Lessons from Customer Conversations
Customers will acknowledge that doing something manually is less efficient — and then still prefer to do it that way.
From what I’ve observed, it’s a comfort thing. It’s faster to do the thing manually than it is to configure it for automation the first time. I’ve seen this pattern repeat across generations.
A prospect recently asked me how to get his business on Google. What he actually meant was: how do I rank high in search engines?
The first question I asked was whether he had a Google Business Profile. He didn’t know what that was. So we started the onboarding process together, and I noticed a gap — I could’ve made up any name in that moment and said “this is what you need to rank on Google,” and he would’ve believed me.
The bottom line: the customer wants a result. He doesn’t care what the tool is called.
This same prospect mentioned that he’d need to dedicate two to three days a week to a platform in order to find value and actually get things done. That’s not something I had considered. I use AI every day, throughout the day — it’s ambient for me.
He also mentioned that his nephew comes in once a week to help run the business. His assumption was that his nephew would have to manage this platform in order for him to get anything out of it.
That made me think harder about the real time commitment involved — not just for power users, but for someone coming in cold.
Here’s what really got me: during my demo, the prospect was distracted by his phone. I was walking him through the onboarding process and he was half there.
But then he started doing the Google Business Profile setup himself. Same type of process — arguably longer — and he was locked in. Not distracted at all.
In the moment, I thought maybe my process was too long or too complicated. But that wasn’t it. The Google onboarding is equally long and he had zero issues with it.
The difference? Brand recognition and expected value.
He already knew Google. He already trusted it. He already believed the outcome was worth his time before he even started.
The customer doesn’t move at the speed of AI. He doesn’t yet understand how fast work can get done, or how much can be accomplished in a short window of time.
The human part — making decisions, wrapping your head around new concepts, building trust in a new tool — takes exponentially longer than the actual task. That’s where the friction lives.
Most people haven’t spent dozens or hundreds of hours using these tools. They haven’t built the intuition that you have to set up the foundation first in order to get the compounding returns later.
I’m currently cleaning one of my Airbnbs and wanted to write this down fresh from the meeting.
This is the work. Not just building the product — understanding the person on the other side of it.
Cheers