Paying Attention To Detail

I have an interesting story to share with you. It involves a tiny and easily overlooked observation which I made concerning a certain product.

My sister has a Dell Laptop computer and I liked using her computer more than I did mine, mainly because hers was way faster and more efficient.

Anyway, on one occasion when I wanted to use the laptop, I reached for the charger and started to unroll the Velcro wrapping that was used to hold the charger together. Immediately I began, I noticed something very interesting. 


The manufacturers, i.e. Dell, left a small space without Velcro at the tip of the Velcro rolling to make it easy for you to pull out the Velcro and unroll the charger. If that space wasn’t there, you would still, of course, be able to unroll your charger, but that tiny, ‘insignificant’ space made it easier, since, if it was all filled with Velcro, the whole thing would stick and make it hard to pull it out.

HOW IS THIS SIGNIFICANT?

A laptop is a piece of extremely complex design and engineering. I’ve had the opportunity to see the inside of one, the motherboard, the RAM, hard disk, processor, Wi-Fi Adapter, and all the other stuff, and men, it’s really a masterpiece of technology.

This story is significant because Dell already had the herculean challenge of manufacturing and mass-producing this complex piece of machine, and missing out that tiny detail on the tip of the Velcro used to hold the charger won’t even mean anything. In fact, my own laptop charger and many others I had used in the past had no such thing and it didn’t even matter a bit.

That detail contributed nothing to the performance and the efficiency of the machine, and it wasn’t really a superb design effort per se.

This story is significant hence, because Dell, a Fortune 500 company, cared about their customers in a special way. In addition to creating a superb machine that solves a ton of problems, they cared enough to put a space at the tip of the Velcro to help you roll up and unroll your laptop charger with ease.

Isn’t this Fantastic?

I know you can learn something from this story and apply it to your business. You can learn to care about your customers in a special way. You can learn to look beyond the basic things and fulfil a special need for your customers, one that makes your product special and outstanding.

This post is dedicated to Dell.

You can pay attention to detail and you can be outstanding.