Sure, your AV integration business might be stacked with professionals that can develop a truly incredible system for a variety of audio visual customers.
I’m still learning about the incredible systems you all are building and how they really do entertain us and make our lives easier.
However, one common trend I’ve heard a few times is that some audio visual customers just don’t really use these expensive systems being installed.
Integrators deliver a very specialized product tailored to fit their customers needs, but if customers aren’t using the systems, maybe those integrators aren’t really listening.
Ever stop to think about why a lot of tech companies and products fail? According to the Harvard Business Review, it’s because they don’t truly listen to their customers and put stock in market research.
The Review used Windows 8 as an example:
The team at Microsoft poured millions of dollars into R&D, creating countless innovative features, but ultimately the platform struggled to gain traction with customers. With hundreds of negative reviews calling Windows 8 “needlessly confusing and hard to use,” people questioned whether they should upgrade at all. One publication even referred to Windows 8 as the “epic fail of the decade.”
Ah yes, I remember Windows 8. I bought a PC in 2012 that was saddled with that clunky excuse of an OS. I found it confusing, bloated with features I never used and too far gone from the good Windows systems of the past.
Eventually, my laptop fell into a pit of update bugs and came to rest in an inescapable update/reverting changes loop from which it will never return.
As the Review notes, Windows 10 came in like a knight in shining armor to rescue us from the black hole of Windows 8. That process, however, included market research, feedback and a big focus on marketing.
Instead of blaming your tech illiterate audio visual customers for not knowing how to use new technology or being too ignorant to learn to adapt, consider whether the system is what they want and whether it is easy to use for someone unfamiliar with technology.
Rather than throwing in all the bells and whistles to beef up that contract, focus on how you can help the customer.
