Sol's 30 second rule

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 02 April 2006 10:40

IT Industry - Strategy

Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo, told an investment conference in Hong Kong last week that "I have a rule in our company that says if it takes longer than 30 seconds for me to either intuitively figure it out or for you to explain, I probably won't use it."

Trujillo was explaining to conference delegates how Telstra plans to make access to its services integrated and simple, and was demonstrating this by accessing BigPond's coverage of the Commonwealth Games on his mobile phone, which at the time was roaming on the network of Telstra subsidiary CSL.

"I can teach you in five seconds or less how to get onto your BigPond site on your mobile device, and it's reading two words and pushing one button," Trujillo claimed. "That's a big deal, and we're going to do that with many other services as we go forward."

He explained that this was "part of the integrated experience that we're investing in, in terms of the business, to start changing the customer experience, where it's again one touch, one click, one button simple, because the lesson I have learned in business is that if you make it simple, people use.

"We all know the stories about the books. You know the training manuals, the training sessions, all that sort of thing. If you've got to be trained, I have a rule in our company that says if it takes longer than 30 seconds for me to either intuitively figure it out or for you to explain, I probably won't use it."