Once a person knows something, it's hard to remember what it was like to not have that knowledge (or know-how). In the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they describe the way that many companies suffer from the ‘curse of knowledge' syndrome - where a company's representatives believe that their product category is allocated much, much more customer mindshare than it actually receives. The effects of this syndrome come out in a number of ways: those who speak to the customers use acronyms and technical jargon that the customer couldn't possibly know unless they worked in the same industry. Or those people who write the messaging and product literature use terminology assuming that the recipient can automatically convert the product specifications into customer benefits (which requires thought and understanding at the least - and in many cases it just goes over their heads and the mention of such terms was squandered time and probably caused customer frustration).
The challenge for Marketing is to take dozens or hundreds of product specifications, sort through them with the customer's needs in mind, prioritize them, and then provide the customer with a short list of the most customer-critical benefits of the product. Everything else that is mentioned is likely to confuse or frustrate the customer - possibly making them believe that this particular product must be made for someone with much more technical knowledge or more complex technical demands.
Tappers and Listeners - This is a great example of how the concept of the ‘curse of knowledge' can play out. This was tested in a research study several years ago. A group of people were given a common song and asked to tap the song to another person and to guess how many of the people would be able to guess the song, based only on the rhythm and timing of the tapping. Tappers (who had the song going through their head as they tapped,) guessed that the receivers would identify the song correctly 50% of the time. In reality guessers only got it right 3% of the time! Simply stated, once a person has an understanding of something - it's very, very difficult to remember what it was like when they lacked that knowledge.
The point here is to ensure that anyone who has contact with the customers should constantly strive to ensure that they're not letting technical terminology or industry jargon get into the customer communication. Doing so, may very well be worse than simply not communicating - it may communicate that the specific product being discussed is inappropriate for that particular customer.
It's All About Customer Knowledge,
Chris Hawkes
