....

Like it or not.. fair or not...correct or not..  All first impressions matter. You make them about everything and so do your clients.  Malcolm Gladwell sold boatloads of his book "Blink" trying to convince you of it.

Simple? Obvious?

I don't think so. Too many first impressions remain extraordinarily poor.

This post from Seth Godin got me thinking about all the bad things that come from waiting in line.

My local Citibank has 12 teller windows. I have never been there when more than 3 had tellers were behind them. I have never been there when there was not a long line.

There is a large chain of "super" Drug Stores here in New York called Duane Reade. They all have approx. 8-10 cash registers and I have never been there when more than 2 had staff behind them (Most of the time it is only 1). This is so universally true at every Duane Reade that I now refer to every other company that creates this illogical and customer maddening experience as the "Duane Reade of _____"

In both cases, managers are around that observe these long lines and NEVER rally other staff to clear it or jump behind the register/window themselves.

Now, I am not the most patient person in the world. But, I do not think that anyone enjoys waiting in a line up to 10-20 minutes. Is that just the way it has to be to keep expenses down?

My local Whole Foods Market has over 35 cash registers (all staffed) and a person at the head of the line that continually directs people to the next open register. The line is often over 50 people long and I have never waited more than 5 minutes.

There is a hotel in Germany that picks you up from the airport, lets you order dinner from the car so it is waiting for you and they check you into the hotel when you get to your room.

How much effort does it really take to focus on that most important moment when your customers are about to pay you? Why would anything else come first?

Are there any times when your customers are "waiting in line" to use your product or service? If there is, the most important big idea/innovation for you to execute this year would be to fix it.