The “our user” syndrome

It seems to be a diffuse, mysterious ailment. I see it again and again in customers. Customers with very different characteristics. Be it origin, gender or skin color. Whether in large or small companies. Be it in Germany, France, Italy or Switzerland. I’ve experienced it everywhere, the “our customers” syndrome.

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Hardship cases

I once observed this most clearly with a small company that I had supported with eCommerce activities. After a setup project for the online store was completed, the first orders arrived and we evaluated the initial figures from the analytics tool in a workshop, I suggested optimizations to the product range and the presentation of the products based on this.

I’m used to being resistant to advice and can usually handle it well. I simply persevere and explain the facts that we have gathered over and over again and try to let my customers come up with the right solution themselves. In this case, however, that didn’t even begin to work: My clients were categorically against all the measures I suggested. Measures which, nota bene, were completely logical. These were measures such as moving call-to-action elements to the viewport in the order process.

When they ran out of factual arguments, they came up with the killer argument par excellence: “Our users” don’t want it that way. As a coach and consultant, you are caught in a trap: either you give in and don’t really take your job seriously or you contradict and indirectly say that the customer knows less about their users than you do. Not formulating this openly has something to do with decency. Customers who deliberately play on this because they don’t want a change for other reasons, such as company policy, are well aware of this. 1:0.

They really believe that

In another case, the customer did not want to advertise any products in the newsletter, even though he was in urgent need of orders. “That’s not what our users want, they want to be inspired, such disdainful product advertising will only put them off.” At first glance, this would seem to be a valid argument, but not if we had already collected almost 20% of newsletter subscribers in a survey. 80% of respondents wanted specific monthly offers. My client’s banal comment: “Only 20% were surveyed, probably the wrong ones.” Facepalm.

What is behind it?

Of course, these are the moments when you think about terminating the contract or mandate. Nobody gets anywhere that way. In a way, I was also fascinated by this experience, which is unfortunately repeated from time to time in a slightly different form.
How can you simply negate facts like that? For a long time, I had no idea. Until I realized that, in the vast majority of cases, my customers see themselves as a kind of reference.

The “our customer syndrome” has a little brother, because “I can already see that in myself” effect

Far too often, customers take it upon themselves to determine the needs of their users. Sentences like “This content is not read on mobile, I can already see that in myself. I would never do that”. Or “These spare parts won’t be ordered online, I can already see that for myself. It’s much easier for me by phone”. The catch is: Only very rarely is your own behavior congruent with that of the majority of users.

Somehow your own preferences and habits are reflected on your customers. And these are then confirmed by the person you trust the most. You yourself.

The attempt to stop change

But to argue in such a psychologized way is not enough. I think I can say that the syndrome is more common among older customers. This, on the other hand, seems rather logical to me: anyone who has spent a decade or more working with their user base will logically find it difficult to accept the changes in that very base. And that’s where a consultant specialist with all kinds of figures, curves and diagrams comes in handy. Let him do 10 years in my business first.

Strategies out of the dilemma

However, I have also developed a strategy that can alleviate the syndrome. The following 4 points usually help quite well:

1. Don’t get angry. It’s just part of the job and it’s our job to coach the customer, even if they have the feeling that things are going completely in the wrong direction
2. Take the customer seriously. Listen first, even if you already know the findings from analytics and studies. Consulting is always a people business. 50% as a minimum.
3. Propose a deal: Try to test both ways as part of an A/B arrangement. With concrete results, especially when money is involved, you usually get a long way.
4. If the customer cannot bring himself to implement the winning arrangement, simply declare both A and B to be the solution. This is a both/and compromise and probably not the most ideal solution from a technical point of view. However, if you look at the overall constellation, it is probably the maximum that can be achieved. As we all know, you can’t force anyone to be happy.

I can only hope that more and more customers will base their decisions first and foremost on the data and knowledge that is available. There are still enough areas where there is no empirical data, where intuition and experience are required. Also in the web sector. It would be nice if we could focus our energy on this.