Google announced a couple of days ago a remarkable improve on Google Analytics and it’s interface, and it just got me thinking why would they make something like this? They already had the best online free service out there to measure websites. The answer: the will of making things well, or as I like to call it, “the joy of good“, and that is something you don’t get to see everyday. Of course this has a direct relationship with concepts like “offering the best service as possible”, and improving the user experience by making things work better.
In a direct comparison with other offline services this just doesn’t happen. For example, here in Mexico the most important telephone and internet service dealer is Telmex and everybody knows it just sucks for many reasons, but it is the kind of company that improves it’s services when another company offers a better one and so on, but they are not gonna make any move just to improve their customer experience in any way just for fun. Tim O’Reilly put it very clear by asking the simple question “What would google do?” in terms of explaining what is happening online with web 2.0 services and the offline ones like banks, telephone, insurance, etc.
Perhaps the way of thinking of this companies is directly related to the need you have as a consumer to this services. Changing your bank account or internet provider is not as easy as hitting the back button or entering another URL in your browser, so pointing the obvious, Google maybe experiencing the need as a company to offer the best service as possible (even if they are already the best ones out there).
I remember the day I first got my router from Telmex and it stopped working after a few days, so I called customer service and we got into a long fight that ended with this guy saying to me something like: “So… what are you going to do, this is the best service out there”, and when I made a comparison with the service offered in other countries like the U. S. and Japan he said something like: “Oh… that is Japan dude… this is Mexico, this is as good as it gets”.
Quite scary.
WHAT TO DO NOW?