Your industry has a default solution. Don't use it.
Last week I spoke about how to find a different problem to solve. But sometimes the problem is right; you just need a different solution to stand out and be the best option in your market. You can read part one here.
Three weeks ago we came back from holiday to a broken fridge, and all the annoyance that came with it (frozen food very much melted, smells very much smelling).
I ordered the new fridge from a retailer specifically because they'd take the broken one away for free; otherwise, that would've been another problem I'd have to deal with.
This is the perfect example of a small, smart piece of problem-solving. The retailer had worked out that, beyond my needing a fridge, I also needed the broken one to go away. So they became the no-brainer choice for offering that.
The industry has largely solved the need to keep food cold and fresh, as customers are happy with the concept of a fridge. So you don't win by building a slightly better fridge; you win by solving the total problem in a fresh way.
How do you think of the fresh solution you ask? Here are five questions I've found myself asking on project after project this year, whenever the problem is right, but the solution isn't different enough yet.
What can you take away?
When we try to improve something, we almost always add to it and try to make said thing do even more. Think of all the latest Airfryers which now have so many settings and heating options, despite me still just clicking to 'airfry' everything at the default heat. Or the ASOS website, which I've stopped using for the simple fact that there are too many choices, even when I have a clear product in mind.
In 2021, researchers at the University of Virginia published a study on how automatic this human reaction is. In one experiment, people were asked to make a Lego structure stable enough to hold a brick. Every piece they added cost them 10c, and removing pieces was free. The best fix was to remove a single block, but instead, ~60% of participants spent money adding more. It's not natural for us to think about taking parts away.
And yet, simplifying existing solutions can be a winner. When I worked at a sportswear company, we introduced fast checkout. Rather than the standard 5 pages and various forms, we launched one-click ordering. It delivered to your default address, charged your default card, and used your fastest delivery option. Every step we removed was one less chance for someone to change their mind, and conversion rates, of course, won.
For a service business, subtraction might mean one clear offer instead of a menu of 8 packages. Or creating a process that's half the steps and so half the decisions for your client. Sometimes, the best way to win is to just make it simpler.
Should it be harder or easier?
Simple is not always best! I'm personally a fan of friction. I think we've made modern life so easy that we've removed many of our reasons to leave the house or talk to anyone once we're out. But that's a whole other article.
In business, removing friction is the default, and usually for good reason as I covered above. But when everyone in your industry is removing friction, the brands that stand out can be the ones deliberately adding it back.
The Ordinary is a great example. They name their products after the ingredients and the percentage, like 'Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5'. To choose anything, you have to learn what it does, or at least what it means. That's friction, but it's also what built a customer base that loves knowing exactly what they're putting on their skin.
Friction can protect people too. When I was working at a bank, we saw a big increase in customers being scammed through Facebook Marketplace. Purchase scams are still the most common type of authorised payment fraud, and much of that is because sending money to a new contact is so easy that nobody has a moment to stop and ask whether the seller is real. So we added friction: we slowed the journey down and prompted customers to complete checks before they paid. And our customers appreciated that - our solution was the best because it was the longest.
How can you make your customer who they want to become?
The philosopher René Girard built much of his work on the idea that most of what we want is wanted because someone else wanted it first. He named this Mimetic Desire. We copy desire from the people we admire, envy, or simply keep seeing.
So your solution isn't just your product or service, it's who your customer becomes by using it, and whether anyone else gets to see it.
Say you're opening a gym. Nobody signs up because they love burpees. They sign up to become someone who's incredibly fit, and the workouts are the annoying means to an end.
Most gyms put their effort into the burpees part: better equipment, more classes, nicer changing rooms. A different solution is to make members feel like they're already becoming that person, and then let others see it.
Barry's (my fave gym) does this brilliantly.
You can pre-order a shake when you book your class, so it's waiting for you when you walk out. You leave holding a branded cup that tells everyone on the street exactly where you've just been and what kind of person you are.
This feeds the customer's self-image, and it puts that image in front of the next potential customer.
Who's already solved this somewhere else?
Your industry may well have tried every solution within its own walls. So what about one that comes from somewhere else entirely?
In the early 2000s, two doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital were worried about the handover of children from heart surgery to intensive care. It was a crowded, noisy few minutes when equipment, information, and responsibility all had to move at once, and things were getting missed in life-or-death scenarios. Watching a Formula 1 race, they noticed a pit crew doing something similar in about 7 seconds, with everyone knowing exactly where to stand and what to do. So they asked Ferrari's pit crew to help.
The hospital rebuilt its handover around fixed roles, set positions, a clear leader and a checklist. Handover errors dropped significantly.
Can you solve it at a different time?
I often talk about the difference between urgent and nice-to-have problems. Something I've noticed this year is that the same problem can flip between the two depending on when you solve it.
In 2019, Monzo launched Get Paid Early. If your salary is paid into Monzo, you can have it a day before payday, for free. Back then, I was in my mid-twenties about to live in London for the first time, and I can vouch for the fact that the most urgent time I needed my salary was the day before it was due. So they solved that gap for me.
As a different example, the restaurant I wrote about last week couldn't make the food any faster, so it moved part of the wait to before customers arrived by letting them order ahead.
Ultimately, this is about solving the problem before your customer feels it. Other solutions in your market may solve the pain when it arrives, but your solution could prevent the problem altogether.
What's the right solution for you?
Last week I said being slightly better isn't a position. But solving the right problem in exactly the same way as everyone else isn't one either.
Each of these 5 questions is there to break the defaults of the other solutions that may be popping up around you. Usually, you only need one twist in your thinking to find yourself in a gap of your own.
The fridge retailer solved my problem well, and I'm grateful. But many other appliance retailers caught on and now offer that same expanded solution of picking up your old one. So they need a new twist if they want to keep standing out.
So remember: the right problem gets you noticed, but a different solution gets you remembered.
What's yours?
