Balancing Act: Cost Efficiency vs. Customer Centricity in Agile Projects

A Reflection on Kento Morita's Experience at Spirit Airlines.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Kento Morita, a highly accomplished AI professional who has contributed to groundbreaking projects like Alexa and Gemini, shared a thought-provoking experience from his brief stint at Spirit Airlines. Let's face it, we are all not surprised about Spirit filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the news. If you have ever had the displeasure of dealing with them or are on social media, you know they are dreadful for customer experience. Even when they are wrong, they seem to have the most challenging people working for them and you know you secretly smiled and said yep, they deserve it. I am sorry for all the nice people who worked at Spirit who lost their jobs.

So our hero Kento discusses in his video how the task at hand was to reduce customer service costs by minimizing the number of calls routed to human agents. While the intent was to increase efficiency, the approach prioritized cost-cutting over customer satisfaction. They wanted him to do anything possible to keep customers away from agents to save $3-$5 USD per call.

Kento's decision to resign from this project highlights a critical issue in the tech industry: the delicate balance between cost efficiency and customer experience. While it's understandable that businesses aim to optimize operations and reduce expenses, sacrificing customer satisfaction is a short-sighted strategy. Good on Kento for being ethical and following his morals vs. his paycheck.

As we all know, the new one-click cancellation rule has significantly shifted the power dynamics in the customer-business relationship. To thrive in this new era, it’s more crucial than ever to design and build products that prioritize user experience, accessibility, and efficiency.

How Can Agile Teams Strike the Right Balance?

Empathize with the Customer:

User Research: Conduct in-depth user research to understand customer needs, pain points, and expectations.

User Personas: Create detailed user personas to represent different customer segments and their specific requirements.

Customer Journey Mapping: Visualize the customer journey to identify opportunities for improvement and potential bottlenecks.

Prioritize User Stories:

Customer Value: Focus on user stories that deliver the most value to customers.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Prioritize features that address core customer needs and can be iterated upon.

Agile Metrics: Use metrics like customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure the impact of product features. Stay tuned for another article on this.

Involve the Customer in the Process:

User Testing: Conduct usability testing to gather feedback on prototypes and early versions of the product.

Beta Testing: Invite a select group of users to test the product in a real-world setting.

Continuous Feedback Loops: Encourage ongoing feedback from customers through surveys, social media, and other channels.

Collaborate Across Teams:

Cross-Functional Teams: Foster collaboration between product managers, designers, developers, and quality assurance engineers.

Shared Goals: Align teams around a common goal of delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Regular Communication: Maintain open and transparent communication channels to ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives.

It's essential to remember that while cost efficiency is important, customer satisfaction is the ultimate driver of long-term success.

What are your thoughts on balancing cost efficiency and customer experience? How have you seen Agile teams address this challenge in your own projects?