The User Advocate

Last week I received my first comment – evidence that at least one other person in the world hears what I’ve been saying this year. When I investigated, wary of comment spammers who had recently hammered my logs, I found there is an entire community of people like me writing – except they appear to have figured out how to make a living at improving usability.

One log had an entry about hypersensitivity to customer experience issues as an occupational hazard, coining it the “” or “PatPS”. He told a story about a problem experience and ended up feeling bad because of context unrelated to his experience. I admire his compassion, but I believe a business needs to be cognizant of the effects employees have when they’re having a bad day. It is essential to manage the employees so that issues like his are prevented. Move the employee off the counter, or give them time off, or figure out some other way to handle it.

It is important for him to not succumb to the inverse syndrome: “Oh it’s only a pea.” Too many businesses stop noticing peas and eventually the pile is big enough they keep customers away from that counter. Train your teams to see the peas.

And be thankful you have the ability to feel the peas… it is rare and should be valued.

Technorati Tags: Princess+and+the+Pea+Syndrome, user+advocacy, user+experience, employee+enagement

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under News, Potential improvements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.