Hurricane Debbie dumped 17 inches of water in Colin's home.  It was a traumatic experience, from wading through the murky water to the neighbor’s house—hoping not to encounter the alligators that usually hang out nearby—to watching a team of 12 recovery professionals sweeping through and gutting what remained inside after the water subsided. The experience has been emotionally draining, especially since they didn't have flood insurance, making the cost of repairs overwhelming. It exposed the emotional nature of these circumstances and reminded us of what is important when treating a distressed customer. This episode explores the Customer Experience lessons learned along the way.  The story begins with the frantic search for help after the flood. With no time to gather multiple quotes, a friend recommended Servpro, a disaster recovery company. While Servpro did a great job, one small misstep—using the term "demolition"—upset the host's wife, highlighting the importance of language and empathy in high-stress situations. Despite the upsetting circumstances, Colin and his wife appreciated the team's professionalism and sympathy. We also touch on a less positive customer service experience with the cable company. While their technician was helpful and empathetic, the initial process during the phone call didn't consider the host's extreme situation. The rigid, unempathetic procedure highlighted how companies, like the cable provider, can improve by empowering their employees to handle unique circumstances flexibly. While getting coffee, the lack of empathy from a cheerful barista served as another example of how businesses can fail to acknowledge customers going through difficult times. While we recognize that coffee chains do not specialize in disaster recovery, it was still a missed opportunity for them to show empathy in a moment requiring more than routine friendliness. A frustrating visit to a self-storage facility was another eye-opener. The company had implemented a tablet/virtual receptionist system, which lacked the human touch, particularly during hurricane season when people needed help the most. Companies should be prepared to offer a more hands-on, empathetic approach to meet heightened demands during extraordinary times. The episode is a call to action for companies to build flexibility and empathy into their Customer Experience strategies, especially during times of crisis. Businesses that show genuine concern for their distressed customers during challenging times will create loyal customers for life, while those who don't may lose them. In this episode, we also dive into: The emotional toll of disaster recovery and its impact on Customer Experiences. How language choice can impact a customer's emotional state. The importance of empowering employees to handle unique customer situations. Why self-service solutions may fail in high-stress scenarios. The critical role empathy plays in building customer loyalty, especially during crises.  

Customer feedback is critical to managing and improving your customer experience but it isn’t easy to get. Worse, it isn’t always useful and enlightening on what you are doing well, or perhaps more importantly, not so well.  In this episode, we tackle a common problem many businesses face: how to get more actionable customer feedback. Our guest, Tim Waterton, Chief Revenue Officer of HappyOrNot®, brings over 20 years of experience in helping companies gather and analyze customer insights. Waterton shares valuable tips on making the feedback process seamless, efficient, and impactful. One of the main insights Waterton offers is the importance of capturing feedback at the right moment—immediately after the Customer Experience. According to him, this approach ensures that businesses collect more accurate feedback as people's recollections of their experiences fade quickly. He suggests that feedback should be short and simple to encourage participation, using tools like micro-surveys (e.g., quick emoji selections). Waterton also explains the difference between feedback and reviews. Feedback is company-initiated, where you ask the customer directly, while reviews are customer-initiated and usually more detailed. Both have value but serve different purposes in understanding the customer experience. A key takeaway is the balance between positive and negative feedback. While many companies receive mostly positive feedback, focusing only on the negatives or positives can skew your understanding. You need both to find areas of improvement and highlight what's working well. We also warn about the dangers of over-automating customer experiences. Colin shares an example of a milkman who improved efficiency but lost personal connection with customers, ultimately losing Colin’s wife's business. This cautionary tale is a crucial reminder that companies must balance efficiency with the human touch, especially in the age of AI and automation. We wrap up with practical tips on gathering meaningful feedback, including choosing the right channels, keeping surveys relevant and concise, and acting on the feedback you receive. In this episode, you'll also learn: The difference between feedback and reviews and why both matter How to avoid "survey fatigue" and keep customers engaged The role of micro-surveys in capturing real-time feedback The importance of balancing automation with personal interaction Why acting on feedback is crucial to improving Customer Experience

One of the benefits of being in business and academia for years is that we have a lot of experience running workshops. This episode is a brain dump of all the stuff you won’t learn in a book but is critical to the successful outcome of your program.   The first and perhaps most critical step is breaking the ice. By setting a relaxed and open tone, you ease participants into the session, ensuring they’re ready to engage. A simple question at the start can do wonders—something as quirky as asking attendees to share something strange about themselves. This activity breaks down barriers and injects some fun into the proceedings, setting the stage for a lively and productive workshop.   As a facilitator, it's vital to approach the workshop without a predefined answer or outcome in mind. Your role is to guide participants in finding solutions, ensuring participants take ownership of the results. This approach fosters a deeper connection to the material and encourages lasting change.    For instance, when working with a client like Maersk Line, the world's largest shipping company, it’s important to ask the right questions and provide tools rather than answers. This method leads to better results and enhances the participants’ sense of accomplishment.   Also, flexibility is key when it comes to planning your workshop. While having an agenda is important, adjust it as discussions evolve, allowing for deeper exploration of ideas and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.  Similarly, consider the group dynamics when dividing attendees into smaller teams. Mixing personalities and ensuring a balance of perspectives can prevent dominant voices from stifling creativity and lead to more innovative solutions.   In this episode, we dive into these essential strategies for leading a workshop that leaves a lasting impact. Drawing from years of experience, we explore practical tips to ensure your workshops are engaging, effective, and memorable for all participants.   If you listen, you will also learn the following:   Ryan wrote a script for Broadway, and Colin is married to his stepsister. No, really. How to effectively manage group dynamics by balancing personality types and seniority levels. The importance of having a clear goal for the workshop and aligning all activities towards achieving it. Why off-site workshops can prevent distractions and boost creativity. The significance of determining the ideal team size for different workshop activities. Techniques to ensure follow-through on workshop outcomes back in the workplace. The impact of physical space on group energy and interaction during the workshop.  

Claire Dunwood has a pickle. She wants to know how to manage rising customer expectations with fewer resources than she used to have. This episode seeks to help her—and you—do exactly that. It’s pretty common to hear problems like this today. Responding to rising expectations is easy when there is no limit to the resources you can throw at it. Doing that same thing on a budget is a different kettle of fish.  We kick off by exploring how expectations form. Expectations for experiences, even for those we've never had, are often built from adjacent or similar experiences, drawing on memories, media, or past interactions. Therefore, customers have preconceived notions about how their interactions with your brand will unfold, even before they’ve engaged with you. Claire noted that customer expectations seem to be constantly rising. Effective management of rising expectations requires identifying which aspect of the expectations is rising—rational, emotional, or sensory—and whether it aligns with your business goals. We discuss the importance of focusing on the aspects that drive the most value for customers rather than trying to meet every rising expectation. A key takeaway is the importance of focusing on what matters most to your customers, as highlighted by the Blue Ocean Strategy. This approach suggests excelling in the most important areas to your customers and letting go of everything else. Knowing your customers well is essential, as it helps you decide which expectations to meet and which to disregard, ensuring that you spend your resources wisely. In this episode, we share practical strategies for managing customer expectations, including understanding customer needs, proactive communication, setting clear boundaries, maintaining consistency, and leveraging technology. These strategies help balance the demands of rising expectations with the reality of limited resources. In this episode, we also talk about: The formation of customer expectations from adjacent experiences The categorization of expectations into rational, emotional, and sensory The concept of outcome-based prioritization when resources are limited The role of transparency and proactive communication in managing expectations How to decide whether certain customers are worth the effort based on their expectations and profitability Examples of businesses effectively setting and exceeding customer expectations The importance of staying agile and responsive to customer feedback  

Personalization is a developing area in Customer Experiences. With AI driving what could be possible, many of you might be wondering how you can best leverage its capability in yours. To that end, we invited our special guest, Graham Hill, Ph.D., to explore the rapidly evolving field of Personalization in Customer Experiences. With decades of experience in customer relationship management (CRM) and Customer Experience, Hill shares valuable insights into how personalization, particularly with the help of AI, is reshaping customer interactions and driving business results. Hill explains that personalization operates on a continuum, ranging from broad, branded communications to highly individualized content tailored to a single customer’s needs.  He also emphasizes balancing mass and personalized communication within a marketing strategy. While mass communication builds general brand awareness, personalized and individualized content can significantly enhance customer engagement and drive sales. Hill discusses the impressive impact of personalized communications, noting that customized content can be up to nine times more effective and individualized content up to 44 times more effective at eliciting customer responses than generic communications.  However, he warns against over-personalization, advising businesses to consider their goals and the specific problems personalization can solve before investing heavily in these technologies. Hill also critiques traditional segmentation methods, advocating for outcome-based segmentation instead. By understanding what customers are trying to achieve and how they measure success, businesses can design more effective personalized communications that resonate with customers at different stages of their journey. The episode also features a case study from Hill’s work with Toyota Financial Services, where implementing personalized communication in the repurchase management program led to a significant increase in response rates—from 10% to 35%. Hill’s approach underscores the importance of clear goals, continuous improvement, and a customer-centric focus in personalization efforts. In this episode, we also explore: The balance between mass communication and personalization in marketing strategies. The significant impact of personalized and individualized content on customer engagement. The importance of outcome-based segmentation for effective personalization. The dangers of over-investing in new technologies without clear goals. Practical steps for understanding customer needs and enhancing key interactions through personalization. The role of AI tools in supporting but not overshadowing simple, effective personalization efforts.  

Fair Warning: this episode regarding excuses was prompted by recent experiences with tradespeople during Colin’s kitchen renovation. No one likes excuses, least of all your customers. Lately, Colin has been hearing many amazing excuses about why something can or cannot be done in his kitchen project. It got him thinking about excuses and why people make them. Today’s episode explores the ideas of excuses and what they tell us about human behavior. Consider examples like long call center wait times blamed on “high call volume” or companies deflecting responsibility for faulty products or order issues by passing the buck to manufacturers. These situations highlight the commonality of excuses in everyday interactions. It is important to understand the difference between an excuse, which is used to avoid blame, and a reason, which acknowledges the cause of a problem and usually is followed by steps to make it right. Additionally, we explore the psychological motivations behind excuse-making, including our innate desire to see ourselves as right, and how this plays into consumer behavior and decision-making.  One important concept that supports our behavior around blame is Confirmation Bias. When avoiding blame, we tend to favor information that supports our existing beliefs (i.e., that it is not our fault), even in trivial matters. Additionally, we delve into the concept of Fundamental Attribution Error, where we are more likely to attribute others’ mistakes to their character while excusing our own based on external circumstances. This human tendency to avoid blame and protect our ego is universal. However, the consequences bear a sharp contrast to the benefits of taking responsibility, especially in leadership roles. A case study from the UK’s Post Office scandal illustrates the severe consequences of excuses on a larger scale, where avoiding responsibility led to widespread harm and even imprisonment. From this, we draw lessons on the importance of honesty and accountability in both personal and professional contexts. In this episode, we explore the fine line between a reason and an excuse and examine how they function in various Customer Experiences.  In this episode we also discuss: The psychological need for self-preservation and its impact on excuse-making. How Confirmation Bias affects our decisions and perceptions in everyday life. The difference between taking responsibility and deflecting blame in customer service. Real-world examples of excuses versus reasons in customer experience. The potential long-term damage of excuses to trust and relationships. Strategies for handling mistakes and building stronger customer relationships by owning up to errors.  

In this episode, we tackle a thought-provoking question from one of our listeners: Is it ethical to use urgency as a marketing tactic?  This question sparked a deep conversation about the ethics of digital marketing, particularly the use of scarcity to drive sales.  We feature insights from Daniel Bisett, partner and CXO at WeRock DM, who shares his thoughts after watching "The Social Dilemma" and wrestling with the impact of digital marketing on mental health. Bisett discusses the ethical concerns of creating false urgency in marketing, comparing it to the stress and pressure felt by consumers during high-stakes purchases, like a kitchen remodel. He argues that manipulating customers with "FOMO" (Fear of Missing Out) can lead to hasty, anxiety-driven decisions, which ultimately harm the customer and the brand’s reputation.  Instead, Bisett advocates for building trust and long-term relationships by offering genuine value rather than pressure-filled transactions. Bisett’s message and our subsequent discussion challenge marketers to reflect on their tactics and consider the long-term implications of their strategies, not just for their business, but for their customers' well-being. In this episode, we further explore whether using behavioral science in marketing crosses ethical lines, especially when marketers understand more about customer behavior than the customers themselves. We also delve into the nuances of ethical intent, the role of empathy, and the importance of transparency in marketing practices. We also discuss how companies can ensure they are not just making sales but also treating customers with dignity and respect. In this episode you will also learn: The ethical implications of using behavioral science in marketing. The difference between needs-based selling and manipulative sales tactics. The role of empathy in ethical marketing decisions. How intent and transparency can help marketers stay on the ethical side of business. Real-life examples of ethical and unethical marketing practices. Strategies for building long-term customer relationships based on trust and value.  

In this episode, we dive deep into the concept of empathy and its significance in Customer Experience Management. We challenge common perceptions of empathy, explore its connection to emotional intelligence, and examine how both concepts can enhance your experience management efforts. We begin with a discussion on the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), referencing some compelling statistics: Emotional intelligence influences 58% of job performance. 90% of top performers at work have a high EQ score. The demand for EQ skills is projected to grow six-fold in the next three to five years. Employees with empathetic leaders report a 76% increase in engagement and a 61% boost in creativity. Restaurants managed by individuals with high EQ see a 22% annual profit growth. EQ interventions in the workplace can reduce employee turnover by 63%. 75% of Fortune 500 companies have utilized EQ training tools. Our guest, Sandra Thompson, an emotional intelligence coach from Evolution, shares her insights on empathy within the context of EQ. She emphasizes the necessity of using empathy skills, which involve asking questions and truly listening to understand another person’s feelings and interpretations, rather than projecting our own emotions onto their experiences. We also explore the idea that traditional empathy might be too contextual, as emotions are personal and can lead to misunderstandings if the emotional context differs. Thompson’s concept of “walking in the customer's shoes” is dissected, with the notion that while some shared experiences can foster empathy, unique contexts might still cause disconnects. We break down empathy in emotional intelligence into three approaches: bad (not caring), good (walking the experience as if you were a customer), and better (experiencing as a customer and asking questions to understand their feelings). This layered approach is essential for effective experience management and creating genuine connections with customers. In this episode we also explore: The impact of empathy on job performance and employee engagement. How empathy and emotional intelligence can reduce employee turnover and increase profitability. The role of emotional intelligence in leadership and its effect on creativity. Strategies for developing and implementing emotional intelligence skills in the workplace. Real-life examples of how empathy and EQ improve customer experiences. The importance of self-awareness in emotional intelligence and managing personal emotions. Practical tips for enhancing empathy skills through active listening and inquiry.  

In this episode, we challenge the conventional wisdom of customer-centricity and discuss why firing a customer is sometimes necessary. While it may seem counterintuitive, knowing when to let go of a customer can benefit your business in the long run.  We outline five critical rules to help you determine when it's time to part ways with a customer: Rule #1: Fire customers if they cost too much. Some customers drain more resources than they generate in revenue. It's crucial to track these costs accurately and address the imbalance. If you can't rectify the situation, it's time to let them go. Rule #2: Fire customers if they don't align with your brand. Your brand's values should resonate with your customer base. If a customer's values conflict with yours, maintaining the relationship can harm your brand's integrity and alienate your core audience. Rule #3: Fire customers if they don't fit with your future. As your business grows, some customers might no longer fit your strategic goals. Prioritize resources for future growth by letting go of customers who don't align with your long-term plans. Rule #4: Fire customers if they are too risky. If a customer's business model or payment practices pose a significant risk, it's safer to part ways. Overcommitting to one client or taking the undue risk can jeopardize your business stability. Rule #5: Fire customers if they abuse your employees. Support and protect your employees from abusive customers. Ensuring a respectful work environment is critical for employee morale and long-term success. Understanding these rules will help you make informed decisions about maintaining customer relationships that align with your business goals and values. Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to let go. In this episode, we also explore: The importance of knowing your customer cost metrics and tracking them accurately. How to handle awkward conversations with customers about cost imbalances. Examples of brand alignment, including the Colin Kaepernick and Nike story. Strategies for soft-firing customers without abrupt severance. Recognizing when your growth trajectory requires pruning your customer base. Identifying and mitigating business risks associated with certain customers. The impact of customer behavior on employee well-being and company policy. Insights on post-pandemic changes in customer behavior and their effect on businesses. The balance between customer-centricity and business sustainability.  

In this episode, we explore the role of AI in customer experiences and whether it will replace human interaction. Ali Cudby, CEO of Alignment Growth Strategies, shares insights on leveraging AI to build customer relationships effectively. We discuss practical AI tools that enhance customer experiences and streamline efficiency.  There are a couple of helpful AI tools Cudby mentions. For example, Synthesia generates AI voiceovers for video scripts, making updates easy and translating content for global audiences. Also, Absorb uses AI to create prompts-based presentations, reducing time and effort. Cudby describes how these tools allow for more accurate customer communication while freeing up time for personalized interactions where it matters most. Cudby (alicudby, Alignment Growth Strategies), the author of Keep Your Customers, emphasizes that while AI is a valuable tool, it cannot replace genuine, personalized experiences delivered by empathetic humans. Customers must feel seen, heard, and valued to build trust and loyalty.  The episode also highlights the importance of context in customer experiences and how AI can assist without overshadowing human value. We also touch on the potential risks of AI, such as the creation of fake videos, and the importance of verifying authenticity, especially during critical times like elections. Schema matching helps us identify inconsistencies in AI-generated content, ensuring we make better judgments. The discussion includes the concept of Blue Ocean Strategy, which advises focusing efforts on what drives the most value for customers. By maximizing resources in areas that matter most, businesses can avoid spreading themselves too thin and achieve greatness. In this episode, we also discuss: The significance of AI tools in customer education and training. The balance between AI efficiency and human empathy in customer interactions. The impact of AI on content accuracy and time management. Real-life examples of AI and human synergy in customer service. The role of schema matching in identifying AI-generated fakes. Strategies for optimizing customer experiences using the Blue Ocean concept. The importance of context in understanding customer emotions and needs. How to determine the value AI brings to your customer experience efforts. The potential pitfalls of over-relying on AI in areas where human touch is crucial.  

Friction occurs when a customer has to work or think hard during an experience. Many times, friction is accidental or the result of organizational apathy. In these instances, friction is a bad thing.    Friction is rarely a good thing in a Customer Experience. However, there are times when it can be beneficial.    For example, when your bank uses two-factor authentication to ensure you are who you say you are. This friction enhances customers’ feelings about an experience.    So, how do you know the difference? It depends on the context.    For example, Disney and Apple have annoyed Colin. Typically, he sings these two brand’s praises, so this friction surprised him.    Both require Colin to make appointments for his experience, which bugs him. Disney has a new program where you book appointments before you arrive to ride an attraction at a certain time. They charge for it, too. Apple requires you to book an appointment in one of their locations rather than turn up with your questions. (But Apple doesn’t charge for this service.)   While Colin is still determining if the Disney program will improve the experience, he is sure this new process will be more hassle than the previous one. Time will tell whether it will be worth it.   Regarding Apple, the friction of booking an appointment has benefited Colin. He isn’t turned away because everyone is “too busy” to deal with him when he arrives at his appointed time.    So, while Colin would rather Apple was always available when he shows up at a retail location, making the appointment—and the friction it introduced—has provided value for him.     In this episode, we delve into friction in Customer Experiences, exploring when it's beneficial and detrimental. We provide examples illustrating how friction can enhance or hinder customer interactions, shedding light on its nuanced role in shaping perceptions and behaviors. By understanding the multifaceted nature of friction, businesses can unlock new opportunities for customer engagement and loyalty.   You will also learn the following:   The advantages of removing friction and making things easier for customers. The prevalence of accidental friction stems from neglect or apathy rather than deliberate strategy. Examples of deliberate friction in various industries, from amusement parks to luxury restaurants, and the underlying psychological mechanisms at play. The importance of finding the right balance between security measures and customer convenience, avoiding excessive friction that may deter or frustrate customers. Strategies for strategically managing friction to align with broader business goals while prioritizing customer satisfaction and ease of interaction.  

Colin has a bone to pick. No, it's not with cable providers this time. It's with the tradespeople involved in his latest home reno project. They are living up to the poor reputation that precedes them, and he has a list of complaints.    Key problems included inaccurate pricing, disdain for previous workers' efforts, lack of collaboration, excessive use of jargon, and poor time management. The disconnect between different trades, reminiscent of organizational siloes in corporate environments, often exacerbates problems.    These issues often leave customers frustrated and distrustful. Drawing from personal experience with Colin's kitchen renovation, we highlight common problems that contribute to the negative perception of tradespeople and discuss ways to enhance their Customer Experience.   It is important to note that many tradespeople excel in their work and customer service, proving that good practices do exist. It's just that none of those lot are currently working on Colin's project.   A significant issue is information asymmetry—customers often lack the knowledge to assess the necessity of additional work, creating a sense of vulnerability and distrust. Other industries, like customized software solutions, face similar challenges where the contractors' expertise far exceeds that of the clients.   Some tradespeople and firms have addressed these issues effectively. For example, an electrician's memorable and self-aware tagline, "No Malarkey with Mr. Sparky," engaged Colin enough to hire them to fix his electrical mishap. He liked the acknowledgment that sometimes contractors do provide more than their share of malarkey. This example underscores the importance of clear communication and reliability in building customer trust.   In this episode, we not only humor Colin's need to rant, but we also explore why tradespeople have the reputation they do and what they should do about it.  We also look at what you can learn from their mistakes to benefit your organization.    In this episode, you will also learn how to avoid these mistakes with tips like:   Use Effective Communication Strategies: How tradespeople can improve customer interactions by avoiding jargon and clearly explaining their work Set Realistic Expectations: The importance of accurate initial quotes and timelines to build trust and prevent customer frustration Employ Collaboration: Strategies for enhancing coordination between different trades (or organizational siloes) to ensure smoother project completion Develop Customer Education Tactics: Methods for educating customers about the work undertaken to reduce information asymmetry and build confidence Implement Customer Experience Systems: The value of structured approaches to ensure consistent and positive customer experiences across the trades Learn from Other Industries: Insights from how software firms handle project management and customer relations to avoid cost and time overages  

Did you ever have an imaginary friend? If so, you already have a leg up on this week’s episode. Chances are you created a mental model of your imaginary friend and could predict with 100 percent accuracy how they might react to a given situation.    A mental model is a detailed creation of an imaginary customer that helps you determine how a real-life customer might react to a given situation. However, unlike the imaginary friend, science and data develop the imaginary customer, not creativity.   As we conclude the Masterclass Series about the intricate world of Customer Experiences and the myriad factors that shape customer behavior from a behavioral science perspective,  today’s episode pulls everything together. We discuss why you should create mental models of imaginary customers to understand why your real-life customers do what they do.   Traditionally, advertising professionals crafted detailed fictional personas, like an imaginary friend from childhood. Then, they targeted their messages to these fictional customers to hone their brand messages. Today, marketers continue this practice by segmenting customers into groups with specific characteristics, creating a persona that represents the group, and tailoring messages for each persona.    AI presents an intriguing opportunity to enhance this approach, enabling AI to predict customer responses by accurately simulating real-world behavior. This practical application holds immense promise.   However, relying solely on intuition is inadequate for constructing precise mental models. A wealth of data is necessary to uncover the underlying motivations and psychological triggers of customer behavior.    Understanding the context in which customers make decisions is another critical element of creating effective mental models. Factors such as current emotions, memories of past experiences, and the situational context can significantly influence decision-making. Also, we discuss how Daniel Kahneman’s two-system model from "Thinking, Fast and Slow" explains the interplay between rational and intuitive decision-making processes.   This final installment of our Masterclass Series underscores the significance of customer personas or mental models in comprehending and anticipating customer reactions to diverse marketing strategies. Our discussion emphasizes the criticality of incorporating comprehensive data into these models to ensure accurate predictions of customer reactions, particularly in the context of incentives. The discussion also highlights the challenges of integrating such data into AI models.    In this episode, you will also learn:   The historical development of customer personas in advertising The potential future role of AI in creating and predicting customer personas The limitations of relying solely on intuition for customer behavior predictions The significance of memories and emotional drivers in customer decision-making Why nutrition labels did little to encourage obese people to make better food choices The impact of situational context on customer choices  

You know that friction in a Customer Experience is a problem that needs fixing. However, do you have that same perception of workplace friction? If you feel the friction at work, you probably do. But if you don't, you likely think little of it, if at all. Doing work for money requires a certain amount of friction, right? However, if the friction impacts employees and decreases employee morale, it can be a significant problem. One might even say it is a problem worth fixing. In this episode, we delve into workplace friction and its impact on employee productivity and morale with Christophe Martel, founder and CEO of FOUNT. Martel, an expert in eliminating workplace friction, shares his insights on how reducing friction can transform employee experience, leading to happier and more productive teams. We define workplace friction as anything that makes it harder for employees to do their jobs. This friction manifests in various ways, such as messy interactions, poor intra-company team collaboration, lack of established rules, and inadequate systems for settling disagreements. While most companies recognize friction in Customer Experience is detrimental, many organizations overlook its impact on employees. Martel explains that workplace friction is an evolving concept that varies from person to person. Unlike organizational friction, which slows down processes company-wide, work friction is more acute and usually affects frontline employees. It often arises unintentionally from policies or changes designed to meet departmental goals, complicating interactions for customer-facing staff. FOUNT addresses structural friction by identifying and resolving issues through data collection and analysis. By understanding employees' specific tasks, FOUNT helps organizations implement solutions that improve productivity and morale. Martel emphasizes that solving work friction leads to happier employees and yields operational benefits, making the company more efficient and profitable. One key takeaway is that productive employees are long-term employees. Contrary to the popular belief that people leave managers, Martel argues that they leave because of work friction. Managers often absorb friction for their teams but lack the authority to make systemic changes. As a result, friction becomes ingrained in company processes, persisting even when everyone acknowledges it doesn't work. Martel advocates for open communication between frontline employees and senior managers to identify and address work friction. He also highlights the potential role of AI in reducing friction, though its effectiveness depends on user adoption. AI tools can help when properly deployed based on insights from work friction data. We discuss why addressing work friction requires a clear understanding of its causes and a commitment to making systemic changes. We also hear about how Martel's approach with FOUNT demonstrates that reducing friction can significantly improve employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall company performance. Listeners will also learn: How to identify different types of workplace friction The importance of data in understanding and resolving friction Examples of structural friction and how to address them The role of managers in mitigating or exacerbating friction The potential impact of AI tools on workplace productivity Practical steps for fostering open communication and gathering actionable insights from employees The financial benefits of reducing work friction in large organizations  

Customers can tell you why they do something, But they might be wrong.    It's not that customers are stupid. No, it is quite the contrary. Customers' thinking and decision-making are complicated; multiple things happen simultaneously.    Sometimes, the reason customers do things is hidden, even from the customers themselves. In our penultimate masterclass episode, we explore how you can get at these hidden motivations when designing a Customer Experience that surprises and delights customers.    In this episode, we delve into the hidden motivations of customers, particularly focusing on Confirmation Bias. This bias is a psychological tendency in which people seek information confirming their beliefs and discount contradicting them. It plays a crucial role in customer decisions, often without them even realizing it.   For example, one significant influence is the desire to be right, to see oneself as competent and knowledgeable. Confirmation Bias stems from this need, as people seek information that validates their opinions and disregards contrary evidence.   This bias manifests in various ways. One is brand loyalty.    For example, Apple enthusiasts might blame themselves for device issues rather than consider a fault with the product. This self-blame reinforces their loyalty, even if the product doesn't work perfectly. Similarly, loyal users of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) overlook its problems to maintain their positive view of the service.   Confirmation Bias is also evident in political beliefs. Studies show that exposure to opposing viewpoints makes individuals more extreme in their views rather than moderating them. This reaction occurs because engaging with opposing views requires more cognitive effort and emotional resilience, as it threatens one's sense of being right.   In business, Confirmation Bias occurs when companies resist new findings that contradict their existing strategies. For instance, in our Emotional Signature® research, organizations often find that the real drivers of customer satisfaction differ from the assumptions. While these insights are valuable, accepting them is challenging because it feels like the organization must admit to past mistakes.   Recognizing and addressing hidden motivations is essential for businesses, so tune in to gain insights into the complex world of customer motivations and how to leverage these understandings for better business outcomes. We will explain why it is crucial to go beyond surface-level feedback and analyze customer behavior to uncover these deeper drivers.    In this episode, we also discuss:   The role of evolutionary psychology in understanding customer motivations. Techniques for uncovering hidden customer needs. How Confirmation Bias affects brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. The impact of cognitive effort and emotional resilience in accepting opposing views. Strategies for supporting customers in justifying their purchases. The importance of being open to new information and challenging one's own biases.  

Sanjay Patel faces a challenge many of us can relate to: how to get senior executives to buy into your program.    Dealing with senior management can be nerve-wracking, as I learned twenty years ago when my heart rate spiked during a presentation to the CEO and C-suite. Today, I've mastered strategies for these situations.    In this episode, we discuss how to deal with them effectively and get what you want.   For example, it starts by being confident in your knowledge. Senior executives are usually clever and ambitious, knowing a lot about various topics but often not much about Customer Experience (CX). When discussing CX or any program you are knowledgeable about, remember they can learn from you. They wouldn’t talk to you otherwise. Respect your expertise and believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in your ideas, why should they?   So, yes, confidence is key, but avoid being overly technical or jargon-heavy. Overcomplicating your message can make you seem like you’re covering for something. Instead, align your message with what the CEO cares about most. For example, if the CEO is focused on cost-cutting, explain how your CX program can save costs. Understanding and addressing their needs will help you get through to them.   You should also keep your questions simple. Surprisingly, the higher you go in the management chain, the simpler the questions should be. Simple questions like "What experience do we want to deliver?" engage the senior team effectively. Avoid complex questions that convolute your message. Being clear and relevant is more important than appearing clever.    Additionally, using examples from within the organization or from customers helps illustrate your points effectively. Personal stories make your message digestible and relatable. For instance, Colin always asks his clients to think about a good or bad experience they had recently. By asking your audience about their own good or bad customer experiences, you can help them understand the importance of emotions in CX.   Finally, senior management values opinions. When asked, state your opinion clearly and respectfully. And be straightforward; senior management can easily detect dishonesty.   Today’s episode explores how to convince senior management to support your program.  . Ultimately, persuading senior management is a sales job. So, we talk about how to sell your idea by meeting their needs.    In this episode, you will also discover:   How to frame your expertise in a way that resonates with senior executives' priorities. Techniques for simplifying complex ideas to ensure clarity in communication. The importance of aligning your proposals with the company's strategic goals. Methods for using storytelling to make your case compelling and memorable. Strategies for addressing tough questions with confidence and transparency. Ways to gather and present evidence that supports your proposals effectively.  

This episode is the sixth in an eight-part series on Unlocking the Psychology of Customer Experience. Here, we explore the psychology we have regarding how human beings deal with predicting unpredictable outcomes. The discussion focuses on biases that influence how people perceive and assess probability and risk, impacting their judgment and decision-making processes.   We begin with a common bias in these situations, the Gambler's Fallacy. In this scenario,  individuals predict future random outcomes based on past results. It feels logical but isn’t and often results in poor decision-making.    For example, casinos will often put the results of the past few Roulette rolls to give patrons a history of what has happened with the wheel. Some gamblers might use this history to predict what is likely to happen next.    However, the marble doesn’t have a memory of what just happened or any control over what happens next. The next roll will be as random as the last roll. The history of the Roulette wheel is meaningless; it only serves the casino by exploiting patrons' inability to realize the random nature of the spin and taking their money.  Another bias we discuss is the Hot Hand Fallacy, which influences people to believe that a streak of success in sports or other areas is sustainable despite statistical evidence.    The Gambler’s Fallacy and the Hot Hand Fallacy are not any more logical or rational than one another. The Hot Hand Fallacy differs because, at least, an athlete’s performance or a business outcome isn’t random. However, it isn’t any more likely to be right.    We also examine the Overconfidence Bias, which reveals how individuals tend to be overly confident in predicting outcomes, leading to misguided decisions. The Dunning-Kruger effect, a related phenomenon, highlights how individuals with limited knowledge of a topic may underestimate their competence.    Colin is guilty of this regarding his ability and drive to learn about his SLR camera’s more nuanced settings. He opts for the automatic settings instead.   Moreover, the Endowment Effect is discussed, illustrating how people overvalue items they perceive as their own, influencing their willingness to part with them. The Hindsight Bias is also explored, revealing how people tend to believe that past events were more predictable than they were.   In this episode, you will also learn the following:   The importance of ongoing learning and adaptation in navigating the complexities of human decision-making. The implications of these biases for customer experience design and decision-making in business. Strategies for mitigating the impact of cognitive biases on judgment and decision-making. Real-world examples of how these biases manifest in various contexts, such as investing, sports, and customer interactions. The role of awareness and education in addressing biases and improving decision-making processes. Practical steps for incorporating insights from behavioral economics into experience design and business strategy.  

Regarding Customer Experiences and the behavioral sciences, there is seldom only one thing happening at a time. There are usually a lot of things happening at once. This masterclass episode, the fifth in a series of eight, explores economic biases and how they create flaws in our decision-making logic.    For example, one key bias discussed is the Sunken Cost Fallacy, where people need help to walk away from investments, leading to subsequent mistakes. Loss Aversion is another bias explored, highlighting how we feel losses more acutely than gains. This bias influences behaviors like resisting salary reductions and preferring to face a potential layoff (where one would lose all their salary) because we can’t imagine losing any part of our present income.   The Endowment Effect, stemming from Loss Aversion, emphasizes how we overvalue items we perceive as our own, leading to decisions like overpricing sentimental possessions. It’s why grad students can’t bear to part with their gift in exchange for a gift of equal value. It’s also why economist Richard Thaler, University of Chicago, can now add “Nobel-prize-winning economist” in his bio. Ultimately, these economic biases reveal that people aren't always logical, and irrational factors often influence our decision-making processes. In this episode, we discuss why and what you can do about it in your experience design.    In this episode, you will also learn the following:   Strategies for recognizing and navigating economic biases in customer experience management. Examples of how these biases manifest in everyday situations, such as purchasing decisions and salary negotiations. The importance of understanding irrational decision-making in designing effective customer experiences. Practical steps for leveraging insights from economic biases to enhance customer interactions and outcomes.  

Surge pricing, a form of dynamic pricing, involves raising prices during spikes in demand to balance supply and demand. It is a rational economic solution to manage demand effectively, but it can generate negative emotions among consumers who feel they're being unfairly charged. Surge pricing is a specific flavor of dynamic pricing or, depending on your perspective, price discrimination.   Surge Pricing is commonly seen in ride-sharing services or airlines, where prices increase during peak times to encourage more drivers to hit the road. Examples of surge pricing include Uber's increased fares during rainy weather and airlines charging higher prices for last-minute bookings or peak travel times.   In addition to ride-sharing and airline industries, surge pricing can be observed in other sectors, such as bars offering happy hour discounts to attract customers during off-peak hours. However, it doesn’t work in every situation and can damage your customer relationships.    Surge pricing has its good points. It can increase revenue and manage demand effectively. However, to do so, this dynamic pricing strategy must be balanced with customer-centric considerations and strategic communication to avoid negative perceptions.    In this episode, we explore the particulars of surge pricing and explain how effective communication is crucial when implementing dynamic pricing strategies. Customer communication can ensure customers understand the rationale behind the pricing changes and feel they're receiving fair value.    In this episode, you will also learn the following:   Examples of surge pricing in various industries, including hospitality and energy. The role of strategic purpose in dynamic pricing implementation. Why effective communication helps stave off disaster when implementing dynamic pricing strategies. How framing dynamic pricing changes can influence consumer perceptions. Balancing the benefits to the customer with revenue optimization goals. There is a need for flexibility and supply management to support dynamic pricing strategies.  

Various motivational biases and emotions shape customer experiences, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to designing experiences. For example, the customer’s mood significantly impacts the customer’s decision-making processes.   Today's discussion highlights why understanding the customer’s mood and managing customer emotions helps you achieve your desired experience outcomes. It also identifies twenty emotions driving or undermining value, stressing the necessity of specificity in emotional goals.    We also cover the Affect Heuristic and Mood Management Theory, two prominent theories in psychology that are particularly relevant to our discussion on the role of emotion in decision-making. Here’s why:   The Affect Heuristic suggests that our intuitive choices are often guided by emotional responses, with a preference for positive experiences. This has practical implications for businesses in terms of designing customer experiences that evoke positive emotions.    Mood Management Theory posits that our decisions are often driven by the desire to regulate our mood, seeking pleasure or alleviating discomfort. This theory helps us understand the role of mood in decision-making and its potential impact on customer experiences.   Context, culture, and age also influence mood and emotional responses. We discuss how cultural predispositions and life stages shape emotional goals and needs (which also explains why Colin’s Smiley Face Buttons on Etsy won’t sell like hotcakes in England).  In this episode, we underscore the importance of recognizing and understanding the impact of mood on decisions. We also explore the power of positive thinking in shaping perceptions and responses to reality while acknowledging its limitations in influencing external outcomes. Additionally, we advocate for a diagnostic approach to customer emotions and behavior and capitalizing on positive or managing negative moods.   Here are a few key points we make in the podcast:   Mood significantly influences decision-making processes, so understanding and managing customer emotions, which we covered in another episode recently, are crucial for designing effective experiences. Specific emotional goals are essential for achieving desired outcomes, so if you don’t have them, you should make them now. Context, culture, and age also influence mood and emotional responses. Why Colin and Ryan represent both the best and the worst culture has to offer regarding positive or negative outlooks on life.  Positive thinking can shape perceptions and responses to reality but can’t change reality; so think positive but work hard—and don’t walk barefoot over a field of hot lava because you “think you can.”  

