Show me what you won’t do for me
Is this new product you are looking at for you? Will this new service really do all that you need? Often to discover this you have to read long texts that describe what the service or product does.
Another pretty smart way to inform your customers is to clarify what your service or product doesn’t do.
For who isn’t this made
The startup Plot which offers a storyboard tool does this brilliantly on its website. After having described what their service is, they have this section called “Who’s Plot For?”
There they enumerate clearly what the service doesn’t do. The first line says for example: “You want free software for low budget productions”. That’s so smart!
If I was looking for something cheap that fits my amateur needs then I definitely know this tool isn’t for me. But if I’m a big media production company I know that this tool is for me.
What you won’t get
In the last years, I have started to do the same when it comes to client work. I always like to describe what the client won’t get from its collaboration. This helped me disappoint my clients from the start and create a healthy conversation on unwritten and unsaid expectations.
You can see above one of the slides I used during a kickoff session with a client. This slide helped me to clarify all the elements that weren’t included in that proposal. This helped to clarify the boundaries of the project much more clearly than by just saying what the project would achieve.
Another Service Design Principle
These two examples can help us formulate another tiny Service Design Principle to better handle customers expectations:
Instead of only showing what your service does, also highlight what your service doesn’t do and who will be unhappy if they use it.
