[HN Gopher] Small Things
___________________________________________________________________
Small Things
Author : jger15
Score : 107 points
Date : 2024-05-05 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rishad.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rishad.substack.com)
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| Good customer experience matters. People remember how they were
| treated and they will be more loyal to a company that goes the
| extra mile to give them what they need.
|
| Years ago when I worked at Amazon, leaders made customer
| experience a priority and empowered us to do what was needed to
| ensure a good customer experience even if would cost the company
| more. I am not sure if things are the same there now, but it
| taught me a lot about how a company's relationship with its
| customers matters for the company's long-term growth and customer
| loyalty.
|
| The enshittification trends we see today are the opposite.
| Companies are all to happy to make quick profits by choosing to
| put what is best for the company ahead of the customer
| experience. Customer data is sold and shared. Ads are cramed into
| every possible space. Customers are opted in to onerous legal
| agreements and forced arbitration. Dark patterns abound.
|
| Customers notice. Customers remember. And when the circumstances
| are right they will drop such companies and watch them burn with
| pleasure. The golden rule still holds and no company is "too big
| to fail".
| Manfred wrote:
| All these things matter when you try to build an enduring
| company instead of the embrace, squeeze, and run strategy. I
| don't think that happens a lot any more, if we are lucky one
| company might keep its course for 20 years and then it gets
| sold or the founder moves on.
| Swizec wrote:
| I once took a hard look at our user surveys. As a software
| engineer I'm not really expected to care. All our happiest
| customers talked about the service experience. All our
| grumpiest customers talk about the service experience.
|
| None of our users gave two shits about the software. All they
| cared about was did we solve their problem on that day when
| they needed us.
|
| That's when I realized we're a software-enabled service
| company. It changed how I prioritize things.
| wrs wrote:
| I just had an Amazon package stolen from my porch with $500 of
| items in it that I needed quickly. I reordered everything for
| delivery next day, and started a chat in the app. The only
| thing they wanted to know was if I wanted the refund on my
| credit card or as a gift balance. (I've been an Amazon customer
| since 1997, so that might factor in.)
|
| But on the other hand, the quality of the actual product
| catalog is now abysmal. Way too many clones of Ali Express
| items with literally random brand names and scam listings. I
| still sort of trust "Sold by Amazon" listings, but they're
| making it harder to filter on that. So in this area the
| accounting department is clearly outranking the customer
| experience department.
| ashnehete wrote:
| Tangential, but the line saying: "smiles are always free" reminds
| me of the often overlooked cost of emotional labour performed
| especially by the service industry. We should also acknowledge
| this small thing.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > "smiles are always free"
|
| you're not wrong; nothing is free:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_mask_syndrome
|
| > ...subjects develop depression and physical illness as a
| result of prolonged, unnatural smiling.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| I am so far removed from this now that it feels foreign to me.
|
| In my house we must have a good attitude or be silent. It's
| fine to be angry or sad, just no crying or whining. Every
| request for a hug must be met with a hug.
|
| I expect the emotional exercise to help workout the management
| of emotions and adjusting of attitude.
| lukevp wrote:
| Your house sounds a little toxic. I couldn't tell in your
| post if you were positive or negative toward this, but it
| sounds like a denial of human emotion. Why would anyone ban
| crying? Sounds like the "turn it off" approach from the Book
| of Mormon.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Sounds like the "turn it off" approach from the Book of
| Mormon.
|
| I'm not familiar with that. What is it?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mormon_(musical
| )
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_6iKKoKyBM&list=OLAK5uy_
| lKH...
|
| https://genius.com/Original-broadway-cast-of-the-book-of-
| mor...
|
| https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1686764,168676
| 4
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_suppression
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Emotions are real and to be well managed. There's a time to
| cry. Working with adults who cry when their work or effort
| is brought under examination will lead to a toxic work
| environment.
|
| I'm not Mormon. Not familiar with the culture.
| mynegation wrote:
| > In my house we must have a good attitude or be silent.
|
| Having grown up in a house like that and re-learning to
| express my feelings and being able to empathize with people
| close to me later in life - I ask you to take a harder look
| at that stance.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| You've expressed your emotions. I expressed mine.
|
| I appreciate your encouragement.
|
| I wasn't taught that attitude was a choice. It was hard
| learned over many failures. My stress evaporated. My
| anxieties faded.
| wrs wrote:
| Not sure if you mean that literally..."no crying" sounds like
| a very bad idea even for an adult. I trust you mean more like
| "no hysterical tantrums".