This has been created in partnership with NICE. AI is a significant development in experience management, but many organizations need help with its implementation. While experimenting with AI, like ChatGPT, offers a glimpse of its potential, it's challenging to understand how AI fits into the broader tech stack and business systems.   In today’s episode, Elizabeth Tobey, Head of Marketing for Digital and AI for NICE ) NICE, an AI platform, shares insights on effectively using AI to enhance experiences.    This video summarizes what I see happening in many organizations regarding implementing AI.   Tobey says that many organizations have told her they don’t know where to start. She emphasizes the importance of beginning with impactful AI use cases and setting clear KPIs to measure success post-deployment. NICE's suite of solutions helps identify pain points within a company, enabling targeted AI implementations, such as Enlighten XO, which stands for experience optimization.   However, implementing AI requires overcoming siloed approaches and investing in third-party solutions due to resource limitations and expertise within organizations. Customizing AI models for specific customer experiences is crucial, as different experiences require different approaches.    In other words, you don’t want the same experience buying a luxury car as returning running shoes. One must feel posh and comprehensive, while the other should be quick and easy. (We’ll let you guess which is which.)   Tobey advises that to sell AI within an organization, one should focus on solving business problems rather than promoting AI. Managing expectations about AI capabilities is essential, as AI alone cannot solve all problems. Instead, AI should complement existing technology, culture, and business objectives.   Tobey suggests clearly understanding success criteria and providing data to potential partners to demonstrate realistic outcomes. Building relationships with partners invested in success ensures alignment with business needs and fosters growth opportunities.   In this episode, we will also discuss:   The importance of understanding AI nuances and use cases across different organizational roles. How AI solutions should align with existing technology and business objectives. The role of partnerships in AI implementation and success. Managing expectations and avoiding overreliance on AI. The evolution of AI technology and its potential impact on businesses. Customizing AI solutions to address specific business challenges. Leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences and drive business growth.  

A Master Class Part 3: Unlocking the Psychology of Customer Experience In the third episode of our Master Class series on the Psychology of Customer Experience, we delve into how other people influence our behavior. Understanding these theoretical dynamics is practical, empowering you to design effective Customer Experiences. Robert Cialdini's research on influence is a cornerstone of understanding social dynamics and persuasion techniques. In this episode, we rely heavily on his groundbreaking work. First, let’s consider Social Proof. Social Proof is a concept that describes how the actions and preferences of others influence people. Two examples that demonstrate how this works are the idea of trending, or the tendency to like something if others do, and the fear of missing out (FOMO), which drives people to join in activities or trends. Reciprocity influences behavior, too. Reciprocity is the idea that people respond positively to kindness and favors. Many times, people who have been on the receiving end of kindness will return that behavior.. However, acts of kindness that inspire reciprocity must be genuine. If they come with the expectation of something in return, they will not produce the same results. Scarcity is a persuasive tactic that capitalizes on the limited availability of a product or service to create a sense of urgency and desirability. It can be seen in online shopping carts indicating low stock or limited time offers presented during a cruise. In this episode, we provide an overview of many of these social dynamics that influence customer behavior in your experience. Understanding social dynamics and influence can inform strategic decisions in customer experience design, including marketing campaigns, sales techniques, and product positioning. Best of all, Colin uses his serious “Master-Class” voice, which tells you that he really knows what he is talking about.   In this episode, you will also discover: The concept of Social Proof and how it influences consumer behavior. The power of Reciprocity and how acts of kindness can drive customer loyalty. How Scarcity tactics can create a sense of urgency and increase demand for products or services. Examples of these influence techniques in real-world scenarios, like online shopping cart messages and to-good-to-be-true cruise line offers. The importance of considering social influences throughout the customer journey. Strategies for leveraging social dynamics to enhance customer experiences and drive sales.

Quality assurance is crucial in Customer Experience Management, and assessing call center operations provides valuable insights into an organization's customer-centricity. The subject of today’s episode is the result of our None of Use is Clever as All of Us feature. One of our listeners, Jamie Scott of Evaluate Agent shared his thoughts on Quality Assurance and the problems organizations have regarding this area. Observations and conversations with call center agents reveal operational inefficiencies and training gaps that impact the overall customer experience. Scott highlights key issues with traditional quality assurance practices and offers insights into leveraging AI for enhanced customer service.  Scott emphasizes the importance of viewing AI as a tool rather than a replacement for human agents and advocates for analyzing all customer interactions to gain comprehensive insights. He underscores the need to focus on the emotional aspects of customer interactions and suggests using AI to predict and diagnose customer sentiments across various channels.  However, challenges such as siloed AI implementations and focusing on rational data in quality assurance metrics hinder progress in this area.  In this episode, we explore Scott's topic and how it can help you with your Quality Assurance efforts. Despite these challenges, there are actionable strategies for customer service and quality management professionals.   In this episode, you will also discover: The significance of assessing call center operations for understanding an organization's customer-centricity. Insights from Jamie Scott on leveraging AI and overcoming challenges in quality assurance practices. The importance of viewing AI as a tool to enhance human decision-making rather than a replacement for human agents. Strategies for analyzing all customer interactions to gain comprehensive insights and identify areas of improvement. The need to focus on emotional aspects of customer interactions and incorporate emotional metrics into quality assurance practices. Practical tips for implementing a top-down approach to delivering the desired customer experience and measuring targeted emotions across all customer touchpoints.

A Master Class Part 2: Unlocking the Psychology of Customer Experience In this episode, we continue exploring the psychology behind Customer Experience, focusing on the role of memory. Customer loyalty hinges on how memories are formed and retained. Therefore, understanding memory formation is crucial for designing impactful experiences. Memory formation begins with encoding, where new information is processed and stored in the mind. Encoding involves several effects, including the Primacy Effect, which prioritizes remembering initial experiences, and the Recency Effect, which emphasizes recollecting recent events. Additionally, the Frequency Effect highlights the importance of repeated actions in memory retention. Retrieval effects determine how stored memories are recalled. Professor Daniel Kahneman's Peak-End Rule suggests that people remember the most intense emotion experienced during an event and its conclusion. This rule applies to evaluative memory, shaping overall perceptions of past experiences. Memory also has structure. Memory structure resembles a fishing net, with individual memories as knots connected to form a net, which represents the larger memory network. Retrieving one memory often triggers the recall of associated memories, along with the emotions and experiences linked to them. It’s helpful to picture the fishing net at the bottom of a shallow pool and imagine pulling it by one of the knots to the surface. You get the knot you grabbed, but all the connected knots come along, too. Strategically managing memory formation involves planning for encoding, recall, and structure. Tactics such as leveraging primacy and recency, incorporating humor or emotional connections, and providing follow-up reminders can enhance memory retention. It's crucial to prioritize memorable aspects of the experience and reinforce positive memories over time. Considering the interconnected nature of memory concepts, such as the relationship between encoding and recall, helps design experiences that leave a lasting impression. For instance, understanding how customers perceive value allows you, as a professional, to highlight key features that resonate with your target audience, instilling confidence in your ability to create memorable customer experiences. In this episode, we discuss how memory plays a significant role in driving customer loyalty, making it essential to proactively shape how customers remember their experiences. By being deliberate about memory formation, businesses can create meaningful connections and foster enduring relationships with their customers.   In this episode, you will also learn: The importance of encoding and retrieval in memory formation. Strategies for enhancing memory retention, such as leveraging Primacy and Recency effects. The role of emotional connections in shaping memorable experiences. The significance of follow-up communication in reinforcing positive memories. How memory structure influences the recall of associated experiences. The interconnected nature of memory concepts and their implications for experience design.

A Master Class: Unlocking The Psychology of  Customer Experience With this episode, we begin an eight-part series exploring customer behavior and the psychology that drives it. Each part will delve into the various psychological aspects of Customer Experiences, offering practical advice on understanding and influencing them. Our focus today is on why customers make quick decisions and how you can sway those decisions in your favor. Understanding customer behavior is complex and influenced by multiple factors, a concept known in academic circles as high causal density. There's no one-size-fits-all solution for a perfect Customer Experience transformation; it requires a combination of approaches. Human nature often seeks shortcuts for cognitive tasks, leading to heuristic processes. Heuristics, or mental shortcuts, simplify decision-making. We discuss four common heuristics: Anchoring and Adjustment: People use familiar examples to estimate values quickly, which can lead to biases, especially in pricing strategies. Focusing Effect: When faced with information overload, individuals focus on crucial details to aid decision-making. Recognizing what customers prioritize can influence their choices. Availability Heuristic: Our brains estimate likelihood based on easily accessible examples. Understanding what information customers readily recall helps shape perceptions. Representativeness: People often categorize based on stereotypes or representative traits. Recognizing customer expectations can guide your design approach. Considering these heuristics, we emphasize the importance of first impressions, understanding customer values, managing expectations, and aligning your design with customer decision-making shortcuts. Recognizing the diversity in customer decision-making preferences is crucial, and segmentation plays a vital role in tailoring experiences. This episode explores various influences and group psychological concepts tied to customer decisions. Our goal is to provide a holistic understanding of experience psychology, making you more agile in grasping customer behavior and creating plans for compelling experiences that encourage return visits.   In this episode, you will also learn: The significance of first impressions and their impact on customer anchors. How to identify valuable areas for customers and use them for effective comparisons. The role of customer expectations and how to align your design with their anticipated experiences. The importance of providing information shortcuts to simplify decision-making. Strategies for segmentation to cater to diverse customer decision-making preferences. The overarching theme of simplification as a design approach offers customers shortcuts to decision-making and potential sales.

In this episode, Colin and Ryan tackle a listener's question about the psychology of customer loyalty, delving into its emotional and relational aspects.    Loyalty, they explain, goes beyond mere repetition of behavior; it is rooted in deep emotional attachment and often requires sacrifice. Drawing parallels to personal experiences, such as loyalty to sports teams (Lutown Town Football Club, recently reinstated in the Premiership) and brands like Apple (naturally), they highlight the importance of trustworthiness and the willingness to go the extra mile in fostering loyalty. They emphasize the significance of loyalty in defining one's identity and sense of belonging, likening it to tribalism. Even in non-tribal contexts, individuals exhibit loyalty to specific brands or products, creating a sense of community. Through personal anecdotes and examples, Colin and Ryan illustrate how businesses can earn loyalty by prioritizing customer needs and making sacrifices for their benefit, ultimately fostering long-term relationships.   Moving beyond misconceptions about loyalty in business, Colin and Ryan encourage organizations to define loyalty in terms of sacrifices made by both the customer and the organization, fostering a two-way relationship. They offer practical strategies for fostering customer loyalty, including recognizing the emotional connection between the organization and the customer, defining loyalty for the organization, and being loyal to customers by delivering on promises and treating them with respect.   In this episode you will also learn: Loyalty is rooted in deep emotional attachment and often requires sacrifice. Loyalty plays a crucial role in defining one's identity and sense of belonging. Businesses can earn loyalty by prioritizing customer needs and making sacrifices for their benefit. Defining loyalty involves considering sacrifices made by both the customer and the organization. Practical strategies for fostering customer loyalty include recognizing the emotional connection, defining loyalty for the organization, and being loyal to customers by delivering on promises.  

“Did I tell you about the time I …”   These seven words are one of many ways we signal one of our favorite things is coming next: a story. We can’t get enough of stories and look for them everywhere, from news to conversations to the commercials we can’t avoid on TV. Stories are an essential part of the human experience.  In today's world, storytelling is crucial in various aspects of business, including marketing.  Human fascination with narratives stems from their ability to captivate attention, evoke emotions, and aid memory retention. Stories provide context, making information easier to recall, and create emotional connections that reinforce memory. Businesses leverage storytelling to establish their brand identity, often highlighting humble beginnings or overcoming adversity. Effective storytelling goes beyond mere anecdotes; it persuades and simplifies complex concepts, making them relatable to the audience. For instance, Ikea's narrative of cost-saving design innovations clarifies the correlation between low price and high quality. In marketing and persuasion, storytelling proves instrumental in communicating abstract ideas and influencing consumer behavior. By tapping into emotions and personal experiences, storytellers can make their points resonate with the audience. Stories simplify complex concepts, facilitate self-awareness, and enhance brand perception. In this episode, we explore why storytelling is such a powerful tool in a marketer's toolbox and how you can tell compelling ones to your customers.    You will also learn: The importance of storytelling in marketing and communication. How narratives aid memory retention and emotional connection. Examples of successful brand storytelling like how Ikea helps us buy their assemble-it-yourself furniture because it’s far more affordable that way.   The effectiveness of storytelling in persuading and simplifying complex ideas. Strategies for crafting compelling stories, including emotional resonance and relatability.   If you have a story you want to share with us, please send us a video or audio for our None of Us Are As Clever as All of Us Feature. We’d love to hear it and might feature it on the podcast and in the newsletter.  

Personalization is an excellent tactic for your marketing efforts. However, only some people like this personalization; some feel they're being watched. Therefore, it is important to remember that context and who's doing the personalizing matter.   Picture this: Colin’s at his go-to fishing store, Discount Tackle. The manager knows him, we chat, and he recommends a lure. Even though Colin can snag it cheaper elsewhere, the personalized touch keeps him coming back.    We've all got our versions of this – the local diner, your loyal barber, or maybe a small biz that fuels your hobbies. Small businesses nail personalization. But big companies? They play the tech card, crunching data to determine "personalized" offerings—not always a slam dunk.   Why? With technology, the data sometimes gets too personal, and without a personal relationship supporting it, you're left feeling like the company is stalking you, not helping you.    The trick is to balance personalization and privacy without making it weird. Discount Tackle gets it. They add value to Colin’s fishing game. Spotify does well with personalization, too. It has cool features, like Spotify Wrapped and DJ playing mode, that enhance the music and user experience but aren't creepy.   But then there's Facebook. Facebook dives deep into Colin’s life for personalized ads, which he doesn’t appreciate, nor do they enhance his experience. Remember: we do not pay for Facebook, but they're cashing in on us.    Graham Hill on LinkedIn – he's all about putting the "customer" back in personalization. His take? Check your spam emails; they're not overly personal. He wants to see marketers’ user personalization to send the message to the right people at the optimal time.   We want personalization for a few reasons. It's like getting invited to an exclusive club when it's done right. Sainsbury's in England sends Colin discounts on stuff he buys. It is cool, not creepy. We also like familiar stuff. Plus, we appreciate the effort.    In this episode, we explore the balance between personalization and privacy. We explain why brands should always consider who you're talking to, how you're doing it, and why.    In this episode, you'll also discover: The Balancing Act of Personalization: Learn how to balance personalizing interactions and avoiding the "too much information" zone. The Differences Between Small vs. Big Business Tactics: Uncover how small businesses ace personalization in face-to-face talks while larger corporations use tech and the tradeoffs involved. Value and Purpose Dynamics: Explore the critical role of value and purpose in personalization and how it can make or break customer relationships. Why Trust and Context Matter: Understand the significance of trust and context in personalization and why it's not just about data but the emotional connection. The Critical Nature of Adding Value, Not Just Selling: Shift your perspective from collecting data for sales to providing genuine value, making customers feel respected and appreciated.  

Customer emotions heavily influence experiences and motivate actions, yet these motivations are often hidden, even from the customers. Organizations must uncover these hidden motivations to serve their customers better. The "Jobs to Be Done" framework, popularized by Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School, provides a lens through which to view customer motivations.   Eckhart Boehme, Founder and Managing Director of Unipro Solutions, emphasizes the importance of aligning customer experiences around the idea of jobs to be done, helping organizations grow faster by understanding what customers seek to achieve through their products or services.   The Jobs to Be Done framework shifts focus from product features to customer motivations, urging businesses to understand the underlying needs driving customer behavior. It prompts companies to ask what customers are buying and why they are buying it.   Boehme also introduces the Wheel of Progress, a tool designed to help organizations understand customer journeys and progress through four phases: awareness, expectations, experience, and tradeoffs. This tool facilitates collaboration and strategy formation based on meaningful data.   This episode explores why understanding customer motivations is essential for effective marketing and product design. While uncovering these motivations may not be intuitive, it is a worthwhile endeavor that can lead to powerful insights and better decision-making.   Here are five other things you will learn in this podcast: The significant influence of customer emotions on experiences and actions.  The importance of uncovering hidden customer motivations for effective business strategies.  How the "Jobs to Be Done" framework provides a valuable perspective on understanding customer needs and motivations.  The role of tools like the Wheel of Progress in visualizing and understanding customer journeys.  Research and analysis are necessary to uncover customer motivations and make informed business decisions.  

Colin has been ghosted. He was surprised, considering he is married and has been for decades.    However, his ghosting experience didn’t come from a romantic partner but a professional one. Since ghosting appears to be spreading into many interactions, we thought we should discuss it here.    Ghosting, where someone suddenly stops communicating, has become more common, thanks to technology making it easier to cut off contact. It often happens online, like in dating apps, leaving one wondering what went wrong.   Even social invitations are not immune. Despite sending out monthly invites to friends, many don't respond, which feels rude. The ease of digital communication is eroding traditional manners.   Professional settings aren't spared either. Job candidates get ghosted by companies during interviews, and vice versa. It's surprising how these communication norms are changing, and we need to stay aware of these shifts.   Take LinkedIn, for instance. Contacting people about products or services can take time and effort. Some think not responding is rude, while others argue it's acceptable. It shows how communication norms differ across platforms.   Despite these changes, we should keep our communication personalized and well-researched. Understanding the norms of each platform and maintaining in-person connections can help avoid being ghosted. Following older norms, like sending thank-you notes after interviews, can set us apart positively.   In this episode, we discuss ghosting and why it happens. We also discuss how to navigate these changing norms with respect and awareness.   In this episode, you will also discover: What ghosting is and why it happens in interactions today What the primary motivation is for ghosting is  How understanding the norms of each platform and maintaining in-person relationships can help reduce the chances of being ghosted An excellent, if time-consuming, strategy can yield the results you were hoping for if you want to access people who think ghosting is acceptable  behavior Why Ryan almost lost a job because he isn’t a “Thank You Note” guy What type of response Colin will welcome on LinkedIn and which ones he will ignore  

"What's the one thing we need for a stellar Customer Experience?"    If we had a dollar for every time clients asked us this, we’d, well, have quite a few dollars.    The question is understandable. This unspoken desire for a silver bullet solution echoes across industries. We all want a silver bullet solution that will fix our problems, whether for weight loss, financial growth, or, in Colin’s case, for playing the guitar.    The problem is that there isn’t one for CX improvement. Or guitar, frankly. Achieving mastery in guitar isn't about shortcuts—it's about hours and hours of practice. Likewise, crafting a remarkable CX demands dedicated effort, not a quick fix. Yet, the allure of a silver bullet persists.   The quest for a single, transformative action stems from a human penchant for simplicity, urgency for instant results, and an aversion to complexity. Many wish to sidestep the nuanced challenges of CX improvement, preferring an easy remedy. It's a journey fueled by a lack of CX expertise, feeling overwhelmed by the myriad CX considerations, and the appeal of past CX success stories with simple solutions.   In this episode, we explore seven reasons we want silver bullet solutions. Perhaps more importantly, we offer a realistic perspective on embracing the truth: CX improvement demands dedication and a holistic approach. By understanding the reasons behind the silver bullet mindset, businesses can navigate their CX journey with a clearer understanding and realistic expectations.   In this episode you will discover:   Why our psychology drives us to crave straightforward solutions, overlooking the intricacies of CX enhancement. How our love for immediate results fuels the search for quick fixes and why we shy away from the multifaceted challenges in CX, seeking simplified remedies. What guitar solo Colin would play if he had a magic wand, or, magic guitar pick.  The influence of exceptional cases and how they reinforce the belief in silver bullet solutions. How our old pal Risk Aversion weighs in by leading us to seek shortcuts instead of embracing comprehensive CX strategies.  

You will have a customer crisis. We apologize for being so direct, but the fact is customer crises are inevitable.  When it does happen, will you be able to navigate it to an acceptable outcome? Do you have a comprehensive approach?   We doubt it. Few organizations do.    Most think a customer crisis isn’t going to happen to them or that they will be able to manage it when it does with their business-as-usual approach.    They are wrong. It will, and they won’t.    Others think they do have a plan, even if they came up with it when the main method of communication with customers was some form of physical correspondence. They have it in a binder on a shelf back by the disconnected fax machine, just above paper files and right next to their Blackberry charger.   To be fair, they do have a plan, technically, but it lacks relevancy and will probably result in winging it at the moment of crisis.   When it comes to customer experience, even the best-managed companies encounter challenges. The inevitability of a customer crisis necessitates a proactive approach, emphasizing the art of staying composed in the face of adversity. In this pursuit, five fundamental rules emerge to guide organizations through the intricate landscape of customer crises.    We share these rules and why they will help in this episode. The journey through customer crises demands a holistic and proactive approach. By embracing these rules, organizations can navigate the complexities of customer crises with composure, transparency, and a commitment to continuous improvement.   Here are some of the things you will learn: Starting with the obvious, we make the case that a well-thought-out plan is essential in managing customer crises effectively and that you likely have the foundations of one built already in your present customer service scheme. We share how reminding cruise passengers a watery death on the journey is a possibility by having an evacuation drill upon leaving port is a great way to start the cruise experience—and a relationship built on trust.  We explain how actively listening to customers and showing empathy is critical to maintaining composure during a crisis, especially for frontline employees, who face the barrage of raw, disappointed customer emotions first. Why news should always be shared, good or bad, and that transparency and honesty take precedence over withholding information during a crisis. The essential nature of reviewing the whole problem, what you learned, and how you plan to avoid it happening again in the future will move your customer relationships forward in a positive way once the negative incident is behind you.  

Have you ever come across the Abilene Paradox? It's when everyone agrees to do something that no one really wants to do.    Jerry B. Harvey coined "The Abilene Paradox" based on a family incident. They ended up driving 50 miles each way across the scorching Texas desert to Abilene for dinner, even though none of them wanted to go. They all thought everyone else wanted to go, so they reluctantly agreed. Politeness led them to a hot, dusty adventure that none of them enjoyed.   This reminded me of a recent experience. I had plans with friends, but as the weekend neared, I wasn't up for it. I decided to bow out and texted the group. Surprisingly, many others in the group thanked me for speaking up because they didn't want to go either. It made me wonder who initiated the plan in the first place.   In work settings, I recall something similar. I remember being in meetings where the boss suggested something not so great. Nobody spoke up because, well, the boss is the boss. Challenging the boss could make someone look foolish, so everyone went along. This conformity can lead organizations down a problematic path.   So, what can you do to avoid the Road to Abilene?    This episode explores how to avoid such situations in your organization. The good news is there are effective ways to manage it, with strong leadership and a robust communication process being crucial.  In this episode, you will also learn:   The various reasons we find ourselves in such situations that often involve avoiding conflict, fearing consequences, or having poor communication systems within the team. How to encourage open communication and foster an environment where team members feel safe expressing their opinions without fear of backlash.  What the benefits are of constructive dissent, where leadership encourages team members to voice differing opinions and ideas, leading to better decisions and avoiding the pitfalls of silent conformity. Which essential leadership skills matter most here, and why there is value in listening to diverse perspectives The specific strategies organizations can use to avoid falling into the Abilene Paradox trap, ensuring that decisions and plans are based on genuine agreement and understanding.  

A hidden impact exists regarding your experience management return on investment (ROI). It is often overlooked because it lurks between a specific moment in a customer process and the behavior resulting from it. However, uncovering and understanding this hidden impact is critical for comprehending its implications on the bottom line.   Emily Davidson wanted to know how to determine the value of her Customer Experience initiatives, a challenge many in the field face. So, she asked us—and we were glad to tell her. What Emily needs is the insight provided by our Emotional Signature research.    The Emotional Signature was developed years ago in collaboration with the London Business School. It resulted from millions of questions posed to thousands of business professionals across hundreds of countries, leading to the identification of the Emotional Signature®.   The Emotional Signature gauges how experiences make individuals feel and how those emotions correlate with the value assigned to the experience. For instance, an experience infused with friction and frustration might yield an Emotional Signature that disappoints customers, resulting in undesirable behavioral outcomes. Conversely, positive emotional connections can enhance outcomes.   Emotions drive customer behavior, influencing actions beyond what survey responses might indicate. A case in point is how Disney Theme Parks discerned that guests, when surveyed, requested salads, but their behavior demonstrated a preference for junk food. This discrepancy showcases the nuanced nature of customer desires and the importance of understanding the specific feelings driving behavior.   In this episode, we explain to Emily and our other listeners how the Emotional Signature Research provides a data-driven approach to understanding the intricate relationship between emotions, customer behavior, and organizational values. While optional for those already convinced of the emotional impact on customer behavior, it is a powerful tool for skeptics requiring tangible evidence before investing resources in experience improvements.   In this episode, you will discover the following: The key to measuring emotional impacts on ROI is how organizations often don’t even know when you ask them and how you can figure it out for your organization.  The twenty emotions, ranging from joy to frustration, that drive or destroy value for organizations.  Why granularity about customer emotions is crucial, and why the ubiquitous oversimplification of emotions as positive or negative won’t work.  A  basic explanation of Structural Equation Modeling, a widely accessible statistical technique, and who to assign it to on your team (hint: it’s the one who is best with numbers). How sorting through what customers say they want but don’t drive value and what customers don’t say they want but do is crucial for making informed decisions that impact the bottom line positively.  

Have you ever noticed that spending cash is harder than using a credit card? You are not imagining things. Different payment methods carry varying degrees of discomfort when used.    Cash tends to have the most painful impact, followed by checks. Credit cards offer a lesser discomfort than cash or checks. With advancements in payment technologies like contactless cards or smartphone transactions, the potential exists for these methods to generate even less discomfort than traditional credit cards.    So, how can businesses leverage these insights into payment methods to assist customers in handling their emotional response to spending?   To put it simply, the answers lie in Mental Accounting and Reframing.   Mental Accounting plays a pivotal role in how customers navigate their emotions regarding spending. It serves to alleviate guilt and elevate happiness in spending scenarios. Thus, it's crucial to consider mental accounting within the broader context of managing customers' emotional experiences.   In this episode, we explore where your customers are emotionally relative to the purchases they make and how guiding them to an improved mental accounting from your business perspective is essential. It turns out that messages that acknowledge and address customers' emotional responses to spending can be a powerful strategy in enhancing their overall satisfaction and engagement during transactions. Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:09  Ryan explains how money can be spent on anything, however the biases we create using mental accounting help us manage our emotions regarding our spending.  07:20  Colin associates a podcast with Joe Pine regarding how customers value their time in experiences differently depending on the type of timed transaction it is.    17:43  We discuss the importance of understanding what mental accounting your customers are using and working with that to help them feel more satisfaction with their purchase. 21:08  We explore how financing in the mix can change the spending experience for customers.   28:09  We share the key takeaways from Mental Accounting and how you can leverage it to improve your experiences with customers. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.  Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.   

Exploring ethics is challenging. Given its abstract nature, it is a tough subject for learning and discussion.    That said, we never falter in the face of a challenge.  We developed five principles of professional ethics we believe are vital to revisit periodically.   Are they rigid guidelines? Do they offer absolute answers? Are they timeless?    Not quite.    Ethics evolve over time, and what's acceptable today might not be so in the future. Nevertheless, ethics, much like any skill, can be nurtured, honed, and enhanced.    It's intriguing to note the limited emphasis organizations place on ethics training. Perhaps there's an antiquated belief that either you possess ethics inherently, or you don't. It's possible that some organizations subscribe to the notion of, "If your parents didn't instill it, we won't either."   In this episode, we unpack the five rules of professional ethics. These five principles serve as a compass, aiding in constructing a framework for achieving the best outcomes and comprehending the path taken, ensuring it can be replicated successfully.   Here are some key moments in the discussion:   05:41  We start with the first rule about setting your own personal boundaries, and whether or not it’s okay to kill your boss. 10:05  After introducing the second rule, which gets deeper into the influence of context, we learn where Ryan gets demonstrations for his lessons on ethics (spoiler alert: It’s Netflix). 20:51  The third rule talks about regulating the environment, whether that’s changing the culture or walking away from it. 25:04  We go against what we usually say about intuition and encourage you to trust your gut…but only this time! 28:24  We announce the last rule, which is a warning that nothing is perfect; finding the best solution is the best you can do in some situations and accepting that is essential.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years. Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Practicality is essential. Great ideas you can’t do anything with in the real world are a waste of time.    Bob Black, one of our avid podcast listeners, likes our concepts about eliciting particular customer emotions. But he doesn’t know how to do that in practical steps. So, this episode gives them to him.    Bob isn’t alone. Numerous organizations struggle with eliciting specific emotions in their customers. While most acknowledge the significance of customer emotions in shaping experiences, many falter when asked about the particular emotions they aim to evoke. Often, organizations gravitate towards vague terms like "positive" or "favorable." These are not emotions; they are adjectives that describe emotions.    So, the first practical step in evoking a specific emotion is pretty simple: One must have a specific emotion in mind to evoke it.    In this episode, we dive deeper into the step-by-step process of evoking specific customer emotions. We also discuss how training, AI technology, and tried and true low-tech mystery shopping can help, too.    Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:24  We hear about Bob Black’s pickle regarding the practicalities of applying the concept of evoking specific emotions, which many organizations share. 08:28  Colin discusses his work in emotions at the beginning of his adventures into Customer Experience, including identifying the 20 emotions that drive and destroy value. 13:23  We share one of the biggest obstacles to success in evoking customer emotions—and it probably isn’t what you think.   19:37  The discussion turns to context and why it is essential when looking for clues into customer behavior.  25:15  Colin shares his biggest sales tool, which is low tech and accessible to any organization: having the experience as if you were a customer. 29:42 We point out the more advanced practical steps of evoking emotions, starting with an assessment of processes. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.  Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.  Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

Have you ever heard the following?   Then, Bob’s your uncle. It’s the difference between chalk and cheese. On your bike, then.   If you haven’t and you don’t live in the UK, Colin wouldn’t be surprised. They are British idioms and when he employ these expressions with his American pals, they usually don’t know he is talking about. However, his friends and family on the other side of the pond do.    It demonstrates the importance of the words you use to communicate and how easy it is to miscommunicate or not communicate at all. Language holds a pivotal role in shaping your customer experience.   Our interest in the significance of language ignited recently when we received a None of Us Are as Clever as All of Us video from Shane Smith ([email protected]) at Everetics, a consultancy specializing in customer support and service. Smith emphasized the crucial role of language, highlighting how words carry weight beyond what our conscious mind perceives. Being mindful of employing positive language instead of negative words can remarkably enhance the customer experience without any cost.   In my tenure as a global Customer Experience Consultant, we've trained many employees on the impact of language choices. Raising awareness about how we convey messages significantly influences customers' perspectives.   Smith pinpointed innocuous phrases used in interactions, such as "No problem" or "I don't disagree." While the phrases convey positivity—indicating there's no issue or that there is agreement with the other person—the inclusion of words like "problem" and "disagree" introduces negativity subconsciously, perhaps making the listener feel defensive. Defensiveness is not a positive interaction with a brand, even at a subconscious level.   It's akin to framing; how you package information alters its perception. Similarly, how you phrase prices or present choices can influence customers' decisions. So, why be casual about the language employed in customer communication?   In this episode, we explore the topic of language choices and how you can employ them in your experience also.    Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   03:21 Colin quizzes Ryan on a few British idioms, and Ryan does okay considering he’s from Ohio. 07:07  We lead into the video submitted by Shane Smith regarding the importance of choosing your words carefully in customer interactions. 11:46 We give our first thoughts about Smith’s ideas, and agree that neither of us thinks scripts are a great idea for customer interactions. 16:17  Colin shares a story about how Apple uses language brilliantly with their training on “Feel, Felt, Found” when talking to customers.  22:20 Ryan gets philosophical, summarizing an argument about the effects of language that has been going on for a long, long time.  25:19 We share how you can also submit a video to the podcast with our None of Us Are as Clever as All of Us feature. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.  Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.  Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

This has been created in partnership with YouGov. Our listeners will enjoy $ 500 off their first survey from YouGov. Click here.   Customer research has some big problems. You might think the big problem with customer research is not asking the right questions. But it isn’t.    Then, surely it’s asking the wrong people the wrong way, right? But that’s not it either.    The biggest mistake people make in customer research is not doing it often enough.    Let me explain. Frequently, clients hand me their most recent customer research—and it’s from seven years ago. Seven years constitutes a significant timeframe in the realm of customer markets.    Consider the preceding seven years and the transformative impact they had on the world:   We grappled with a nearly two-year-long pandemic that brought the world to a standstill and dealt a severe blow to businesses.    This global crisis spurred an unprecedented acceleration in the digital transformation of analog experiences, reshaping how people communicate, work, and shop.   Our return to the new normal revealed double-digit inflation across various consumer goods, significantly disrupting spending habits.    When grocery bills rival what individuals used to allocate for car payments, and car payments align with previous spending on mortgages, the available disposable income diminishes. Consequently, people's responses to survey questions may change a bit.   In this episode, we explore the problems of customer research, how to avoid them, and a powerful new tool that can help you unlock customer insights like you have been doing it all your career.    In addition, you will also learn:   Which restaurants survey respondents think Colin and Ryan are more likely to frequent based on their pictures A must-have three-step system for developing customer surveys and the new platform that makes it accessible for anyone to get started How many murders it takes to be a mass murderer, and how many chainsaws Ryan has in his garage even though he is not a lumberjack (or a murderer or any sort) How surveys showed that nearly two-thirds of customers don’t realize the influences that drive their behavior as customers What you should do to improve the customer insights you ascertain from your customer research efforts Hosts: Colin Shaw, Founder & CEO Beyond Philosophy LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as a ‘Top Voice’ and as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 283,000 followers and 82,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’.   Professor Ryan Hamilton, Emory University  Ryan is an award-winning teacher and researcher in the field of consumer psychology.    Guests:  Brian Reitz Contact: [email protected] This has been created in partnership with YouGov. Resources and Links Mentioned: Beyond Philosophy Website YouGov Website

We want to hear from you. Simply record a video with your thoughts, ideas, reactions, lists, or whatever else you have to offer, and we might discuss it on the podcast.  It’s called None of Us Are As Clever As All Of Us. To learn more, click here.    Justin Stafford ([email protected]), founder of a Customer Smarts shared how sports can teach us how to improve your Customer Experience.    Justin's metaphor holds true in various scenarios. In sports, not every player on the field has an equal chance of scoring, but for the team to succeed, they must collaborate seamlessly.   Similarly, in many organizations, sales teams often occupy the flashiest roles. They wield significant influence due to their role in closing deals. However, just as in sports, the flashy players, like the quarterback in American Football, rely on their team, especially the offensive line, to execute their tasks effectively. Ignoring their support can hinder their performance—and leave them picking turf the out of their helmets.   Justin's sports analogy remains relevant here. While sales teams may clinch deals, departments such as finance, IT, and operations need to align with the sales strategy. Ultimately, all departments should work together to enhance customer value.   As a devoted season ticket holder at Luton Town Football Club, I'm thrilled to share that they have earned a promotion to the English Premier League, where they compete against well-known teams like Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, and Manchester City. I've noticed parallels between the dynamics in football and Justin's insights from AFL.   In football, forwards often command higher salaries compared to other positions, such as the left back. The left back's role mainly involves defensive work and may not be as glamorous. In contrast, center forwards often receive double the pay compared to other players on the team.   In this episode, we explore the concept introduced by Justin. Plus, we share our thoughts on the concept, including whether Colin really knows anything about the AFL.     Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   02:03  We explain our new feature, None of Us is as Clever as All of Us and how you can be a part of it.  04:48  Justin shares his thoughts about how sports teams and their game-winning strategy is a good analogy for an organization that wants to pursue customer centricity in their experiences. 13:28  We refer to a past podcast about how departments like Finance affect the experience, and why it is essential to have everybody working together for a common goal. 21:56  Colin explains some interesting details about Luton Town Football Club’s field, which might surprise you, particularly if you are in the ladies’ room during halftime. 24:17 We both share what we liked best about Justin’s metaphor about the AFL and Customer Experiences.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.   

Per Statista, the amount of e-commerce losses to online payment fraud in 2022 since 2020 is $41 billion. If you think that is bad, get this: it’s supposed to rise to $48 billion by the end of this year.    But wait, there’s more. Messente, a dedicated business messaging platform, notes the surge in package delivery scams. TransUnion's published a study that unveiled a staggering 1500% spike in shipping fraud between 2019 and 2021, likely spurred by the flourishing ecommerce landscape and the surge in digital solutions post-pandemic. What’s more, a 2023 study highlighted that nearly half of all fraudulent emails and texts revolved around package delivery.    Clearly, fraud is on the rise and that means organizations have to protect themselves. So, two-factor authentication, text confirmations, codes, and retinal scans (not really) should be part of every transaction then, right?   Not so fast. Customers don’t like getting hassled during their purchases with extra steps or queries that question whether they are who they say they are. Some might get annoyed enough to create some significant abandonment issues in your e-commerce channel.   So, how do you balance the need to prevent fraudulent activity in your interactions with customers and the need to provide and easy and excellent customer experience? In this episode, managing partner and CEO of Messente Uku Tomikas joins us to explain.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   05:07 Tomikas explains that the next big thing in fraud is using AI for it; marking perhaps the first use of AI in customer experiences that Colin isn’t enthusiastic about. 07:07 We begin our discussion about how to be diligent about fraud and security while still providing an easy and excellent customer experience. 13:00 Tomikas explains how organizations are handling this balancing act currently and how their efforts can unwittingly make it easier for fraud to occur.   21:03 We talk about the particulars of how AI can get into the mix with these tricks and personalize the fraud attempts.  27:17  We share the practical advice we have for organizations to deal with this threat without driving customers around the bend with security hurdles.    This has been created in partnership with Messente.   About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.   

