An old and well-worn adage often heard in the world of business is that “the customer is always right.” This is not to be taken literally, in that a customer may often say or do things that are patently wrong. What the phrase means is that to achieve success in business you need to attend to the needs of the customer and make them feel that any requests made of the business are reasonable and will be fulfilled if at all possible.
In the deep dark past of face-to-face transactions, this attitude was often embodied by a certain type of friendly person whose role was to interact with customers and spread feelings of goodwill. In small businesses, it might be the owner who smoothed over issues that threatened to drive customers into finding other options for obtaining the desired goods or services.
While it can be argued that there are many advantages to the world of eCommerce and online transactions, the personal interaction between the representatives of a business and its customers has largely vanished. Yes, you can usually call some type of service desk and talk or chat with an AI bot that is happy to address your concerns. But these replacements do not provide anywhere near the same level of contact that can assuage a customer's concerns as did the face-to-face chats of past business dealings.
The Rising Importance of the End-User Experience
In the 21st Century, customers are increasingly interacting with businesses through their websites and software applications rather than brick-and-mortar establishments. The connection between customer and vendor is conducted electronically without the chance to impart a personal touch to a transaction. The experience that an individual has when using a business’s website or application will be a determining factor when considering whether to re-engage with an enterprise.
There are several characteristics that a user expects from a viable experience with business applications and eCommerce sites. Failure to adequately address these elements will result in an inferior user experience that can result in lost business now and in the future.
The user experience must provide something useful to the consumer as well as offering an effective and usable method with which to obtain their goal. This may be making a purchase or obtaining information regarding a product. A company website should be designed to allow easy navigation so users can find what they want, and also be accessible to those with disabilities. Information that is delivered through the site needs to be credible or risk turning off the online community and sending them looking for other, more reliable sources.
These design considerations are accompanied by the operational imperative of keeping the applications running and available to prospective customers. It doesn’t matter how innovative and intuitive your site is if users can’t access it or are frustrated by slow performance. They will quickly find alternatives if a company’s site does not perform up to expectations. Once you have lost a prospective customer, you may never get them back again. Making sure the end-user is happy is essential to maintaining and growing a modern business.
Improving the End-User Experience
IDERA’s Precise for Databases is designed to enable precision monitoring of database applications to identify performance issues that can impact the end-user experience. It supports SQL Server, Db2, Oracle, and SAP Sybase ASE environments. Precise enables the continuous collection of transaction data so no trends or performance issues are missed. The application’s low overhead is non-intrusive and can be accessed through a web-based console for increased monitoring flexibility.
Precise has been responsible for many benefits for the database teams who deploy the tool, including an improved application end-user experience. Performance issues can be quickly identified from the overview dashboard and users can drill down to find pertinent details for speedy problem resolution. The intelligence built into Precise provides tuning recommendations and enables the simulation of what-if scenarios to analyze the effects of changes on other SQL queries.
Attracting and retaining customers demands that you take measures to ensure a pleasant and worthwhile interaction with your online database applications. Precise will help you keep your apps running efficiently and provide an end-user experience that will have users coming back for more.