12. The Force of Habits: The Double-Edged Sword

Although capturing customers’ habits can lead to long-term profitable relationships, doing so requires changing the habits of the organization. The inertia of an individual customer’s habit is nothing compared to that of a large company. Not only can the organizational structure (including policies, procedures, and processes) bog down offers designed to be habitual, but the behavior (habits) of individual employees can as well.

If market managers have been using customer satisfaction measures to grade employees, evaluate stores, and report to their bosses, they will experience tremendous resistance to change to a more meaningful metric. A product designer might create an intuitive interface based on a vision of habit formation, but product developers or product managers might reflexively add the bells and whistles that adorn all the company’s other products. And even if the product vision survives development and commercialization, the advertising manager will probably show little interest in figuring out what the habit-forming message should be.

The solution is to treat your employees or coworkers like dogs. Reinforce those behaviors that incrementally lead to bringing habit-forming products and services to the marketplace. Add new metrics. Change the context of the decision-making process. Figure out what cookies work best in your organization and when to install buzzers.

Unfortunately, organizational structures can inadvertently create complexities that the customer must navigate. When I took my father to a cancer clinic for treatment, I was appalled to see the receptionist hand him a clipboard with eight pages of forms that needed to be filled out. Frustrated, I asked the receptionist why this information wasn’t transmitted from the referring physician and why so many forms existed. Her reply was dismissive. “Each department creates its own forms.” A quick review of the paperwork showed that 80% of each form asked for the same information. Although it would have been easy to make a single form that could be copied and distributed, the clinic allowed its organizational structure to dictate a complex and time-consuming process for its clients.

Large companies often experience this problem when employees far removed from customers make decisions that can add layers of complexity. By prioritizing habit formation, companies will objectively see the need to streamline these processes.