Guest column: Overcome scotomas before they become brick walls

Blind spots creep in and erode the customer experience

Here’s your new business word of the day: Scotoma. Usually a medical term, a scotoma is a partial loss of vision or blind spot in an otherwise normal visual field.

Scotomas happen to businesses and organizations all the time. They creep in slowly, eroding the customer experience or company culture in little ways until suddenly you have a situation on your hands — possibly a significant loss of business or clients. 

When things are going well, it’s easy to let something like the customer experience or your internal culture slide. This doesn’t happen because companies don’t care. It happens because you are busy meeting the demands of everyday business, and things slide into a state of complacency and even disrepair. 

This surfaces in different ways for different companies. It happens when our focus is on the end fulfillment rather than the entire process. So many companies have been in crisis mode due to workforce challenges, supply chain issues, or just high demand that the methods by which their audiences reach them and complete the transaction can suffer. 

Scotomas surface in many ways. A few examples include:

  • Outdated information, including hours of operation, contact info or broken links to and on your website
  • A lack of follow-through on customer inquiries or customer service
  • Physical barriers, such as poor entry lighting, directional signage, visibility or a welcoming approach to your business
  • Breakdowns in consistent and quality communications
  • Internal communications that don’t reach all employees effectively

So, how do you overcome the little blind spots before they become big ones? 

  1. Elicit feedback at various points in your customers’ journey, not just after completing the business. Use technology and anecdotes to seek this information. For example, one or two questions at pressure points can help you gain understanding. Sentiment capture can show you a trend over time and help you better understand your process. 
  2. Seek objective observation: “Secret shopping,” outside evaluation, user-experience testing on your website, or ask someone who has never been to your business or website before to provide you with their observations and where they find pain points or barriers in engagement with you. Fresh eyes on your process help you discover those blind spots that you miss in the everyday operation of your organization. 
  3. Learn more about your audiences and develop empathy for them. Gather data on your clients and create a persona for each audience segment to help you understand why they select your products or services. Validate them against current sales and engagement. Then, engage with people who represent those personas to provide input. 
  4. Charge (or hire) someone in your organization with process evaluation and improvement. You don’t have to go full Lean Six Sigma, but it should be a measurable part of someone’s job to ensure that your processes are as friction and error-free as they can be. 

All scotomas result from a part of a process, and every process can be pulled apart to discover where breakdowns occur. It takes time, effort and a willingness to take a hard and brutal look at your business and have uncomfortable conversations. 

But, in the end, you are improving your customer experience by listening and empathizing with them. It pays off in loyalty and brand ambassadorship. And it’s a lot cheaper than acquiring new customers or clientele.

Jen Neumann is owner and CEO of de Novo Marketing in Cedar Rapids.