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Crying for pain is fine.
|
| Crying for emotional manipulation is not permitted.
|
| The kids can turn off the tears when they want if the
| manipulation is shown as ineffective
| 2four2 wrote:
| When you put it this way, it seems more reasonable.
| Obviously you shouldn't reward or validate tantrums. At
| the same time, however, empathy is an easy way to
| acknowledge misplaced emotional reactions without
| encouraging them.
|
| Meeting a tantrum with "I know you don't like the taste
| of vegetables, but they're an important part of growing
| up and you must eat them before having sweets." is
| different from "In this house, you cannot cry if there's
| no real pain."
|
| There's no fine line between valid responses and
| manipulation. For manipulators, the pain FEELS real. The
| pain is a part of a learned behavior. Guiding those
| feelings instead of making a hard rule cutoff will have
| better results and build better trust.
| skipnup wrote:
| And if you live with a toddler, even those have to exist
| and are necessary for becoming a healthy being. At least if
| they are met with understanding by the parents.
| squigz wrote:
| > just no crying or whining. Every request for a hug must be
| met with a hug.
|
| Your kids can't cry, or complain? And they have to give
| someone a hug even if they don't want to?
|
| This all seems very unhealthy long-term.
| Cerium wrote:
| I agree with the introduction, but that line was the last I
| read in the article.
| qup wrote:
| Do you always stop reading when you disagree?
| cyberax wrote:
| The other problem: if you always smile, then you never smile.
|
| A smile transforms from a sign of affection into just another
| mandatory part of a uniform.
| jvans wrote:
| small things don't show up on p&l reports or a/b tests so the
| bean counters ignore them. But they have an outsized impact on
| long term success and people who are really great at what they do
| sweat the small stuff regardless of the numbers
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I recently moved and wanted the post office to forward my mail. I
| could fill out the physical card or I could go online and fill
| out a form and pay a $1.10 fee for verification. The fee was
| small enough that I thought it was worth saving the hassle.
|
| As I write this, the other browser tab for the post office web
| site is still displaying the 'loading' window with no end in
| sight after I entered all my info. I guess it is back to doing it
| the hard way.
|
| IT IS the small things...
| lukevp wrote:
| This is something Apple does amazingly well. The first touch
| point on a new Apple product is the box, and they use high end,
| thick cardboard that's got a great finish. When you go to open
| the box, the interface between the bottom and top halves is so
| perfectly fitted that there's a weightiness to removing the lid,
| like it has a seal. It probably costs barely anything to make the
| box better like that, but every time I buy an Apple product I
| notice it, and I feel like they care about the small things.
|
| I used to be anti-Apple. I used Android or Windows Phone and used
| Windows or Linux on PC. I thought the extra cost of Apple was a
| scam. But as I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate a company
| that doesn't BS me and waste my time.
|
| Windows has ads and malware built into the OS. They charge you
| for OS upgrades. macOS is just free and ad-free.
|
| The laptop hardware doesn't cut corners. Yes, it's expensive, but
| everyone knows of its quality. in 5 years it still has value. Try
| and sell a 5 year old windows laptop.
|
| This extends to all their other products and services. I pay more
| to not be the product, and to have privacy. I'll make that deal
| all day.
| wrs wrote:
| "It's the small things" has driven Apple design for decades.
| And it's a cultural thing, not just the "design department". I
| remember back in the mid-90s when I left Apple to work at
| Microsoft and realized how rare it is to have software
| developers who view everything through the lens of the end user
| experience, even if they're working on the file system or the
| boot sequence.
|
| Random example: One of the first things I asked when I got
| there was "why, when you turn on a Windows PC, does it start
| your user experience by filling the screen with scary
| gibberish?" That got fixed, but it took _many_ years, partially
| because of all the coordination needed in the PC ecosystem to
| do anything, but mostly because nobody really cared all that
| much.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That ingrained cultural attention to detail is probably the
| only thing I miss about working there. Too many other tech
| companies I've worked at just don't care about things they
| consider "edge cases". Make the "key customer journey" (in
| other words the happy-path) work and you're done. Is "making
| it beautiful" in the contract? No? Then don't work on it! Oh,
| the software doesn't work in landscape mode? P3 bug, we'll
| fix it later--just ship ship ship. Cheap out and make the
| casing plastic instead of metal so you can save $0.30 on each
| device. KPIs! OKRs! metrics! That's all the rest of the
| industry runs on.
