My iPhone updated last night.

Before you groan, let me say this.  I love that the change has been made to automatically update during the night.  That makes a ton of sense to me.  In the past, the notifications popped up on my phone at completely inconvenient times for me.  So I either ignored them, or I finally broke down and updated, only to be annoyed it was going to take hours in the middle of the day.  So I love that change.  It’s convenient for me as the customer.

On the other hand, when I woke up the newly updated phone seems to have forgotten everything I have asked it to save.  While I appreciate the software update, I didn’t ask for it.  As a customer, I felt like it was working just fine yesterday.  So while the well intentioned engineers at Apple were trying to make a product better, they made it harder to use for me…the customer.

I get it…first world problems.  But I think this happens a lot in business.  As organizations, we are constantly looking to be more efficient.  We strive to create better ways to operate internally, or process orders, or find new customers…and we should.  But in the process, we need to remember the customer.

What are the consequences of this change?

How will it effect our clients?

Because while a goal of any organization is to run efficiently, that only makes sense if that efficiency better serves the customer.  We don’t want to get so wrapped up in making it work for us, that we add friction for the people trying to pay us or use our product.  I know that is never the goal of a change.  But let’s face it.  Sometimes that is the outcome.

That’s why you groaned just a little bit when I opened with “My iPhone updated last night.”

Kirby Hasseman is the CEO of Hasseman Marketing, a full service marketing agency located in Ohio.  Learn more about Hasseman Marketing here.  And if you are interested in have him speak at your next event, you can learn more here.