Picture this: Your customers, like individuals, operate on habitual inclinations. So, if they habitually favor a competitor’s product or service, how does one instigate change? Here, we present seven potent ways to turn the tide.   But before diving into these transformative strategies, let's peer into the psychological underpinnings of habits. They possess distinct characteristics:   A cue within our environment kickstarts the habitual response.  This cue triggers an automatic reaction stemming from ingrained memories.  The reward at the end reinforces the habit loop, solidifying its existence.   The crux lies in our Intuitive System. This part of our brain swiftly recognizes this cycle and transforms it into an automatic routine.   Colin’s Intuitive System has influenced his habits enormously as a customer. In the realm of modern convenience, Colin’s shopping mantra revolves around a singular hub: Amazon. Be it the fleeting wish for something or a dire need, Amazon stands as his go-to, an ingrained habit so sturdy that breaking it seems an arduous feat for anyone.   However, daunting doesn't equate to impossible. In today's episode, we delve into the art of habit transformation, uncovering seven strategic pathways to overhaul routines and maximize returns on investments.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:10  Ryan explains the habit cycle, and what each point of it has to do with our brain’s way of processing information.  09:24  We discuss the importance of recognizing these cycles in customers behavior and how that translates into your strategy for changing it with our first two rules.  18:31 We explain how to craft a winning strategy for changing customer behavior (spoiler alert: it involves making it easy and rewarding for the customer).   24:17  The discussion turns to how you can help things get easier and feel more rewarding by educating and reinforcing your desired customer behavior with rules 5 and 6.  31:49 Colin reviews and summarizes the seven rules and how they can help.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.   

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and time for one of our favorite traditions: looking back on what we learned.  Each of us has three things we learned in the past year that we think can help all of us moving forward into 2024.   Reflection is a key part of the growth process. That’s why we are excited to continue our tradition of reflecting on the past year and what we learned during it.    Moreover, it's essential to take note if no changes have occurred. A lack of progress signals a need for reassessment.   Sometimes what we learned was personal, but it has implications for the business world. For example, you may have heard Colin share about his wife, Lorraine, and her back surgery this year—a major undertaking that necessitated extensive physical therapy during recovery.    Lorraine has diligently worked through it, making gradual changes that have cumulatively resulted in significant progress. Pre-surgery, everyday activities like walking or solo grocery shopping were challenging for her. Now, she can accomplish these tasks without enduring constant pain.   The transformation wasn't immediate. Initially, Lorraine relearned walking using two sticks, then transitioned to just one stick, and now, she confidently walks without any sticks at all.   The same principle of gradual improvement through diligent effort holds true for Customer Experiences. Achieving a customer-centric organization isn't an overnight switch. It evolves over time, with incremental enhancements fostering a culture and experience centered around customers.   In this episode, we look back at what we learned in 2023 and how it can help us in 2024. As it turns out, we are smarter than we were last year, and we hope after this episode you will be, too.    Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   03:36   Ryan kicks off the lessons learned by explaining how hard work and luck led to his new book deal—for the second book he pitched this year.  06:14  Colin shares his first lesson about how he sees organizations about to make the same mistakes they did 25 years ago with the Web, but this time with AI. 09:20  Ryan talks about how even he, an introvert that doesn’t like people, needs other people in his community to have his back. 12:47  Colin tells the story about how he remembered that most people are trying to do the right thing, even if sometimes it feels like the opposite is true.  14:57 Ryan shares that by stepping up and taking on a new challenge he took a step back to realize how much he enjoys this part of his job. 17:20  Colin talks about how his wife’s recovery from surgery taught him that small changes can make big change happen, if you are patient and keep doing the work.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

This year has undeniably been dominated by the rise of AI, bringing both positive and negative outcomes. We host Alex Mead, Global Customer Service Experience Director of Alvarez & Marsal ([email protected]), to discuss this crucial topic and its implications for experiences.    Mead envisions that AI will significantly reduce customer effort in their experiences. He anticipates a future where customers can simply ask, "Where's my order from two days ago?" and that's all it takes for AI to swiftly provide the desired information.   In this scenario, Mead highlights two crucial aspects. First, AI will grasp natural language interfaces, a concept that has been evolving for at least the past three years. This means we can communicate with AI as if we're conversing with a human, whether through speech or text. Second, AI will promptly authenticate the speaker and retrieve the requested information, cross-referencing it against various data points and platforms in under a second.   Some of you might be thinking, "Don't we already do this with devices like Alexa?" You certainly do, and it works seamlessly.    However, Mead emphasizes that the significance lies in the widespread adoption of this capability. While organizations like Amazon have already implemented it, the prediction is that many more organizations will follow suit in the coming years.   Furthermore, Mead envisions AI going beyond information retrieval. AI will also discern or intuit whether the provided information places the customer on a path of contentment or dissatisfaction.    In this episode, we hear what Mead thinks about AI and the pathways for its utility in experiences in the short and long term. We also talk about what all this functionality of the AI of tomorrow means to you in managing your experiences today.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:11 Mead kicks off the discussion about AI with his predictions for the short term, meaning the next one to five years, and it might surprise you to hear how easy it will be for customers. 11:51 We discuss examples of how future AI-enabled CXs will have more proactivity than they do today. 16:38  We learn about the Customer Service Experience and why it is essential to understand what it is and when it occurs for today’s organizations. 21:44  Mead explains how to implement an AI strategy for the organization that is cohesive and drives the goals of your entire company rather than one siloed department.   31:57  We all share the key takeaways we have from the discussion and how organizations should use this information today.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

The Future of Customer Research Teams: Innovating for Success in 2024 and Beyond   AI's enthralling me these days, and it seems the world's caught in the same spell. One realm set for a profound AI makeover is customer market research—a topic worth diving into since it's likely on many of your radars too. Exciting or nerve-wracking—depends on which way you look at it.   Qualtrics recent article, "AI Will Revolutionize the Market Research Industry" suggested a couple of thought-provoking stats I thought I would share:   Threat or Boon? 83% of researchers view AI as an opportunity, with only 7% seeing it as a threat.  Job impacts? 26% believe AI will birth more market research roles, 35% anticipate a reduction, while 39% reckon it won't budge the job landscape.   Clearly, the consensus leans toward AI significantly boosting the market research scene, yet there's no majority stance on its implications for customer insight or market research job stability.   Historically, technologies swept through industries like a forceful wave, sometimes obliterating old norms while birthing new frontiers. Should the AI tide wash over market research, it might erode traditional roles while seeding a fresh bloom in the industry. The upshot? Jobs will morph—both in nature and in the entities they serve.   So, where's the compass pointing for customer insights? Alyona Medelyan, CEO of Thematic  ([email protected]) in Auckland, New Zealand submitted a video for our None of Us Are as Clever as All of Us program, shares her thoughts.   In this episode, we discuss Medelyan’s video and how the AI winds are steering us into uncharted waters, with the market research ship set for a profound voyage.    Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   02:50 Colin shares the stats from Qualtrics regarding the future of AI and customer insights and market research.    07:53 We roll the video from Medelyan, and talk about our first reactions.  13:37  Colin gets into one of the problems he sees with customer insight teams in the larger organization and what that does to the information shared.   16:57 Ryan explains the how AI is excellent in creating categories, and demonstrates his SAT-level mastery of fancy-sounding academic words.  19:24  We get into the opportunities this affords us regarding preparing for the transformation AI promises to the area and making the most of it for your organization.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.   

During a recent discussion with a valued client, I uncovered an interesting revelation. While they were delighted with their repeat business, which they attributed to customer loyalty, a closer look at the repeat business statistics painted a different picture. What I observed wasn't a steadfast commitment from their customers; rather, it appeared to be inertia.    This prompted my realization that these customers might easily switch to a competitor if a tempting offer came along.   Now, you might be wondering, aren't loyal customers the ones who keep coming back for more? They certainly are, but not all repeat business is a result of loyalty. In some cases, it's due to inertia, and distinguishing between the two is what we'll delve into today.   First, let's establish clear definitions for customer loyalty and inertia. Loyal customers intentionally choose your product or service because they have a genuine emotional connection with your brand. They can articulate why they prefer your offering. In contrast, inertia is about automatic and habitual purchasing. It's a decision made almost unconsciously, and individuals might struggle to explain why they chose your product.   Reflect for a moment on the people in your life to whom you feel truly loyal. Typically, you'd think of family and close friends. These are relationships rooted in deep emotional connections. Surprisingly, it's these very emotions that underlie brand loyalty.   For many organizations, measuring loyalty can be challenging, but they often track repeat business. The issue arises when they treat other types of repeat buying – the inertial and the habitual – the same way they view loyalty, failing to distinguish between them. In this episode, we talk about how to make this distinction. This approach separates loyal customers from those who buy out of habit or inertia. We also talk about how to develop strategies that nurture genuine customer loyalty.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   02:03  We discover how Colin decided to cover this topic from his recent client meeting.  05:29  Ryan shares his mini framework that he teaches his grad students, the three groups of repeat business motivations. 10:19  Colin shares how he discovered that he wasn’t really as loyal to Delta Airlines as he thought he was.       18:28  We share our list of telltale signs that you have customer loyalty.  23:24  We discuss how extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is different and it affects customer behavior.  26:51 We share our final thoughts about this topic and what you should take away from the conversation.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

Unleashing the Power of AI vs. Human Touch: Which Delivers a Superior Customer Experience?   I often say, "None of us are as clever as all of us." However, sayings are more useful when they can spur action. So, we have a proposition for you: If you have something you want to say about experiences or technology, statistics, or reports, feel free to share them via video. To learn more, click here.   To that end, Tom Martin, CEO at Glance, has submitted one about AI.    Tom makes an excellent point. As we develop AI into our systems, we will need to determine what AI will replace, what it will augment, and what it will add.   AI presents opportunities to shift some routine tasks from human employees to virtual ones. However, shifting of tasks should mean reducing head count. Instead, AI should be a way to help employees pay more attention to the needs of customers.    Moreover, we should be realistic about the power of AI. It isn’t magic; it can’t solve all our problems. What it can do is be a powerful tool that we can leverage and develop over time.    We have been here before, too. I had a system that was going to be the best thing that ever happened to my organization 20 years ago. That was the fantasy. The reality was quite different.   And let’s not forget the internet. It took years for it to be what it is today. AI will likely follow a similar path.    In this episode we explore the points made by Tom in his video along with our take on AI and Customer Experiences. Perhaps most importantly, we implore organizations to remember that AI doesn’t replace your employees; it enhances what they can do for customers.    Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:28  We listen to Tom’s video and why he thinks leading with humans creates a better AI strategy.  09:48  Both Ryan and Colin share their thoughts about AI and the next frontier of business, including Colin’s frustrations with the phrase, “high call volumes at the moment.” 18:10  Colin shares a story about a new system implementation program that didn’t live up to his hopes and dreams for it 20 years ago, and how that applies to organization implementation with AI.       20:23  Ryan explains the Hype Cycle and how it applies to the implementation and adoption of AI.  26:50  We both share out thoughts about the future of AI in organization and what you should take away from the discussion.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. About Colin Shaw LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has over 294,000 followers and 78,000 subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter ‘Why Customers Buy’. The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for four years.    Colin is a renown keynote speaker and undertakes consultancy work and educational workshops to help organizations improve their Customer Experience.    Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

My client is disappointed with their results. Their experience improvement efforts have been successful, but not as wildly successful as they had hoped.  When my client shared this with me on a recent call, I was neither surprised nor perplexed about what was going on with them. Getting the whole organization to embrace the customer requires more than most organizations think.  You see, when you start an improvement program, you want some quick wins. So, you address the most obvious areas first, fixing problems and enhancing interactions by defining how you want customers to feel about you when it’s over. These elementary steps are necessary, important to prioritize, and, to many companies’ chagrins, just the beginning of the process.  Every department in the organization plays a role in the Customer Experience. However, not every department realizes it. Some of them think their insular role inside operations puts a big barrier between them and how the customer feels about the organizations. But it doesn’t; in fact, that barrier doesn’t exist.  In this episode we explore the steps you take to get these internal departments to look past the non-existent barrier they think is there and understand how what they do affects the experience. We explain how you can then leverage their buy in to get to the outstanding results that you expected but are still waiting to realize. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 06:33  Colin explains what he plans to do to address this problem, starting with first step, which might surprise you in its simplicity. 09:07  We explain the many ways that Human Resources plays a significant role in the Customer Experience and embracing customer-centricity.  13:21  Ryan explains that first-ordered thinking might be getting in the way of your efforts to help other departments see the effects of their actions on the experience and what you can do about it.      18:40  We discuss the ways that finance is essential to the experience, and, spoiler alert, it has to do with $$$$. 23:33  Colin makes a point that Legal, which definitively needs to protect the company, also needs to be customer centric and how they can be without getting disbarred.  26:31  We share the last example of how IT has become one of the most essential parts of the experience, especially when you consider the importance of managing the organization’s online presence and technology integrations. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Regret is a powerful emotion. One might not think it has a place in a marketer’s messaging toolbox. However, you might be surprised to learn that in addition to being a powerful emotion, it can also be a powerful tool. The reason we regret things depends on the situation. We can regret a purchase we made. We can regret a purchase we didn’t, too. What we regret and how we respond to it requires understanding how regret happens.  Inside each of our minds, we have three selves. There is the Actual Self, the one we are despite any notions we might have. There is also the Ought Self. This self is the one with obligations and responsibilities. Then, there is the Ideal Self, which is who we want to be. Regret is often a conflict between the Actual Self and one of the other two.  What we regret and who we blame has a lot to do with comparisons between these selves internally. Also, these comparisons might differ depending upon the customer segment to which the individual belongs. Therefore, to use regret as a marketing tool, it is essential to understand what comparison your customers are making and to what standard or value they hold.   In this episode, we explain the psychology of regret, how it drives our future behavior, and what to do about it if it happens to your customers after buying your product or service. We also discuss how you can use it to create improved experiences with no regrets for your customers.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 01:49  Colin explains how he was once a Sony Superfan and how it led to one of the purchases he regrets nearly every day.  03:49   Ryan explains how Colin’s perception of self plays a role in his purchase regret regarding the television by explaining the different selves we each have. 10:23  We get into the idea that how much regret we feel has a lot to do with how much control we think we had regarding the decisions made.       14:53  We discuss the impact of regret in customer experience settings and start a discussion about how an organization could respond. 19:04  Ryan explains that people regret different things in the short term vs. the long term.  25:46  We both share our final thoughts on the key takeaways a marketer should have about how to leverage regret in their messaging. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

It’s pickle time again here on the podcast. This time John has a pickle with his new business. He wants to know some ways that he can get other people to help him sell his products and services. We knew several ways, eight in fact, and they might help you, too.  One thing to consider when you listen to this list is how each of the tactics gets you what you want. In some cases, you might discover that our suggestion doesn’t. Or at least it doesn’t get you what you want right now. Later, once you have worked your way down the “to-dos” with your marketing and sales, one of the ones that didn’t work then would now. For example, with Beyond Philosophy, Colin didn’t like the first tactic, Affiliated Marketing. He felt that by getting into a relationship where he was contractually bound to suggest a specific company might compromise his integrity to his clients. So, Colin has carefully avoided that one.  However, that might not be the same for your business vertical or philosophy. It’s these goals for the communication or tactic that should drive these decisions for which ways work best for your business. In this episode, we help John with his business pickle—and some of you, too—with our eight suggestions for what you can do to get other people to sell for you.  Are you “in a pickle” at your firm, too? Tells us about here and we might feature your pickle on an episode of the podcast.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 06:09  We share the first tactic, Affiliated Marketing, which allows you to recruit others to present and close your product on your behalf.  10:03  The second tactic, Referral Programs, is another way you can leverage the relationships you have to make new ones.  17:48  We discuss Joint Ventures, including some that worked well and some that didn’t. 21:07  We encourage John to sponsor a sports stadium, or at least a local soccer team, because sponsorships are a great way to build awareness. 26:09  Ryan and Colin share final thoughts about how John’s new business can use these tactics to get other entities selling for him. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Colin sometimes struggles with a glass-half-empty disposition. He blames it on being born British. He felt it keenly when gathering the following 14 statistics for this episode. There are a mix of game-changing opportunities, including missed ones, and some acute risks facing organizations next year.  Ryan is American, a population Colin characterizes with as a glass-half-full disposition. He hopes by sharing these numbers gathered from reputable sources, that his American cohost might view these numbers with a bit more positivity.  Will Colin be disappointed? Maybe, maybe not.  For example, one statistic says by applying certain principles, organizations can expect 85 percent increase in sales growth and more than 25 percent in gross margins. It sounds great because it is.  However, another statistic shows that only 30 percent of organizations have improved their experiences enough to satisfy customers over the last ten-plus years, and it’s getting worse not better. It does not sound great because it isn’t.  This episode explores 14 statistics from reputable sources that present some compelling numbers regarding the whole Customer Experience movement—and what can happen if you ignore it or focus your efforts on less impactful components. From opportunities to risk, don’t miss out on this episode before you start planning your next year.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 05:31  We get into the first statistic from Gallup and how it can really sell the experience program to the revenue-oriented and a second from them about the emotional nature of deciding. 11:53  Colin shares his statistic from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) regarding how 70 percent of organizations remained flat or decreased customer satisfaction and that the index is at its lowest point since 2006. 19:14  We discuss the merits of growing existing customers versus recruiting new ones, but that 44% percent of companies still focus on customer acquisition, even though the probability of selling to an existing is 60 percent.   23:06  Colin shares a statistic from Emplify that explains why customers will pay a higher price to buy from you.  27:52  We discuss the last stat from Zendesk which explains how quickly you can lose a customer and what these stats revealed about Customer Experiences. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

When a Stanford professor brings snacks to class, it’s fun. But you can bet it’s also an experiment, and he’s probably testing how people make choices for today and for todays that will come in the future. It turns out, that timing matters a lot when it comes to the decisions we make.  The professor we are referring to is Professor Itamar Simonson, marketing professor at Stanford University and his research surrounding customer decision-making. He learned that students who chose their snack at each class tended to choose the same one. However, students that chose a snack on one day for three future classes tended to have more variety.  Why the difference? It turns out that people like to make the same decisions over and over, especially about things like what to eat for a snack or dinner. But we are much more optimistic about how much our future selves will want something different.  What about new choices? People do make them, particularly when they are for the future, but most times we are content to make the same choice over and over again.  In this episode, we discuss why we are like this, why we sometimes think we won’t be like this someday, when we are better person, and why you should understand how to accommodate this customer behavior in your experience.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:22  Ryan shares the example from Professor Simonson and how people chose differently when it is for that day of class or for future classes.  08:12  Colin brings up the famous marshmallow test that researchers did by convincing children not to eat a marshmallow right away so they could get two; few kids made it, though.  14:42  We discuss how when it comes to things like breakfast or food in general, we tend to make the same choices, but other times we don’t, but usually for the future, when a better version of ourselves exists.      22:08  Ryan shares what can happen if people continue to make choices to buy things they don’t use and how it can backfire on your experience.    25:40 We share practical advice about what you can do with this information to provide the proper experience for the future selves your customers want to be and the actual selves they are today. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Poor Irene Beard. She is in a pickle, and she needs our help. A strong believer in brand, Beard is starting a new company and asked us for help getting people to take away what she wants them to about her company’s brand. Beard’s question brings up some interesting concepts regarding brands, their origins, their evolution, and their existence for organizations today.  Before we get into any of that, it is essential to remember that your brand is a tactic. It communicates the value you provide customers. Brand is a tool in your toolkit that can adjust your strategy and deliver the experience that wins over the hearts and minds of customers and keeps them coming back for more.  Today, branding is all about the value you provide customers. What that value is varies by organization. Some brands offer value by doing one thing really well. Others deliver value in several areas.  The success of your brand isn’t whether it provides one value or many; success depends on understanding what your customers value and delivering that.  In this episode, we explore the areas of value a brand usually provides and what an organization can do to ensure that their brand delivers the right ones to customers.  Are you “in a pickle” at your company, too? Tells us about here and we might feature your pickle on an episode of the podcast.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 01:34  We discuss Beard’s business pickle and why branding is an excellent focus for anyone in business today. 03:23  Ryan explains how he appreciates that Beard is already on the right path by concerning herself what customer think, because that is key for branding. 08:00  We believe in frameworks to organize thinking, and begin the discussion about ours, which has four parts. 15:42  Colin shares a story about spending way too much on athletic shoes given the level of play of his ten-year-old on the pitch, and how branding made it happen.  19:55 We explore brands that have done a good job with branding and why, as well as the differences one should expect in brand strategy depending upon the type of brand it is.  27:33  We get into the practical takeaways for Beard, and anyone else struggling in this area, to get the right branding for her new company.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

So, you think the sale is in the bag. The customer signed the paperwork and everything. However, when you log in the next day to email, there is a cancellation. You think, what happened? People change their minds all the time for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes, it is about something they ordered or bought; sometimes, it is about paint color or springing for the upgrades. Why they change their mind has a lot of influences, and understanding how a customer’s mind works can help you manage these situations to the best possible outcome.  The customer’s mind is a complicated thing. We think of ourselves as unitary, meaning the only version of ourselves. However, psychology shows we have multiple versions of ourselves that activate under different circumstances. These versions might not always agree on the decisions made, so once a new version gets control, it might reverse a previous version’s decision.  Plus, these versions of us also have two ways of thinking. There is the fast and automatic thinking provided by our Intuitive System and the slow and deliberate thinking employed by the Rational System. The outcome could be quite different depending on which system controls the decision. Moreover, sometimes the Rational System will come in and overrule the Intuitive System later, which can be the impetus behind that cancellation you just saw.  In this episode, we explore why customers change their minds and how you can build into your experience ways to manage this. So, go ahead and listen; the future version of yourself will thank you for it.  Here are some other critical moments in the discussion: 03:50  We introduce the concept that we have multiple versions of ourselves and multiple thinking systems that influence decision-making and mind-changing.   07:50  Ryan shares a story about research showing how one can reach different decisions and sometimes less-than-optimal results.  11:05  Colin explains how the two systems of thinking work off each other about decisions, and Ryan explains how wish lists on purchases rarely come to fruition.       16:55  We share a practical example of customers changing their minds in the real world on a buying decision and how the company responded to manage this change.  20:40   We talk about Cognitive Depletion and how it affects customer behavior. 26:35  We share practical tips and suggestions that can help you manage customers’ changing minds in the future.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

For many of us, planning can be an area of opportunity. We underestimate how much time something will take and how much time we will have available for something, particularly regarding project completion. However, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explained why we do this, and we will tell you what we can do about it.  Kahneman and Tversky call this phenomenon the Planning Fallacy. Our optimism about our future selves and the abilities and resources available causes it. For this reason, it rarely occurs on a tight timeline; we are far less optimistic about our right-now selves. We know we can’t do it right now. There are a few reasons besides optimism that cause this problem, too. For example, we tend to focus on certain details and ignore others (Focalism). Or we might be wishful thinking. We want to finish the project by then, so why not pick that date? In this episode, we explore why so many of us are victims of the Planning Fallacy and what we can do about it in our own work and the work of our organizations. If you listen to this podcast, your future self will thank you.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 04:02  We introduce the idea of the Planning Fallacy and explain what it is and how it affects us.  08:15  We discuss why it’s different when considering something with a short timeline, meaning an imminent due date.  11:10  Colin shares an example he frequently encounters on Emotional Signature projects, and why it isn’t his fault they miss their optimistic deadlines.  19:36  Colin points out that different departments organizationally can contribute to the problem and that these departments should learn The Power of Saying NO. 21:29  Ryan shares more contributing factors to why we victimize our future selves with the Planning Fallacy. 29:42  We share practical advice about what you can do to ensure that your past self doesn’t get your future self in a bind.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Sometimes it’s a “processing” fee. Sometimes it’s called an “admin” fee. We have even seen it labeled “convenience fee,” a refreshingly candid explanation for it. However, they are always additional fees, and if you have them in your pricing, they might have terrible implications for your customer experience.  However, they might not. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of scientific evidence that points to a definite negative effect on additional fees for a customer experience. For my part, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth when I get hit with one, so, my presumption is that I am not alone.  However, our listener Brian Williams wrote into us with a pickle. His company is facing rising costs and are debating the merit of raising prices over additional fees and vice versa. Unable to decide—or just wanting an outside perspective—they wrote to us to find out what we think.  It is a quite a pickle. Probably one that some of you are facing, too. There isn’t a clear-cut answer either. However, there are some important considerations that can guide a decision to go one way or the other.  In this episode, we explore these considerations, the possible fall out from them, and give our opinion on what Williams and his company should do.   Are you “in a pickle” at your firm, too? Tells us about here and we might feature your pickle on an episode of the podcast.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 01:48  We present Williams’ business pickle and why this is such an area of interest today, and for more than Ryan and his academic friends. 04:21  Colin shares a couple of instances where additional fees soured his experience. 07:57  Ryan gets into the theory behind what’s going on with additional fees and why they are so common in an era of inflation.       17:32  We introduce the topic of tipping and how it is a form of Two-Part Pricing also, and becoming too steep and too ubiquitous to sustain itself in the U.S. 26:24 We explore whether additional fees are a form of transparency, and what the fall out can be from listing out fees as line items in pricing bids.  29:23  We share our advice for Williams, and anyone else facing this same problem.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

We can be grumpy about the restaurant experience. This self-awareness is key, especially when we realize that our behavior closely resembles the behavior of two grouchy Muppets heckling Kermit and Fozzie from the balcony. However, it’s easy to see that every business can learn from restaurants that bungle these moments of the experience.  We are aware this episode is a grumpy rant. Moreover, not everyone will agree with the things that we think restaurants do wrong. What drives us mad could be the very thing you love most. However, the fact we differ on these points demonstrates a critical overarching theme of this podcast: segmentation matters, and accommodation is key to deliver an excellent experience.  Restaurants that choose to ignore these criticisms have a right to do so. Moreover, if they prefer to cater to a specific segment of customer that prefers the way they do things, that is their prerogative. Some restaurants have been extremely successful by doing this and we do not fault them for it.  We don’t eat there either, but that’s beside the point.  In this episode, what we hope to achieve by airing our grievances is to point out how these moments in the restaurant experience demonstrate moments that every experience design could have.  For your business vertical, whatever it may be, we hope that the common experiences of dining out—or ordering to go—help illustrate these concepts and help you improve your experience.  Plus, it sometimes feels good to complain.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:41 Colin kicks off the complaints by pointing out that some restaurants do not understand the business they are  in, and therefore, do not send the right signals with their experience.  06:39  Ryan describes a restaurant experience that could use a little spruce up in the post-pandemic takeout vs. dine in experience.  11:32 We discuss the importance of managing the key interactions in an experience by properly training the team to put customers first so people remember that experiences can be time well-spent.      16:29  We remind our listeners that the little things add up and can burn you in the customer’s evaluation of how you did at the end of the experience.  19:17 Colin refers to an article out of Cornell that explains how what restaurants leave off the menu cause customers to spend more than they would have thought.  24:30  We summarize what we would change about these things that drive us mad at restaurants and that you can apply to your experience, too. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Follow Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

A podcast listener is in a pickle! Catherine wants to establish that her firm is known for low prices. However, she wants their reputation to avoid seeming cheap or low quality.  Cheap and low quality is brand promise few firms want to make. However, many brands want to have a reputation for low prices and high quality. Unfortunately, this brand promise is challenging to get right. Most customers don’t believe such a thing is possible.  However, it is possible. Amazon got their start with a reputation for low costs for high quality books. Over time, they built a brand known for service, delivery speed, and continuous improvement, which customers view as hallmarks of high quality. These examples are non-price influences that affect the price image.  For example, if you walk into a shop where they are serving complimentary espresso or champagne, you know that the prices are going to be high even before you see a price tag. By contrast, if you walk into a shop where everything is piled on a fold up table and supervised by a single, sullen employee scowling at their phone behind a makeshift counter, you know prices will be low. In this episode, we explore the ways Catherine can establish her firm’s reputation for low prices without seeming cheap or low quality. We also give you practical advice that will help you make the case to your customers that you are the best deal in town.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:26  We talk about brands that have done an effective job of establishing themselves as affordable and high-quality.  05:49  Ryan starts off the discussion of how to achieve this tricky feat by explaining all the influences that affect a customers’ perception of a company’s price image.  17:19  We talk about reference points and how they affect price evaluations.    22:22  The discussion turns to how communication of how you are doing this amazing thing of providing high-quality items at low prices so customers can accept it.  27:48  Ryan summarizes his advice in practical ways that Catherine, and you, can apply these strategies to overcome this pricing challenge. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Is your data ready? Is your team ready? Are you ready? Being ready is critical to the successful implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve your customer experience. The next competitive battleground for organizations will be predictive experiences, or experiences that anticipate customers’ needs. The ability to make these predictions is AI-driven. However, to do so accurately requires data, lots of quality data.  Herein lies the rub for many organizations. Their data house is full of siloed data and isn’t ready for AI analysis. So, firms need to be sure that they address this challenge before devoting a ton of time and resources to the implementation.  However, there is another challenge, too. Many organizations might think they want to implement AI, because it’s so cool and people like to have the coolest, newest thing. But, in some cases, AI might not be the best fit. It isn’t magic; it has some things it does well and some that it doesn’t. Knowing what problems your organization has can help you decide whether AI can do the right things for you right now.  There’s a lot to consider before implementing AI in your customer experience. What ready means and how AI can improve customer experience are two areas that are not always well understood by organizations. Moreover, the size of the firm has little to do with the understanding; big companies are struggling the same way little ones are, albeit in different areas.   In this episode, we host The Agile Brand podcast host  Greg Kihlstrom, (www.gregkihlstrom.com) Principal Chief Strategies for GK5A, on this week’s episode to explain how organizations can get ready and what AI is positioned to provide organizations. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:45  We ask Kihlstrom to explain some of the common issues he sees in the introduction of AI and technology.  09:25 Ryan lead Kihlstrom into talking about how organizations are faring with implementation, who is and isn’t having a great go at it, and where it is going in the future.  20:19  Kihlstrom explains how the most innovative companies are using AI to the extent it can provide proactive experiences.    25:49  Colin shares his worries that too many organizations will not use a unified approach in implementation. 35:25  We all share our advice about implementation and what organizations should do to make this work for them. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

We are very judgmental, particularly when it comes to prices. We can always tell whether something is a good or bad deal.  The fact that some of the ways we do this are not as accurate as others doesn’t even occur to us. Knowing that customers have different ways they evaluate your pricing that are sometimes inaccurate shouldn’t upset you, though. It’s a bonus to realize it. Once you understand how people judge your pricing, you can use strategy to present it better and maximize your pricing to gain profit.  There are three basic ways that customers evaluate your prices. These have varying levels of simplicity and accuracy. The most accurate way is not the easiest, naturally, and vice versa. However, these three ways come together to deliver the good-deal-bad-deal message to your customers’ consciousness.  Some retailers are wise to these judgmental ways. They use customers’ natural propensity to compare pricing when communicating their offer, so it comes out on top against competitors. However, some choose a different tack, which doesn’t always make it easy to compare.  Still others spend their time building a reputation for low pricing while offering a few high-priced things alongside hoping that no one does the math. Since we don’t always do the math, it works.  In this episode, we explore the three ways that customers evaluate your pricing and why. We also talk about how you can present your prices in the best possible way to tip the scales away from bad deal to good.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:17  Ryan kicks off the discussion with a story about shopping for milk at Costco, and why he was wrong (and his wife was right) about the best deal for milk.   05:22  Colin shares one of his favorite YouTubers that covers things like pricing, and reveals some retailer tricks of which every consumer should be aware. 07:13  Ryan shares the three ways that people evaluate pricing, starting with internal reference pricing.   09:37  We discuss how external reference pricing also influences our pricing evaluations, and sometimes even across product categories. 11:53  Ryan explains the third category, which is price image, an evaluation we gravitate toward when we don’t have as much information. 19:32  We share the two dimensions that organizations should consider when they anticipate how customers will evaluate pricing. 22:06  We explain how price images form and how they influence our decision making. 34:19 We wrap up with some practical ways you can leverage this understanding to present your pricing in the best possible way to customers.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

It stinks to wait around for something as a customer.  Whether it’s in a waiting room or a hot sweaty line at a theme park, none of us are usually very excited about waiting around for something. However, it’s a fact of life that customers have accepted over time.  It also stinks to know that your experience makes customers wait sometimes. You probably would rather that your customers didn’t have to wait around and could get down to business spending money with your organization. However, despite your diligent efforts, you still have some time where customers are waiting around.  Instead of throwing your hands up in the air and accepting defeat, we have a few strategies that can help manage this bump in your experience’s road. Eight of them, in fact. Now, to be fair, our tips come from David Meister’s article, "The Psychology of Waiting Lines."  That said, this paper has excellent tips for you.  In this episode, we talk about Meister’s eight areas and how you can emulate other organizations that have made the waiting experience a little less painful for their customers. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:37   We explain that sometimes customers have to wait, but it doesn’t have to be terrible while they do, thanks to the paper by Meister that defines what makes waiting so terrible. 03:31  Distraction is key and helps with the problem of making your customers feel like their time is occupied with more than just waiting around for you. 07:23  We use the examples of customer behavior on airplanes to explain the Meister’s concept about how people want to get started waiting, even if it is only to wait in a new position afterward.   10:49  We explain how Uber manages the third area, uncertain waits are longer than certain waits, well by letting you know the car is coming and when. 15:17. We talk about a related area of communication about waits pertaining to Meister’s area that unexplained waits feel longer than known waits and why kids don’t get it. 19:18. Unfair plays a big role in how waits feel; just ask anyone in a Disney line watching the fast pass ticket holders blow past them.  27:17 We end on the 8th area, which is that solo waits feel longer than group waits, because misery loves company, doesn’t it? _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Waiting around for a customer experience is rarely a good thing. When customers are waiting for you, that’s usually a sign that not waiting would have been difficult or inconvenient (read: expensive) for your company. However, not valuing customers’ time is probably the most expensive mistake you can make.  Then, of course, there are the times when the waiting is part of the experience. For example, the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland has several rooms you pass through before you get to the ride that set the mood and build anticipation of the adventure to come. When you skip it, you get to the ride faster, but you miss out on the building of the anticipation.  Part of what makes the Peter Pan wait more beneficial than your average waiting around situation for an experience is that it make the waiting more enjoyable. Many would also argue that the ride—and the park itself—provide value to customers who are waiting.  So, waiting isn’t always bad; like many things we discuss on the podcast, it depends. However, it does always reveal how internally focused you are and whether you place importance on the value of customers’ time. In this episode, we explore what it means about your focus when customers wait and how you can manage or enhance the waiting experience to engage and enhance customers’ time spent with you.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:59  After sharing some stories about waiting that made him feel cross, Colin explains that you need to value customers’ time in your experience. 10:33 We discuss how Disney manages wait time by offering Fast Track to reduce queue wait times, and signs in line that estimate how much longer you have to wait before the ride. 16:17  We talk about when waits are good for building anticipation; and how sometimes the wait is even better than the experience.  24:21 Ryan explains that his kids are excited about some changes to Minecraft that are coming that they had to wait for; and what they were waiting for might surprise you. 26:59  We suspend the conversation, and explain that listeners will have to wait to hear about the rest of the topic on next week’s episode. (See what we did there?) _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

I get mad when people waste my time. It’s probably why I have such a beef with cable companies and organizations’ call centers that have long hold times. Wasting someone’s time is also a waste of an opportunity to deliver an excellent customer experience.  The source of my ire is likely tied to time being our most precious resource by some estimations. Therefore, when you waste it, you are careless with something with a finite supply. Some of us have more than others available—or left as the case may be.  So, when an organization wastes customers’ time, it can be one of the worst things they could do to increase customer loyalty and customer-driven growth. Would you want to be anxious to return to an experience that wasted yours? Not bloody likely, I say.  By contrast, saving time is among the most essential things you could do for a customer. People will pay a premium for it, too.  Regarding time and customers, one of the most essential things you can do is to make it worthwhile. In other words, any time customers give you should return to them as a memory of time well spent.  The ideas expressed thus far here are not ours. Time progression is a critical area that key opinion leaders in the experience economy are exploring these days.  In this episode, we host Strategic Horizons’ Joe Pine, author of The Experience Economy and co-founder of the concept of Time Progression, to discuss what that means and how it can influence how customers respond to your experience.  Here are some other critical moments in the discussion: 03:22  Colin asks Pine to explain the concept of Time Progression to the listeners who have yet to become familiar with it.  09:49  We discuss organizations doing interesting things with time analysis that companies would be wise to emulate and those that have decided to take up more customer time that companies should not. 19:25  Pine explains why healthcare is a transformational experience, so it should do better with patients’ time progression. 26:02  We discuss where we think SMART products should go, as Pine wrote in HBR in his article, "Are Your Digital Platforms Wasting Your Customer's Time?" 28:53  Pine shares his practical tips for how to improve your performance regarding time progression with customers. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

We have all been there. We think we did something great, and we look forward to getting the feedback that tells us so. Unfortunately, when we do get the feedback, we discover that we weren’t quite so great as we thought we were. It’s a matter of perception and understanding this concept can help avoid this mismatch in the future.  One of our listeners, Damien, found himself in this pickle recently. His organization has delivery stats that paint a glorious picture of achievement. However, the customer surveys do not paint delivery with that brush at all. So, Damien asks, why the discrepancy? The problem could be a challenge with perception. The internal organization has one perception of performance, the customers have another. If perception is reality, which one matters?  (Hint: say the customers. Okay, not a hint so much as a gimme, but we do our best here.) From a psychological perspective, perception isn’t the correct term. In fact, psychologists would only have perception as one part of what is going on here. To summarize, psychologists would submit that perception applies only to receiving the information through our senses. How we interpret and compare the perceived experiences to our expectations is the reason for the discrepancy.  In this episode, we take a deeper dive on what is happening here to Damien’s organization, and what they—and you— can do about it.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:05  We hear about Damien’s pickle and why he needed our help. (Do you have a business pickle, too? Tell us about it here.) 05:00  Before we move further into solving Damien’s pickle, we define our terms in the style of psychology. 10:24  Ryan ignores Colin’s request to get practical by exploring a very heady and philosophical example, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 17:10  Colin explains how you can learn more about perception, interpretation, and evaluation of an experience and how it relates to memory by shopping for a TV in a showroom. 21:51  Colin shares a story about how he thought the Princess Lunch at Disneyland Paris was expensive; for the record, he didn’t go alone but brought along his grandchildren. 27:20 We share our practical advice for how to understand how there was such a discrepancy in perception between Damien’s organization and customers, and what to do about it.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

