Tuesday is recycling pick-up day, and we dutifully put out our recycling can each Monday night.

This past Tuesday, I was out early running an errand only to return to see my recycling can standing right in the middle of the entrance to my driveway.  This meant I had to pull into my neighbor’s driveway, walk back to mine and move the can out of the way.  Not that big of a deal mind you, but certainly an inconvenience.

Now what exactly ran through the mind of the person who did this, I am sure it wasn’t done spitefully or with bad intent, it just was done with no forethought, no consideration for what someone would need to do to simply pull their car into the driveway.  I know that to many this wouldn’t merit a blog post but I think it teaches a lesson for businesses everywhere.

Do your employees understand what your customers have to do after they purchase?  Are they trained in the entire customer experience, not just their particular portion of it; I mean the entire experience from awareness to product usage?  Have you and your employees thought about things from the customers’ viewpoint?  Have you considered what it’s like to open the box, pull out the product, plug it in, make it go, etc.?  How difficult is all of that, how difficult is it to figure things out as a customer?

You see, the person who deposited my recycling can in the middle of my driveway obviously had a limited view.  They did their job and that is all, the rest of the experience was off their radar.  In our businesses, we can’t afford that.  Attention to these details can make the difference between loyal customer advocates and detractors who spread bad impressions to the world.

A word to the wise here: Take a look at your customer experience from head to toe and ask yourself, is this easy or a pain?  If it’s a pain at any step, fix it; don’t make your customer drive to the neighbor’s to do what you should have done if you had been paying attention.