| apantel wrote:
| This is the nature of lower price points: economization,
| doing only what is needed, not what would be nice.
| nextos wrote:
| The key is that Apple's product lineup is relatively small.
| Compare that with e.g. Lenovo, who offer a mindblowing amount
| of SKUs.
|
| Too many SKUs tend to be correlated with lack of polish and
| attention to detail. And this comes from someone who prefers
| Linux, and hence ThinkPad.
|
| Even basic user experiences, such as buying online, are
| vastly better at Apple. For instance, lenovo.com is handled
| by a third party in many markets, including the EU.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Too many SKUs tend to be correlated with lack of polish
| and attention to detail."
|
| So true. Back a decade ago, Nokia had an enormous amount of
| SKUs. The firmwares were usually crap, and even the
| hardware was often subpar. You were obviously not expected
| to keep the same Symbian smartphone for 5+ years, with the
| possible exception of the Communicator.
|
| Blackberry, on the other hand, had much fewer SKUs and much
| better quality.
| nextos wrote:
| Yeah, Nokia was the other example that came to mind. They
| were really capable. When they had a small team focused
| on a single thing, the Nokia N9, the product they
| developed was outstanding. However, as an organization,
| they were totally dysfunctional. Lots of internal fights,
| politics, etc. I sadly know that well as I interacted a
| lot with Nokia during the mid 2000s.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I programmed Nokias back then.
|
| The technical talent of their R&D was top notch, and it
| was sadly wasted by a dysfunctional decision making
| culture.
|
| People here on the HN tend to value engineers highly and
| look with disdain on mere managers. They may be right
| when it comes to the Pointy-Haired Bosses, but good
| management is a large force multiplier when it comes to
| the capabilities of any org. And bad management will
| easily drag a good engineering corps into an endless mire
| of meaningless work.
| nextos wrote:
| Hard to disagree!
| pooooplaaa wrote:
| > But as I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate a company
| that doesn't BS me and waste my time.
|
| You say this after a paragraph praising a cardboard box that's
| basically exactly the same as you'd get with almost any other
| google, samsung, etc brand?
|
| Apple fanboys are so self-unaware it's hilarious.
| 9dev wrote:
| Perhaps one needs a specific genetic disposition to even
| notice good design. I immediately knew what OP meant and I
| also unpacked Google and Samsung products; it's not the same
| thing. Nobody managed to match the way Apples design language
| is coherent from the moment I open the lid of the box all the
| way to the UI.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I agree with most of this and generally like Apple stuff,
| but...
|
| _The first touch point on a new Apple product is the box, and
| they use high end, thick cardboard that's got a great finish._
|
| ...I can't agree with this. Their boxes are bad! They're
| probably really proud of their boxes and think they're the
| best, and they do have a nice surface sheen, but they're bad.
|
| They're too heavy, too hard to open, near impossible to break
| down to recycle.
|
| Every time I mention this somebody says "that's out of date,
| they've really improved recently", but I'm still seeing the
| same shitty plastic-infused boxes.
|
| Nintendo are great at doing amazing things with simple
| cardboard. But there are plenty of other companies doing this
| now. Apple is well behind the times.
| fbrchps wrote:
| Anecdote: I recently received a new M3 MacBook Pro at work,
| and the box was 100% recyclable, as well as everything inside
| of it - instruction manuals (why?) were held together with
| paper, the power cord had paper around it, and the
| keyboard/screen separator was also tissue paper.
|
| I'm not denying that there's "plasticized paper" in the box,
| but as far as I could tell, it was 100% recyclable. As for
| "breaking down the box", if you flip the lid around to the
| bottom of the box, and then stack them together, then it
| saves a good bit of space. But yes the moulded cardboard that
| held the laptop itself was a pain to get out of the bottom
| section.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Was it a box you opened via a flap? Or one of those board
| game style boxes with a close-fitting lid, but manufactured
| in super heavyweight material with sub-micron snugness of
| fit? Those look nice but I find them pretty annoying.
| dmd wrote:
| > It probably costs barely anything to make the box better like
| that
|
| On the contrary, it costs _a LOT_ to make the box that good.
|
| I can't find it now, but I recall some article posted here
| about how lots of startups spent insane amounts of money trying
| to make their packaging as good as Apple's (UHD foam, aluminum
| milling) when they should be working on their actual product
| instead.
| gumby wrote:
| Their hardware is pretty good, but my overall impression (as a
| mainly Apple user for 30 years) is just that the experience
| sucks less.
