Pokémon Battle Academy Solved Onboarding Without Calling It Onboarding

Nikki hates board games. The rulebook comes out, the energy dies, and the fun sits three feet away behind a wall of logistics. Except once: a Pokémon card game showed up at Christmas and broke every rule she thought was inevitable and it quietly changed how she thinks about client experience design.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why the Pokémon Battle Academy box is one of the best examples of intuitive experience design Nikki has ever seen (yes, really)
• The specific design decision the game made that most businesses never do: understanding comes from doing, not the other way around
• How guidance can serve the person who needs it without slowing down the person who doesn't
• The gap between "feeling like you've started" and "feeling like you're being prepared to start" -- and why that gap is where clients quietly drift away

If you've ever wondered why clients disengage before you even get to the good part, this episode is going to make something click.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

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A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Transcript

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This is the one I was telling you about. It is the You will not believe this place so that I've seen it. I am literally obsessed with the link to literally everyone I know. Their biggest one. I'm telling everybody about this. Tell them I sent this is my biggest one. Girl, 10 out of 10 would recommend. I'm gonna say something controversial. I hate board games. And it's not because I'm competitive and I hate losing, although I really am. It's because I hate the feeling of when a board game comes out at a dinner party or a gathering of friends. When someone walks in with this huge box, it's like, I just bought this new game, we should play, and everybody gets really excited. And then the rule book comes out, and the energy just changes. There's people arguing, should we read it out loud first before we start? No, no, no, we should just play, and somebody's touching the pieces, and somebody else is going, don't touch anything yet. And the fun, it's right there. We're so close to it. You just can't get to it. And this happens with me and board games every single time. Except one time, and it was a Pokemon board game. Welcome to Would Recommend. I'm Nikki McKnight, and this is the show about the businesses that customers can't stop talking about and what they actually did to earn it. Today is a Nikki Talk solo episode, and we're going to be talking about one of the quietest ways that founders lose clients before the relationship even starts by building experiences that make people earn the right to begin. And a children's card game that accidentally solved it kind of perfectly. So today I'm going to talk to you about Pokemon. Yes, Pokemon. Over the Christmas holidays a couple of years ago, my now seven-year-old nephew was full on obsessed with Pokemon. And he was gifted this game called Pokemon Battle Academy. Before the wrapping paper had fully hit the floor, this kid is opening the box. He wants to play, and he wants to play right in that moment. Not after we look at the rules, not after the board gets set up nice and clean, but immediately. And I'm sitting there bracing myself for the inevitable, I thought, temper tantrum and Christmas standoff incoming. You've got in in the red corner, you've got the kid who wants to start immediately. And in the blue corner, you've got the parents who are like, okay, we're gonna set it up, and then we're gonna subdue, and we're gonna do this. And you've got this just box of Pokemon cards standing between this kid and a good time. Except, surprise of all surprises, this didn't happen. There was no temper tantrum because when they opened the box, they saw that the game had already solved this issue before it even happened. The game came completely set up. So you open this box, the card decks of these Pokemon cards were prearranged. They were in the exact order that you needed. And there was a little guidebook that literally said, Welcome to the game. Don't shuffle anything. Player one, you're gonna take this pack. Player two, you're gonna take this pack. Player one, you're gonna draw this card. It's going to be this card. You're going to put that card in this place on the board. Now you're going to say this. And when that's done, player two, you're going to take your top card, which is going to be this, and you're going to put it here. You didn't have to read the rules first. You there was no tutorial. You just opened the box and started playing and started playing correctly. And if you have ever had a young child or a nibbling or just a really excitable best friend, you know how tough it can be to make them just sit still and listen because they are so excited. And it can soon become a fight over no, no, no, just listen. We're gonna do it this way. No, no, wait, wait. And this moment, this Christmas morning, watching my nephew go from zero to fully immersed in playing in under 30 seconds, this blew my mind. And like most people who work in customer experience strategy, like me, I was like, what can I learn from this? What did this game do well? That not only is this game being used immediately and when the parent's eye is being used correctly, but how did they get there without a fight? Because most business systems, they're nothing like that, and not just because they're not a Pokemon card game. We overexplain, we build these complicated multi-step funnels that ask people to earn the right to start. Watch five videos, join this wait list, confirm your email, read the onboarding doc, fill out the survey, watch the, and then you can begin. Oh, you you want that resource, you want that tool? Well, you have to complete these three modules first, and then you can have the thing that you want and need right now. And we wonder why people ghost us or fall off early in the process. Here's the thing Pokemon Battle Academy, this board game on this Christmas morning, it didn't need to know my nephew's learning style. It didn't segment him into a customer persona