18 months. That was the timeline Colin gave himself to move from a sales job to a general manager post. It was a long time ago now, the kind of thing one remembers when they look back over a decades-long career.  However, it also worked. Colin did make that transition, moving throughout departments and learning new skills, and always with the goal of moving to general manager. Ryan, being from academia, teaches an introductory marketing course to his MBA students. It’s a class they take first semester when their enthusiasm and exuberance are high.  This abundance of energy also drives them to his office during office hours, hoping for some career advice. As an academic, Ryan has some for them, but recognizes that there is always room for more.  In this episode, we explore the key insights we have gained over the spans of our careers and share them with you. From taking advice from Colin’s father to learning how to navigate the political quagmires that many organizations foster, we give you some areas to focus on to get where you want to go.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 04:06 We kick it off by explaining that over the years we have seen jobs come and go and job come from out of nowhere that can change the course of a career for good or ill. 08:39  Colin shares some advice he learned from his dad, which on its face seems simple, but in truth is the one thing everybody looks for and appreciates.  12:30  We talk about the importance of looking down the road in a career rather than on the part right in front of you; you don’t want to be 50 or 60 and realize that you were headed the wrong way. 17:19  We share a strategy that seems counterintuitive, that sometimes the way forward is taking a step back or sideways.  20:17 Colin discusses how there is always something to learn, even in a bad job, so don’t forget to notice what you shouldn’t do in your career. 25:00 We talk politics (no, not those politics), and how you can use them to your advantage when you understand them in your organization. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

At first glance, authenticity appears straightforward. To be authentic, one simply needs to be genuine in their thoughts and actions. However, as is often the case with our discussions in the podcast, the subject becomes complex under scrutiny.  Our motivation to discuss authenticity stems from a podcast listener's request. They find themselves grappling with authenticity in their experience and want to know how to improve and leverage it to generate growth with their customers. Consider the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London. It has meticulously recreated Holmes's apartment. As part of the London School's team, Professor Kent Grayson, MA, PhD, a scholar fascinated by authenticity, would engage museum visitors by posing a seemingly absurd question: Is the apartment portrayed in the museum authentic? However, it’s a silly question. It cannot be authentic since Sherlock Holmes himself lacks authenticity. Nevertheless, individuals earnestly responded to Professor Grayson's query. Some offered genuine critiques, pointing out anachronistic furniture pieces and other details. It was ironic that the attendees thought that the fictional place inhabited by an imaginary detective was inauthentic because the end table was from the wrong period…but there it is. In this podcast, we discuss authenticity and how it matters in Customer Experiences. What we discover is elementary, our dear Watsons. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:05   Ryan explains about the London Business School Professors research about the authenticity of the Sherlock Holmes Museum.  07:02  We discuss how a thing doesn’t have to be real to be authentic; it just has to feel real. 13:22  Colin explains that every experience is authentic; however, what it reflects about an organization might not be what customer want or value.  20:38  We cover the idea that the customer perception is key, so making customers feel an experience is authentic is essential. 30:03  We discuss the key takeaways that we have from this discussion and how it can help your experience. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Have you ever noticed how many vitamin options there are at a drug store? If not, you should know there are hundreds. It is bloody overwhelming.  All these vitamins got us thinking about differentiation. If your product isn’t that different from another, like a B-12 vitamin, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition?  Vitamin companies are not alone here. One of our listeners wrote in with a business pickle about differentiation on how to have it in an ever-competitive market. The answer lies in the experience. But how? What does differentiation even mean? And what does B-12 do for you anyway? (It does lots of stuff, by the way; you should probably take it if you don’t get enough.) When you are too close to something, you might have a hard time seeing what your differentiation could be. Your usually helpful depth of offering knowledge can be a hinderance. The nuances of competitive improvement might be authentic but too deep in the minutiae to distinguish you.  In other words, your competitive advantage might be real, but really boring to your customers. So, instead of coming up with something that is a competitive differentiator, you come up with this minor detail, emphasizing something the customer doesn’t care about or doesn’t recognize they should. Therefore, it takes an outside perspective sometimes to see what is possible regarding differentiation. And sometimes, this differentiation from the outside is disruptive and turns everything in your industry on its ear.  In this episode, we explore the ways our listener and you can differentiate yourself from the competition. As a bonus, we package it into five rules that you can use to drive your actions.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 06:44  We kick off the discussion with the first rule, which tells us that different means different and not just a little different. (They do get better, we promise.) 10:07  We get into the discussion about how disruption is often the key to differentiation that matters; otherwise, everyone ends up chasing the same goals and having little variance from one another.   17:50  We introduce the third rule, which is define the Who and the How Much, two key areas for besting the competition.  22:49 Rule number four says what are you going to differentiate on, meaning what area of your offering will be your competitive advantage.  25:35 We introduce the last rule, which is shamelessly bias, that experience is the hardest thing for your competitor to copy.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Many organizations are making a common mistake when it comes to AI. They fail to capitalize on the potential to enhance Customer Experiences through this powerful technology by building it incorrectly. By changing their strategic approach, they could gain a significant competitive advantage. Take, for instance, a telecom company that developed an AI system to detect customer churn. While it successfully identified customers likely to churn, it fell short in explaining why they were leaving. Here's the issue: AI models excel at predicting customer behavior but lack the ability to establish meaningful connections and provide context for the data. It's akin to Deep Thought from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy revealing that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42. It may be a correct answer, but we're left without understanding the underlying context. The mistake lies in how organizations set up their AI systems. The outcome resembles the ambiguous answer of 42. What we truly need is the context that explains the reasons behind it. In this episode, we explore the mistake many organizations are making with AI and what might happen if the Flat Earthers get a hold of it. Chances are their answer will be about as useful as 42. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 01:42  Colin kicks it off by asking how to link together The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Flat Earthers, and Artificial Intelligence, and how that relates to the opportunity inherent in AI systems. 09:11  We describe the difference between machine learning and deep learning under the larger umbrella of AI work, and why machine learning might have biases written into its code. 14:44  Colin explains what Flat Earthers have to do with all this, and explains what they believe, suggesting that listeners watch this clip from the ABC News YouTube channel. 20:08  Colin share the big danger of all this, particularly when you consider the parts of Customer Science that are coming as a new wave of change. 29:16 We share our big takeaways from the discussion and how organizations would be wise to improve their AI strategy. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

You wouldn’t think to look at it that The Magic Castle hotel in Los Angeles has been ranked in the top ten hotels on TripAdvisor, but it has. A converted apartment building has turned its unassuming appearance into an excellent experience for its guests, and how they do it isn’t that big of a thing, quite the opposite. It’s the little things make a big difference in their customer satisfaction.  In this case, it’s things like a popsicle hotline that makes this small hotel a surprisingly successful one. People who use the hotline—aka a red phone with a sign over it that reads, “Popsicle Hotline”—poolside receive a popsicle from the staff. Now, people remember this small thing when they talk about their experience. However, there are countless little things that happen in an experience that they don’t remember. These little things often create value to customers. However, since they don’t always remember them later when asked, they keep them a secret. In other words, they can’t tell you because they didn’t remember that moment specifically.  In this episode, we explore the little things in an experience that create value for customers and what you can do to leverage these types of moments in yours. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 04:48   We both share many small things that can occur in an experience and how they create value.  09:34  We get into the idea of nudges and how they can affect our judgment of quality for an experience. 13:51  Colin shares an example of how small things can also change an experience and customer behavior at the same time, which just might save the world.  20:11  We talk about how you can apply this idea of convincing people to change in your experience with a little nudge and how to leverage that for experience improvement. 24:02  Colin explains how the Emotional Signature can help in your efforts to determine what are some of these “secret” things that matter to customers.  28:21 We share our practical advice for applying this concept of improving small things for people in your experience. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

You probably don’t say no to people enough, especially if it’s to your boss. Like most of us, you are conditioned to cooperate with others, which means we usually say yes to most requests to avoid conflict. However, learning to say no in the right way, might also avoid conflict while simultaneously giving you back control over your life.  We host author Vanessa Patrick, Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Marketing, and researcher in the Consumer Behavior Marketing field, to talk about this right way to say no based on her book, "The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No to take Charge of Your Life." Patrick addresses this critical skill in her book, as well as its relationship to saying no to ourselves through self-regulation or self-control.   Patrick’s past research often depicts self-control as an upbeat version of self-discipline. Self-control serves as a reflection of your values, rather than self-imposed constraints. Patrick believes defining and defending these boundaries to others enables you to make decisions that create more fun and happiness in your life, particularly regarding the things you already said yes to.  In this episode, we explore the idea of personal policies, or the rules we set that should guide our decisions. Calling it compassionate self-control, Patrick says this approach facilitates having your needs driving your decisions. It also means that instead of looking out for cues from other about how to respond to these requests, we look within ourselves.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 01:29 Ryan introduces our guest and who then talks about her past research and explains how that led to the premise behind her new book. 06:16 Patrick explains the three competencies she identified that are essential to the “Art of Empowered Refusal.” 16:01. We discuss the significance of personal policies to guide your decisions and the two forms they can take to aid in that effort. 25:06  Patrick explains the importance of using empowering language, especially when talking to ourselves.  32:05  We discuss the practical applications of this concept in your life and how you can leverage Empowered Refusal in your life and work.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Your customers are having a relationship with your brand right under your nose. Do you know if it’s a strong, healthy one? Our connection with brands is much like any other relationship in our lives, with some being healthy while others are not. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for people to form codependent or dysfunctional relationships with brands. Therefore, it's essential to build strong brand relationships with your customers. Despite being legalistic trademarks, brands have become an entity, almost human-like, with which people form a personal connection. The corporate structure with its trademarks, colors, taglines, and messaging guidelines are irrelevant to customers.  What matters is the brand's presence in customers' minds, memories, thoughts, and emotions. Creating an attachment is crucial.  Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, introduced the concept of the Emotional Bank Account years ago, which can apply to these relationships customers have with your brand. Emotional Bank Accounts have positive and negative deposits in them all the time, only the assets held within are how we feel about the brand.  Just like we have these accounts with people in our lives, brands also make deposits and withdrawals in these accounts. In this episode, we explore the ideas behind these five rules and how they help you form a strong emotional bond with your customers with a robust deposit history in their emotional bank accounts, ensuring their loyalty to your brand. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 01:29  The podcast begins with the idea of brands and what they are. 08:04  We kick off the five rules, with the first one, “Focus on emotional benefits and value to your customers, not just on product features.” 19:13  We talk about the importance of storytelling and why it matters in branding. 20:25  Ryan explains that trust is foundational to the relationship but not the place to stop and why.  23:48  We share the final rule and explain why people need practical ways to make emotional connections, not wispy, ethereal concepts that don’t mean anything in the real world.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Getting your new program initiatives accepted requires overcoming a lot. So, to help you get that done—and impress your boss doing it—you need to have a winning strategy.  The corporate budget is a funny thing. Getting approval on a budget in the corporate world doesn’t mean you get to spend it. Quite the contrary. You often have to get the budget approved for what you might spend and then when you want to spend it, you get approval again.  When you read it written out like that, it sounds super inefficient and completely silly. However, my guess is that many of you that are responsible for a budget know exactly what we mean.   Plus, change is hard for people. As a champion of a business program that would result in significant change, you are already going to have a challenging time getting that approved. This episode helps you get through this inefficient and silly process successfully, and impressing your boss while you do it.  We share our tips and tricks for handling this process with clarity, influence, political awareness, realism, credibility, and professionalism.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 1:32 Colin shares a personal story about getting permission to spend his corporate budget, what he did to get it, and how it led to this podcast. 05:43  We share the first one about being clear about the goal and how numbers are essential to these discussions.  13:44 Now we explore how the good clear ideas you have that are supported by numbers need this critical spin so people can hear what you mean, followed by a foray into managing company politics. 21:52  We get into credibility, which is essential to convincing people to follow your way of thinking. 26:40  To round out the discussion, we get to the most important one, the one you have the most control over, professionalism.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Organizations often fail to consider the context in which customers enter the experience, assuming that every customer is the same. However, recognizing the context of a customer's experience is crucial to developing an effective customer strategy. Context is an omnipresent factor in customer experience. Depending on a customer's context, we must create a customized experience.  For instance, while working on a project for one of the cellular phone companies in the United States, we discovered that they treated customers who had lost their phone or had it stolen in the same manner. This oversight neglected the importance of context. Consider how you would feel if you had lost your phone in the back of a taxi. Most likely, you would feel foolish, right? Now, consider how you would feel if your phone was stolen. You might feel outraged, or scared, or both, which are different emotional responses than how you might feel after leaving your phone in a cab. Despite this, the mobile company treated both types of customers in the same way. They immediately requested the account number from both. However, we convinced them to determine what happened first, followed by ensuring the customer's safety if their phone was stolen. This simple change had an enormous impact on their experience design and outcomes. Thus, segmentation is a vital aspect of anticipating context. People bring unique perspectives and expectations to their experience. While segmentation is only one factor that can determine context, it is an excellent starting point. In this episode, we explore why context is crucial to customer experience design and how you can improve your understanding of your customer’s context. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:10.  We discuss how Kenneth Cukier’s TED talk about “Big Data is Better Data” and how having data isn’t enough to predict how people will interpret it.  07:12 Colin tests his theories with Ryan, who has his own context, which is always a fun activity. 10:20 Ryan shares an interesting demonstration of different contexts clashing in a researchers work with an isolated tribe in the Pacific. 14:20  Colin shares his recent insight about diversity, which he describes as a “blinding flash of the bloody obvious.” 18:09  We get into a discussion about changing a person’s context gracefully and the skills needed here.  27:48 We share our advice for helping organizations improve their experience understanding and using context in experience design. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Journey Maps can be useless exercises. That’s right…we said it. However, these often-used tools don’t have to be as useless as they usually are. Journey Maps are only useless if you don’t include the customer’s emotional journey in them.  Emotional journeys are the “squishy stuff” associated with why customers buy from you. Since customer’s feelings are challenging to itemize, many organizations tend to leave them off. However, the result is a customer process, not a journey map.  After all, without this information, how can you expect to predict and anticipate customer behavior? Moreover, how can you design an experience that is so well positioned for customers’ needs that they come back for more (and more)? In this episode— and at the behest of a very complimentary listener who says we actually taught them something (!!)—we explore how you can integrate customer behavior, and the emotions that drive that behavior, into your journey maps. We show you how all the things we talk about on this podcast apply in a practical way and can produce practical results, like an ROI.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 04:10  We explain how we will demonstrate the application of behavioral sciences concepts to a standard Journey Map that we made up about booking a hotel online. 12:15  We go through each of the ten concepts we agreed upon before the show, and then Colin adds a bonus one at the end, catching Ryan off guard.  21:29  Using the checklist of (now) 11 concepts, we begin taking you through the process of applying each one to the booking a hotel online journey map, starting with Customer Segmentation, and so on through the list.  27:05  Ryan points out that many times, changes in how organizations serve customers can have an inadvertent effect on how an experience ends, which is detrimental to the emotional journey.  32:58  Colin shares a personal story of how a rental car company bamboozled him into getting a car he couldn’t afford after a long-haul flight across the pond, and it cost the company money as a result.  37:00  We share our final tips and key takeaways from this exercise and how it should help you have a more complete picture of the customer journey.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Having a high IQ isn’t the most important thing for leadership. It helps, but intelligence isn’t enough to make a great leader.  It turns out that IQ without EQ, or emotional intelligence, doesn’t inspire teams to meet or exceed their goals. This EQ concept, popularized by Daniel Goleman, has been a crucial component of the leadership conversation for several years. Similarly, customer service representatives with high EQ are crucial for the emotional management of customers. The ability to understand and manage emotions is a crucial factor in ensuring customer satisfaction. EQ involves the ability to identify and manage our own emotions and the emotions of others, as well as understanding your reactions to situations and how they may affect others. In other words, leaders and customer service representatives who can remain calm and objective in stressful situations are more effective in their roles. In this episode, we will delve into the concept of EQ, what it entails, and its impact on leadership and customer service strategies. We will explore the five realms of EQ, starting with knowing your emotions. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:26  We introduce EQ and Goleman’s concept of the five realms of it, and how the first concept of it helped in Colin’s recent weight loss efforts.  08:50  Colin shares a story about how 30 years ago as a middle manager he went to a 360-degree feedback event that fundamentally changed how he thought about himself.  12:51 Ryan talks about how he likes that unlike intelligence, EQ is something you can work on and improve, no matter what you were given naturally.  17:11 Colin talks about the most silent transaction he ever had at the grocery store, and why that employee might be in the wrong position in the store.  20:30  We explain how well you deal with change is an essential part of EQ, particularly if you have some work to do. 28:55  We summarize what we learned and how developing EQ can help one’s leadership as well as improve the Customer Experience their organization delivers.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Vijay, one of our listeners, drew my attention to a deficit in my content regarding customer strategy. He asked if we had anything on customer engagement. After a search of both my hard drives (computer and memory), I realized that I didn’t. To remedy this giant hole in our content, we recorded this podcast.  Now, part of not having any content on the subject means I didn’t have a definition ready for the term. However, like anyone would these days, I fixed that with an internet search. I found an excellent one at HubSpot, another great one at Salesforce, and third at Qualtrics. Each of these definitions was unique and oddly familiar. However, together they do a great job of defining the general outline of the concept. To summarize them, let’s say that customer engagement is about interacting with customers in a connected way through a variety of channels to build an emotional connection with them.  In a recent podcast with Customer Experience pioneer Joe Pine, we explored the idea of time well spent. One addition I might make to the combination definition from my previous three sources is to deliver an experience that a customer thinks of as “time well-spent.” Often when customers feel this way about your product, service, or experience, they will recommend it to their friends and family—which is an excellent indication of engagement.  In this episode, we explore the concept of customer engagement and how you can craft a winning strategy for it in your experiences. Plus, we fill a hole in our content to satisfy Vijay’s request and feel better about the job we are doing engaging you with our content.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:53  We share definitions regarding Customer Engagement and how we agree and disagree with part of them. 10:44  We discuss how finding a new idea in marketing is essential, so, reengaging old concepts under a new name is fine if it means solid strategy comes back into fashion.  17:02  We revisit the idea first shared by Pine on an earlier podcast about how engagement is also about time, from giving it to you to thinking of what was spent with you as a good investment.  20:52  Ryan offers his critique about the concept of customer engagement and a common mistake many organizations make when trying to improve it.  22:43  Colin share his key takeaways about the concept and how you can apply a practical strategy for engagement moving forward.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

If you have been listening to us for a while now, you probably know about our “I’m in a Pickle” podcasts and the “5 Rules” series. If so, and you’re a fan, today is your lucky day because this podcast is a mash-up of both series. Not only that, but we also added in 5 more bonus rules for 100% more rules.  It seems that quite a few people in our audience have a pickle. They want to start a consultancy but don’t know what to do. So, we are here to help. In this episode, we explore the 10 rules for building a successful consultancy and how they apply to your success. While we can’t guarantee that you will be successful if you follow them, we know that you won’t be if you don’t.  Here are some key moments in the discussion: 02:47  Colin kicks off the rules by encouraging to read an old book for some new thinking and to challenge yourself to be brave. 13:20  Ryan explains the critical mistake many entrepreneurs make when starting a new venture and how you can avoid making the same one.  20:41  We discuss providing value to your customers and how you can tell if you are doing that.  24:39  Colin gets practical about something that there is never enough of in a new business, money, and how to make sure you get what you are owed. 27:44  We wrap up the rules by explaining what you shouldn’t do, even if there is good money in it.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

One of our listeners has a pickle. They did research that told them a product was just what their customers wanted, so they developed and launched it. But now, there are no sales. They want to know what went wrong. We suspect we might know.  Research is a double-edged sword. It has the power to give us answers we want but not always the answers we need. Many things we do, deliberately or otherwise, affect what we hear.  In addition, sometimes our sources are unreliable. Customers have different mindsets when they answer a question on a survey and when they make a buying decision. So, what they tell you on a survey might be quite different than what they do as customers. In this episode, we take a deeper dive into these ideas of what went wrong for our listener’s product launch. We also share some practical advice to avoid making these mistakes in the future.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:43  We discuss the pickle our listener, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote into us about.  06:36  We talk about how survey questions can lead your respondents to an answer, called Push Polling, which is very well explained in this comedy program from the UK, Yes, Minister."  11:28  Colin talks about where he thinks the real crux of the problem is for his listeners’ pickle, not understand the customers real underlying motivations.  16:55   We discuss the concept of what we hire product and services to do for us, like a job, and how some buying decisions satisfy two different roles. 19:02  Colin shares a story about a major product launch that cause major headaches for his organization back in the day.  25:30 We share the practical advice for our listener’s pickle and how you can avoid making these same mistakes in your product development.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

We will admit it. We have made mistakes in our lives. It’s only natural that some of the calls you make in your journey are going to be bad ones. Believe it or not, we are thankful for them. One learns a lot from one’s mistakes or at least that is the hope. Some of the calls were good ones, though, and we are thankful for those, too. Perhaps, even we two, like the blind squirrel, can find a nut once in a while.  One of the great things about having a podcast is that we can share information. In this episode, we share some stories about things that have gone wrong. Our hope is that you can learn vicariously through us without having to suffer through similar pains yourself.  Similarly, we share some of our triumphs, too, with the hope that these success stories might help some of you as well. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:50  Colin shares what he learned about choosing the right companies for his career goals by mucking it up in his 20s with one company worse than the next. 07:01 Ryan explains how he learned that loyalty isn’t always a two-way street when he experienced his first layoff at a startup.  10:26  We learn how recruitment is a bit like a fairy tale in that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the proper prince or princess.  14:00  We discuss the importance of having a plan rather than crossing one’s fingers and hoping for the best.  17:08  Colin tells us what he would have done differently at the beginning of his consultancy rather than the decision he made that almost bankrupted it. 21:28  We both share out successful decisions, from continuing to pursue a degree to establishing a priority for work-life balance to adopting a mindset of continuously learning.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Did you know that FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a powerful motivator for customer behavior? Organizations today should find ways to leverage the power of FOMO  with their customers.   I was surprised to learn how much of an addiction social media was for some people and how it linked up with feelings of FOMO. You might be as surprised by these statistics from 2021 as I was:  51% of people visit or log into their social media more now than two years before  27% of people wake up and check their social media accounts  45% of users said they couldn't wait for more than 12 hours to check their social media accounts  20% of users can't waste time for more than an hour without checking their feeds  69% of people think if they don’t check Facebook and other platforms that they will miss important events  In this episode, we explore what FOMO is and how it affects what we do and why. We also talk about a couple of practical (and ethical) ways you can leverage its power to increase the profits for your bottom line.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Regret, even the anticipation of regret, is a huge part of FOMO. These feelings are associated with Loss Aversion, which describes how we hate losing things more than we enjoy gaining things. If we feel like we missed out, we are losing out on the chance to be a part of something—and we really don’t like that feeling.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 03:58  Ryan defines FOMO and explains how social media and FOMO go hand in hand these days.  10:56 We connect FOMO with other emotions, like regret, and feeling included, or excluded as the case may be, and explain how avoiding these emotions can be powerful motivator. 14:33  We connect the idea that FOMO is part of some marketing team’s goal for an experience; they want FOMO to occur with their followers for things like celebrity 21:02  Colin shares some more stats about the emotions tied to FOMO and how they are on the destructive side.  24:40  We share three practical things you can do for your customers that use the power of FOMO (in a good way) for your experiences and to the benefit of your customers.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.  

This Podcast produced in partnership with Zuper™. You are probably underestimating the importance of a vital part of your Customer experience. Most organizations do. However, neglecting to address it can have negative impact on your customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer advocacy.  Dying to know what it could be? Well, the area that is often underestimated in importance is the impact of your field service engineers. Often the face of your company, these team members deliver a critical part of your customer interaction. Underestimating the significance of this part of your experience is a critical mistake.  Field service is a term not everyone is familiar with. However, you are familiar with them even if you don’t know what they are called. Field service describes the people that install, repair, and upgrade your equipment. Their ubiquity is such that they are a part of everyday life. In fact, you probably saw a few at work in some capacity today; you just didn’t know what they were called.  In this episode, we host an expert in Field Service on our recent podcast, Michael Israel ([email protected]), Head of Field Service Evangelism at Zuper. Israel has worked in customer and field service for over 50 years. He has managed domestic and international field service operations, including 12 years at IBM. He's also been in management and executive roles with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) providers and field service software applications with Oracle and SAP.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:05 Colin introduce Israel, and Israel shares some of his related experience that led him to becoming an expert in Field Service, as well as what the area entails.  10:11  We get into a discussion of the changing attitude for the service side of a customer experience, from viewing it as a cost to seeing it as profit center. 20:38  Colin asks why more organizations don’t embrace adopting software to manage this part of the experience; Israel’s response might surprise you.   24:23 We discuss the opportunity for a lot of companies regarding training and who does a good job with leveraging performance in this area. 27:29  Israel gives us a glimpse into the future of field service and what technology will do to enhance this critical area.  30:37  We all share our key takeaways and practical applications for organizations that want to address field service in their experiences. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. This podcast is full of bad advice. If you do follow the five rules we present, we guarantee you will fail. We realize this might be different than our usual Five Rules episode content. However, we think that presenting the way to fail might be the way to help you succeed. (How’s that for a different kettle of fish?) For example, if you want to fail, we have the rules that will help you do it. They include doing any or all of the following: Not understanding the marketplace.  Ignoring customer feedback.  Failing to adapt to change.  Not being authentic.  Overlooking diversity and inclusion.  In this episode, we explore why our five rules, otherwise known as what not to do in business, lead to failure for many brands you know, and in some cases, remember from before they crashed and burned. We share what we have learned by watching brands make silly mistakes (and hope none of you will make the same ones.) Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The critical thing to remember here is that we don’t want you to do these things. Instead, we encourage you to learn from these mistakes. So, if anything, we are telling you to break these five rules instead of following them.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 04:07  We kick it off by explaining how if you don’t understand the marketplace, you are sure to blow it with them, hastening your descent into failure.  10:53  We abandon all pretense of being organized, and share all five rules at once and then fit our examples under the various rules.  12:08   We discuss business guru Charles Handy’s S-curve from The Empty Raincoat about how things ebb and flow in performance, and when is the best time to change.  19:50  Colin relates the five rules back to an article he read, “15 Famous Brands Who Failed to Innovate,” and how hubris plays a role.  23:46  Ryan explains how Victoria Secret might have fared better over time if they had more diversity and inclusion built into their leadership.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.  

Fads come and go. From Tamagotchi’s to fidget spinners, we have seen plenty come and go. However, one fad that will never go out of style is treating your employees as the valuable resource they are. So, to answer our own question, Employee Experience is not just a fad and is definitely the future of a successful organization.  We are fired up about this today because one of you, Praveen Kumar is in a pickle and he asked for our help. He wanted to know how to build an excellent Employee Experience. Not surprisingly, we had plenty of advice about it.  You see, so much of what we talk about on this podcast applies to customers. However, it also applies to employees. People are people, whether they are buying or selling. So, until your employees are robots, you should be managing both experiences.  In this episode, we explore the question of how to build an excellent Employee Experience. We also share some advice on how to implement the advice practically and successfully, which is more than we can say for bringing back the Thighmaster.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One thing that might be a fad is what we call this area. For our part, we like Employee Experience because it goes with Customer Experience, and it uses alliteration. So, we don’t think the idea behind it will fade, but the terminology might. And we are okay with that.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 06:23  Colin explains how we are all experiential animals, so it is essential to ensure that experiences work for us, or there are negative consequences.  10:46. We discuss how the Customer Experience and the behavioral science theories that we relate to it also apply to the Employee Experience.  13:26  Ryan explains how Reference Points are essential in the conversation about Employee Experiences.  20:56  We address the various ways you can use Customer Experience advice to manage your Employee Experience efforts.  26:10  Colin gets into how a previous podcast about the 5 Rules of Leadership are essential here also.  29:11  We both offer our last bits of advice for Kumar and anyone who wants to build an excellent Employee Experience.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

I have been watching the American Customer Satisfaction Index for over 20 years. Many years, there wasn’t anything too surprising in the report. However, recently there has been, and it isn’t good news for most organizations.  After nearly two decades of investment in customer experience, only 20 percent of organizations have managed to improve their customer satisfaction scores—leaving the vast majority, 80 %, having failed to do so.  One has to wonder, has it been worth it? We have been working on delivering experiences that surprise and delight customers for years.  So, why aren’t they surprised and delighted? Why, despite all our best efforts, are the numbers going the opposite direction? Before you blame COVID for all this, it is important to note that these trends began long before that, although the pandemic did nothing to help matters. Nor is it a problem of customers having unreasonable expectations. Research shows that as satisfaction declines, so do customer expectations.  It turns out that there are a number of variables that could be contributing to this decline in customer satisfaction, which offers a lot for organizations to learn.  We invited an expert, assistant professor Forrest Morgeson, from the marketing faculty at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and the director of research at the Customer Satisfaction Institute to share his insight. In this episode, we explore what this means to customer experience then, now and in the future. Where we are going with experiences, might surprise you.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 02:41  We introduce our guest, Forrest Morgeson, assistant professor of marketing at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and the director of research at the Customer Satisfaction Institute at Michigan  05:53  Morgeson answers my question about how satisfaction can be down at this point in time with two salient reasons.  15:46 Colin shares a story about apathy and how what he saw 20 years ago might be happening in C-suites all around the world as we gape into the void of a recession.   22:44  We ask Morgeson to explain what the data shows about satisfaction within industry, and what he tells us might surprise you. 26:59 Morgeson shares his predictions for what will happen next regarding customer satisfaction and changes in experiences.  _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

One of our listeners, Clive Hearst has a bit of pickle he needs our help with today. He wants to know whether he should invest the time and money in getting his MBA. He wants to know what the true value is of an MBA, and whether it is a must-have for his career. The answer depends on a few things.  It might surprise you to know I don’t have an MBA. (Or maybe not). However, I have experience, and much of it leading teams and driving experiences for people, but I didn’t pick that up in a classroom or an internship. I learned it on the streets, and in interactions with clients, bosses, and subordinates.  I probably won’t get an MBA. I am closer to getting a fishing boat and a new tackle box than a degree at this point. However, I still say probably because there is a part of me that says, “never say never.” Part of me is interested in an MBA and I have to wonder why… So, does an MBA have any value or is it just a piece of paper? In this episode, we try to help Hearst answer these questions for himself and shed some light on the current state of the MBA in today’s business environment.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There should always be deliberate goals for everything we do in business, and that includes post-graduate education. Post graduate education in this case is an MBA, but the same goes for a Ph.D., law school, or medical or dental school, any other programs too. Part of the decision should always be one’s plans for what they will do with the education in which they invest.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:53  We start with one of the most important questions a person should ask themselves when considering getting their MBA, and the rest of everything will depend on the answer.  06:27   Ryan explains how MBA programs are structured and how long a person can expect to be in one, depending upon the program they choose. 09:54  Colin asks Ryan to explain some of the key advantages of getting an MBA, and the answer might surprise you.  13:04    We discuss the increased earning potential that can occur from getting an MBA, and how it sometimes doesn’t, and why.  20:20 Ryan explains how the most prestigious MBA programs tend to require several years’ experience before getting one and why that is. 24:50 We discuss how MBA programs are changing and what type of MBA might be a good investment for today’s business employee. _________________________________________________________________ Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Time is our most valuable resource. It’s a resource that you aren’t able to get any more of,  no matter what you do, and you are losing more of it every second.  When you look at it like that, asking people for their time a much bigger deal than you might have considered at first. Therefore, when you are spending it with them, you should make the most of it.  Moreover, you are competing for customers’ time. So, when they do give it to you, they are going to evaluate whether that was a good move afterward. If you are careful with it, you can end up on the bad side of an evaluation and a losing side of the battle for their attention in the future.  Joe Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy, writes about this battle for customer attention and how they evaluate time given to you in a recent article about 'Competing for Customer Time'. Check it out here. We also hosted him on a recent podcast where he shared his three categories for customers’ evaluations of time given to your organization. They include time well saved, time well spent, and time well invested.  In this episode, we discuss these three categories and what they mean to organizational experiences. We also talk about how some organizations do it well, and some waste our time unapologetically.    Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   03:22  Colin explains how the three categories of customer evaluation of time as Pine explained in the article and on the recent podcast created an Aha! Moment that rivals some of the most significant in his career.  08:10  Colin shares a story about calling his health insurance company and how they did not respect his time, how that could result in his finding a new provider, and how they will never know why.   12:39 We share an example of a company that takes their service and elevates it with the theatrical to create a time well spent evaluation.  22:44 We get into time well invested, and what expectations customers are likely to have before they would give an organization a positive evaluation in this area. 25:33 We share our final thoughts on what is happening here regarding the battle for customer’s time and how you can leverage this insight for your organization.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click HERE to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Price increases are part of today’s business environment. Unless you live on the moon, you are experiencing them from your suppliers, too, and will pass those on to your customers also. However, if you handle the price increase the wrong way, you will also likely be losing some of those customers, too.  One of our listeners, Alan Flower, has a pickle regarding the need to increase his prices without losing his customers. Since our advice not to raise prices or to decrease prices instead will end up with him going out of business, we came up with a few other, more practical, ideas.  The fact is no one wants a price increase. So, on its face, it seems like an impossible scenario. However, it might surprise you to learn that there are ways to increase a customer’s price, maintain your company’s margins, and keep most of your customers.  In this episode, we explore the many ways you can soften the blow of a necessary price increase to retain as many customers as possible while doing what you need to do for your bottom line.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Communication is the underlying theme of this exercise. Many of the suggestions we make during this podcast relate to the “how” of communicating. However, the why of it is just as essential, so be sure that you pay attention to both when you inform your customers of an impending price increase—or face their wrath instead.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:51  The first suggestion we make is to set proper expectations, which includes giving people time to adjust to the news; upping prices without warning will not get this price increase process off to a very good start. 07:25  Ryan explains how using framing is an essential way to manage the outcome of the price increase conversation, and that without it, you can make a mess of this process pretty fast.  11:06  Colin shares some things not to do, deceptive practices that you might get away with, until you don’t, and then the consequences can be severe, like Shrinkflation.  17:35  We explore sweetening the offering with companion products or services that add value, a situation that make a price increase much more palatable to customers.  19:34 We look at the value in delaying a price increase or taking it incrementally instead of all at once. Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here 

How long does it take to choose a craft beer at a big box liquor store? Four hours.  That’s what it felt like anyway. Why did it feel so long? Too many choices. In fact, when I was done, I needed a beer to recover from the exercise of choosing a beer.  Of course, if there had only been a few, I would probably complain that there hadn’t been enough options for craft beers.  The fact is, we like having choices, until we don’t. There is a point where not enough choices becomes way too many and the end result is the same, a negative experience and sometimes a lost sale.  In this episode, we explore the negative effects of too many choices on your bottom line. From overwhelming customers to elevating their expectations, what you offer has a significant effect on what people buy—or don’t.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are two ways choice affects customers psychologically. First, too many choices can make people give up on deciding and wander off. Second, the plethora of options can increase the expectations for what a customer wants out of the transaction, and often keeps them on the hunt longer for the perfect choice. Neither is an outcome that is doing great things for an organizations bottom line. Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 05:52  Ryan shares the results of research conducted at a Grocery Store in California that tested how many jam options was too many (Spoiler alert: It was more than six). 09:14  We discuss whether there is an optimal number and what considerations would go into determining that.    12:22  Colin explains how his TV shopping has increased his knowledge about TV offerings while also making him feel more anxious about choosing one.  21:33  Ryan uses dating opportunities to explain how more choices can change what you expect out of a date and Colin explains how he ends up in the matrimonial doghouse because of his lack of romanticism. 24:25. We share what firms can do to make decisions easier for people and maximize their decision potential in different offering scenarios.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE. Follow Colin on Twitter HERE. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here 

I have written seven books, countless articles, and tons of keynote speeches, not to mention thousands of emails. As a writer, through and through, I know how difficult it can be to stare at a blank screen watching that blinking cursor wondering where to start.    But a new AI-powered chatbot might make my life a whole lot easier, and yours, too.    It’s called ChatGPT, and it has the potential to change how we create things and make the power of AI accessible to everyone. It is a conversational chatbot that can process requests and, if you want, write things for you. It has written poetry, code for applications, the copy for a Ryan Reynold’s MINT mobile company commercial, and more.     Unfortunately, it also means ChatGPT is accessible to high school students that need to write a five-paragraph essay about Romeo and Juliet. If there is one group where ChatGPT is unwelcome, it’s the teacher’s lounge at any high school or college.    In this episode, we discuss how ChatGPT might change the way organizations do things moving forward.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   We also discussed what some of my readers on LinkedIn think of the AI technology in ChatGPT. Igor Rodrigues likes how it handles context. Sergei Liashenko thinks it could be useful for staff training. Graham Hill worries that if too many people leverage the technology, we will lose the distinctions between organizations that often provide a competitive edge.    We would love to also hear your insight. To subscribe to the newsletter and weigh in, please click here.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   02:41  We introduce what ChatGPT is and how we have been working with it, and how it differs from what other technology we have encountered. 07:54  Colin shares some of the ways he thinks it will serve as a writing assistant for him moving forward, and Ryan explains how it has completely wrecked the educational essay.  16:51 Colin shares some of the responses he got from readers of the newsletter on LinkedIn.  22:53  We share what the 8th imperative would have been for our book, The Intuitive Customer, if we had leveraged the AI, and it was surprisingly good. 24:32  We share our insights about what you should take away from this topic and apply it in your organization.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

If you have customer segments that read like the drink sizes on a fast-food menu, then this podcast is one you really need. The fact is many organizations get customer segmentation wrong. So, we came up with some critical questions that can get it back on track.  One of our listeners is in a pickle and it has to do with their firm’s segmentation. Vijay Patel’s sales haven’t been what he hoped, and he wondered if the problem might be targeting the wrong customers. We think they might be, too, but probably not for the reasons Patel thinks.  Many organizations use databases to segment their customers based on easy-to-collect data, like demographics, industry vertical, or total annual sales. While this information is useful, it is incomplete. We discuss what needs to be included to make these numbers mean anything for targeting.  In this episode, we explore what are critical questions an organization should be using to create customer segments that lead to effective targeting. And to be clear, they don’t use the words “small,” “medium,” or “large.”  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience I have had a terrible time with UPS recently. I sent a package 2-day priority international and ten days later, I still don’t have it. Plus, I have had no luck getting answers about what happened to it. In part, I am to blame because I don’t have a lot of experience with shipping things via UPS. However, part of the problem is UPS because they don’t have a targeted experience for inexperienced shippers like me.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:12  We share a pickle from Vijay Patel who asks us how to ensure that their customer segmentation is correct. 07:27  Colin talks about one of the best segmentations he has ever experienced in Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, where they separate leisure and business travelers. 11:42  We lead into the first question about segmentation and how it should serve your organization. 14:25  Colin poses the next question about the data used to segment customers and whether it is meaningful for this exercise (spoiler alert: if it involves small, medium, and large, then it isn’t). 18:18  Ryan explains selection bias and how it can doom your efforts by missing an enormous opportunity for your business. 21:04  We explain how using databases can lead to stereotyping and how that is sloppy marketing.  25:18 We discuss psychographics and how it applies to segmentation, and why it might not work either and what we know will work better. Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE. Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