|
| I don't actually know, but my impression is that they work
| harder "under the hood" than on the user facing stuff (which
| ironically is what _I_ want. But in applications and user
| interfaces, in many cases they have simply lost their way.
|
| But the physical quality from, as you say, the box to the
| device does feel like it improves the quality, making up in
| part for indifferent software.
|
| The double irony here is that I can afford to buy expensive
| goods, but I won't buy a Prada pullover any more because the
| zippers are functionally poor. Apple provides a luxurious
| experience (a nice box with a lovely watch inside) at a cost
| that a supermarket worker can afford.
| 38 wrote:
| The box? Really? The box does not matter at all. As long as
| it's not a plastic clamshell, it's good enough. The box just
| not justify the 2x price over mostly similar products
| jjnoakes wrote:
| The box isn't the only justification for the higher price.
| It's just an example. If apple cares that much about the box,
| imagine the effort they put into the rest of the hardware,
| software, and experience.
|
| I'm not an apple user but it is obvious to me that apple
| users aren't paying more just for the box.
| 38 wrote:
| > If apple cares that much about the box, imagine the
| effort they put into the rest of the hardware, software,
| and experience
|
| faulty logic. if that was the case, they would
| intentionally over engineer the box, and leave everything
| else shitty, in order to save money. the box doesn't
| matter, the product matters.
| albumen wrote:
| But their customers would quickly spot that. In fact,
| other companies now get close to / match apple's
| packaging attention to detail, but the rest of the
| customer experience itself rarely matches that first
| impression.
|
| So the box matters; and the product; and the customer
| service. Focussing on just the product is missing the big
| picture.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Faulty observation(?)
|
| The box matters to some people including me, it _is_ ,
| after all, part of the package that you buy, and the most
| visible one.
|
| That does not mean that I would buy worthless product
| just because it has a great box. It just means that I
| appreciate work spent on the box design, too.
| 9dev wrote:
| ...the fact that the behaviour you describe is precisely
| _not_ how Apple works is the reason I am their customer.
| lisper wrote:
| > This is something Apple does amazingly well.
|
| Sometimes. Other times not so much. Sometimes they make changes
| just for the sake of making changes so that they can continue
| to be the "cool new thing" and in so doing they make things
| objectively worse. The canonical examples were the butterfly
| keyboard and the touch bar.
|
| Another example is the move away from discoverability and
| towards hidden controls. In mail.app, for example, the controls
| to save attachments are hidden until you hover over them. There
| is no visual clue that they exist until you hover. You either
| have to know where they are, or stumble upon them by sheer
| luck. There is, obviously, no manual to clue you in.
| creeble wrote:
| I too have been a State Farm customer for over 30 years, and my
| proof of insurance cards come with perforations.
|
| I too would notice and care if they did not. Maybe he's on
| paperless?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Management by key process indicators is such a surreal thing.
|
| Any sane human would notice that it's pointless to go out of your
| way to make a completely optional interaction with your customers
| and do it so badly that the customer will leave unsatisfied.
|
| The only way you get that is by building a clearly stupid AI, and
| subjecting people to its whims. What is a management best
| practice, so yeah, let's do it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I do this with UI. In fact, I'm working on a backend dashboard
| app, right now. Only two of us (nerdy) types will ever use it
| (maybe more, if things take off, but it's not a priority).
|
| I will be spending at least three days, polishing up a
| "thermometer" UI, for the date ranges.
|
| The main public app, itself, is a big aggregation of "small
| things," like custom transition animations, haptics, font
| choices, etc. The designer was quite adamant about "small
| things," often complaining about half-pixel (!) offsets.
|
| That's one of the reasons I write native, and also one of the
| reasons that I'm using UIKit/AutoLayout, because they let me do
| anything I want (but I don't really like AutoLayout -I'm just
| good with it).
|
| People seem to like it.
| gumby wrote:
| There are longstanding lessons in this point that predate
| software.
|
| The US car companies slid in the 60s and 70s by incrementally
| cutting "irrelevant" costs, like not painting under the seats,
| cheaper knobs, and the like. Each of these changes was
| imperceptible but their sum was noticeable. Ironically their own
| European and especially Japanese competition went the other way:
| started cheap (so people expected cheap knobs) and then
| incrementally moved upmarket ("Wow, this cheap car is nicer than
| I had expected" -> premium market).
