Of Doors and Door Cards

At my place of work, all the exterior and many of the interior doors have electronic locks that are manipulated with keycards.  These keycards are made of plastic and are blank, white, about the size and shape of a business card.  The interior doors are a throwback to when we shared the building with another company, but now serve only to hinder the passage of people.  In fact, certain doors are permanently propped open, negating any usefulness of the rest.

In my eight years working here, I’ve triggered the lock on the door leading to my part of building thousands of times.  Each cycle gives a beep and a satisfying “thunk” as the lock releases.  Today as I entered the area, one of the sales people pulled me aside and in a conspiratorial voice said, “Watch this.”  With that, he pulled the door open without unlocking it.  My world tilted 20 degrees and I started wondering what else that I believed in might be false.  I had a crises of faith, standing in front of a gray, steel door.

Why is any of this the least bit significant to anyone other than me and the maintenance department?  The reason it so threw me was not the fact of a non-locking door.  Anyone wanting in has only to walk 70 feet down the hall and enter through the doors by the vending machines.  It was rather the violation of an implied contract that made me dizzy.  For years I had performed an action and received a result.  To get something—to my desk easily—I needed to do something—swipe my card.

We do the same thing to our system users when we make procedural or GUI changes without preparing them and helping them understand the reasons for the change.  When a user of a CRM system has manually enriched account records for years and suddenly the button is gone and it happens with no input on her part, we see it as an enhancement.  The salesperson entering an account sees it as her world shifting without warning.  Will she get used to it eventually?  Sure, but in the meantime, you’ve thrown her off her game and made her just a tiny bit less inclined to trust you and your system.

The key to preventing the negative reaction is input, communication, and reinforcement.  Get input from your users before the change, whenever possible.  Let them know what the change is and when it will take place.  Remind them again, just before it happens.  As far as possible, clue them in on the reasoning and reinforce why this is a positive change.

A lot of work for what to you, the system administrator, seems like a very minor reworking, but it isn’t so minor to your customers—internal or external.  Unless it's a system critical emergency, take the time to do it right.  The goodwill you create and conserve will pay you back many times over for the little additional effort
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Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go check the rest of the doors!