It’s a new year so we decided we needed an update.  A few years ago, we gave you some rules for gaining growth. But times have changed, and so the rules need to change, too. Therefore, we took another pass at the questions that can help your organization gain growth in 2023.  In some ways, these are more like provocations than questions. However, we aren’t picking a fight. We are, however, trying to be provocative. In fact, we usually ask them because we know that people can’t answer them. We want them to realize that they don’t know these answers and get them thinking about it so we can help them move forward.  The first two questions you are probably familiar with already. They set the stage for what we are trying to uncover. Then, we move into specifics about what customers want from your experience. Next come the future questions that explore areas about where you should be trying to go and the tools you can use to get there. Finally, we get into a question about my absolute favorite part of experiences, memory.  In this episode, we explore what we ask and why. We also talk about what they need to realize from their answers and how it can help them gain growth in the new year.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One company we helped move forward was Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping company. We hosted one of the successful leaders of this organization on another episode to share the five rules for a highly successful implementation. One of the things Maersk shared is that these questions made a difference in their improvement program—which is saying something since they improved their scores by 40 points over 30 months.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 07:36  After we discuss Maersk line, we get into our second strategic question that explores how customer-centric your organization is, and how that affects your growth. 10:21  We get into an area that we are devoting a whole episode to soon, which is about how people describe their experience with you, as well as what they really want and what drives value for them, all crucial areas to answer for your experience.  18:34 This kicks off the future part of the strategic questions, where we talk about predicting customer behavior and using Customer Science to be successful at it.   20:42 Ryan takes a 2,000-word detour to express how he agrees with Colin, much to his chagrin and Colin’s supreme delight.  28:19 We talk about Colin’s favorite subject memory, and why it matters so much to make them deliberately in your experience. 29:31  We summarize the seven strategic questions and how you can actually work on them on top of everything else you have to do—and why you should make time for them.  Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

In sales, it can be tough to know when a customer is no longer deciding but already decided—unless, of course, they tell you that out loud. So, it is incumbent upon you to read the signs that a customer has decided to buy.  For example, I like to make drawings with pen and paper during my sales presentations with a contact. Then, I position the pen toward them during the discussion as an invitation for them to pick up and draw a little bit, too.  If they do, it’s a good sign. Scribbling away on my pad of already scribbled paper, I know that the contact is engaged and interested in how my services will help them achieve their goals.  However, there are several signals that a person sends when they are ready to buy. One of our listeners, Jason Bradley wrote in with a business pickle wanting to know what some of these signs are. In this episode we tell you and explain the psychology behind it. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:19 We present Jason’s business problem, how other listeners can send in their questions for us to answer on the podcast, and how Colin can tell a person has made a buying decision. 7:20 Ryan presents the Rubicon Model and how it applies to our psychology around decision making.  14:35  Ryan talks about the differences in our mindsets before and after decision-making, and how it applies to political discussions. 20:41 We discuss how people have a preference for action and feel invulnerable after making a decision as part of their psychological need to be right about it. 26:19 Colin shares a story about a sales training that taught them how to get through Death Valley, and, no, it wasn’t a desert survival tip. Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Every so often, I get a chance to chit-chat with colleagues of mine about the future of customer experience. This time, my colleagues were pioneers in customer experience, Lou Carbone (Experience Engineering.com) author of Clued In, and Joe Pine (StratgicHorizons.com), author of The Experience Economy. We discussed what we see changing in CX.    We all think we are at a turning point in the movement. There are a lot of things that the recent pandemic has broken. However, organizations haven’t fixed all of them. Add in the inflation rates that are crippling the economy and affecting customer behavior, and you have a good idea of the state of things these days.    However, my colleagues and I agree there are also exciting things on the horizon. Customer experience enjoyed its first academic nod. We also see CEOs taking a new interest in creative thinking and open-mindedness. Customer science looms on the horizon.    In this episode, we explore the potential for the new year in the customer experience movement and combine the powers of decades of experience to guess what will happen in 2023. We see significant changes coming and share what we see and what you should do about it.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   The state of affairs today in customer strategy is dire. The American Customer Satisfaction Index is at its lowest level in 17 years. From 2010 to 2019, two-thirds of organizations still needed to improve customer satisfaction. Forrester predicted that one out of every five people in Customer Experience would lose their job in the next twelve months.    Here are some other critical moments in the discussion:   02:53  Carbone discusses how too much business thinking is still stuck in the industrial age and how we should change that. 08:31   Pine describes how experiences are about people’s time, not wasting it but making it well-spent. 12:51 Colin threatens to sing Abba’s “Knowing me Knowing You.” 20:00  Carbone announces a milestone for customer experience management, getting a nod from academia.  27:36 Pine shares ideas about developing new measurements for success in CX beyond the traditional that might track customer sentiment more than today’s measures. 36:11 We share our predictions for the new year and what organizations should focus on.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   Bad leadership leads to bad Customer Experience. To have a great Customer Experience, you have to have great leadership.    It reminds me of rabbits.    When my kids were little, we kept rabbits in a hutch. One day, I let the rabbits out to enjoy a little freedom in the garden. But, when I put them down, they hopped right back in the hutch.    I had taken over a call center team at the time. The rabbits’ behavior resembled my team’s. The hutch represented all the constraints built up in the call center culture. The team were much more comfortable hanging out in these constraints than finding a way to do more for customers.    It fell to me to change the culture. Over time, my call center team were hopping throughout the garden of customer centricity, but it required focus and effort on both our parts.    In this episode, we explore the role of leadership in Customer Experience and the 5 Rules guaranteed to increase your effectiveness as a leader.     Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   07:18  We start off the rules with an essential one about self-awareness; how you project yourself in your head does not always translate to the perception of your leadership by your team.  11:26  Colin introduces rule number two, which explains that you have to understand that you do not need to be the cleverest to be the leader. 16:54  We discuss The One Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard, which emphasizes where your followers are and how ready they are to follow your lead. 20:49   Colin refers to one of his favorite leadership aphorisms, “None of us is as clever as all of us,” which speaks to leveraging the strengths of the team to create a better output rather than serving in despotic rule. 26:10  Colin emphasizes ensuring you maintain the critical individual relationships with team members that are necessary to your team’s culture, a critical concept in Ken Blanchard’s follow up book, The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. 28:36 We round out the rules with a crucial part of leadership, loyalty, which goes both ways but starts with the leader.      Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

The end of a year is always a nice reminder to reflect on time passed. It’s a regular milestone where you can check in on your experiences and remember the lessons gained from another trip around our sun.    This year has been an interesting one. With a foot half-in, half-out of the pandemic, continuing supply chain issues, rising inflation rates all over the world, and a war in Ukraine, one might even say awful.    However, like any year, everything isn’t awful. There have been moments, professionally and personally that have been exceedingly positive and have changed us for the better, even if it was just a little bit.    In this episode, we each share a professional and personal lesson learnt from this year. From a description of the world’s ugliest knife (which you can see for yourself at minute 19:26 on our YouTube Channel of the podcast) to the significant realization I had that AI is just our bias written in code shared by our guest Broderick Turner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Marketing at Virginia Tech., and founder of TRAP LAB, a few months ago, there is sure to be something for everyone—or at least some thing to entertain you.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   04:37  Ryan explains how this year taught him that businesses should quit waiting for things to get back to normal; the future is the next normal. 11:24  Colin shares what the revolving door on 10 Downing Street experience this year in the UK reminded him about business and philosophy.    19:26  Ryan explains that learning something new can make you feel more ready to adapt to change, and then showed the knife he made himself, which he describes as the world’s ugliest knife. 23:32 Colin reminds us all that history repeats itself, which means that the skills we learned long ago might come in handy again; so, if you can manage it, don’t forget those lessons.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Ah, yes! It’s the most wonderful time of the year. When we reflect upon the passing year and make plans for the New Year: what we want to keep, where we want to be, and how we need to change. Then, we make them, our New Year’s Resolutions.    However, in just a few days’ time, we will have failed at keeping these resolutions (again) and forgotten all about it.    There are a number of psychological reasons why change is hard, and much of it has to do with habits. Habits are part of our Intuitive System, which is the fast automatic thinking we use to save energy instead of dragging out our Rational System, the slow, deliberate thinking we sometimes use. We get a cue, which triggers an automatic response, that gives us a reward.     However, habits can be broken once you understand where you need to intervene. With a few tricks and some real motivation, you can kick a bad habit or even start a good one.    In this episode, we explore why some people are successful with their New Year’s Resolutions and win, and why some people fail and lose out on the benefits of meeting the challenge for change in the New Year. (If you want to be a part of the first group, we suggest you listen. Want to be in the second group? Keep on rolling with your present strategy.)   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Habits are a giant part of New Year’s Resolutions. Usually, we want to stop having bad ones, i.e., start losing weight and exercising, quit biting nails, or to stop smoking or drinking so much. However, sometimes we want to start good new habits, i.e., floss more, take up a new hobby or learn a musical instrument, or subscribe to a fantastic newsletter on LinkedIn (hint, hint). Below are some moments in the podcast that can help with either direction you are going with this in the new year:   03:16  Colin shares a little bit about his personal weight loss journey and how what he learned there made it clear that psychology is a big part of success or failure with resolutions.  09:14 Ryan explains why using the Framing Effect on your project can be persuasive in these goals.  11:10   We get into change management and how habits are an integral part of that process. 15:00  Ryan explains how  the two-system of cognition, and more specifically, the Intuitive System play a role in habitual behavior and why that is. 20:01  Colin explains how similar failures often happen with Customer Experience programs, too, but that those failures say a lot more than many people think they do. 25:55   Ryan explains why goals and reaching them is one thing, staying there is another.  27:21  We close with an excellent suggestion on how to be successful, based on a story from the actor Terry Crews on how to build a good habit for going to the gym, and it’s not what you probably think.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Going viral is the goal of any passionate social media poster. Posting your content and watching as the views and shares grow exponentially is the dream for marketers trying to build a brand online.    Unless, of course, the viral post is about how you broke a guitar during a customer’s flight and then showed “indifference” to their complaint. (Looking at you, United Airlines.) That’s a nightmare.    The trick is actually doing it—and for the right reasons, not a customer service failure. In an environment where there is infinite amounts of content to compete with, getting a post to go viral is a victory few marketers have the pleasure of experiencing.    In this episode, we explore how to get people to collaborate with you in your efforts to create viral content on social media and the essential elements of the content that encourage people to share it.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   When you want a person to do something, you have probably heard that you should explain the benefits they will enjoy from doing so. It’s no different with social media. Your content should have a benefit that appeals to the sharer and collaborator, and a benefit to whom the person shares it. Therefore, a hearty laugh, a heartfelt “awe,” or an unrealized and epiphanic insight are never a bad way to go.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:38  Ryan explains how framing plays an essential role in getting people to share your content.  09:47  Colin shares an example of what not to do with your experience that encourage people to share content about you with the infamous (and hilarious), United Breaks Guitars video. 14:04  We share a key insight about how to make something go viral, and it’s not your awesome brand message. 18:34. Colin introduces the idea of internet trolls and everyone piling on as meeting an essential human need to be a part of something.  25:25  Ryan covers a past campaign with Dunkin’ Donuts and Charli D’melio that had all the elements that make a social media campaign go viral.  28:54 We summarize the secret formula ingredients for you and how you can use them in your customer strategy.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customers are fickle. Or at least they appear to be. What once may have exceeded your customer’s expectations one day becomes ordinary the next. That’s because People become less sensitive to change as things improve. It’s called  Diminishing Sensitivity, and it’s the reason that sometimes you have to work harder to “Wow!” your customers.     If you gave $100 to a poor person and a millionaire, it would have completely different effects on their daily lives. While the millionaire would be polite and appreciative of the extra cash, the poor person would feel the difference made by the money far more.    In some ways, your customers are the millionaire in this scenario. Your excellent Customer Experience has made them less sensitive to your improvements. However, if your experience is next to terrible, improvements feel a lot more like $100 to a poor person.    Diminishing sensitivity can be seen across many different industries. For example, the difference in graphics between the video game Football for the Atari 2600 and Madden’s NFL 10 was astounding. However,  when you compare Madden 10 to Madden 12 and 14, the difference is noticeable, but not astounding. It ceases to be something that amazes and becomes something to be expected.   In this episode, we explore the concept of diminishing sensitivity and how it  can affect your customer experience and your customers’ perception of it. We also talk about what you can do to continue to improve.    How Can I Combat Diminishing Sensitivity?   While it would be easy to say you should constantly push the boundaries of your product or service, this is not necessarily realistic. As we have seen with the iPhone, constant improvement eventually bores consumers. Therefore, it’s essential to occasionally disrupt the market with more significant improvements to keep your customers hooked.     Here are some other key moments: 03:33   Ryan introduces the concept of diminishing sensitivity and the minds behind the concept. 09:07   Colin and Ryan discuss how the iPhone is an example of diminishing sensitivity. 15:09    Colin admits that he likes to find companies that need his help that haven’t gone as far into their experience journey because you can enjoy significant impact quickly.  19:14    Ryan and Colin explain how other large organizations have navigated the tricky bit of continuous improvement after enjoying those initial gains. 25:50    Ryan and Colin go over the “curse of improvement” and what you can do to avoid it.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Recession is a natural step in the economic cycle, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the bad news. When economic downturn occurs, we all feel it.    Corporations tend to cut back in a downturn, neglecting things like customer experience. To differentiate yourself from everyone else, you should double down on these services while others cut back.   Nobody looks forward to a recession, but being prepared and aggressive can help alleviate its effects. Don’t let yourself get left by the wayside while there is such a great opportunity to grow.   In this episode,  we do not minimize the downsides of economic recession, but rather show that not everything has to be terrible. We discuss what to do when things get bad, and how to focus on the upside of a recession.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   The most crucial part of dealing with a recession is preparing ahead of time. If you're caught blindly by the oncoming decline, you and your business could wipe out. While we may not officially be in a recession yet, planning as though we were will leave you far more prepared for the times ahead.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   02:50   We first discuss the effects of recession on the larger economy and its necessity to the business cycle. 10:09   Ryan explores the effects of breakdown on breakthroughs and innovations in corporate structure.  14:29   We look at how changing before change is forced upon you can help your business during recession. 17:36   Colin discusses how speeding up when others slow down can improve your success during downturn. 22:19   We give our personal advice to both companies and individuals concerned about the oncoming recession. 24:37   We explain why customer service is one of the most important aspects of succeeding businesses during times of recession.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel, too? Check it out here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Claire Hillman, a loyal listener, a subscriber to our NL, Why Customers Buy,  and viewer of our podcast on our new YouTube Channel is in a pickle and needs our help. She asks, Should I move to where my customers are or move them to where I want to be?    Now, our first reaction was to tell Claire that she should absolutely meet customers where they are. After all, isn’t that the customer-centric thing to do?    However, it occurred to us that at one time, we waited in line at the airport to check in, wrote out our bills on paper checks to mail back through snail mail, and bought DVDs and CDs that we had to store on specially made racks in our homes.    We did these things because we hadn’t moved to digital check-in, automatic bill payment, and streaming. If organizations hadn’t moved us to these efficient and easy ways to simplify these tasks, we might still be making small talk with the airline employee or licking envelopes.   Since we see that many things that we do today are not the way we used to do things—and realize how much better the experiences are with the new way—it might not be the best things to meet customers where they are. Instead, it might be better to move them where you want them to be.    In this episode, we explore the finer points of moving customers to where they want to be and how to manage this process for your organization. You might be surprised to know that giving customers exactly what they want isn’t always the best way to handle your customer strategy.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Another area where some customers might have not realized was a benefit to them is Self-Service, particularly at the supermarket. However, other customers are never going to want to serve themselves there. What is happening here is the idea of customer segmentation. Some customers love taking matters into their own hands; others feel like it’s losing something from the experience to have to handle things themselves. How you move these groups to where you want them to be requires a careful look at the value you bring to the experience and framing the change in a way that appeals to each segment.      Here are a few other key moments in the discussion:   02:51  We learn about Claire’s pickle and how our first reaction was replaced with the idea that it depends on where your customers are and where you are trying to move them.   4:50  Colin shares a story about how self-service at a supermarket showed him how organizations train customers to try new services and having front-line employees there is a great way to do it.  07:58  We discuss how customer segmentation and understanding what customers value is an essential part of managing the process for moving customers, or you can move some of them right out the door. 13:57  Colin describes how he gets his wife Lorraine to update her iOS on the iPhone, a task she detests, by showing her a couple of new features she is sure to value, which is a great example of what to do with customers. 16:48  Colin explains how the Focus feature that came out on Apple’s last iOS for the iPhone demonstrated how different people care about different things (customer segments), so getting them to change using the same strategy can be difficult. 23:22  Ryan explains how meeting customer might also mean taking into consideration their cognitive state, and what resources they have for deciding to move forward when you position the change. 26:15  We both share our practical advice for what you can do with this information to move customers where you need them to be.    Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   As if the world isn’t crazy enough—with the war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis, the looming threat of recession, and the ostensible beginnings of catastrophic climate change— we learned a flesh-eating bacterium (Vibrio vulnificus) is running rampant in Florida, infecting people as it thrives in the brackish floodwaters left in the wake of Hurricane Ian.     It’s bloody stressful these days.    With so many things we can’t control, feeling uncertain about the future economy is normal. However, uncertainty is a difficult environment in which to move forward with business.    Colin thought maybe he was feeling so pessimistic about everything because he is getting old. So, he polled his followers on LinkedIn a few days ago to see what they thought. He asked them,"What are you expecting the business environment will be over the next year?" The results might surprise you.    However, no matter how we all feel about the future, into it we go anyway. So, in an effort to help us all cope with the road ahead, we present the 5 Rules for Managing Uncertainty in this episode, which you can also watch on our YouTube Channel.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Uncertainty is a difficult environment for decision making. Often, we look for ways to mitigate these feelings using short-cuts in decision making to move forward. It’s also why we like to say a decision was a no-brainer. If the best way forward was so obvious that we didn’t have to think about it much, we have much more certainty about it. Certainty is definitely our preferred state when we decide things.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   01:49   We start off by explaining the situation behind the poll and what Colin and Ryan think about the future. Spoiler alert: they don’t agree. 05:35  We share some participant insights, first from René Bomholt and then from Andrew Safnauer, who tell us that it will be different in various parts of the world and that thinking about having a recession is the surest way to ensure there is one. 08:57  We share the first rule, to recognize that uncertainty will happen, and it will be uncomfortable.  15:07  We talk about the positives of uncertainty in rule number two, which is to remember that the upside of uncertainty is it provide opportunity, especially to disrupt things. 17:57  Colin shares why he likes to wear his Luton Town Football Club shirt—even though the team isn’t as good as he wishes it was—and how an ex-manager was the inspiration for Rule #3, control the controllables.  22:27  We get into Rule #4, which is to be alert and prepared; because being flat footed and unprepared is never a winning response to uncertainty while having more information and a plan is.  24:25  We explain why the last rule, hoping for the best while planning for the worst, is an excellent way to cope with uncertainty, and why it can pay off for you no matter which way things go.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

What if we told you that we know how you could develop a superpower? You can. We know you can because the method for it it was developed by a Yale’s assistant professor of marketing that was once a door-to-door salesperson and someone who has performed open-heart surgery on a pig.   The superpower you can develop is influence and it is essential if you want to make changes in your organization. As champions of Customer Experience, we don’t need to tell you how crucial it is to get people to change. Influence and consensus building can help you get there, and our guest will tell you how.    In this episode, we talk with climate philanthropist Zoe Chance (zoechance.com) Ph.D., author of Influence is your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. Chance shares with us why she wrote the book, some constructive criticism for the Customer Experience movement, suggestions for a winning strategy, and step-by-step instructions for how to gain support for your ideas.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One of the reasons Chance wrote the book was because she felt like other tactics written by thought leaders for influence were too transactional. Her methods are softer and built upon a foundation of mutual benefit. In fact, she jokes that her agent wanted to call the book Influence for Nice People. While she rejected the title, she doesn’t reject the premise and hopes that she can do some good with her strategies. Climate change is a topic so important to Chance that she is donating half of the profits from her book to go to 350.org, a global network of climate activists seeking change through the power of ordinary people.    Here are a few other key moments in the discussion:   02:19  We introduce Chance and some of her accomplishments, including the aforementioned open-heart surgery performed on a pig. 05:52  Ryan asks Chance why she chose such a well-written about topic like influence for her book, and Chance explains why she had more to say on the topic. 13:05  Chance explains that the psychology behind influence is the same whether you are convincing people to go to a restaurant or resolving a multi-million-dollar purchase. 17:17 Chance explains to Colin the two big ideas she has for why some organizations do not address the improvement they need in their experiences the way he would like.  21:43  We discuss the intention-behavior gap and how it plays a significant role in influence and getting people to change. 23:46  Chance shares her secret to influencing group decision, including the step-by-step strategy for “working around the roots,” as the Japanese say. 29:36  Ryan asks Chance about the chapter she has on saying no, and what she says about it might surprise you—it has a lot more about getting people to say yes than you might think.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Neither of us is much of a runner. In fact, to get us to run with any kind of speed would require some motivation—like a tiger chasing us. That’s because fear is a powerful motivator. Fear is also a powerful tool for marketers to get customers or potential customers to care about something.    So, why does fear motivate us so much? Safety is an important value for all of us. When it is threatened, we notice. In other words, fear is a strong emotion, which makes it hard to ignore or control. In some cases, you might even have an involuntary response as the fear you feel taps into something primal. Michael McIntyre provides an engaging and comedic perspective on this topic here.    When you have something to sell, it can be challenging to cut through the clutter to get people to care about what you have. In fact, getting people to care about anything can be challenging, whether there is a potential sale involved or not. That’s one of the reasons that marketers find themselves using it; fear can get people to care.    Political ads are big fans of this type of marketing. Campaigns use the opponent’s platform and voting record to scare voters about what the opponent might do if elected. Of course, the candidate campaign ad creators want voters to choose would never do those things. So, fear motivates the voters to give their vote to the political campaign’s candidate. It’s genius, and very common.    In this episode, we discuss why fear motivates humans, how marketers can use it effectively and what marketers should avoid. Plus, we decide which mask Colin should wear for Halloween. Don’t miss out on the exciting debate.       Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Among other ways, Loss Aversion, which is part of the larger behavioral science concept of  Prospect Theory, is part of the equation in using fear as a marketing tool. You might remember that Loss Aversion describes that in our minds, losses loom larger than gains. To put it another way, we hate losing things more than we enjoy winning things. Loss Aversion is why we are sometimes motivated to respond to a marketing offer. We don’t want to risk losing something.    Here are a few other key moments in the discussion:   03:46  We talk about our newest part of the podcast, video; click here to subscribe to the Intuitive Customer video feed for the podcast.  05:36  We talk about how fear is a tool used by marketers because it is a powerful emotion that causes people to care about things they might not have before.    08:45  We review the concept of fear aversion, FOMO, and how these can feed into these marketing messages.  15:43  Colin recalls the work of British comedian Michael McIntyre and his bit about wasps and bees, which demonstrates how we sometimes try to control our very real fear. 18:36  We explore why fear is so motivating to us and why we seek it out in “safe” spaces.  20:56 We explain how fear appeals are motivating, but you should do these things if you want them to work and avoid some other things to keep it from backfiring.  31:05 We share our practical suggestions for what you should do with this information.    Subscribe to our YouTube channel here for more content.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

This week on our podcast and Intuitive Customer YouTube channel, we address a listener’s “Pickle” with our “I’m in a Pickle” feature. You might remember that a Pickle is our term for a business problem that might be addressed with customer strategy and/or the behavioral sciences. We hadn’t featured one for a while, so we thought it was time to dig into a new one.    This week, we hear from a frustrated and disappointed insurance professional named Tonya Dunn who wants to know why, after all their Customer Experience improvements, they still aren’t seeing the results they expected. She wants to know what we think the problem is and what we think they should do.    Customers are complicated and so are the reasons they do what they do—or don’t do— in an experience. In our listener’s case, the thing they are not doing is recommending them to their friends and family.    This problem is not unusual, nor is it insurmountable. However, it usually requires taking a hard look at what an organization is doing to improve and where they might have veered off course from a successful customer strategy to manage customer behavior.    In this episode, we take that hard look at what might be going on with their improvement program and how the organization might change what they are doing to get back on course and start getting those referrals rolling in the door.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   First of all, it’s important to note that there is rarely one reason something like this happens. Like many things, there are several reasons that this can happen with a Customer Experience program. There are theoretical reasons that could influence the results our listener is getting and tactical ones, too. We discuss them all in the podcast.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   03:02  We hear about the pickle and why Colin chose this one to feature on the podcast. 04:07  We talk about the theoretical reasons that our listener isn’t getting the results she wanted, starting with a favorite topic, Reference Points. 13:26  Ryan talks a little about the Evaluative Heuristic, which is something we use when comparing complicated or hard to understand things in a decision.   17:23  Colin talks about some tactical problems that could be happening, starting with how organizations sometimes focus on the wrong parts of the experience.  23:04  We discuss why it is essential to identify what customers value the most when choosing what to invest your time and resources into improvement. 27:21   We wind down the discussion and share our recommendations for our listener (and anyone else out there with a similar problem) about what to do about this pickle.   Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Organizations need to embrace that emotional side of their experiences. Not only to design an experience that surprises and delights their customers, but also so their Artificial Intelligence works to provide useable insight. Combining the emotional data into the formula with concepts from the behavioral science side will make it so organizations can understand what and why their customers do what they do.    However, I worry that they don’t.    You’ll remember that Customer Science is the fusion of data, the behavioral sciences, and artificial intelligence (AI). Today, we will discuss what role AI plays in predicting customer emotions and how they affect customer behavior.    AI isn’t perfect. Yet. We did an interview with Broderick Turner, Ph.D., from Virginia Tech about AI recently. Turner explains his skepticism about AI since he views AI as opinions written in code.    However, imperfect or not, AI technology gives us some options we didn’t have before.  Applied intelligently and with a deliberate approach, AI has the potential to solve problems, and help us achieve goals.    This episode is the second of a series of podcasts we did with Beyond Philosophy’s own Zhecho Dobrev (@ZhechoDobrev), author of The Big Miss: How Organizations Overlook the Value of Emotions. We talked with him before on our podcast a month ago about how emotions drive customer behavior. This week, we dive a little deeper on this concept, and explore how emotions affect the insights we get from Customer Science. If you’d like to read a bit more from Zhecho on emotional attachment being a key factor in customer-drive growth check out this article here.       Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   In the book, Dobrev shares research about AI. It looks at the typical customer journey touchpoints and how much value do each of those drive. Also, Dobrev examines where emotions and customer relationships affect the outcome, and how much value those provide. Now, he is analyzing how AI uses each of those customer journey mapping touchpoints, meaning the customer infinity lifecycle thinking about the brand, learning about the product, purchasing experience, and all the other points until we get to customer retention.      Here are a few more key moments in the discussion:   03:36  We talk about the recent podcasts that led to this one, including the first one with Zhecho a little while ago, the podcast we did on Customer Science, and an episode we had with a guest, Broderick Turner, about how opinions make their way into AI code.  08:30  Dobrev explains that regarding AI in the Customer Science mix, it should include customer emotional data, as they are the main drivers of customer behavior; otherwise, the insights it has gleaned may not be authentic drivers of behavior. 10:43  Dobrev shares three organizations that have done a great job using AI to understand how emotions affect and drive customer behavior and why it helped.  20:26  Colin shares how a previous podcast, one about the book, The Myth of Experience, demonstrates one of the problems with AI, which is that organizations don’t have the data they think they do and how that leads to problems with their application of it. 29:09 Dobrev shares his plans about what is next for AI and experience, and his effort to piece together a strategy that can improve all experiences moving    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

This podcast was created in partnership with Streem   Delta thinks I am a liar.  Or at least it felt like they did on this phone call with me. If we had a video option, the entire experience would be better for both sides, and I would have the flight I wanted. Video can be the untapped jewel of your experience design, and we will explain why.    The problem was a schedule change that put me out of Boston instead of Atlanta. I wanted to switch the flight back to Atlanta on a different one that was the same price but was unable to do so on my own online. So, I called the contact center. Unfortunately, they had a different fare on their system than I did, so I felt they didn’t think I was telling the truth. During that phone call with Delta, I wished I could show them what I had on my screen so they could trust me.    I had a similar experience with my doctor. I had pain in my chest and wanted to indicate to the doctor where it was without seeing him or giving him a 400-word description. The video was not an option, so it was a wordy description in stops and starts.    In this episode, we talk with special guest Jóhann Hannesson, Lead Product Manager and the head of Web Development at Streem, about using video in a Customer Experience. Hannesson says that video could be the missing link between your customer who has a problem and the expert they are talking to in the contact center who, through video, can help them faster.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   So, why do humans prefer video in these situations? There are two answers. First, there is a level of information exchange that words do not always have. You are not always depending on a customer that is not necessarily an expert in communicating the problem with terms concisely and accurately with the contact center. Second, it facilitates communication by allowing people to talk and look at the problem together.  Video allows the customers and contact centers to work together on the situation.    Here are a few other critical moments in the discussion:   01:55  We introduce our guest host, Jóhann Hannesson, Lead Product Manager and the head of Web Development at Streem. 05:55  Hannesson explains how interactions with a contact center have friction when they rely on non-expert customers to communicate with expert contact center employees and how video can help resolve them in practical ways.  15:21  We learn that not only does video make calls easier for the customers, but they also improve the employee experience, too. 22:00  Hannesson explains how video has improved customer contacts and helped resolve issues more efficiently.   25:07  Hannesson shares a specific case study that used video to reduce repeat home visits.   29:22  We all share our practical advice about how to use video to improve the metrics that matter most to your organization (and that none of us are footballers, in case you were wondering).        Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as a 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' He has 290,000 followers for his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected it as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

When it comes to the behavioral sciences, I love their take on memory. I love it so much, that we did a podcast mini-series on it in three parts.    In the first part, we talked about why memories are essential to experiences, when we use them to decide sometimes, and how memories form.    The second part covered how memories are connected and the different types of memories we have.    In this final episode of the memory mini-series, we explore how we store, retrieve, and forget memories.   Why all this hullabaloo about memory? Simply put, I think too many organizations underestimate the significance of the effects customers’ memories have on their bottom line. Memories are essential to experiences. They connect us to our past and drive our behavior in the present. In many ways, memories define us.   Memory is also essential to customer loyalty and retention. Nobel-Prize-Winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman explained it all to me ten years ago and I never forgot: customers don’t choose between experiences; they choose between the memories of an experience.   In this episode, we discuss how we retrieve, store, and forget memories. However, we also talk about what you can do with this information to ensure that when customers are sorting through their memories of your experience, they come back for more every time.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   In our Memory Maker Training, we cover the importance of memories to your experience and how to train your employees to create excellent and lasting ones of your experience. This training builds upon your choice of the experience you want to deliver customers, whether that’s making them feel valued or cared for or something else in that moment. These memories are reinforced by the words, phrases, body language and tone used by your team.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   04:01  Ryan gets the discussion started by going over how our minds store memories and the influences on that process. 12:12  We learn how SOHCAHTOA from trigonometry is an excellent example of mnemonic devices that help us remember things and why.  13:57  Colin explains how an app called  What Three Words uses an easier to remember way to pinpoint your location than coordinate numbers.  16:05  We discuss the Zeigarnik Effect and how it helps us retrieve memories, along with some other interesting tools.    26:41  We discuss how we sometimes misremember things, as studied by Elizabeth Loftus and presented on her TED Talk.   31:24  Ryan and I get into the “So what?” of memory and how you can apply what you have learned practically in your customer strategy.         Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Memories do not exist alone. They are networked…and this network isn’t a bunch of the same kind of information arranged in neat order and categorized by type. It’s a network of different memory types intermingling facts and feelings, procedures, and judgements, all influencing each other in interesting ways.    Memory is what creates customer loyalty. It doesn’t matter what parts of your customer strategy you design. If customers don’t remember that you did it, it won’t matter later.    It’s for this reason that we love the subject of memory. So, we did a mini-series about it.    In this episode, the second part of a three-part mini-series on Memory, we build on the concepts we shared in the first episode. We talk about the memory network and how it works. We also discuss the different types of memories. Plus, we get into one of my favorite concepts from the “father of the behavioral sciences,” Nobel-Prize-winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman, the Peak-End Rule.    It's sure to be  an episode you will never forget.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   There are a lot of things that memories are. They are facts, procedures, feelings, and evaluations. One thing they are not is a sole existence. We kick off this episode with an explanation of the network of memories that makes it clear what we mean.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   02:53  Ryan explains his metaphor of a fishing net to describe how memories connect to each other in our minds. 11:06  We discuss the different types of memories and how they form.     15:39  Colin explains how sometimes organizations can design experiences that train customers to use them, like the site where he buys his sheet music for the guitar. 19:04  We get into how habits are a type of memory, albeit and automatic and subconscious one.    22:13  Colin tells a story that is sure to mean that his daughter will never let him babysit his grandchild again.   23:55  Ryan explains Episodic memory, which is the one that is most like what experienced champions should do for their customer strategy.       You can listen to part 1 of our mini-series on memory here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Memory is crucial to customer strategy. Understanding customer behavior requires a fundamental understanding of how we access and use memories in our daily life and how it drives decision making in our actions and even who we decide to trust.   In other words, understanding people requires understanding their memories. Further, it requires knowing what they remember and why, and also, what they don’t remember at all.    This week, the Intuitive Customer is going Netflix. We present the first of our three-part series on Memory. It’s the Memory Mini-Series, Part 1. In it, we explore how our behavior is motivated by our memories. We also take a closer look at how memories form, and where it lives in your mind, or whether it ends up in the memory wastebasket instead.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Memory is a giant subject as it relates to Customer Experience. It affects what customers remember about your brand, what they order or buy from you, and whether they ever come back. In essence, managing customer behavior requires managing their memories.    6:43  Ryan explains why memories are not all, but almost all of human psychology. 9:36  Colin asks Ryan to explain whether memory has anything to do with the decision-making shortcuts people use to make decisions, and Ryan explains that some do, and some don’t. 17:37 Ryan explains how brands are a memory-based structure in the minds of your customers, their thoughts, and feelings that they associated with your offering and why that is. 21:21 We explore how memories form, and how the different types of memory formations differ from each other, starting with how memories exist in our minds. 26:46  We explain why Ryan can still order a pizza from Pizza Hut in Cleveland, even though he hasn’t lived there in decades, and what to expect in the next installment of our three-part series on memory.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

What did you do during the lockdown? Did you take up a hobby or a new exercise program? Did you watch hours of news coverage hoping for some good news? Were you in the kitchen working with your sourdough starter? Or were you on the couch watching the entirety of Netflix?   All were excellent pursuits, by the way, especially the bread making. However, one of my team was spending the lock down a different way: taking a deeper dive on the data we have collected on our Emotional Signature® research.  What he found there became a book.    Our Emotional Signature research measures the level of emotional engagement you have with customers right now and determines what the really want from you. We undertake this exercise by asking a lot of questions. As a result, we have loads of responses, nearly a million in fact.    We had looked at it for each project, gleaning the insight for our client and then filing it away for posterity. However, we had never undertaken a perusal of the whole batch together, even though I thought we should and often told my team we were sitting on a gold mine. It only took a global pandemic to get us to start digging.   In this episode, we talk with Zhecho Dobrev, Senior Consultant at Beyond Philosophy for 13 years, Customer Experience and Behavior Science Consultant and Trainer, and, now, Author of The Big Miss: How Organizations Overlook the Value of Emotions, about what he found and whether any of it was worth its weight in gold. You can follow Zhecho on Twitter here.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience     In many ways, this research is significant in scope and fairly international. Dobrev's book uses the responses from nearly 20,000 customers from 24 organizations within nine industry sectors, including  healthcare, finance, telecoms, utilities, and others. While there were plenty of business-to-consumer models, almost half were business-to-business companies, too. Respondents were from the US, UK, Canada, and Europe. With all the resources and data gathered over the past two decades, what Dobrev discovered about customer behavior might surprise you.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   03:53  Zhecho explains what he was looking at and what he was looking for during his lockdown with a decade’s worth of Beyond Philosophy Emotional Signature data.   08:15  Zhecho shares some interesting research that demonstrates that despite knowing that how customers feel affects decision-making, most organizations ignore it.    15:36  We get into the opportunity costs associated with ignoring this essential part of the customer experience to organizations, including the development of a Wicked Learning environment, which we discussed a few weeks back.     20:19  We hear a story of how a closer look at what people really want helped move the ball for the YMCA gyms.    23:56  Zhecho shares another example from a luxury store in California that measured the brain activity of an employee while managing the emotional experience and how it resulted in more sales for the store. 27:51  Ryan shares his experience with managing emotions and shares his advice for how to apply this in a real world experience.  28:56  Zhecho shares his advice for how to apply these ideas in practical ways for your organization.          Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   In my 20 years as a consultant for Customer Experience, I have been involved in several successful implementations. The Maersk Line project that I worked on with Michél Patterson, a continuous improvement expert in Lean Six Sigma was one of the most, with an improvement of 40 points for their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) over 30 months. What’s more is they also experienced a 10 percent increase in shipping volumes.   Implementation was a big part of that success. To that end, in this episode we share the five rules of a successful customer experience implementation. Michel Patterson takes the lead on this one, as a career-long believer in continuous improvement providing the following five rules she used in her first, and very successful, project with customer experience improvement:     Define: What are you trying to accomplish? Measure: How will you know if what you do is working? Analyze: What changes are possible that might improve experiences? Improve: How can you roll these changes out on a larger basis? Control: How can you keep things moving in the right direction?   In this episode, we cover these five rules and how they played out in our highly successful Customer Experience implementation for the world’s largest shipping container company.      Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   If you know anything about Lean Six Sigma, you probably recognize the five rules. These phases of the implementation serve as excellent guideposts in a customer experience project like this one. Michel Patterson says that for her first project in the implementation area, these five areas were the natural inclination for organizing their efforts with Maersk.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   06:44  Michel Patterson explains how she didn’t have a lot of experience with handling customer experience improvement projects, so she relied on her Lean Six Sigma background and project management structure, starting with Define. 14:43  Michel Patterson explains the concept about putting Measure second in the list and why it is essential it is there. 22:04  We discuss the third in the list, Analyze and how the changes you make are going to improve the experience and move the metric identified in the second step, Measure.    25:00  Colin brings up the Ambassadors, how they were chosen, and the role they played in the implementation.  26:52 After you improve your experience in a bigger way based on the first three steps, you land at Control, which is where you keep things going and improving continuously.   30:58  Colin adds in some details he remembers from the implementation and how they played into the success of the overall project.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Intuition is a concept that plays a major role in decision-making for all humans. Intuition is the way we can “know” things without using our reasoning. It is based on our instincts and experiences, and our need to find patterns for things in our lives.    Unfortunately, intuition isn’t always right. Knowing when intuition could be correct and when it might not be is a critical skill for any of us, particularly in business.    Robin Hogarth’s book, The Myth of Experience, can help. In it, Hogarth has theories about intuition and how it forms, and in what conditions it might be more reliable than others.    In this episode, we explore the idea of intuition, how cognition affects it, and what environmental factors affect its reliability. We also share some practical advice on how you can overcome your propensity to use instinct and combine it with rational processes to get the best possible outcome for yourself and your organization.      Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   We talk about intuition as a “gut feeling” or “something we know in our hearts.” However, intuition lives squarely in our brains. It is part of the two systems of cognition that we all share. One system is fast and automatic, while the other is slow and methodical. Intuition comes from the fast and automatic part, so understanding how that works will also help you understand when your intuition is serving you—or failing you.   03:48 Ryan discusses what he learned from Hogarth’s book regarding where intuition comes from and how it forms. 06:31  We discuss how intuition plays a role in my Apple product obsession.  10:45  Hogarth’s research indicates that there are two environments under which intuitions form, kind and wicked, which has a video that explains it well.  15:51  We discuss how you might not always know which kind of environment you are in, kind or wicked, and are often fooled; this video also explains how people get fooled and why.  23:48   Moneyball, either the book or the movie, gives us a good example on how to build upon the instinctive decisions we favor and coupling that with rational processes to ensure it isn’t wrong. 25:42  We share the practical advice we can glean from this concept and apply them to your decision making and what resources you trust.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

