We've all had the experience I had today. That of repeating a reference number to a series of people on the end of the phone who apparently need that information before they can put you through to the next person who will put you through to the next person who finally inputs the reference into the system in order to look at what you might be calling about.
It's crazy - the reference number is designed to be a short-cut to a solution and yet the system is not designed to facilitate that short-cut. Ensuring that your infrastructure and staff facilitate those short cuts is the key to great customer service, to excellent usability and to good marketing because it eliminates frustrations and delays and gets the customer where they want to be as quickly as possible.
And as
Mike Kruzeniski highlights, it doesn't even have to involve people.
All you have to do is make the label the button.
Simple, isn't it? But just think how many metaphorical labels your customer has to read or fill-in before you press their buttons.
