[Sigia-l] How does change affect user satisfaction scores?

[andrew at humaneia.com]

Quoting Livia Labate <liv at livlab.com>:

> If everything is unacceptable and you made it acceptable with the big 
> change, satisfaction can be affected positively.

Hi Livia,

it can - and then there are the H. neophobus types for whom any change 
is a bad change. A case in point: I was in renewing my parking permit 
at the local government shopfront two days ago - an elderly couple came 
in around the same time. The new system is based on taking a ticket 
that relates to what you want to do - renew vehicle registration, pay 
for a parking permit, or pay for some other government permit. The 
elderly couple were complaining to one another bitterly about how much 
the system had changed - while they were waiting in fairly comfortable 
chairs until their number came up in a queue served by someone who was 
set up to serve their exact need. In the bad old days of a few years 
ago, they would have been standing waiting in a queue, stuck behind 
someone who might be taking half an hour to argue a parking fine, or 
someone else renewing their reptile permit with 27 bits of supporting 
documentation.

To some people, any change is a bad change.

The best bit of online change management I saw was a good example of 
the aforementioned transition - National Australia Bank 
(http://www.national.com.au) moved their online banking login button 
from the top menu to the right hand side menu a few months back - and 
for two weeks before, a flash screen advised customers of the upcoming 
change. From memory they even had the new button in the new spot along 
with the old for the last few days prior to the change. I don't have 
figures on how successful it was, but it impressed me (who is no fan of 
the general run of online banking interfaces).

Cheers, Andrew

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.