My iPhone is getting bossy. It suggested widgets based on the time of day I was using it. This proactive experience is the future of experiences. Unfortunately, few organizations know how to build them.    While the definition of proactive experience is somewhat fluid at the moment, perhaps the best way to describe it is to solve a problem before the customer knows they have one. This proactive experience is powered by the emerging field of Customer Science, a convergence of data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the behavioral sciences. Intaking a variety of consumer inputs, the machine will output a response intended to resolve these customers’ predicted needs creating a positive engagement tool for customer service.   There are benefits to customers with proactive experiences. Many customers want a proactive experience because it feels more personal, improving consumer satisfaction. It makes a person feel more important and appreciated when a system tries to recognize what they want.    Organizations benefit, too. To the company, proactive experiences provide a different advantage: customer retention. If customers feel more satisfied with their experience, they are more likely to return to your site in the future. In this episode, we invited Vasili Triant, Chief Operating Officer of Ujet, to  tell us more about what is possible with proactive experiences. He shares many go-to-market activities that can help organizations gain the first-mover advantage rather than we-are-getting-left-behind hustle.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   A company can do a few things to create this positive engagement tool for customer service. It all starts with understanding your customers, which involves customer segmentation, dividing them into similar groups, and appealing to what they have in common and value collectively. From there, you must hire people to transform this information into algorithms that can predict what the customer wants to do based upon indicators provided by said customer.   Here are a few critical moments in the discussion:   06:17 Vasili introduces the concept of proactive customer service, its definition, and its benefits. 10:33 We discuss the process of formulating a proactive customer experience and how to ensure its success. 15:45 We discuss how proactivity contributes to the future of customer experience. 25:22 Vasili explains how proactive customer experiences help to predict customer behavior. 27:50   Vasili details his frequently asked questions and the answers he uses to help organizations take advantage of this engagement tool to boost the customer service experiences.    This podcast was produced in partnership with Ujet.cx. You can find more on them on their Twitter page here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as a 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' He has 290,000 followers. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Is your idea of an ideal evening a nice meal at home and a book or a Netflix queue?    Or would you rather be at a cocktail party with people from all walks of life exchanging stories or jumping up and down to a throbbing beat in the middle of a crowded dance floor?    How you answer this question is one of many ways that you can explore your personality type. The personality you have will help you determine how to leverage your strengths (and confront your “opportunities”) on your path to success.    Psychology research determined that there are common areas of personality that all people share with many characteristics that fall under them. They are the Big Five Personality Dimensions and they might be useful to you on a journey of self-discovery.    In this episode, we explore the Big Five Personality Dimensions and how they might affect your preferences. We also look at the characteristics that fall under those dimensions to determine how these facets can affect our choices.      Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   The Big Five Personality Dimensions are the areas of our personality that drive our decisions. They include Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness. For each dimension, there are personality traits that are associated with the area. For example, Extroversion, which determines how you generate your energy around (or away from) people, has facets like warmth, assertiveness, and excitement seeking, as a few of them. We think taking an online quiz is a great start in a journey of exploration for better self-awareness, as well as understanding the people around you.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   05:00   Ryan shares his insight on the differences between the two personality camps for psychological research and how it relates to the Big Five Personality Dimensions. 11:32   We discuss some of the psychology tests that human resources departments often use and how we think they should be applied to a journey of self-awareness and discovery.  17:05  We cover the Five Dimensions of Personality and explain what they are, as well as the characteristics associated with each area. 24:26  Colin shares a story about how a leadership conference revealed to him several years ago how his personality traits were interpreted by his team through communication, and how they didn’t necessarily match his self-view.  27:50   We share the practical applications we see for personality exploration in customer experience, customer strategy, and personal self-discovery.        Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers!   To vote, please click here.   I am grumpy about customer experience these days. Recently, I vented a bit of my frustration on LinkedIn and asking has the world gone mad? This realization came with a bunch of different things in my life as a customer went wrong, from gate delays on the tarmac for transcontinental flights on both sides of the pond to a house in shambles because of materials delays and poor project management.    Interestingly, it is not simply a case of a single company or industry experiencing failures; the problem is everywhere. From theme parks to airlines, the responses to my rant revealed issues that seem to encompass a wide range of businesses.    The reader's replies voiced many opinions about the possible causes and solutions for these declining experiences. One reader suggested that the lack of good service is due to a lack of motivated workers wanting to be paid more for less work. Another commenter theorized that the culprits might be high expectations, insufficient staffing, and a lack of empathy.      In this episode, we talk about many of the problems with experiences we are seeing today and what we can do about them—and how we can adapt to the new normal.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   While many may be quick to blame the entire situation on COVID, many of the problems we are seeing today are also influenced by other factors. For example, many labor pool shortages in the UK are affected by population migration resulting from Brexit, which makes organizations hard-pressed to find warm bodies, let alone the right warm bodies, to fill their open positions. Also, some of the problems are cultural. For example, one reader shared her perspective as a Dutch person living in Britain. Then, of course, there is the computer to deal with, and sometimes it says no (Warning: Fruity language at the end of this video). Regardless of the causes for this shift in customer service quality, we must begin to repair some of the damage.   Here are a few more key moments in the discussion:   1:38 Colin talks about his frustrations with flights to and from JFK Airport and the subsequent LinkedIn post about the world going crazy. 04:30: We discuss the declining customer satisfaction index and some of our listeners’ responses. 08:05: We evaluate a commenters assessment that customer service quality has declined due to a shrinking labor pool.  12:40: We look at COVID-19 and how it may have affected quality of Customer Experience by raising consumer expectations. 17:12: We examine a listener’s poor experience with Disney and how it is representative of a larger labor shortage problem around many larger corporations. 22:52: We explain how COVID did not cause all customer service issues but rather worsened previously existing ones. Specifically, we look at Brexit and economic downturn in Europe. 32:40: Ryan discusses a listeners review of good customer service and then we look at solutions for these customer and employee experience issues.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers!   To vote, please click here.   Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an incredible technology with potential to shape the future of humanity. However, it is fundamentally flawed. Who messes it up? That’s right, human programmers.    The common misconception is that AI is a pure technological brain built from scratch without the risk of human influence. The truth is the program is incapable of performing tasks beyond the boundaries of the specific situations for which the algorithms were designed.   Take the basic linear regression formula: y = mx + b. This simple equation is a program to figure out the output or “Y” by means of the input “B” through the algorithm “mx.” All that an AI is doing can be summarized at a basic level in this equation. It is finding an output from an input using a fundamental algorithm. Since the AI is simply doing the math, the algorithm is the most important part of any AI.    Understanding these principles, it is apparent what really matters in AI construction is the importance put upon the inputs in the coding process. Currently, AI is not capable of making these decisions; only human coders have that power.    In this episode, we talk about today’s AI and its flaws with our guest Broderick Turner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Marketing at Virginia Tech., and founder of TRAP LAB (Technology Race and Prejudice LAB). We explore the inherent biases built into programmers’ decisions when making AI’s—and the ridiculousness of a robot uprising with the technology we have today.    So, What’s AI Good for Then?   Many of us perceive AI as mysterious as a magic trick. However,  in reality, AI is a series of algorithms. In other words, AI is merely the means of producing an output from an input based upon the algorithm put in place by the programmer. Therefore, AI tends to work best when the inputs are limited.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   03:46 Dr. Turner introduces “Weapons of Math Destruction”, the concept that AIs are merely opinions written in code, and what that means for AI. 05:30 We discuss the absurdity of the idea of an AI takeover and why this would be impossible with our current technology. 09:32 Ryan asks Dr. Turner to explain what scenarios AI is good for and we discuss some of the most successful AI products in the modern world. 13:09 Dr. Turner discusses his own private research including how AI is used in conjunction with YouTube thumbnails to determine optimization for view counts for advertisers. 17:12 We discuss how AI is used to determine which thumbnails will be the default based upon data collected through user trials and how AI is effective in this field. We then discuss how AI audits are conducted in these scenarios. 26:28 We discuss the results of the audits conducted by Dr. Turner and what this means about the user groups of the sites tested. 32:40 Dr. Turner discusses the racial and gender biases found in websites like Twitter and how the algorithms the sites use affect them.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could you vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers!   To vote, please click here.   There is a compelling and interesting Sci-Fi show on Netflix called “The OA.” But I don’t recommend watching it.    I wouldn’t watch it because this show was victim of outdated broadcast content strategy in a streaming-dominated world of television. However, I mention it because it represents what can happen if you neglect to update your customer strategy to invest in your Long Tail business model.    The Long Tail refers to a different inventory approach made possible by the Internet. It represents the ability to have any number of options available in virtual form for the consumption of consumer groups of any number and still be profitable. It allows you to offer more options without regard for the shelf space needed in a physical space. The Long Tail strategy is particularly applicable to content, like books or television shows, but it likely has applications in many other business verticals as well.    In this episode, we explore the implications of the Long Tail strategy for customer experiences and how we can learn a lot from Netflix’s mistakes in this area. We also give you practical ways to apply these business lessons to your own Long Tail customer strategy.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   “The OA” is a show with two seasons, referred to as parts, that ends the second season with a significant cliff hanger. However, since the other three parts of the original five-part story arc were never made, it hangs there in the Netflix Original inventory unresolved, forever. It is an unsatisfying end to an otherwise compelling show. That’s why even though you can watch the “The OA”  right now, I don’t recommend it. You will never get the answers you seek about what happened. We take a look at why this happens and what we can learn from it for your Long Tail customer strategy.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   01:36  Ryan introduces the premise of what happened with the Netflix show “The OA” and why their content strategy creates problems with their catalog.  04:32  Colin explains the concept of Long Tail and how it applied to Amazon’s business model in the early days and later became an essential part of other businesses’ offerings. 12:16  We discuss how Netflix might be a victim of using an old broadcast strategy to their approach to creating and renewing content, and how it can poison their Long Tail offering.     17:04  Colin asks Ryan to explain why humans need completion from a psychological standpoint, which Ryan ascribes to cognitive dissonance and our discomfort with feeling unresolved. 22:26  Ryan tells the story of France’s Maginot Line and how fighting an old war did nothing to help defend the country from the Germans in World War II. 24:52 We explain how you can apply what we see happening at Netflix to your own experience and its Long Tail possibilities and opportunities.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers!   To vote, please click here.   Usually, we have one pickle per podcast. However, today’s podcast has two pickles per podcast. Sure, it’s still The Intuitive Customer Podcast, just now with an extra pickle.    Our first pickle comes from Jane, who works at a large business-to-business company. They are implementing a Voice of Customer program to identify critical improvements necessary for the organizations. However, to get the insight they need to make sweeping changes, they need robust data collection. Jane asked us for advice on how to increase their survey response rates to get the data they need, and also how to get the local team to get on board with the data collection process.    Our second, extra pickle, comes from Elizabeth, who asks, how is inflation affecting people’s ability to buy? Since I am sure that we are all curious about this issue—both as businesses and consumers—we thought we would include this one as a bonus.    In this episode, we respond to both Jane and Elizabeth’s business pickles. First, we discuss how Jane can increase her response rates to her survey and get the team on board with the new initiative. Then, we dive into research from consumer research firm Attest that tells us a bit about how people feel about inflation and how that is going to affect their customer behavior.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Previous podcasts might help take a bit of a deeper dive on each of our listener’s pickles. We had a podcast, that we produced in partnership with Attest, on the 5 Rules for Customer Research a few weeks ago, which addresses the areas of Jane’s pickle. Also, we did an episode recently called, Inflation is Going to Kill My CX, and that addresses some of the ways to respond to inflation in your experience.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   03:07  We hear the background on Jane’s pickle and what their company is trying to do.    06:37  Ryan shares perspective on how you can motivate people to respond to the survey in different ways, and Colin adds that considering who you are asking will also influence how you motivate them.     14:23 Colin explains how communication about how you will use the data you collect and being selective about how often you ask will both boost response rates. 20:44  We learn about Elizabeth’s question regarding inflation, and Colin shares interesting statistics that he gleaned from Attest's US inflation sentiment tracker. 24:06  Ryan explains how the way we buy gas might make the feelings about gas prices more painful.  26:08  Both Ryan and Colin share their insights on how organizations can respond to customers that are bombarded with price hikes and personal cutbacks that build relationships instead of destroying them.       We produced this podcast in partnership with Attest.     Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.     Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

When I was still a lad, around 10, I brought home a school report that read, “Colin is the class clown.” I am still proud of that report card to this day. Humor is an essential part of life and, surprisingly enough, business. There are numerous ways to use humor to your advantage in your customer strategy.     You might have heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine.” That’s because it is. There are many health benefits of laughter. Laughter reduces tension and increases trust in relationships. It can make an uncomfortable situation more bearable, which is good for everyone’s mental health, too.    Laughter is an excellent strategic tool in business, as well as in life. When we laugh, it feels disarming, and we are more willing to listen to people who make us laugh—because we hope they will do it again! When people are listening to you, there are many more opportunities to be persuasive.    I always want my team to use humor, appropriate humor, of course. I also encourage them to read the room, or, to put it another way, ensure that their joke is coming at the right time.    In this episode, we explore the many ways that humor can encourage your customer strategy in a positive direction. We also talk about the four theories behind what makes something funny, and have many clips that demonstrate what we mean.    (Also, it is important to note that the comedy clips have a bit of fruity (aka, bad) language, so be careful if you play them at work or around your mum.)   Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience   We discuss the four theories of humor, which, to be honest, don’t sound funny at all. As we go through them, some of you naturally funny people will understand these concepts intuitively. However, for those that want to be more amusing and use comedy more effectively in their customer strategy, it is helpful to be familiar with what makes something funny to people. So, consider how you can apply these concepts to business, whether through the contact center and account management interactions, or marketing messaging, or even in the conference room.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   09:05 We begin with the first of four theories of humor, Superiority Theory, which is much better than the other three for sure. 14:51 Ryan talks about the second theory of humor, Relief Theory, and we all felt a lot better afterward.   19:50 Incongruity Theory is the third theory we discuss, but it didn’t go at all like we expected. 25:05 The last theory, Benign Violation Theory, explains how breaking social norms or language meaning is what makes this type funny that Ryan probably made up because he needed a fourth one to finish out the list.    27:03 Colin asks Ryan to explain where sarcasm falls into all of this and then proceeds to use a bunch of British slang that really cleared things up for all of us. 35:51 Colin and Ryan break down how all of these theories can be useful in your customer strategy.        We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers!   To vote, please click here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

I was recently out and about and thought how happy I was that the pandemic was behind us. Many people must feel the same way because retail is bouncing back after two terrible years. However, it’s not bouncing back to the way it was before. Customers have changed how they want things and organizations should take advantage of how a physical and virtual experience work together in their customer strategy.    Bjorn contacted us with this very question. He has a business pickle that he wants help with, specifically, how to leverage the technology like Customer Science and online tools developed during the pandemic to enhance the brick-and-mortar Customer Experience.    In this episode, we explore this subject. We give examples of some excellent versions of this integration as well as areas of opportunity for them. We refer to two other podcasts, Nissan and the Metaverse, that discuss these types of integrations that might also help surrounding this topic.  We also give Bjorn and the rest of you the practical advice that can make this process work for your customers and your bottom line.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Different people want distinctive experiences at various times. This idea is the foundation of Customer Segmentation and targeted marketing. When discussing an integration between online and physical Customer Strategies, it is essential to consider why people want one over the other or why they were motivated to be in the type of interaction they are at any given time. This understanding will help you create an integration strategy that enhances things for your customers rather than detracts.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   02:40  We hear about Bjorn’s pickle from Bjorn himself and reflect on how the pandemic changed both online and brick-and-mortar interactions likely forever. 06:01  Colin shares a story about a recent shopping experience that was an excellent example of what is possible with the physical/virtual experience integration until they blew it at the end. 11:35  We talk about how the most important question to ask when comparing shoppers between online and in-person is their motivation for being there.  14:30  Colin shares some interesting statistics from McKinsey’s “What's Next for Digital Consumers? May 23rd, 2021,” which leads to a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of human interactions in Customer Experiences and how organizations should adapt experiences regarding that.    22:53  Colin talks about how Customer Science and the AI involved will enable more customer segmentation that was possible in an analog world.  29:24  We summarize our discussion and what it means for practical steps organizations can take to successfully integrate digital and physical experiences moving forward.       Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.   We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers!   To vote, please click here.       Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. 

Breakthrough thinking: Why do we believe things that are not true?   There was a car brand several decades ago in the UK called ŠKODA. It was a terrible car, much like Yugo was in the US. However, they have changed their image and today, my son wants to buy one. I told him the jokes we all used to have about ŠKODA and their low-quality construction (What do a ŠKODA and a baby have in common? They never go anywhere without a rattle.)    My son doesn’t care. His perception is that they are a great car company. Mine hasn’t changed.    Now, I know my son better than anyone, except maybe his wife and mother. I know he is sensible and good with his money. He’s no Wally. If he decides to do something, he bloody well knows why (he gets that from me). Nevertheless, his opinion that the company is better now has done nothing to change my mind.    In this episode we are exploring why we believe things that are not true, even when faced with facts. Psychologically, there are a lot of reasons we do this. We also talk about how you can overcome a bad reputation and change customers perceptions of you with your customer strategy. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t happen fast.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   There are a few reasons why we won’t change our minds even when the facts tell us we should. Some are psychological; some are social. However, they are all at work in this critical customer strategy concept.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   04:31  Colin shares how the different spread of information about the war in Ukraine in the West vs. Russia can ensure that the Russian people don’t change their minds or stop supporting it.  09:19  Ryan answers Colin’s questions about why people don’t change their minds even when they are presented with information that they are wrong about something with several influences.  12:32  We discuss how the self-image can get in the way of changing one’s mind, also; we push away negativity from our self-image.     16:12  We talk about the length of time it takes to change minds and what it takes during that time to ensure it happens. 19:11 Ryan tells a story about how social agendas can also get in the way of changing one’s minds, and it will probably not surprise you to know that politics is a culprit.  26:54  Colin reviews what he thinks the key learning is for organizations and how we would combat these inclinations with customer strategy.         Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Podcast Summary A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. 5 Rules for Effective Customer Research That Make A Difference Customer research is an essential part of any organization’s customer strategy. However, it requires more than emailing a customer survey out over seven years or so. Customer research requires a few things to be effective in driving the metrics that matter for your experiences.  This episode, with guest Sam Killip, Director of Customer Research from consumer research platform, Attest, which helps organizations understand their customers. Attest’s global online consumer platform taps into hundreds of thousands of consumers around the globe.  Killip says their clients survey consumers to understand consumers' views and what they're doing, thinking, and feeling to feed into their customer strategy. With her help, we devised a list of five rules for making these efforts effective.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The 5 Rules for Effective Customer Research That Make a Difference include: 1. Define the right method. 2. Get under the skin of the customer. 3. Cast your net wide. 4. Respect the respondents. 5. Do them little and often rather than large-scale. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:09  Killip explain a little background about Attest and how she came to her position there after a long career in law before joining the team. 05:04  We share the first rule, Define the right method, and discuss why survey answers are not always the best way to understand why customers do what they do.  08:55  We introduce the second rule, Get under the skin of the customer, and why mom and pop shop owners knew this one from day one, and how larger companies can gain that same understanding. 14:36  When talking about rule number three, Cast your net wide, Tillip explains how you can get into trouble when you make too many assumptions about your who your customers are. 20:18  As we move into the second to last rule, Respect the respondents, we focus on appreciation for the people who provide the customer voice and the essential nature of keeping them engaged with the project. 23:49  We cover the last rule, Do them little and often rather than large-scale, and why this one is essential to keeping your finger on the pulse of the customer sentiment. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We have another business pickle to address. This time it’s with Christine Jones who is having problem with her organization not taking customer complaints or the Voice of Customer program seriously.    We have been there. Ryan once worked at a grocery store that had a suggestion box that he never once in all the years he worked there saw opened. He suspects that no one even had the key anymore.    Colin’s corporate employer engaged in a pricey customer survey every year, listened to the results, including the complaints, and then carried on with business-as-usual. When Colin complained, one person suggested maybe they stop doing the customer survey.    In this episode, we explore why this happens with Voice of Customer feedback and complaints. We also share practical and actionable steps to change this for your organizations—and none of them are to stop getting customer feedback.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Organizations that are monopolies don’t need to bother with customer feedback. However, monopolies are few and far between. For the rest of the organizations, which is almost all of them, competition necessitates taking customer complaints seriously—before your customers become the competition’s customers.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   01:58  We read Christine’s pickle and share our stories that commiserate her problem, because it’s not an uncommon one, especially in business today. 06:00  Colin shares his last point first with Christine, which is exactly what he did in the same situation: realize that it could be that this organization might not be the best fit for her long term.    13:57  Ryan explains that empathy for fellow employees will help customer strategy champions to help them prioritize the experience agenda, which might mean making allies higher up in the organization. 19:26  We discuss Confirmation Bias and Reference Points and how they play a role in how organizations view the Voice of Customer and customer complaints (hint: they are not small ones).   24:24  We share the practical things that Christine can do in this environment to affect change and get the organization to take customer complaints seriously. 29:24  We talk about what might be the greatest customer complaint ever set to music, United Breaks Guitars.     Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Your Customers Want Self-Service, and Here’s What You Need to Know about Why   You bend over backwards to provide helpful customer service. You look for the best team members, with the right attitude and aptitude to take care of your customers in every way.    What it means to “take care” of customers is changing. So, while a focus on customer service is a sound and proven strategy, it could be what your customers want most is for your employees to leave them alone. Customers would rather take care of themselves with self-service.   However, self-service isn’t the only service that customers want. There are times when self-service doesn’t work, and only having that option will create a bad experience.    In this episode, we discuss why people want self-service and what any company should consider when providing customers that option. We also talk about when self-service doesn’t work and why—and those reasons might surprise you.    Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience   Two stats caught our attention from consumer research company Attest’s US Food and Beverage Report from July 2021.  The first was 72 percent of Gen-Z shoppers would rather use self-checkout at the grocery store, and the second was that 68 percent of all shoppers would rather try clothes and makeup online with the help of a virtual tool. Attest’s research indicates that younger people like self-service for everyday interactions. It also suggests that shoppers of any age are pretty happy with online shopping for things that were traditionally in-person purchases.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   04:33  We start off the conversation by discussing if this is about wanting more or less human interaction or a generational thing. 07:56  Ryan shares the most important question to ask regarding making the move to a self-service channel (Hint: it’s about customers). 12:24  Colin talks about how he uses self-service in his Freedom Boat Club membership and why he prefers booking flights online over talking to a company representative (Hint: It’s because he’s picky).    17:18  Ryan explains how customers wanting to be in control is a significant driver in a self-service preference, and why not everybody feels that way. 18:27  Ryan explains some of the psychology that is underneath these preferences and needs, as well as suggesting a summer reading assignment for our listeners that want to know more. 22:33  We get into the advice we have for firms regarding self-service for their experiences as well as what to avoid in those situations.         Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

How do you know if someone trusts you? Is it how they talk to you? How much time do they spend with you? What do they say about you when you aren’t around? We might argue the answer is D, all of the above. Plus, there are many other behaviors people have that indicate they trust you. Moreover, these things are true whether we are talking about people in your personal life or customers on your sales reports.  All this talk about trust is because of Bob. As you may remember, some of our listeners write into our “I’m in a Pickle” feature of the podcast. This week we consult Bob about how to find out if the account he manages as part of his new position trusts his company.  Bob’s wants to know if we have any tests that will help him determine if they do. In this episode, we talk about the many ways you can find out if your customers trust you. They range from the direct to the obscure but should give you a clear picture of how customers feel about your company regarding trust and many other emotions you want to know about. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Bob’s question inspired not just one answer, but several. We have four suggestions for Bob that can help determine if his account trusts his company. Each of them is effective in their own way, and also works together with the others to create a complete picture of the trust in this significant business relationship.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:29  Our listener Bob shares his pickle as a new employee at a company handling a big account that wants to test whether the account trusts his company, and asks for our help. 04:13  We share our first suggestion for Bob, which is to ask customers if they trust you, preferably on surveys, which is the easy part; the hard part is what we tell you about the answers. 08:13  The second secret we share builds upon the first one by suggesting you pose scenarios and ask questions whose answers will indicate what they think about you.     15:39  We talk about how to use what you know about customer behavior data to discern how much customers trust you, including what they want to hide from you. 22:02  Ryan explains how trust experiments and games can also indicate how customers feel about you, including an example from the British TV hit show, “Golden Balls.”   Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

The contact center at many organizations doesn’t get the strategic consideration it deserves. My former contact center team at British Telecom seemed to be viewed primarily as a cost center, a necessary expense. As a result, their team was always pressured to streamline staffing, coached to be as efficient as possible with multiple priorities, and designed to generate the least amount of cost.  These measures weren’t bad business principles, but they also didn’t send the best signal to the team. Contact center employees felt like second-class citizens in the organization, not nearly as valuable or venerated as sales and marketing. However, the contact center should have been valued. The contact center is an essential component to your experience, and also contains a wealth of information about your customers. With all that rich data pouring in, the contact center can be a front-line help to the company and the company’s brand.  The tide is turning regarding how organizations view the contact center. We have the pandemic to thank for part of this realization about the contact center’s value. One of the few good things that came out of the pandemic was the acceleration of technology adoption and comfort. Plus, the need for contact center workers to work from home meant that organizations had to embrace the cloud, which is an essential element for the contact center technology of the future. In this episode, we host Thomas Goodmanson, President and CEO of Calabrio, a global Customer Experience intelligence company that builds software to enrich customer interactions. Goodmanson explains the future of contact centers and why now is an excellent time to be in the contact center game.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Goodmanson points out that high turnover rates are a source of frustration for many contact center organizations. Turnover makes it difficult to train your people in the skills necessary to deliver that experience you want for your brand. If you don’t have that front-line team there for the context, the data you collect is full of all your customer behavior insights, but inaccessible to put to work for your customer strategy.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:41  Goodmanson explains which parts of the employee experience of the contact center employee are broken and why.  08:30  Colin asks Goodmanson to take a deeper dive into how the software available for contact centers enriches human interactions and where that ties into Calabrio’s customer experience intelligence field. 14:21  We discuss the area of self-service and how some generational differences might drive the channels for future contact centers.     18:48  Goodmanson describes how software innovation will alleviate some of the stresses and pain points associated with a call center employee’s daily work.    22:00  Colin shares his view about how the experiences of the future that will be most successful are those that are proactive, and asks what Goodmanson thinks about that, too.  24:37  All three of the hosts share their advice and key takeaways for the future of contact centers.        This episode is sponsored by Calabrio.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Verint  is an expert in the Voice of Customer and have been for over 25 years. Their Verint on the Engagement Capacity Gap  report is essential reading for experience professionals today. Fleischaker emphasizes the critical nature of ensuring that you don’t overlook Voice of Customer data, which is crucial part, so you can optimize the relevance of the insights you get from it. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:59  08:07   12:51   20:04   21:57  25:02   Verint sponsors this episode. Click here to register for Verint's annual engagement conference in Orlando from June 13 to June 16. Verint helps the world's most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work data and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and the science of customer engagement to meet shifting customer interactions and their ever-increasing demands.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

How many streaming services do you subscribe to? How many products are on Amazon Subscription in your Prime Account? Do you subscribe to satellite radio? How about music streaming? I think you get the point. We subscribe to everything. Subscriptions are as normal today as texting or drinking $6 versions of coffee that we can make for ourselves at home.  Subscriptions have a lot of appealing features to customers. In the U.S. Food and Beverage report by Attest, a consumer research platform, we learned that Of course, they also have a lot of benefits to the companies that offer them, not the least of which is a steady stream of income from its customer base.  In this episode, we explore the reasons why customer like subscriptions and how psychology influences these feelings. We also explain how behavioral sciences play a role there, too. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Many years ago, I subscribed to Amazon Prime to get faster shipping. As a result, I also get Amazon Prime streaming as part of the package, but it wasn’t the driving force behind my decision. Now, the irony is that I choose Amazon Day delivery to reduce how many shipping packages I receive. So, apparently, I no longer need the fast shipping, but I won’t cancel Amazon Prime because I don’t want to lose the streaming service. This example is not uncommon among subscribers. Loss Aversion is a significant influence on our behavior when we continue to subscribe. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:19  Before we get into the theories about why subscriptions work the way we do, we share some interesting examples of programs that are working, from phones to cars to…heated seats? 06:27  Colin shares some fascinating statistics revealed by Attest, a consumer research platform, in their latest Food and Beverage report. 11:14   Ryan explains the two perspectives regarding subscription services and what each of them likes best about it.     16:54   We discuss how Mental Accounting benefits from the lower installment pricing inherent in subscription programs. 20:33  We discuss the role of Loss Aversion in subscription service and how it can benefit organizations that offer them to customers. 29:17   We share our practical advice and what we think organizations should be wary of, or tragedy may ensue.       This podcast was done in partnership with Attest. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Customer Science is a vital part of any organization’s future success with their customer experience. The combination of AI, behavioral sciences, and data is a powerful way to gain insight into your customers behavior so you can provide a proactive and perfect experience for them.  But how good is the data you are feeding it? And are you feeding ALL your data into the mix? If our experience tells us anything, it’s that you probably aren’t, which can degrade the quality of the insights available to you. In this episode, we talk with Chief Marketing Officer of Verint,  Celia Fleischaker about the third part of the Customer Science fusion formula, data, and how to ensure that you are using all of yours.  Verint  is an expert in the Voice of Customer and have been for over 25 years. Their Verint on the Engagement Capacity Gap  report is essential reading for experience professionals today. Fleischaker emphasizes the critical nature of ensuring that you don’t overlook Voice of Customer data, which is crucial part, so you can optimize the relevance of the insights you get from it. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One significant issue with many organizations’ customer data is it isn’t collected in one place, nor is it in one format. This situation makes it difficult to leverage all the data you have. Often, organizations use what is easiest to use, e.g., sales numbers, geo locations, delivery records, rather than all that is available. However, it is in the layering of details that you have about customer behavior that you get the richest rewards from Customer Science. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:59 Fleischaker explain how the shift to digital channels has resulted in more data available for you to feed into your AI, including that from the Voice of Customer, which requires companies to consolidate it.  08:07  We hear about an insurer in Europe who is using Customer Science to improve first all resolution and Customer Experience in the contact center.    12:51  Colin asks Fleischaker how this influx of data used with Customer Science has changed marketing.    20:04  Fleischaker explains how the new approach to customer strategy will affect customer segmentation and targeting efforts. 21:57 We talk about the ways that leveraging your data can result in a proactive experience that anticipates customers’ needs. 25:02 All three of us share practical steps that organizations should take today to make their data work better for them in the science-driven future.       Verint sponsors this episode. Click here to register for Verint's annual engagement conference in Orlando from June 13 to June 16. Verint helps the world's most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work data and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and the science of customer engagement to meet shifting customer interactions and their ever-increasing demands.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. Experiments serve as the gold standard for determining causality. If we create them correctly, we know that an action we take makes something else happen and there isn’t any other explanation.  That is, if we create them correctly. Even in my corporate career I realized that determining causality is tricky. After presenting to organizations the revenue gains they can expect by taking my advice, they ask, “How do we know that your changes caused the increase instead of something else?” My answer was always the same, unsatisfying one: You won’t.   That’s because we can never know the causality of behavior at 100 percent certainty (even if we follow all the rules).  However, when we have more data we also have more confidence that there is no other explanation. Sound experiment creation strategies will help us build a solid case for our causality.  In this episode, we share the five rules for creating behavioral experiments. We talk about how academics design behavioral experiments and how that could work regarding your experimentation regarding changing experiences to inspire new customer behavior.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience So, what are the 5 rules? The 5 Rules for Running Behavioral Business Experiments include: Define your metrics and what you're going to measure.  Establish comparison conditions. Randomize or get as close to randomization as you possibly can.  Define the theory…or not. Foster a culture of experimentation. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:46  Ryan begins his list of rules by first explaining why you should care about following them, which is because proper experimentation determines causality. 07:43  We get into a discussion about the three things that you need to establish causality in your experiment and why they are important to your results. 10:12 Ryan begins the list of the rules, starting with the most foundational, which is to determine what you want to measure before you design your experiment.     12:48  We discuss why it is essential to establish different conditions in your experiment (Hint: it comes down to one word: comparison). 20:25  Ryan explains why having a theory going into an experiment than not having one.   25:42  We talk about why it is essential to allow failure with regards to experiments, and why you will be glad you did (most likely).    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Prices will never be low enough for customers. After all, have you ever got a customer survey back that said you should charge more for your product or service? Have you ever written that yourself as a customer? Of course you haven’t! Who would? As you may remember, some of our listeners write in to our “I’m in a Pickle” feature of the podcast. This week we consult Peter about his business-to-business (B2B) customers that push back on price. Peter’s company is not the cheapest, nor do they have plans to be, so he wants to know what he should do about this customer behavior. Too many organizations don't have a pricing strategy, even though having one is essential to your overall customer strategy. The foundational element is that you should communicate value. Without value that the customer sees, your price will never, ever be low enough.   Chances are, some of you have faced Peter’s problem, too. So, this episode is about customer pricing and the psychology surrounding it. Perhaps more importantly, it’s about how to keep your prices high and your customers feeling like they are getting a deal.  Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience In another podcast, we discussed Fernando’s problem regarding distinguishing a commodity from the others in the field. If you haven’t heard that one, a simple summary is determining how you are different from the other suppliers is first, and communicating this difference is second. These are the same principles vital for pricing strategy. After all, nothing is valuable until a customer is willing to pay for it.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:21  Ryan, who researches pricing in his academic career, talks about the different approaches one can take to address pricing issues with customers, starting with communication. 05:12  Colin talks about the concept of perceived value and how no one will buy anything without it.  10:05  Ryan begins his advice for Peter by talking about how a pushback on price is often a feeling that the value provided does not justify the price, which is usually a communication problem.     13:14  Colin talks about buying an uninterruptible power supply using a metric he understood, but maybe not the most important one; Ryan explains that this happens a lot, so manufacturers should know what that easier metric is that customers use to decide. 18:00   We talk about the Curse of Knowledge, and how it can affect how we communicate about a products’ features and specs instead of the benefits that customers would understand and want to know.   24:35  We also suggest that the problem might be that Peter has price conscious customers and he needs to attract a different type instead based on a podcast a few weeks ago about firing your customers.    Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of companies get customer segmentation wrong. Or they got it right, but they did it seven years ago. The fact is that if you have customer segments that were constructed before February 2020, you probably need to do it again. Things have changed dramatically over the past couple of years, and the customer behavior shared by your customer segments is one of them.  One of the biggest problems that I see in customer segmentation, besides timeliness, is that the categories do not get into why customers buy. Often organizations choose broad categories to the segments, like how much business they represent to the organization or what type of widget they buy, to group like customers together.  Segmenting your customers for targeting purposes is essential. This podcast subject was inspired by some interesting stats I read about in the consumer research team Attest’s 2022 US Consumer Trends report  about what different groups of customers want. Many of these stats reveal that different people want the brands they choose to communicate to them in various ways, and often these things are in stark opposition to each other. It makes clear that one message for all your customers delivered one way will be less than effective for your customer strategy. In this episode, we discuss our 5 rules to effectively target your customers. Starting with a rule that demands you accept change as a constant, we set you on the right course for grouping your customers into meaningful segments that allow you to target them with the right message that encourages them to do what you want in the way that speaks to them best.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Many times, when I discuss customer segmentation with clients, I learn that they have already done it. Excited to see what they have, I take a look, learning that many of the segments include really relevant information like fax numbers or Myspace handles. Usually, after I ask, I learn that these segments were done years ago. However, if your customer segmentation is older than 24 months, it might as well be from 24 years ago. The world has changed, and your customer segments have, too. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:08  I share some interesting stats from the Attest's 2022 US Consumer Trends report  that create a problem for many marketers and inspired this topic for the podcast.    05:26  We share the first rule about accepting that things change, including your customer segments, so be prepared for it. 08:31  We discuss how multiple inputs help create more meaningful grouping than the vague and broad ones we often encounter that do not assist effective targeting.     11:21  Colin explains that it is essential to know what you want the target to do before you segment, which is why he considered making it rule number one. 14:06. We explain how customer behavior is the most important and the most neglected of the characteristics used to segment customers.    19:39  We reveal the final rule and Ryan explains that effective segmentation should have four to eight groupings.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Organizations only pay lip service to CX, and now, we have the numbers to prove it.  From Zendesk’s The Trends Report 2022, you can see a clear dichotomy between what people say they will do and what they will actually do regarding CX.   You should read the whole report, but for starters, here are some stats I was surprised to learn (or maybe not surprised as much as interested to see it in print): 73% of business leaders reported a direct link between customer service and business performance 56% of organizations say they will focus on driving better customer experiences over the next 12 months.  However, later in the report we learn: 23% of organizations said that they were looking to increase customer satisfaction.  23% said they are looking to drive stronger relationships Framing that one in reverse means 67% are not looking to increase customer satisfaction or drive stronger relationships. So, what is going on here?  In this episode, Chief Technology Officer of Zendesk Adrian McDermott (@amcdermo) joins us to give his take on these numbers. For the past 15 years, Zendesk has provided tools and technologies for digital CX and worked with companies to enable agent efficiency in customer service. McDermott has been with them for the past 10 years and scaled his product development from ten people to around 1,500. He also shares what he thinks  organizations should do with their experiences.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience My regular readers will remember that customers satisfaction scores across the board are falling or stagnating for most organizations. The American Customer Satisfaction Index published a report that suggested customer satisfaction was approaching a 17-year low. What’s more, customers care about this dissatisfaction. Zendesk reported that 61% of customers say that they would switch to a competitor off the back of one bad service experience—and that’s just one dissatisfying experience! Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:04  Colin goes through the stats from the Zendesk report that show the dichotomy between what organizations say they will do regarding CX versus what they plan to actually do.  08:12  McDermott shares his take on how these numbers demonstrate two problems, one on the supply side and the other on the demand side, and how organizations should respond.   19:59  We shift the conversation to discuss Customer Science, and to get McDermott’s take on how these tools will help move CX forward.     23:13  McDermott explains that he thinks these tools can aid in personalization, ideally down to a segment of one individual.  26:35  We talk about the strengths of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning in improving Customer Service efficiencies and where that is an appropriate application in customer facing interactions.    34:18 We all share our tips for taking this report’s information and today’s technology and doing something practical with it, proving once again that taking theory beyond the philosophy is the most significant way to make it useful in CX.   This episode of the podcast was made in partnership with Zendesk.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A common mistake organizations make with their experience is failing to understand customer expectations. This mistake will lead to customers feeling unhappy and disappointed—two emotions I guarantee won’t contribute to your customer-driven growth.  Expectations are a form of Reference Point, which people use to compare and evaluate experiences. The expectations are rational, emotional, and sensory, and are an essential companion for customers as they walk your customer journey, making them essential for your Journey Map.  What’s worse, we aren’t meeting customer expectations, at least not according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. On a recent podcast, we explored how the ACSI is showing poor outcomes for customer satisfaction over the last ten years, a time span that make it impossible just to blame the virus.  In this episode, we talk about customer expectations and why so many companies get them wrong. We will also take a look at why we have expectations and where they originate, as well as the reasons we think this way. Perhaps most importantly, we will talk about how to avoid disappointing customers’ expectations when you present them your experience.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Let me start by asking if you have ever been to the Congo? Most people haven’t. However, if I asked you what it might be like, what would you say? Some people might say they picture it to be a jungle country. They might use words like green, humid, or lush. Some might say dangerous or sweaty.  However, in most cases, they don’t know any of this stuff is true. So, how did these images and adjectives get there? My guess is these descriptions come from books or movies people might have read or seen, or stories they heard over the years in school. This exercise demonstrates how customers’ expectations develop.   Here are a few other key moments in the discussion: 09:33  Ryan explains the theory behind why we need to draw upon our past experiences or construct ideas about new experiences as we go about our daily lives for comparison’s sake. 11:32  Colin builds upon Ryan’s example about drawing upon experiences by pointing out that the past experience does not have to be in the same industry vertical to be the comparison.  15:13 Colin gets into the importance of understanding customers’ emotional expectations as well as their rational ones to deliver an experience that satisfies and delights them.     22:57   We talk about how customers’ expectations can change over time and can be reasonable, so it’s important not to blame your problems on unrealistic customer expectations. 26:59   Colin and Ryan both share their practical advice on what to do about understanding customer expectations and how to apply it to the experience you deliver.       Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

