Users as People.

https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-death-of-users-and-product-design-a857f1ad2f3b

one thing that Mark [Zukerberg] said, a small note in the grand scheme of things, that still sits fresh in my mind every single week. “We need to stop calling peopleusers,” he said. “They’re not just there to use our products; we’re here to build things for them.”

People, not users.

User:

I just drove off in my new car and I am parked in the pouring rain on the side of the freeway.  Where is the fucking defroster? 

Forgetting users were people almost cost Toyota their entry into the US Market. They designed an advanced, reliable, competitively priced car so different in all ways from Detroit that people couldn't use it intuitively. Similarly the BMW I-Drive. User satisfaction dropped to near zero. They had to solve the problem with a mandatory UX (human) trainer. 

In 1981 a salesperson (let’s call him Joe) in a big Toyota dealership at 57th St. and 11th Ave. in Manhattan tried to look busy at his desk as the suits from Toyota of N.  America came into the dealership and disappeared into the General Manager’s office to no avail as Joe was quickly called to come to the office.  Once there he was confronted by one of the Toyota execs with the question “What are you doing differently from all of the other salespeople here?”  The only thing he could think of was that he spent time at the next day delivery with the “User” to show them how everything on the car worked.  He knew this was different because he was criticized by the Sales Manager for being “Off the floor” at one point after spending more than an hour with a difficult customer.  The Corporate types had an “Aha moment” and dismissed Joe with a thank you. 

Shortly after they left the mystery was solved as Joe was called back to the GM office, and was asked if he could “explain how the car worked” to all the new car buyers.  The GM explained that the problem was the dealership’s location on one of the busiest intersections in the world was adversely affecting the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) which Toyota had recently implemented for all dealerships.  “Users” had no quiet streets to use to practice with their new car on and blamed the car for being unfriendly to people. 

The genesis of the “Delivery Experience” for new car “Users” seems to be at that time.  The volume at the dealership was too high for one person and Joe was given an assistant for overflow (“Ben”) who was “Too nice” to his clients to be a good salesperson.   A manual was written to guide his presentation but Joe’s follow-up showed that Ben’s too nice attitude was much more important than his inability to follow the manual he was given and Joe became the overflow delivery guy. Ben went on to make a nice career in the delivery position at several Toyota dealerships. 

Joe went on to different things but remained in new car sales as a moonlight position.  “Selling cars is like eating M&Ms for a sales and marketing professional.  Not much nourishment per close but you get a lot of them.”   Much later Joe applied as a salesperson at a Lexus dealership across the country and was told he was overqualified and besides salespeople had to deliver their own cars at Lexus according to “The Delivery Manual.” Joe asked what that was, and the SM sneered and said do you think you can follow this?  Joe skimmed through it and recognized it as essentially a copy of the manual written for his assistant.  I suppose I could since I wrote it, he replied.