and said, Oh, you're like this, you like to receive information like this. It didn't say, before you can enjoy this and have fun, you need to prove you understand it. And it built in just enough instruction for anyone who needed it. Like him, who was learning how to play for the first time, like his dad, who hadn't touched a Pokemon deck in 20 years and who needed a little bit of refresher. And I think that is the thing that ultimately stuck with me the most because Pokemon Battle Academy made a specific design decision that most businesses are just never going to make. It decided that understanding would come from doing, not any other way. There's no preamble, there's no before we begin, let's make sure everyone's on the same page. The guidebook didn't explain the rules and then let you play. It is the plane. The learning is the plane. Draw this card. Now do this. Do you see what happened? That's how it works. Next turn. You're learning because you're already in it. And probably the thing I love the most is that the guidance was built into the experience in a way that served whoever needed it without stopping everyone to deliver it. So while my nephew was just flying by the seat of his pants, like going, next card, next card, next card, his dad was remembering how to play. And me as the audience was going, I've never seen this before, really. Like, how do you play? I used to watch the TV show, but like, how do you actually play the card game? I don't know. There's something to do with hit points and attacks. I don't know. But the game was able to hold all of this simultaneously without anyone having to ask and without anybody having to wait. And this really is a hard thing to pull off because most experiences, when you design for multiple types of people, end up being designed for no one. It's too much information for the person who already knows what they're doing. It's not enough information for the person who doesn't. And Battle Academy really threaded this needle by making the guidance inseparable from the action. You couldn't skip it, really, but you also wouldn't feel slowed down by it. So when I think about what this means for client experience, the question isn't it's not how do we make sure clients understand everything before we start? It's how do we build the understanding into the starting? Think about the first thing a new client does after they say yes, not the whole onboarding, just like the first thing. Does it get them doing something or does it ask them to consume something first? Is the first action they take the one that makes them feel like they're already in it, or does it make them feel like they're in a waiting room, waiting to get the thing that they want, waiting to feel that excitement because they've got to go through the equivalent of HR training first? Because this gap between feeling like you've started and feeling like you're being prepared to start is where this drift begins, right? Clients don't normally name this. They probably aren't even aware that this liminal space exists. They just feel this low-grade friction that you can't locate. And some of them are going to disengage before they ever get to the part where you can actually change things for them. The experience of starting gets to feel like a reward, not a requirement. These businesses are going to find the fastest path between I said yes and I was right to say yes, and then get rid of everything else. So here's the lesson for today, if you will take it. The one thing I want you to do after this episode is I want you to look at the first touch point a client or a customer hits, experiences, or sees when they start to engage with you in a commerce relationship, not them reading on social media, but they're either buying a burrito from you at your food truck or they've just bought your digital product or they've placed an order for their clothing online. Look at that first touch point and ask yourself: does this get them to the good part fast, or does it ask them to earn it first? Because if it's that second one, if you're asking them to earn the right to proceed, then that's your starting point. You don't have to rebuild everything. Just find this one gate that doesn't have to be there and take it down. These are the types of things I've really tried to embrace in my own work and the work I get to do with my clients is we're paying attention to behavior, sure, but we're also realizing the emotion that is present in the room when these things are happening. There's energy, there's hesitation, there's excitement, and we want to respond in a way that is going to feel natural and not mechanical. And this means giving people an option to jump right in and start experiencing what they came for instead of putting the equivalent of this long corridor between them and the thing they're excited about. It means considering what are the different energy levels, the different moods, different needs, but still letting it feel easy and cohesive and ultimately scalable for the business. And who knew this lesson would come from a Pokemon board game? If you're looking for more information on what it takes to be a business that people can't stop talking about, check out the Would Recommend standards. It is five customer experience principles from brands that have figured this out and real examples of what it would take for you to design your experience around the client instead of the process. It's linked for you in the show notes. And that is all for this week's episode of Would Recommend. Thank you so much for listening. If this episode was useful, please rate, review, and subscribe, share it with a business bestie, tell a friend. It genuinely helps more people find the show. And if you want to look at your own client experience and figure out exactly where you can take some of this Pokemon magic, that's exactly what a spark session is for. 90 minutes, you and me going deep into this experience strategy. It's linked for you in the show notes. Tune in next week where I get to talk to two of my very good friends about how photographers use the magic of safety, branding, and personality to make sure that you get the best experience possible. We'll see you next week. Bye.