The gas pump is probably where it hurts the most right now. Standing there, watching the total spin by, climbing higher than you ever have seen it before brings home the acute pain of today’s inflation rate. Never mind that housing and health care have much higher cost increases over the past decades…that gas price per gallon is hard to take.  Inflation has been rising steadily across the board for the past few months. So much so, that experts, who were not concerned in the beginning are starting to worry. While there is reason to believe it will peak soon, no one knows if pricing will go back down.  Stephanie wrote to us about her Business Pickle that inflation is going to kill her CX. Chances are, you are facing some difficult pricing and cost concerns yourself and wondering what it is going to mean to your experience, too.  This episode focuses on how you can manage the current economic environment without destroying your Customer Experience. Will our new, post-pandemic normal have a high price tag associated with it? And what does that mean for your customer experience? Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience Believe it or not, from an economic perspective, all inflation is not bad. To the contrary, inflation serves the broader economy. It might surprise you to learn that the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed), the U.S. governmental institution that manages the economy, wants inflation. However, the Fed wants a steady rate of around two percent. That slow but steady rate encourages consumer spending and investing rather than hoarding of resources (I’m looking at you, Bitcoin.). However, the inflationary rate is climbing faster than that, which is where some financial experts have concerns. So, to summarize the governmental policy on inflation: a little bit is okay, too much is concerning. Here are a few other key moments in the discussion: 03:56  We share Stephanie’s pickle about how to respond to rising costs but maintain a customer-centric experience. 05:32  Ryan explains how a little inflation plays in maintaining a strong economy, and how too much of it can destroy it.  09:21  Colin shares a personal experience with inflation regarding a garage roof project he got a quote for nine months ago, which now is significantly more. 12:56  Ryan explains how inflation can affect the customer relationship and erode trust if it’s not handled properly. 16:34  We share some of the things you shouldn’t do in this situation, because they contribute to the erosion of trust and the degradation of your experience outcome.  21:33  We both have suggestions for how Stephanie can handle this with her customers to the best possible outcome.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Social media has brought us a lot of things, but key among them is the “Influencer.” It means a person that can affect how people think and behave about things related to their area of interest or expertise. We have influencers that can teach us about makeup, sports books, stock picks, customer strategy (ahem) and, of course, wood working. (It’s a thing, I promise).  There are many reasons that the idea of an influencer is critical to marketers today. First of all, it is an excellent way to reach a targeted audience whose areas of interest intersect with your offering. Second, it works really well in the certain circumstances. However, you have to be deliberate about how you use Influencers, and the behavioral sciences can be an excellent guide for you.  In this episode, we explore the idea of Influencers and how you can use them to promote your brand. We also talk about how to optimize your chance for success as well as critical considerations that you should apply to this essential customer strategy.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One of the most important things to remember about influence is that it is both conscious and unconscious. In other words, there is influence that we choose and participate in on purpose and influence that we never really knew happened to us. Both kinds of influence are essential when you are designing a message for customer strategy, and should have deliberate effects they are evoking from people.  Here are a few other key moments in the discussion: 04:14  Ryan explains the difference between influences that are conscious and subconscious, including the difference between subliminal and subconscious, and how that difference changes our response to them. 10:37  We talk about some famous experiments that explore this concept, including one that was fake and never happened, and one that is terrifying. 17:16  Ryan shares some examples of ways that your experience sends subconscious signals, many times in ways you didn’t expect.     22:02  We discuss the essential considerations you should think about as a marketer when deciding which Influencers you should approach and how to message through them.   26:08 We share the practical ways you can use the science behind influence to leverage the power of influence in your experience and customer strategy.      Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Who do you feel loyal to in your life? My money is on your answer being your friends and family. The reason you feel loyal to them is because you have an emotional relationship with them. They might do things you don’t like sometimes, usually at the holidays, that drive you crazy. However, you don’t sever ties over it.  The same emotional connection happens in business relationships. Also, like your personal relationships, they can weather a little bad news without ending them. However, for this to be the case, there are some things you need to do ensure that this relationship forms—and it probably isn’t as complicated as you might think. This episode focuses on how to create these emotional bonds with your customers and foster customer loyalty. We explain why emotional bonds protect you in business relationships and how to lay the foundation for customer loyalty.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience To begin with, we borrow from a concept in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People called the Emotional Bank Account. An Emotional Bank Account is a lot like a regular bank account where you make deposits and withdrawals. The difference is the deposits are good things that you do for your customers and the withdrawals are the things that happen that they don’t like. We think that everyone should invest a lot of time making deposits into the Emotional Bank Account for that rainy day when something doesn’t go the customers’ way.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 01:39  Colin introduces the listener’s business pickle and why loyalty is such an essential part of your experience. 05:18  We explain the concept of the Emotional Bank Account and how it applies to your personal and business relationships. 08:22  Colin shares an example of working with a construction equipment company that you would think wouldn’t want to get into the touchy-feely stuff—until they learned that’s what their customers wanted.     09:57  We discuss the simple way you can build up your customers’ trust in you, which facilitates an emotional relationship forming with your business customers. 13:35  Colin explains how having the entire team consistent in their dealings with customers, and presenting a unified front is essential to forming an emotional bond with customers.    15:01  We explain how you should be yourself when you deal with customers because the relationship will hopefully last, and no one can keep up pretense for that long. 16:41  Ryan explains how addressing the individual’s personal career goals and job responsibilities are also essential to emotional relationships in business, as well as understanding the company politics your business contact must navigate.   21:06 We explain how creating win-wins is essential, and there are times when you have to let a customer go.     Do you have a business problem you would like our help with? Please contact us to tell us about it. We may solve it with you and our listening audience on the podcast! Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Ever been channel surfing and see a movie playing on broadcast that you own in your digital personal library and been unexpectedly delighted? Have you ever then watched that movie, commercials and editing and all, even though with very minimal effort you could watch that movie from streaming without any of that stuff?  This episode explains why you were so happy to find the movie and why it was better to watch it that way rather than stream it yourself. It’s related to the idea of serendipity, and the explanation is the result of a decade of research by Kristina Durante, (@KristinaDurante) Ph.D., Professor of Marketing at Rutgers Business School. We invited Durante to come talk with us, and much to our surprise, she accepted.  However, our surprise in this instance was not serendipity. Durante says serendipity boosts our enjoyment of something because it feels like a “gift from the gods.” The idea that fate has dealt you a good hand is one that makes people feel happier with Customer Experiences, even when they can’t attribute that good luck to the organization providing it. She says that customers like how it feels like magic. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Durante says that there are three main components to define serendipity. First, it must be something positive that happens. Second, it should be unexpected and unplanned. Finally, it should have no obvious source, meaning it can’t be attributed directly to anything or anybody.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:28  Ryan introduces our guest and explains why she is on the show. 04:26  Durante explains how she became interested in serendipity after the song “Material Girl” thrilled her when she heard it on the radio, but hearing it later on her playlist wasn’t the same. 07:42  Durante explains what their research defines as serendipity and how it differs from surprise or luck.     11:24  We discuss how Netflix employs a bit of serendipity in it’s “Play something” feature and why it was necessary for the Netflix viewer experience. 16:28  Durante discusses how serendipity is different than surprise and how this difference is essential to boosting enjoyment for customers.   25:42  Durante talks about ways marketers can set this up for customers in their experiences, as well as some retailers that understand and employ this concept well. 32:22   All three of us share our insights into how marketers can increase the feeling of serendipity in their own experiences as well as what to avoid while doing it.    Join us in celebrating our 20th anniversary over the next month. We will be giving away books and other things this month. Check out our LinkedIn and Twitter feeds for more information. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Do you know when in your experience customers decide to buy from you or not? You should. Otherwise, how can you design an appropriate environment to get customers to decide to do what you want?  It reminds me of the phrase, "Crossing the Rubicon." The Rubicon river was a northern boundary outside Rome in the ancient Roman Empire. The Senate determined if a general crossed the Rubicon with their army, that was grounds for treason.  There is a famous story that as Julius Caesar crossed it with his army, he said,"Alea iacta est”, which means “Now the die is cast” for those of us a little rusty on the Latin. The quote signifies passing the point of no return.  This story is more than a Roman history lesson. I mention it because customers also "cross the Rubicon" when they decide things. Psychology refers to this as the Rubicon Model of action phases in decision-making, and it describes our varying mindsets before and after choosing. The deliberative mindset before choosing takes in information; the implementing mindset commits to and maybe defends the decision after choosing.  In this episode, we take a look at how deciding changes our perspective on things in an experience and how we assign importance to information. We also discuss how your experience design should support and complement these mindset shifts.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience A buying decision is not the only one a customer makes. All of the little decisions that customers make are part of this mindset shift also, in varying degrees. That means plotting them and understanding when they happen is crucial. Knowing when they occur will help you determine where to design features into the experience that get them to decide what you want them to, which is the how, or critical skill of experience design and customer strategy.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:15  Colin shares a marital problem he is having with his wife Lorraine about, well, picking wallpaper for their home redecoration project.  05:44  Ryan explains the psychology behind decision making called the Rubicon Model of Decision Making, and a bit of Roman history lesson about the origin of its name. 07:59  We explain how your customers essentially “Cross the Rubicon” in your experience, too.     11:49  We discuss the two mindsets of customers in decision making, deliberative and implementing.  17:16   We discuss how all the decisions along the way are also subject to the Rubicon Model.    21:07   The discussion turns into how to strategize in your experience to take advantage of the timing for customer decision-making.  27:59  We share the practicalities of applying this information in your experience design.      Join us in celebrating our 20th anniversary over the next month. We will be giving away books and other things this month. Check out our LinkedIn and Twitter feeds for more information.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. Senior executives have risen to their position for many reasons, but one of them is a love for numbers. Executives live by numbers.  So, you can’t just have a “really great idea.” It would be best if you had a “really great idea” and an idea of how it will drive numbers for the organization. I have learned a lot about how to win over senior executives. In this episode, we explore the five rules for successfully engaging with senior executives to enhance your career. I share these based on my decades-long career and constant immersion in these skills. Moreover, I share them because I have learned that if you don’t engage properly with senior executives, it can have precisely the opposite effect on your career.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One of the overarching principles that guide your behavior when engaging with senior executives is to remember what matters to them most. So, if you're having a conversation about customer strategy, think at their level, which is a high-level customer strategy, not an on-the-ground customer tactic. We often mention getting inside the head of your customer and looking at the experience from their perspective. Now, apply that principle your upline by taking their perspective and speaking to them in the language of their decision making. Here are a few key moments in the discussion. 03:25  Colin shares the first rule, which is that everyone should have an opinion; that’s what you are paid for and how you add value to the team.  08:51  We discuss how to handle an explanation with senior executives, and walking the tight rope between respect and intimidation. 13:25  We talk about how at a senior level the questions get simpler, even if the responsibility gets more intense.  18:38  Ryan explains how the fourth rule is essential, be concise, because he has seen people that cannot adapt to a changing environment, and they lose their opportunity to communicate it as a result. 21:38  Colin shares the last rule, Back up your argument with numbers and explains why these matters—maybe the most—when talking to senior executives.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

The future of customer strategy is providing proactive experiences based on the predicted needs of your customers. The key to unlocking this future is your customer data, particularly the data you have collected about customer behavior. You have most of what you need to predict your customers' next move in your customers' past behavior.  This concept is predicated on the idea of Customer Science. As you might recall, Customer Science is the blending of customer data with artificial intelligence and the theories of the behavioral sciences. Customer Science is the next big thing in Customer Experiences, and it is what you need to predict accurately how your customers are going to behave.  I am fascinated by how Customer Science is already changing experiences for the better in the real world. For example, at a recent CX Live Event, I heard Michelle Huenink, Director, Customer Experience & Success at Microsoft, speak about how the company was using their data to provide predictive—and in some cases—prescriptive experiences to their customers. In this episode, Huenink explains what she did, why she did it, and how you can get started doing the same for your organization.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience A significant part of Huenink’s motivation is transforming Microsoft’s Customer Experience to a connected experience using customer data as the basis for its change. She wants to leverage the vast amounts of Microsoft’s customer data to identify moments that are sending an individual’s experience down the wrong path, as well as find parts of the process that necessitate too much customer effort. Then, she wants to empower the front-line teams to correct course and fix things for customers, sometimes even before the customer knows there is a problem.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:39  Huenink walks us through a recent implementation from the past year that identifies and intervenes when a customer enters an “at-risk” zone in the experience. 07:37  Colin asks Huenink what she is looking for in data that helps her focus on the area that will benefit the experience. 11:14  We discuss some of the challenges an organization faces when they try to change the experience based on data discoveries.     16:14  We discuss the differences between customers regarding the channels they use to interact with a company and how data can help you provide solutions to present a consistent experience regardless of the contact made. 20:03   Huenink identifies the most significant opportunity for Microsoft with their experience transformation efforts—and it will probably sound familiar.    22:09 Colin asks about segmentation and how they use it to personalize experiences.  27:17  Huenink shares her advice for what organizations can do to use their data to identify focus areas in their experience transformations.      Don’t miss CXN Live: Customer Self Service 2022 for more great ideas on leveraging self-service to increase customer experience, reduce contact volumes and improve efficiency. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' He has 289,000 followers. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We celebrated a significant milestone this year. It’s Beyond Philosophy’s 20th anniversary. Not only that, but Financial Times also recognized our company as one of the top management consultancies for the fourth year in a row.  It is always gratifying to reach these milestones and enjoy these accolades. However, they didn’t happen by chance. It was lots of trial and error, hard work, passion, and (a little) luck that went into this business. I once heard on the British version of Shark Tank that the secret to business success is making more good decisions than bad. I am proof positive that this is true.  Small businesses are somewhat easy to start but not easy to keep. The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates that 20 percent of new small businesses don’t survive the year. That number jumps to 50 percent that fail in five years. So, as you can see, making it to 20 is no joke.  Over the past 20 years, I have learned a lot of things about business. In this episode, I share them with you, my listeners. My hope is that I can share them with others and help them survive and be one of the 50 percent of small businesses that is still around in five years.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are many things I have learned over the past two decades. Now, as we find ourselves in the Great Resignation, a period where people are re-thinking their careers post-pandemic and starting their own businesses, I have distilled the ten most important to this list.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:31  We discuss the survival statistics of small business per the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and, spoiler alert, they aren’t that great. 06:36  We share the first of the ten lessons I learned over the last 20 years in business, which is be brave. 11:48  We discuss the second of the lessons, which is to zig when others zag, which we also discussed on a recent podcast with Alex Mead.     13:08  We share the importance of focus, which can be scary for entrepreneurs because it might mean turning away business. 15:40  Number four is the lesson about what to expect when you start your new company (hint: hard work and lots of it).   17:15   Colin shares his fifth lesson, which is about learning who is wasting your time and who has something to offer you.  19:46   We begin the second half of the list, starting with the fact that cash is king, especially to you the new business, and ending with the last lesson, which is… 29:10  Colin talks about the final lesson, which is to provide value, and without it, it won’t matter if you know the other nine.     Join us in celebrating our 20th anniversary over the next month. We will be giving away books and other things this month. Check out our LinkedIn and Twitter feeds for more information. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Big Data creates big problems. One of the biggest problems is what to do with it now that you have it.  Don’t feel too bad if this is true for your company. Most organizations have no idea to use the customer insights they have collected. Moreover, it’s surprising how many organizations can’t tell you how improving metrics identified by the employed measures translates to providing value to the organization. In many ways, measurement is killing your Customer Experience. But there are things you can do to fix that.  We invited Founder and CEO Ryan Stuart, @rstuart85, of Kapiche, a customer insights platform to discuss this problem. Kapiche specializes in helping organizations interpret customer data without manually coding it reading thousands of comments. Stuart understands the problem with collecting customer data but not knowing what to do with it next. Stuart explains to us the lessons he has learned in this area and how to use customer data to improve your customer strategy for your Customer Experience moving forward.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One of the big problems with data is how much of it there is. With such enormous amounts of it, many organizations are overwhelmed by what to do with it. Stuart provides specific things that organizations can do for determining how to use the customer feedback usefully in their customer strategy. Then, they can go to work interpreting the data to move the needle on what measures are helpful to their experiences. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:43  Stuart shares his thoughts on why so few organizations have improved their Customer Satisfaction scores over the last ten years pre-COVID.    10:15  Colin shares the importance of using the right lens to interpret data, and why that lens shouldn’t be the same one you used 20 years ago.  12:06  Ryan shares his thoughts on why having a specific strategy for your data helps make your hopes for analyzing customer insights and the outcomes it will have for your experience become the reality of your data analysis.    15:04  Stuart explains how the data pyramid works for transforming data into wisdom, from the bottom (data) to the top (wisdom).   20:10  Colin explains that he encounters similar problems when rolling out Emotional Signature data to organizations; they still look at the new data with old eyes.   22:47  Stuart explains his two-part answer to the question of how to help organizations rise to the data challenge and use it effectively. 32:11  All three hosts share their practical insights on what you can do with your customer data to create a winning customer strategy that improves the experience in ways that matter to your bottom line.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

One of our listeners in Finland is in a pickle. Anna wants to operationalize journey mapping to make their Customer Experience more customer centric. Perhaps more importantly, she wants these improvements to prove practical and effective rather than viewed as a “soft and fluffy” exercise that is not practical for the organization to continue to support.  Anna is not alone in this problem. Similar situations are everywhere in business today. After all, owners and stakeholders in an organization do not invest money in anything because they are hoping it doesn’t provide a return on investment. The things you spend resources on in business should provide a return on investment—or they are not practical enough for the organization to continue to support.  In this episode, we discuss Anna’s business pickle and how she can leverage what she learns in journey mapping to improve her organization’s customer strategy. In addition, we will share practical steps and advice that any organization should take when implementing what they learn from the exercise to become more customer-centric in the experience they provide. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience When it comes to journey mapping, we often encounter a problem. People think that the exercise is the answer to everything that’s wrong (or right) with Customer Experiences. But it isn’t. Journey Mapping is a way to uncover the answers to everything, and should be combined with other customer-centricity experience improvement efforts and measurements to ensure success. We talk about these areas in the podcast.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 2:55  Anna shares her pickle in a recording about how to use the findings in their journey mapping exercise to change the organization to be more customer-centric. 6:10  We share our advice on how to operationalize journey mapping starting with the four parts of a customer experience, including the rational, conscious, subconscious, and psychological.  07:15  Ryan shares his view on what journey mapping can do for an organization, and how it can benefit organizations in their experience improvement efforts. 12:50  Colin addresses the nine areas of customer centricity that affect customer experiences, and the four levels of customer centricity that range from Naïve to Natural.  16:40  Colin shares a personal example of how an experience can expose how customer-centric an organization is.  20:46  We talk about the John Cotter’s 8-step Process for Leading Change and how Anna (and other organizations) can use it to manage the process.  32:08  We both share the practical steps for leveraging what you know from your journey mapping exercise into improving your experience to drive value for the organization, from Emotional Signture research to measurement strategy and more.  Do you have a business problem you would like our help with? Please contact us to tell us about it. We may solve it with you and our listening audience on the podcast!   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

I started Beyond Philosophy 20 years ago when Customer Experience was the next big thing; the new concept that was going to change everything in business. The last big thing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), was old news. After all, everyone had one at that point.  Now, in 2022, I see the next big thing: Customer Science. Customer Science combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI), customer data, and the concepts of behavioral science to help organizations create a winning customer strategy. Leveraging the power of Customer Science, organizations can understand why their customers are doing what they are now and, perhaps more importantly, what they are likely to do next.  In this episode, we talk about Customer Science and how it can turn things around for your organization in 2022. Will you be on this new wave of change’s crest or left in its trough making the same mistakes you did last year? Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The mistakes of last year are best summarized by lagging or plateauing Customer Satisfaction Scores. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) says only 30 percent of companies tracked by ACSI improved their score over the last 10 years. Another way to look at it is ASCI says 70 percent of companies either had flat results or saw a decline in customer satisfaction. All this to say, it’s time for a next level for customer strategy. As Customer Experience moves aside for Customer Science, we have found it. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:21  Colin describes how what he is seeing in business today regarding customer experience feels familiar to what was happening over two decades ago with CRM. 08:34  We get into what Customer Science is and what it is capable of doing for businesses today.   13:27  Colin reads some articles for 2002 regarding CRM, when experiences were becoming a new focus and compares it to what is happening with Customer Experience today.     20:10  Colin explains what this might mean for Customer Experience professionals moving forward with the new wave of change. 22:51 We share how to respond to these changes in the best possible way for your organization and your career as we move into 2022.      Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

The metaverse. It is supposed to be a digital world. Some say it will combine social media and virtual reality (VR), like a more complex VR chat. Some say it will be the next level of online interaction where anything can happen. Others are confused by what it is and what it means. Some call it Mark Zuckerberg’s pipe dream. We think it is the future of Customer Experiences.  Immersive experiences are part of the metaverse, leveraging the power of augmented reality (AR) and VR. While they have to this point largely been dominated by games and entertainment, these immersive technologies are poised to change how people interact with brands’ products and services in more everyday ways.  In this episode, we invited Dobrian Dobrev (@DobrianDobrev), a User Experience Designer and a speaker at UX conferences and author on UX Design and Information Architecture  to tell us how the metaverse will change things in brand marketing. Dobrev takes us through the ways Coca-Cola has been using these technologies in their customer strategy to great success.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The metaverse is in its infancy. Few organizations really know what it is or how to use it in their customer strategy, perhaps thinking of it as a “gamer thing.” However, Dobrev sees enormous potential for brands to use these technologies beyond entertainment, which he has written about in the past. Coca-Cola has been one of the first brands that gets it and Dobrev gives us a front-row seat to their strategy and success.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:29  Dobrev to defines the immersive technologies that Coca-Cola uses, and the differences between AR and VR. 07:41  Colin gives a layman’s example of what a metaverse is using a science fiction example and Dobrev explains how AR, VR, and the metaverse will leverage immersive technology to real-world applications and change customer interactions. 13:04  We learn about an entertainment VR project Coca-Cola used to promote their Fanta brand and how that evolved into a campaign, called Hydr8 AR prototype that ventured outside entertainment and what it was designed to do for customers.     17:02  Dobrev shares the concepts behind an early VR project where Coca-Cola made their packaging convert to a VR headset.        18:48  Dobrev explains how Coca-Cola used AR to help small businesses reinvigorate their business after the first global shut down with “Open Like Never Before.” 20:50  We ask Dobrev what he sees as the future and what brands can do to get started creating immersive experiences for their products and services.   Want more stuff like this? Don’t miss CXN Live: Voice of the Customer 2022  for more great ideas on leveraging customer feedback to enhance customer understanding, optimize key touchpoints, identify friction points, and drive culture change. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Customer satisfaction is low. What’s worse, we can’t just blame COVID for the problem. Sure, COVID is part of it, but, surprisingly, this problem has other causes.  Not only that, but a recent report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) suggests that only 30 percent of companies tracked by ACSI improved their score—since 2011. That means that 70 percent of companies either had flat results or saw a decline in customer satisfaction.  It’s time to stop making excuses and turn things around.  In this episode, we talk with the Managing Director of the ACSI, David VanAmburg about what has been going on over the past ten years in Customer Experience. Like usual, the problem, has a few different influences. We discuss them and what we can do to fix them in 2022.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience I have experienced many waves of change in my career. When I was starting out it was all about Total Quality Management and Business Process Reengineering. Then, following that was Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Starting in the 90s and over the last 20 years, it has been Customer Experience. It surprised me to see that in a time when more organizations were addressing Customer Experience that the ACSI scores were mostly flat or declining. We discussed a few things that might be part of the problem. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:22  VanAmburg gives us his take on the things that are affecting the low scores we see of late on the ACSI. 08:18. Colin asks why VanAmburg thinks that only 30 percent of companies improved their customer satisfaction scores in the last ten years covered by the report.   10:20 VanAmburg explains the problems of too much focus on the smaller picture and not enough of the bigger picture when analyzing data from a CRM.     12:58  Colin talks about how some companies jump into things without understanding them or committing to them, including CRM.  17:04  VanAmburg explains how retail banking faired through the pandemic, and what other companies could learn from it.    18:31 Ryan summarizes the discussion and teaches us all about medium maximization and how that can affect results. 24:07 Colin and VanAmburg discuss the influence of customer expectations and how those changed during the pandemic and affected scores during the pandemic.  27:31 Colin asks what VanAmburg thinks will happen in 2022,  and his answer probably won’t satisfy you.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

What would it be like if your printer sent you an email to let you know it needed ink? Or if your car could tell you that you need to take it in for transmission service? Or if your refrigerator could tell the repair professional what was wrong with it before you ever said a word?  Sound like a futuristic take on product technology? It is, and it’s called the Internet of Things (IoT). However, you might be surprised to know that the ability to have all these things is already available and some companies have been using it to excellent effect. In this episode, we hosted Tobias Goebel (@tpgoebel) Product Marketing Principal at Twilio IoT. Goebel’s article, “It’s Time for the VoC to Get a Little Brother: The Voice of the Product,” introduced the idea of the Voice of Product (VoP) to us. We discuss how the VoP can change how experiences occur in the future and why it should be a significant part of your customer strategy today.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Goebel is clear that he thinks the VoP will not replace the VoC. Instead, Goebel sees it as enhancing the interactions customers have with organizations. The VoP can help firms be proactive in anticipating customers’ needs by communicating issues before they become problems, be active in resolving customer issues by providing unbiased feedback regarding its usage and be reactive to the trends the product team sees and areas of opportunity the VoP uncovers from the data it reveals.  Here are a few more of the key moments in the discussion:  05:04  Goebel describes how he views IoT and what that means for product technology and the VoP.     10:35  We discuss how the VoP could be used with different consumer products, like vacuum robots and table saws.  12:19  Goebel shares the three benefits he sees for connecting a product into an organization.     16:07  We hear a story about iRobot, which inspired Goebel’s article and fueled his fascination for what was possible with the VoP from a customer service perspective.   20:23  Ryan and Goebel discuss how the Voice of Customer and the VoP can work together to provide lots of valuable insight and facilitate faster response times.  26:47   Goebel explains how Amazon has a leg up on this insight as it is an outlet for millions of products and has access to the data about them. 28:52  We talk about why now is the time to tap into VoP and what you should consider when you do so.    This episode was sponsored by Twilio  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Would you like to appear on the show? Please contact us here Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work.: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular LinkedIn column called, Why Customers Buy . Click here to read and subscribe.  Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last three years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We all know that feeling when you see which client is calling and you inwardly groan, What is wrong now? Some customer relationships are more difficult than others, for sure. That is to be expected in any organization.  However, there are other customer relationships that have moved beyond difficult. The costs of the resources it takes to manage the many aspects of doing business with them has outgrown the revenue the generate. Or they are so heinous to deal with that the money you do make doesn’t feel worth it for the toll it takes on your people and organization.  With customers like these, it might be time to fire them.  In this episode, we talk about our listener Robert’s problem with difficult customer relationships and when it is time to call it quits. Moreover, we discuss the best possible way to handle this tricky process that can keep you from burning that bridge entirely, even when there are days when you would be all too happy to light that match. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Every customer relationship has two general areas to consider. First, there is the financial aspect. Are they making your organization money? Sometimes, when you determine the costs of the resources it takes to maintain the account, you discover that they aren’t, which makes your decision less difficult. Second, there is the interpersonal aspect. Are they making you and your people miserable? If servicing the account means that you have high turnover in the account management positions that deal with the customer, as well as throughout the organization, it might be worth it to reassess the relationship. We discuss these areas, as well as other considerations in the decision process.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:53  We learn about Robert and his business problem with difficult customers and when to know it’s time to move on. 07:13  We start by agreeing that there are customers who should be fired and how you can identify those situations from a rational perspective. 11:48  Colin shares an example of who shouldn’t be in on the decision to fire a customer and who would be better suited with the task, and why.    16:11  We discuss the key traps to avoid in this decision process, so you can make a decision that will not cost you more in the long run. 21:38  Colin shares a seven-step process for letting a customer go as gracefully as possible.   27:29. Ryan shares some tips for managing your reputation during the transition. 30:46  Colin shares one last tip for what you should do to avoid this situation in the future.      Do you have a business problem you would like our help with? Please contact us to tell us about it. We may solve it with you and our listening audience on the podcast! Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Our listeners have problems and they let us know about it. For our I’m in a Pickle feature on the podcast, Tina in New Zealand wrote to us because the engineering firm she works with  thinks customer relationships are a waste of time. She wants to know how to convince the engineers that customer relationships are what get the customer strategy gears turning toward long-term success.   I found this pickle particularly interesting because I have faced this myself in our global Customer Experience consultancy. In fact, it was the impetus for the research we did with the London School of Business that led to my third book, The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value.  In this episode, we share our experiences working with firms that are less than convinced that customer relationships are essential to business success. From storytelling to Emotional Signature® research to adopting the same strategies as one would for personal relationships, we share plenty of practical tips to help Tina get out of her pickle and on her way to convincing the team to see things her way. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience People didn’t always have interpersonal relationships. Now, we do, and not just in our personal lives. We have personal relationships in business, too. As customers, we use the same cognitive machinery to manage both types of relationships, and, not surprisingly, there are parallels in the management of them, too. We take a close look at Tina’s business pickle and present real-world, practical solutions to convince the engineers it’s worth it to develop a business relationships with customers.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:02  We read Tina’s pickle to set up the discussion on what business problem our listener is facing.  05:17  We start by looking at some of the reasons this might be happening to Tina at work and Colin shares an example of his experience in a similar situation. 09:21  Ryan chimes in with how convincing people to do anything requires a mixture of what they are interested in and what you are trying to tell them.     12:16  Colin shares how a skeptic at a German insurance company asked him to prove what Colin was saying was true, and how that led to the research behind Colin’s third book, The DNA of Customer Experience. 15:48  Colin share his insight on what makes successful customer-facing people and what Tina can do to optimize the experience for the engineering customers.    18:08  Ryan discusses how part of the convincing might require pointing out that relationships have staying power, but competitive differentiation in the marketplace. 20:48  Colin shares how his work with Maersk Line revealed to leadership the pitfalls of a transactional relationship with customers, and how their changes led to a giant turnaround for the company. 23:19  We share 5 tips (well, really only four; one of the tips will get you in trouble) for building relationships from HelpGuide.org, and our other advice for Tina and her company.  Do you have a business problem you would like our help with? Please contact us to tell us about it. We may solve it with you and our listening audience on the podcast! Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Did you know that customer satisfaction scores are the lowest they have been in the past 15 years? It’s true, and you can’t blame it all on COVID, although there is some blame to be cast there. Per the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), only 30 percent of companies tracked by ASCI improved their score; that means 70 percent didn’t, and that’s alarming. It’s also one of seven significant lessons that 2021 taught us.  This new year also coincides with the 20th anniversary of me founding my global Customer Experience Consultancy, Beyond Philosophy and publishing my first book on the subject, Building Great Customer Experiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Things have changed since then, but one thing that hasn’t is that people want exceptional experiences that meet (or exceed) their expectations—and organizations need to deliver them. In this episode, we explore the seven things we learned professionally and personally in 2021 and what they mean for your customer strategy in 2022. Spoiler alert: it means that everything is changing. Again. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Twenty years ago, all the signs around me pointed to the next big thing in business: Customer Experience. However, the influence of Customer Experience is waning now, making way for something new: Customer Science. Customer Science is the blend of Artificial Intelligence, customer data, and the behavioral sciences, and just like its predecessor Customer Experience, it has outstanding implications for your customer strategy.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:52   Ryan kicks off the professional lessons learned this year with the realization that changing challenges is the reality of the business environment today and how to respond to it.  06:43  Colin explains how uncertainty is something human beings do not process well, and it leads to customer behavior that reflects the behavioral science theory of Loss Aversion.  10:26  Colin explains that Customer Experience is getting absorbed into a larger, more influential concept poised to change the business world, Customer Science.   12:45  Colin shares shocking statistics from the American Customer Satisfaction Institute Index.     15:06   Ryan and Colin discuss what is happening to Customer Experience and how it is the cycle of things in business.  17:05  Colin explains how some companies succeeded in improving their customer satisfactions scores. 19:03  Ryan shares that his personal learning in 2021 was about work/life balance and that he thinks little improvements in areas of his life lead to more improvements down the road.    22:10  Colin talks about his weight loss journey and how a jolt to his bad habits in his personal life demonstrates what often needs to happen in the business world.      Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

