E2C vs. E2E

You've probably heard terms like B2B, B2C, and B2G.

Have you heard of E2C and E2E?

E2C  =  Employees who service customers

E2E  = Employees who service other employees (internal customers)


I coined these terms because, in my experience, especially at large companies, internal customers are not treated with the respect given to external customers.

Internal customers have to jump through more hoops, suffer from more lousy service and delays, and often have to put up with sub-par user interfaces and computer systems.

This ultimately harms the entire business.

That is why, in my Strategic Simplicity® Framework, even though user simplicity is often regarded as "making the (external) customer's life easier", my definition of user simplicity includes applying it to internal customers (employees).

User Design Lesson From XM Radio

They always list the band name over the song title but, to remove any ambiguity, they also put a human icon next to the band name and a musical note icon next to the song title.

Simplicity + No Ambiguity = Good User Design  #design

Time Magazine Unsubscribe Example of Non-User Design Simplicity

I have a subscription to Time Magazine, and they kept emailing me offers for other magazines.

I got tired of it and went to unsubscribe.  They had an email opt out.  I clicked on it and:

1. I had to enter my email.

2. They said that it will take effect within a week.

This is not user simplicity.  In most cases, when you want to opt out of email, you just click on the link and click "confirm".  You do not have to retype your email (which is already known, since you are clicking on their email), and it takes affect immediately.

When it comes to improving your business with Strategic Simplicity, its not always a matter of making a massive change.  A lot of irritating complexity is caused by little things that can be easily changed.

How Important is User Design and Simplicity in Software?

I am a management consultant who specializes in the four areas of Strategic Simplicity®: change simplicity, market simplicity, decision simplicity, and user simplicity.

How important is user simplicity / design, especially with software?  

It can change an entire corporate strategy.

I consulted and worked for a large multinational bank that developed an IT strategy to develop it's own web portal—which would eventually serve as the user interface for all of its legacy applications.  They even hired away some key executives from a prominent travel website, who were responsible for the travel site's state of the art portal design.

Around the same time, this bank entered the Chicago area and bought a local bank 1/10 its size. The larger bank expected to shut down the smaller bank's technology group and move customers to it's platform.

It turned out that the small local bank's software was rated much higher than the larger bank's in a survey conducted by a prominent banking magazine.  Their user interface was so good that the larger bank had to do an about-face with its strategy.

They ended up scrapping plans for its own portal, and they ended up shutting down the larger bank's software and switching to the smaller bank's platform.  The newly hired key portal executives ended up leaving, and the smaller bank's technology executives (who thought they would lose their jobs) ended up running the larger bank's tech operations.