Have you ‘Hassle Mapped’ Your Waiting Line?

Businesses devote significant time and energy to developing and promoting their products and services, always focused on what makes them great. But what would happen if, instead of focusing on the positives, a company was to focus on the problems—large and small—that people experience related to its products and services? “There’s an endless array of frustrations, inconveniences, complications, disappointments, and potential disasters lurking in most of our daily experiences,” states Adrian Slywotzky, bestselling author and partner at the global management consulting firm, Oliver Wyman. He brought the concept of ‘hassle maps’ to life in his book, Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It. 

What do you hate?

Slywotzky points to a trait shared by leaders who are behind some of today's most successful products and services: they are able to experience the world through the eyes and emotions of their customers. According to Slywosky, they ask themselves, "What do I hate about this product or process?" and proceed to catalog every frustration, time-wasting complication, and source of uncertainty. The results are used to create a ‘hassle map’ that acts as an inventory of every difficulty associated with every step in the process of buying, using, and discarding of their products, and then they focus their efforts on eliminating or minimizing each one. The hassle map becomes the company’s engineering, design, marketing, and positioning agenda.

Mapping the Waiting Line

Bringing the idea of ‘hassle mapping’ to the customer waiting line where (let’s face it) frustrations, complications, inconveniences, and disappointments are rampant; you are likely to find many opportunities to transform this dreaded part of the customer experience into one that reflects positively on your business and your brand. Cart abandonment, put-backs, drive-bys, and other negative consequences often result from issues related to the queue management. Hassle mapping can help you pinpoint those issues in order to make meaningful improvements to staff knowledge, employee allocation, checkout times, and customer satisfaction. There is no single right or wrong way to create a hassle map. All it takes to begin is a willingness to look at the glass half empty.