|
| Right now the software and especially SaaS worlds seem stuck in
| their own 1970s Detroit era. Dangerous crap,but with little
| alternative. I don't see any "Japanese manufacturers" (to extend
| the analogy) on the horizon.
| euroderf wrote:
| So if American car companies were trying the "boiling frog"
| effect, what is the name for its opposite that Japanese car
| companies were trying ?
| samatman wrote:
| The word is 'kaizen'.
| eviks wrote:
| If small things mattered, you wouldn't have so many of them
| neglected.
|
| "(And smiles they are free."
|
| Forced service smiles aren't free, but a result of continuous
| spend on training the service personnel
| dingosity wrote:
| Yes and no. You have to do the big things right before you can do
| the small things right. For instance, every flight I've taken on
| United in the past 5 years (about 10 or so) has been delayed by a
| mechanical or scheduling issue. Two of them were delayed to the
| point where I missed a connection.
|
| I do not fly United anymore.
|
| I my mind (and it's likely largely affected by which airports I
| frequently fly into) it's Delta, American and Alaska competing
| for my business. Even though I fly to/through DFW frequently, I
| try to avoid American because of how enshittified their frequent
| flyer program has become. How the mighty have fallen.
|
| It is a little thing (the enshittified frequent flyer program),
| but it keeps me from seriously considering flying American unless
| there's no alternative.
|
| So yes... small things matter (American) but only because big
| things have already eliminated potential service providers
| (United.)
| samatman wrote:
| > _You have to do the big things right before you can do the
| small things right._
|
| Doing the small things right is how the big things get done
| right.
|
| Attention to detail is a culture, and it's as applicable to
| turning planes around on time as it is to giving premium
| customers a premium experience, and ordinary customers a
| surprisingly nice experience.
| happypumpkin wrote:
| For me Delta has been the one that is garbage lately. It used
| to be my favorite but the last five flights have all had
| something go wrong. When I requested proof of delay for travel
| insurance it took them ages to send it over. Tbf though a lot
| of the issues might just be related to their hub being in
| Atlanta. I suppose it is hard to make such a gigantic airport
| efficient but wow do I hate Atlanta layovers (and being stuck
| there overnight when something goes wrong).
|
| Only one I've never had issues with is Alaska but Southwest is
| usually good, plus their boarding procedure is by far the most
| organized. Seriously, why do so many airlines just make it a
| mad-dash by group?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I worked for almost 27 years, for a company that is renowned for
| "small things."
|
| Their stuff costs a lot more than most, but thousands of
| customers thought they were worth the premium, and built their
| entire careers around that equipment.
|
| I think they ran into trouble, when they started selling huge
| numbers of cheaper items. They made a lot of money, but their
| brand lost its sheen.
|
| I'm hoping that they are re-establishing their original baseline.
|
| It did teach me to take this stuff seriously, though. It's not a
| matter of process; it's a matter of _culture_ , and that is
| something that needs to be developed organically.
| BWStearns wrote:
| It reminds me of that shields down article[0] but for your
| customers. Maybe it's just me but if there are enough little
| interactions with a vendor that go poorly because of the
| counterparty clearly not giving a shit they end up in a kind of
| dead-to-me zone. I'll still be polite and all but the second an
| alternative is there I'm gone.
|
| Alternatively there are companies that are always pleasant to
| interact with. Avemco is an insurance company I use and any time
| I have a question for them they either have the answer or go find
| it immediately. When it's time to renew they proactively check if
| I'm eligible for better rates. even if someone came in with a
| quote at a 30% premium discount I'd probably not hear them out
| because I just don't expect such service elsewhere.
|
| It's sad that these nice experiences get optimized away, I
| honestly think people would be nicer to each other if it didn't
| constantly feel like everyone was constantly racing to the
| bottom.
|
| 0: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/
| Nevermark wrote:
| > Imagine if you were a cable company or publisher and re-
| allocate the "stop them from unsubscribing" budget where you
| slash prices, increase channels in a bundle or enhance broadband
| speeds to people who are quitting, to instead reward the most
| loyal customers by going to them and cutting their fees and/or
| upgrading their services to simply say thank you.
|
| Imagine if they readily cancelled you, and if you were a long
| time customer, let you know they were either going to refund your
| last months bill, or gave you an additional free month, whichever
| would help you the most as you moved on?
|
| I know I wouldn't ever forget that. Precisely because they had no
| reason to do it than to value helping me, current customer or
| not.
|
| And how little would that month's service cost them? An
| imperceptible marginal cost.
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