I'm tired of "solutions"
A few weeks ago I was given some copy for a website I'm working on. They were asking how they should change the wording to get better search engine placement. One thing that stood out was how often they used the word "solution". Who even googles for "solution"?!
It seems to be the popular new approach in business nowadays. You don't treat people as customers wanting to buy products anymore. You have "relationships" with people looking for "solutions" for their "problems".When I hear the word "solution" (speaking as a former chemistry major) I think of solvents, solutes and precipitates--a "business solution" is business dissolved in water. What I think is odd about the whole thing is that it presupposes that there is a problem (and that people are just bundles of problems looking for "solutions"). For example, if you have HP Solutions doesn't that imply that there are a lot of HP problems out there? It gets even more ridiculous. If I have juniper problems does that mean I need Juniper Solutions? What is a "juniper problem" anyway? How many people are thinking to themselves: "I have a problem--a real juniper problem--I wonder if I can find any juniper solutions online"?
Maybe I'm a little too independence-minded. I don't think I have a lot of "problems". I don't think I need to pay businesses money to solve the problems I do have for me. I just have things I'd like to do.
And sometimes I need to buy some products to do those things.
3 Responses to “I'm tired of "solutions"”
1. Willie
September 26th, 2007
I actually search for the word problem more than I search for the word solution.
2. Richard
September 26th, 2007
Solution also makes me think of math. Solution seems like just a buzz word to make people feel warm and fuzzy that HP is going to solve their problems with their fix-all solution. When I’m searching for a fix to a problem I use the word fix more often than anything.
3. Garrett
September 27th, 2007
Well, I actually work for a “Solutions”, which is kind of in the company title as a buzzword. However, it kind of does describe what we do pretty well. We don’t really have a product that we sell a lot of, what generally happens is some big company comes to us and says “we’d like to automate vehicles in such and such a scenario” and we say, “OK, we can do this and this and this to do that”. So, we work on a contract basis, companies come to us with problems, we solve them for them.
Its not super profitable, and something we’d like to move away from at some point and become more product oriented, but that’s where we are right now.
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