When I was 25, my mum was proud of the fact that we had never discussed the verity of Father Christmas, which, of course, is not in question. She wanted that story to be a part of my life, so she made sure it was, well into adulthood.  I have continued the tradition with my kids. Father Christmas, the story of a toymaker that brings love and joy to children all around the world has been in effect at the Shaw house for over 30 years. Now, we are indoctrinating the grandkids as well.  Storytelling as a form of persuasion and communication is unparalleled, whether it is about Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus) or an example about whether Disney Theme Park Guests want to eat a salad while visiting the park (spoiler alert: they don’t).  In this episode, we discuss the power of storytelling in business, from the theory behind why it works to how you can apply it practically in your experiences to enhance your customer strategy. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Human beings seem to be hard wired for stories. We seek out stories because they entertain us. We remember stories better than we do if the same information is conveyed in a nonstory format. We tend to be more persuaded by stories and are more likely to relay stories to other people than if the same information was communicated in another way.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:49  Ryan presents the generalized summary of what theoretical work on storytelling has taught us.  07:27  Colin gives an example of an often-told story he uses to make his point about an abstract concept, to make concrete his point about an abstract concept. 10:16  Colin discusses the role of  social proofing in storytelling around organized religion, simultaneously trying to explain his point while not getting cancelled.     15:08  Colin admits that Apple tells a story he likes to hear, and how that affects his affinity for the brand.   16:31  Ryan shares how many tech companies have origin myths, that are not that different from superhero stories in a way.   20:01 WARNING: Colin says something that is not safe for the six-year-old (or six-years-old at heart) listeners of the podcast.  21:53  We share practical advice about how to use story telling in experiences and customer strategy.        Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Imagine that you own a well-known car brand during a global pandemic. No one is coming to the show room to see your dealer’s cars, nor are they bringing them in for service. No one is really driving them around, either. What do you do? For Nissan’s Hussein Dajani, General Manager, Digital and CX Transformation, this wasn’t hard to imagine since he lived it for the past 18 months. He and his Customer Experience Steering Committee came up with a virtual version of the traditional car-buying and service experience and implemented it in record time. The results? Double-digit growth.  I learned about this story on a CX Network Live event. Fascinated with the story and the success, we invited Dajani to this episode of the podcast to share what he learned with you.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Digital experiences are much more prevalent today than they were even a couple of years ago. The virus accelerated the emphasis on digital transformation of formerly analog experiences for all industries, even one like buying a car. The COVID-19 Pandemic also forced organizations to take more risks than they would have otherwise. Nissan’s Shop@Home program is widely successful, producing double-digit growth at a time when many people weren’t even driving their cars much. Dajani shares what he learned during the project and the practical tips he has for other organizations that have a similar journey ahead.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:56  Dajani shares his story about how he ended up at Nissan and what he wanted to change even before the pandemic disrupted business-as-usual.     08:22  Dajani talks about how the day he thought he was getting fired was the day the organization called upon him to deliver.     11:53  We learn about Shop@Home and what it was designed to do for customers.     15:29  Colin asks Dajani if COVID helped get the internal team on board; Dajani’s answer might surprise you.     17:59   Nissan’s plan is to transform the business, not just get through the pandemic, and Dajani explains why.  22:47  We learn about some of the ways that Nissan changed the service experience to a virtual one and why it fixed some friction points for the business. 29:51  We ask Dajani the practical advice he has for organizations on a similar journey, and he leads with empathy, empathy, empathy.   Artificial intelligence and predictive customer experience can transform customer experience initiatives by identifying and shaping customer intent. As a result, it has the potential for businesses to increase engagement, retention, and long-term customer value. Want to know more? Attend CX Network's Online Live Event on January 25th and 26th, 2022.  Click here to register today. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Fernando has a problem that he wants our help solving. In his industry of branding and packaging fast-moving consumer goods, his clients often tell him to do whatever the competition is doing. However, Fernando knows that while imitation is the highest form of flattery, it’s a less than ideal customer strategy when you want to win customers from the competition.  In this episode, we explore Fernando’s business problem, aka Pickle, for our, “I’m in a Pickle” segment of the podcast. We discuss the challenges surrounding competitive differentiation as well as the psychological theories from the behavioral sciences that can help guide the customer strategy. Not surprisingly, it takes standing out from everybody else to fit in with customers.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Human beings are social. From an evolutionary point of view, our social natures is tied into survival. Those that were part of the pack had a better chance of living out the day than individuals going it alone.  Without the same threats today that we might have faced in the past, our social nature persists. Sometimes, this natural inclination is a good thing. However, when the need to fit in influences our decisions in the marketplace, it becomes a problem. Moreover, things like “best practices” can get in the way of creative approaches to deliver experiences. A critical part of any organization’s customer strategy and competitive differentiation is to find a way that you are different from the pack and communicate it. The behavioral sciences explain why this is challenging—and also why it works.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:54  Ryan kicks off the discussion of three influential concepts, Risk Aversion, Loss Aversion and Social Proof, that describe why differentiation can be challenging for Fernando’s customers.     07:06  We explain why adopting best practices and following the leaders in the marketplace is not a great long-term strategy.     08:29  Colin shares a story demonstrating a concept called optimal distinctiveness about buying a popular car, but ensuring that his was “just a bit” different, so his car stood out from the others.     15:56  We bring it back to Fernando’s problem to talk about how to balance the need for conformity with the desire to achieve optimal distinctiveness.     18:49  Ryan explains where we got the term for Top-Shelf liquor and how that relates to Fernando’s problem.   21:48  We explain that appealing to customers requires a practical understanding what those target customers want, and using those values in the experience design.     24:35  Colin shares his advice on what Fernando, and anyone else having a problem with competitive differentiation, can do to overcome their risk aversion and employ a winning customer strategy.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score® (NPS), sees customers recommendations as an act of love. Recommendations are a chance to provide an experience to someone they care about.  Reichheld’s new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, shows tracking the actual referrals is the next level, what Reichheld describes as the “gold” in the business—and the future of your customer strategy.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Andy Taylor, Executive Chairman of Enterprise Holdings, once told Reichheld there is only one way to grow.  Taylor told Reichheld, “You've got to make sure your customers are treated so well, they come back for more and bring their friends.” Reichheld says that's the basic flywheel that drives all great business.  Reichheld thinks that the right way to determine growth is to measure that flywheel. He would like accounting teams to know how much of their revenue came from customers they have had for a year and all the business of that customer’s referrals, called Earned Growth Rate. Earned Growth Rate separates referral growth from the other growth strategies organizations implement, that can include acquisitions, sales and marketing, or new store locations, among others.  Reichheld sees the Earned Growth Rate concept today as where Net Promoter was 20 years ago. In the next 10 to 20 years, he thinks there won't be a serious business person that doesn't know about Earned Growth Rates. He says his new book shows people how to do that. Here are some key moments in the discussion: 03:05  Reichheld explains why his frustration with NPS inspired his book and what he is trying to accomplish with it.     09:09  Reichheld makes the argument that there is only one class of purposes that work in business, and explains why.    13:18  Reichheld shares the one way to grow a great profitable business, and how it drives his decisions to invest in companies.    20:18   Colin asks Reichheld what advice he would give an organization that doesn’t know how to use NPS properly, the way Reichheld intended when he invented it.   21:31  Ryan asserts that culture dictates how NPS plays a role in an organization, and asks Reichheld to give advice on how to focus organizations on culture. 24:44  We learn the difference between good profits and bad profits, per Reichheld, and how to use NPS better moving forward.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

I love when listeners write in with their business problems. I don’t love that they have problems, but I love that they share them with us so we can all work through them together. In our latest submission for our “I’m in a Pickle” feature of the podcast, Janet explains that even though their customer comments are overwhelmingly positive, their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is not where they need it to be. Without any complaints to speak of, Janet and the organization don’t know what the problem is, and they asked for our help.  In this episode, we explore the practicalities and pitfalls of using NPS as a metric for your customer strategy success. We also look at the tactical and practical things that Janet and her organization can do to get the score where they need it to be.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Our first advice to Janet was to remember that NPS is a lot of things, but it isn’t a diagnostic tool. It is a score for how well you already did. If the score is low, it won’t tell you why. Likewise, it can’t tell you why you scored well. It is a way to measure the success of the efforts you have made and, of course, how likely it is that your Customer Experience efforts will lead a customer to recommend you to their family and friends. Here are a few key moments in the discussion. 02:42  We read Janet’s email and explain what her business pickle is.     05:42  Ryan kicks off our discussion by explaining that NPS is not the entire picture of what you need to know about your company’s performance.     10:21   Colin shares a tactical mistake Janet’s company is making with how they ask the Net Promoter Question, “How likely are you to recommend our product or service?”     13:39   Colin gives Janet’s organization questions to consider as they address the need for improvement to hit their goals.  16:38   Ryan agrees strategy to get detailed about why customers aren’t happy enough to recommend them, so they can find their opportunities to improve.   18:09  We kick off a discussion about customer behavior and the differences between what people say and what they do, as well as how to overcome that. 26:49   We summarize all our recommendations for Janet’s company to improve their NPS, from the tactical to the practical.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

I am happy to announce that I am getting my first electric guitar. Many of you know that also means I am buying my first amplifier, too. The one I have my eye on is Fender’s, not because I know anything about amplifiers and their performance, but because I like how it looks like it came straight out of the 1960s.  Nostalgia is an important part of my amplifier purchase. When I see the old-fashioned looking knobs on the amplifier, it reminds me of my childhood and the rock stars of my school days. Getting an amp that looks like that feels like an homage to my childhood dreams of being a rock star.  Of course, the amp is a great amp, too. But I couldn’t tell you why. I can tell you I like how it looks and how it makes me feel.  In this episode, we explore how nostalgia can help your customers feel happy about your offerings, too. If you use nostalgia to appeal to customers’ happy memories and feelings by looking at their past, they just might move forward into the future buying from you.  Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience  The podcast begins with a description of what nostalgia is and why we feel it as human beings. Then we get into examples of how things trigger these nostalgic memories and evoke positive emotions, even if the experience in the past wasn’t a pleasant one. Then, we talk about how you can employ nostalgia to evoke the memories during customer interactions that will spill the happy and pleased over onto your experience. 04:39  Ryan explains what nostalgia is from a psychological perspective.     06:35  We then describe why a negative experience can also make someone feel nostalgic.    08:06  We talk about the Monty Python “The Four Yorkshiremen” sketch that shows how even when people complain about the past, they still seem to feel fond of it.     13:21  Ryan explains some of the psychological benefits of feeling nostalgic that we enjoy as human beings.     15:12  We begin to apply nostalgia to a practical insight for Customer Experience, by using happy memories to cast a Halo-effect on your experience.   23:08  We explain how if you understand what makes people feel nostalgic, you can replicate that in your Customer Experience for them.  25:49  Ryan and Colin explain how you can use the psychology behind nostalgia to improve your experience for people.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

One of our listeners, Jeanne-Claude, has a problem. He sells a complex product and despite the fact that they have the best one in the industry, the competition is outselling them.  I can relate. I sold a complicated product when I was in corporate life, and it was always a highly competitive field. It can be challenging to communicate why you are the best when you have a complex offering and you want to tell customers all about it. However, one thing I know to be true is that it doesn’t matter who is the best; it matters who customers perceive to be the best.  In this episode, we explore what behavioral science concepts might help Jeanne-Claude, and all the rest of you that suffer through something similar, to get the best of his competition.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are a number of factors that influence how customers perceive and offer. In the case of a complicated offering, they might be using something that is easier to compare to get them to a decision. However, it could also be the way the information is presented that drives them to the competition. It might even be that the way the choices are presented is making it difficult for them to choose Jeanne-Claude’s company. We talk about all of these concepts in this episode and how they might be influencing his results as well as how he can leverage them to change the outcome.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion. 01:54  We read Jeanne-Claude’s frustrating problem that despite being the best, they are losing to the competition.  03:39 Ryan explains the Evaluability Hypothesis and how it might influence the decision-making process for customers.     07:50  Colin shares a story about choosing travel insurance and how a magazine provided an easier metric to choose one from the many available options.     14:44  Colin explains that it is essential to understand what motivates a decision for specific customers so you can appeal to that in your communication.     21:22   We introduce the concept of framing and how it might influence people’s decisions.    25:42  Ryan brings Choice Architecture into the conversation and how presenting the choices in a different way might lead Jeanne-Claude’s customers in a new direction.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.    Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Scarcity is something are more used to these days, particularly in light of the supply chain problems we see. Scarcity is something we feel when we are doing thing we have enough of what we need. If we don’t fix the problems at the ports, and the related problem of driver shortages to bring things in from the ports, we might see quite a few empty shelves this holiday season.  Not that empty store shelves were anything new to most of us. After the great toilet paper shortage of early 2020, we all know that the line between chaos and order is thinner than we ever suspected. That’s because when we feel something is scarce, we assign more value to it—and sometimes react in crazy ways.  In this episode, we brought back Dr. Professor Kelly Goldsmith of Vanderbilt University to talk more about Scarcity and how it affects our behavior. She explains how Scarcity has different types and we have various ways we respond to it. She also shares how understanding Scarcity and how it drives customer responses can make it an important tool in your marketing toolkit—but only if you know how to use it well. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The empty store shelves this past year have all taught us a little bit about Scarcity. It changes how we respond to situations in many ways. Dr. Goldsmith explains them to us and how we can use it in our marketing efforts.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:54   Dr. Goldsmith describes what scarcity is and the difference between Objective and Subjective Scarcity.     07:43   Dr. Goldsmith explains that Scarcity is always relative, and you can’t have it without also having a Reference Point.     12:09   Ryan has Dr. Goldsmith explain why the toilet paper hoarding of 2020 is different than a marketing tactic, but inspired by the same psychology.    15:09    We talk about the difference between a perceived need and an actual need, and how that affects our response to Scarcity.     26:19   Dr. Goldsmith shares her research on Scarcity and the positives and negative potential effects of how we try to resolve it for ourselves.    32:51  We all share our insight into how people can use what they know about Scarcity to improve their customer strategy.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

The 5 Rules to Dramatically Improve The Way you Deal with Customer Complaints A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. Does your organization like to pretend that complaints never happen? When they do happen, does the company sweep them under the rug and hide them from everyone involved? If so, you are not alone. Many organizations have the wrong approach to customer complaints. They see them as a problem that should never have happened. However, complaints can be a great way to get real-time feedback on moments in your Customer Experience. In this episode we explore the five rules to help organizations deal with customer complaints. These rules help you come to better outcomes with your dissatisfied customers and how to see complaints for what they are: opportunities to improve what’s broken in your Customer Experience. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience When it comes to handling customer complaints, there is no substitute for understanding how customers feel and showing them empathy. However, there are few other things to remember, too. Our five rules clarify the process and make it more likely that your customer complaint process will make things better instead of worse, both for customers and your bottom line. 03:21 We share the first rule about reading between the lines; understanding the real issue is key to good resolution, which is not what happened with Colin and his insurance company. 11:10  Colin reveals rule #2, which is about giving your employee the leeway and authority to resolve issues on their own, without having to get permission from someone else. 19:06  Ryan and Colin discuss the merits of resolving issues quickly with Rule #3. 24:42  Moving into the last two areas, the fourth rule is to change how your organization perceives complaints; seeing them as the free advice on your Customer Experience that you pay thousands to consultants to discover. 27:09  We discuss how to use empathy to resolve issues for the customer and make them feel like you care; resolving without empathy does not have the same effect.  30:13   Colin gives a quick summary of the five rules and encourages listeners to write in with their business problems to get some free advice. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.  

Rachel has a problem. Her boss can’t see the need to change. She is frustrated and doesn’t know what to do. Lucky for her, she listens to our podcast and took advantage of our “Help! I’m in a Pickle!” segment for our advice on what to do.  In this episode, we explore what Rachel, or anyone who champions Customer Experience but doesn’t have the support they need from above, can do to convince her boss that there is a need for change. We share strategies and tactics anyone can use to motivate the person they report to without getting written up on their boss’s weekly report.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Much of the advice we share isn’t all that different from what we share about Customer Experience. After all, in both cases, you are trying to get people to do something that you want, and that requires motivation.  Like customers, your boss has values and metrics they think are important. They have priorities and time constraints like everyone else does, too. Persuading people requires making the change as important to them as it is to you to move Customer Experience up the priorities and give it the time and resources it needs to facilitate the customer-driven growth you want.   Here are some key moments from the discussion: 02:54   We read Rachel’s email about how her boss does not use the organization’s mission and values in his decision making and she wants him to. 06:29   Colin shares two essential points about getting any person to do anything, customer, co-worker, or otherwise.    09:11   Ryan explains how using measurement to motivate change, like a monthly update on achievement of these goals, keeps the mission and values top of mind for everyone.     16:07  Colin also suggest researching the competition and seeing how they use their mission and values, then report that to the boss.     18:13  Ryan suggests using the principles behind “nudging” to help the boss understand the importance of using the mission and values more in their leadership.   20:45  Ryan suggests using social pressure by getting other employees excited about the mission and values, too, so it’s harder for your leadership to ignore.  22:13  Colin shares a real-world example of using Social Proof to influence the leadership to come around to the organization’s new way of thinking through intra-company program where future invites were recommended by previous attendees. 25:02 We encourage everyone to remember that leadership can come from anywhere, so don’t be afraid lead others, no matter where you rank in the organization.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Back in 1994, Steve Jobs introduced a concept at an Apple conference: that the design of their products should begin at the desired Customer Experience and work backward from there.  Not long after that, Joe Pine co-authored a book called The Experience Economy, that changed the way at looked at the future of business.  In 2002, I began my global Customer Experience consultancy, Beyond Philosophy, a term a bandied about long before anyone even knew what it was. By 2005, I had undertaken research to determine the 20 emotions that drive or destroy value, to prove that incorporating customer emotions into experiences provides an ROI.  Meanwhile, Lewis Carbone was championing Customer Experience and founding his consultancy and philosophy in ExpereinceEngineering™. Now, 2021, Customer Experience as we know it is dying.  That’s the bad news. The good news is that the concepts behind it live on and are developing into a new variant: Customer Science.  In this episode, Pine, Carbone, and I discuss whether Customer Experience is dying and the future of experiences from our point of view.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience It is essential to explain that none of us think that putting the customer at the center of your experience at an organization is an idea that will never die. However, we all think that the original concept of Customer Experience from over 25 years ago has changed and morphed into new areas. What differentiated you at the turn of the 21st century and what does it today are two very different things. Perhaps, more importantly, we discuss what Customer Experience needs to be in the future and what Customer Experience champions can do to ensure that it happens.  Here are a few key moments in our LinkedIn live discussion: 05:34   Colin explains why he thinks CX is dying as we know it and Pine weighs in, too. 13:56     Carbone explains why he thinks it is impossible for CX to die.     25:05     Colin explains what he thinks the future of CX will be, Customer Science.    40:47.    Pine shares what he thinks the future of CX will be, which is focusing on providing value to customers.     42:42     Carbone explains what happened with Capital One as they moved from fixing what was broken to transformative experience that changed the way they do business. 46:29.   Pine explains how he thinks experiences can contribute to happiness, and how it isn’t about having more things to buy.  49:18    Carbone explains how CX of the future can augment the voice of the customer with the mind of the customer.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Total agreement is overrated. Disagreements are good for us. They challenge the status quo and push the standards for improvement. After all, if you only talk to people who agree with you, how would you know when you are wrong? In this episode, I debate with Customer Experience critic Alex Mead, Chief Customer Service Experience Officer, about how we Customer Experience influencers are doing everything wrong. Mead says that our training is outdated, impractical, and worthless and needs an overhaul for practicality.  I disagree. Mostly. Surprisingly, I feel like he makes good points. However, I do not think such an extreme measure is necessary or even a good idea.  Tune in to hear what Mead has to say about training, accreditation, Customer Experience Influencers, and even the term “Customer Experience” itself.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience We set this episode up as a debate and attempted to follow that format. Then, with Ryan as the presiding judge, Mead and I present our arguments, counterarguments, and suggestions for improvement.  Here are some critical moments in the discussion. 02:12  Mead shares his work experience and how he ended up as a self-described Customer Service Experience advocate.     04:56  Mead says that while a mass statement, he believes that Customer Experience is not appropriately defined by all that teach it and how we would explain it instead.     10:03  Colin explains his approach and that while he thinks Mead’s arguments have validity, Colin does not agree with his sweeping statement. 14:43  Mead explains that accreditation earned in two days does not prepare anyone to work in Customer Experience alone; practical experience is necessary.     17:54  Mead explains that a second problem is that today’s Customer Experience experts want to implement technology that is not what customers want.    23:44  We discuss why rebranded marketing people are not the best for heading up a customer-centered contact center experience. 26:05  We both present what we would do to improve Customer Experience training and accreditation moving forward.    To contact Mead directly, follow him on LinkedIn, Alex Mead, or email him at [email protected]. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Great business insights with a touch of humor, all put over in a clear, easy-to-understand way.  Each week we discuss how you can gain and retain more customers and solve business problems. We look at the theory of how and why Customers make decisions and then break this down into practical actions you can take. Here is one review which we think sums up the show. “The dynamics between the hosts of this show absolutely makes this podcast. Each brings a unique take on a topic, their own perspective, and play off each other’s sense of humor. I come away after each episode with a feeling joy and feeling a bit smarter. Win-win”.  You are in great hands as the hosts have vast experience and are respected across business. Colin Shaw, who LinkedIn calls one of the top 150 business influencers and has 390,000 followers; and Professor Ryan Hamilton, teaches marketing and psychology at Emory University; he also used to be a stand-up comedian.  If you want to learn and laugh, give us a try!  Check us out at BeyondPhilosophy.com.

Do you remember Blockbuster, Circuit City, or Kodak? I ask because these brands are not around anymore. They were once the leaders in their field, the only game in town in some cases, but now they are gone. They disappeared because they didn’t respond to changes in the marketplace with new ideas. It isn’t unusual for an organization to be set in its ways. Human beings are also reluctant to change their ways or even opinions. Psychologically, we tend to cling to what we believe and look for resources that support our views. It is only with effort that we see a different perspective.  In this episode, we explore why it is that we tend to stick to our opinions rather than seeing the other side of an issue. We also talk about how diversity in opinions can help create a culture at an organization that is collaborative without being combative. Finally, we discuss ways that an organization can use diversity in opinion and viewpoints as the basis for creating new ideas that ensure their brand won’t disappear like a national brick-and-mortar video store in the 2000s.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The inspiration for this episode was book by Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari does an excellent job showing different viewpoints for long held and widespread beliefs that cause the reader to stop and reconsider their views on the topic. This open and balanced view of opposing opinions is what we advocate when trying to come up with new ideas that foster customer-driven growth in your organization.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion:  03:15  We talk about Sapiens and how the author asserts that becoming farmers probably didn’t make humans any happier than they would have been by remaining hunter gatherers.    06:06  Ryan explains the psychological reasons that people have a hard time seeing multiple viewpoints on an issue or alternative solutions to the one they favor.     09:49  We share one of the reasons we don’t want to accept other viewpoints, which involves conserving cognitive resources and other emotional reasons.   13:22 Ryan shares how scientific progress leads to shifting paradigms, and these changes are good for everyone in the community. 16:35  We explain how a complex world needs complex solutions to resolve it, and anything less will not serve you to make the changes you need.   19:37 We take turns sharing the four actionable ways you can incorporate this style of problem-solving and creative thinking in your organization, starting with gathering a diverse group of people together to collaborate. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. If I had a more efficient family and less expensive friends than you have now, would you like to trade? I can guarantee they will save you time and money.  My guess is probably not. We don’t measure the worth of our families and friends with metrics like time and money savings. We have an emotional bond with them that we cannot replace with a better model or an updated version.  Loyal customers are the same way. They have an emotional bond with the companies they do business with and those feelings are why they come back over and over again. Not surprisingly, loyal customers are the most profitable and have a direct effect on your bottom line.  In this episode we explore the five rules that absolutely build customer loyalty. These rules help you design an experience that creates those emotional bonds and the loyal customers that come with them.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience When it comes to building experiences that produce the emotional relationships that promote customer loyalty, there are no shortcuts. It requires thinking long-term and in detail about how you interact with your customers. Our five rules help organize that process into actionable steps.  Here are some highlights of our discussion: 03:37  We talk about how many organizations think too much about the short-term goals and not enough about long-term goals.  07:59 We talk about how loyalty requires both parties to give and take, compromise, and understand each other, so organizations should remember that it goes both ways.  14:48  Ryan explains the difference between inertia and real loyalty, and why mistaking one for the other can be a real problem for organizations.  20:47   Colin talks about one of his favorite topics, customer memories and their relationship to forming emotional and loyal connections with organizations. 23:12  We bring it back to the emotional part of an experience that many times organizations overlook in their pursuit of business.  25:42  Colin explains the importance of having an Emotional Bank Account with people and to keep up with putting deposits in it.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We all love to keep what is ours. As soon as we have possession of something, it becomes part of our “endowment,” a fancy word for “our stuff.” Psychologists call this the Endowment Effect, and it explains how we value things that we have, even if we got them for free. However, we also hate losing our stuff, even more that we enjoy getting new stuff. Psychologists call this Loss Aversion, and it is the overall concept that explains why your free trial might help increase your sales. Some people would rather pay for something they used to get for free than lose access to it.  In this episode, we answer a question from one of our listeners, Mohammed, who wanted to know how to convince his team to implement a free trial to increase sales. We shared our theories about why it might work and what we recommend.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are practical considerations that accompany implementation of a free trial to optimize your success. We discuss a few of them in the podcast: 02:41  We share the problem, which is part of our “In a Pickle” feature of the podcast where we address listeners problems with practical applications of the behavioral sciences.     04:48  We explain the Endowment Effect and how it relates to Loss Aversion.     08:10  Colin shares an example of how a return policy can make or break a “free-trial” experience.     14:01. We talk about how you can use the successes with a free trial to outweigh some of the costs of having one.     15:10  We talk about the concept of follow-on sales where bringing on new customers presents an opportunity to sell them additional goods and services.   18:41  Ryan talks about Reference Points and how it can be difficult to get some people to pay for something they used to get for free unless you make it clear that is the arrangement from the start. 22:01  We summarize our suggestions for Mohammed to convince his team to implement a free trial in his company to increase sales.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Sometimes customers don’t come back. The two biggest reasons that customers do not come back are apathy and rudeness. With either behavior on your side of the experience, you will lose customers' business. So how do you get them to say, “I’ll be back?”  Our guest Shep Hyken, author, speaker, and thought leader for the Customer Experience movement joins us to answer that question with material from his new book, I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again. In this episode, we discuss some of the concepts he shares in the book, including a six-step process you can use to create an I’ll-Be-Back experience for your customers.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Hyken's goal with the book is to give practical tips to create better than satisfactory relationships. One of Hyken's main messages in all his work is that organizations should be better than average consistently and predictably. When you are better, customers come back.  The core message here is you have to look at those things through the customers' eyes. But, also, every individual in the company should ask, "Is this right for the customer?" before they do anything. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:44   Hyken shares the main idea behind his book, including its origin and how it became his latest passion project. 06:55   Hyken explains why “Fine” the f-bomb of Customer Experience is. 09:45   We learn an abbreviated version of the six-step process to creating an I’ll-Be-Back experience. 13:49   Ryan talks about how best practices can be reductive if too many firms use the same strategy.  17:59   We discuss the importance of meeting the needs of the customers and not confusing that wisdom with the tactics used to meet them. 21:54    Hyken shares a story about when an early delivery cause a big problem for one of his clients and how it could have been avoided.  26:33   Colin introduces the idea that you should be sure that your customers are returning because they feel loyalty, and not just because they haven’t bothered to make a change. If you want to learn more about the book, please visit Hyken.com.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

You probably didn’t mean to do it. You were just trying to market the latest brand effort to your new and existing customer base. You were doing your job; getting the message out. Unfortunately, your marketing inadvertently damaged your customer focus.  However, marketing isn’t the only area to blame for the problem. How you segment customers also contributes to this damage, as well as how well you understand your customers’ expectations of you. It turns out that all of these areas contribute to the customer orientation of your organization. Having a handle on where you are for each of them is an excellent way to improve your customer focus.  In this episode, we explore the ways that we assess an organization’s customer centricity from the most unfocused on customers, or Naïve, to the most, which are Natural. We take a deeper dive into what we look at in three contributing areas, including Customer Strategy, Marketing, and Customer Expectations. Our hope is that you will be able to do it for organizations, too, starting with your own.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience These three areas are significant influences on how we assess an organizations customer centricity in various ways. For Customer Strategy, we see more nuance in the customer segmentation for the Natural companies. In Marketing, we consider how much communication there is throughout an organization so everyone that is in contact with customers is “in the know.” We also look at how often a company takes on customer research to detect changes in Customer Expectations. All of these assessments help us determine where a company is on their journey to putting the customer at the center of everything they do.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:07   Colin explains how Customer Segmentation demonstrates the customer focus of a company. 10:24  We introduce the idea that the Customer Experience strategy should permeate and be the dominant throughout each department’s functional strategies. 15:31  Colin introduces the Marketing area and how that shows where customers rank in the company’s focus.  20:07  We explain why and how market research is another indicator of customer-centricity.  22:24  Colin explains why managing Customer Expectations are indicative of customer-centricity. 29:04  We share why it is important to keep up customer research to stay on top of changes with Customer Expectations.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

If you are like most companies, you probably think that you put the customer at the center of everything you do. But do you? There are some critical things that the most customer centric companies do differently than the average company. It requires a mindset that understands the essential nature of it and then a consistent approach to applying it in all the areas of the company, from how you recruit talent and empower employees to how you prioritize customers in your team meetings.  In this episode, we discuss how we categorize the customer centricity of organizations and use the areas of People and Culture and Leadership to determine it.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are four distinct types of organizations regarding customer-centricity, which we call our Naïve to Natural Model. There are Naïve organizations that do not or will not put customers first, Transactional ones that know they should do more but aren’t, Enlightened companies get the importance of it but are still working on putting them there, and Natural companies, well, they just do it.  We use nine areas to determine where an organization is on this model. Two of the most significant are People and Culture and Leadership. How you handle these areas and how they relate to customers indicate where you are on your Naïve to Natural journey.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:19 Colin defines what customer-centricity is for an organization. 05:07 We share the four types of organizations that we use to codify organizations for customer-centricity.  07:04 Colin explains how there are nine areas that affect an organization’s customer centricity, starting with people. 11:36 Colin shares a story about how he knew an organization was Transactional based on how much time they devoted to customer training in employee orientation.  23:27 We introduce another area of customer centricity, Culture and Leadership. 25:44 Colin explains how they once used a speed dating format to get senior managers back in touch with customers.  27:58 We share how the position of customer issues on the company’s team meeting agenda indicates how important they think it is.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.    Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. 07AQTjnAJQZqFoOfBsUz

No one ever sends out an email that they hope no one will read. Well, not on purpose, anyway. No one would go through the trouble of writing, editing, circulating, and then editing an email some more only to have readers skip it and click on another, more compelling email in the inbox. We write and send emails to get people to do something, starting with reading it.  In this episode we explore the ways that email marketers can increase response rates to their campaigns using the concepts from psychology and behavioral economics. By using the way humans respond to information as a guide, you can change the reaction your email creates in people, and get them to respond more.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are two main concepts that we focus on in this episode, Framing and Loss Aversion. Framing explains how the presentation of information is never neutral and how that affects people’s reaction to it. Loss Aversion explains that we react more intensely to losses than we do to gains. Using the combination of these two concepts, you might be surprised at how different the response rate to the same information in an email can be.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:16   Ryan presents an explanation for Framing and Loss Aversion, and how you can use them to persuade people to do something. 08:51  Ryan explains how there is also a Negativity Bias at play which suggests we prefer negative information over positive information. 10:08  We make an important distinction between presenting losses and being negative,  and how one does not necessarily lead to the other every time.  12:07   We describe how FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, is a form of Loss Aversion that can be useful when writing email copy.  15:07   Colin shares a tool that he finds helpful for writing headlines that are compelling for content, which could be useful for email subject lines. 21:54   We explain why understanding your customers goals and motivations will help you create a message that gets their attention. 24:59  We share all the specific things you can do to make your emails more compelling and increase your response rates.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. A couple of years ago, research from some well-respected firms came back with the conclusion that investing in Customer Experience is not paying off the way that organizations had hoped. One of the reasons that might be the case is because many people are investing in Customer Experience just because everyone else is and, as a result, are focused on the wrong things. So, to change that focus and prove that your efforts are paying off, we wanted to give you a formula for success.  In this episode, we explore the 5 Rules to Guarantee a Return on Investment. From making sure you understand how your experience drives value for people to thinking outside the box to measuring everything you do; we have the way for you to prove that your programs work. But, perhaps most importantly, we show that you, as the champion of them, are the person that can get your organization the results they want and the customer-driven growth they need. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience We designed our five rules to help change your focus to what matters to customers to drive results for your bottom line. This process starts with Emotional Signature® research, which enables you to see what drives value for your organization and the hidden wants and needs that your customers really want but probably didn’t tell you. The 5 Rules to Guarantee a Return on Investment are as follows: Do your homework.  Think outside the square. Remember, costs are part of the formula. Have a Fail-Fast Mentality Measure everything. Here are some critical moments in the discussion: 03:37  Colin explains how doing your homework means digging deeper on what customers really want so you know what drives value for your customers in your experience. 08:30  We discuss how important it is to differentiate yourself from the competition by going beyond adopting industry best practices and looking ahead when planning your strategy in the marketplace rather than responding to change afterward. 14:16  Colin shares his no-miss strategy for ensuring that what you request in the budget will get approved (Hint: It involves getting the finance team on board). 18:31  We talk about how you have to try things and fail so you can learn what works and adjust the rest; it’s a “Ready, Fire, Aim!” approach to change. 21:46  Colin shares how when you can show your results, you also show that you are a person that makes decisions based on strategy and gets results on them. 24:05 We review and summarize all five rules as well as what you should do with them. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We were excited to reach our 200th Episode of the podcast! In this episode, we look back on six of our favorite podcasts from these first 200 episodes and what the key learning was from each of them.  We want to thank our listeners for tuning in each week to hear our ramblings. We are proud of what we do, but it would be meaningless if it didn’t prove to be a useful resource for people. We hope that it is and that you will continue to join us on this journey as we explore the many facets of customer behavior and the tools that facilitate customer-driven growth.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience We identified the following episodes as our favorites from the past 200. Each of us chose three, and if you want to hear them in their entirety, simply click on the title:  Colin's Picks How Apple Uses Psychology To Construct An Outstanding ExperienceThe Massive Importance of Memory in a Customer's Experience What is Customer Science? Ryan's Picks: 5 Rules for Ensuring Behavioral Science Works for Your Business Are You Using This Valuable Marketing Tool for Growth? Is Facial Recognition Creepy, Or Is It Just the Future? Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:24. We explain a new segment of the show we are adding moving forward that will help people even more than in the past.  07:41 Ryan shares his take on the 5 Rules for Ensuring Behavioral Science Works for Your Business episode.  10:54. Colin explains how Apple does a great job with the behavioral sciences in their experience when he shares his first pick.  13:57. Ryan talks about another favorite, Are You Using This Valuable Marketing Tool for Growth?, and its relationship to the Availability Heuristic. 17:15. Colin talks about memories, one of his favorite topics, with his second pick, The Massive Importance of Memory in a Customer Experience. 20:36 Ryan explains why his next pick, Is Facial Recognition Creepy, or Just The Future?, is one of his most memorable podcasts. 25:25. Colin discusses the three parts of Customer Science and why the What is Customer Science? podcast is perhaps the most significant episode of the first 200.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

It all started with Apple's Air Tags. As soon as I heard about them, I knew that they would be exceptional, and I had to have them.  But why? I had a drawerful of other manufacturer's products that did the same thing. What was so special about these? My answer is because these were from Apple, and the reason Apple is the answer is because of Halo Effects. Halo Effects affect people's impression of you and your experiences, and, in some cases, you don't have as much control over these halos as you might like.  This episode explains what Halo Effects are, how they influence customers, and what you should do about it moving forward.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Halo Effects are a widespread psychological phenomenon that forms about people and things, and even whole industries. Halo Effects describe how when you create a general impression about an entity. Then, you use that impression to fill in missing information with data that aligns with that impression moving forward. As you can probably guess, these Halo Effects can be positive or negative, and they have a lot of influence on what your customers think of you.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:13  Ryan explains what a Halo Effect is and how it affects customers' perceptions. 07:17  We explain how attractiveness is an excellent example of how Halo Effects can work quickly and automatically. 09:53  Colin shares an example about buying a car, and we get into how impressions and Halo Effects work together and change over time. 11:48  Ryan talks about how the Halo Effect can fill in details that we don't have. 16:02  Colin explains why all parts of the experience influence the Halo Effect, even if they aren't part of the core service you provide. 18:08  Ryan explains the multiplier effects that can happen of reputations for brands and organizations, both good and bad.  25:37  We talk about how you can use your familiarity with the concept of Halo Effects to manage customers' impressions of your brand experience to a better outcome.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

When it comes to your bottom line, pricing your products and services is essential. Price it too low and you can’t keep the lights on. Price it to high and nobody will buy it—and you still can’t keep the lights on. So how do you increase your margin (and keep the lights on)? Make sure your pricing is correct! However, pricing correctly is more challenging than it may seem at first. Most companies assume that increasing your margin is a matter of marking up your costs enough that you can make a profit. But there is more to it than that. In some cases, companies don’t mark it up enough, and then they still don’t make a profit.  In this episode, we explore the psychology of pricing, the difference between pricing products vs. services, and what you can do to help your customers compare your pricing to your competition, and pick your offer over theirs. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience If you get the price wrong, you go out of business. So, there is a lot at stake with pricing. However, there is a lot at stake for in these decisions for customers, too, and they usually have even less information than you do. In other words, pricing is tricky, especially for services, which are not easy for people to compare.  Here are a few key moments in the pricing discussion: 02:24   We begin the discussion about the difference between products and services, and the different challenges with pricing and comparing them. 09:15   Colin shares a story about how a low price can send the wrong signals, too. 12:05   Ryan explains how Reference Points can help customer evaluate intangible items.  14:46    Colin shares and example of what Anchoring can do for your pricing, and how to pay too much for things in some cases. 16:56    Ryan explains that in some cases people will use environmental cues to make decisions when pricing is difficult to assess.  22:12   We talk about the signals that the dollar amounts in your pricing send and how prepayment can affect customers’ perception of price. 27:24   We share our advice on how you can use what you have learned about the psychology of pricing to increase your margins and get your pricing correct. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. For three years running, Beyond Philosophy has been recognized by Financial Times as a leading management consultancy organization. While I would love to take credit for it myself, I realize that we could never have won without the excellent team we have here.  Our team-building strategy is deliberate and repeatable. I have used it to help organizations that hire us to improve their Customer Experiences to build their teams. In other words, we have a strategy for creating successful Customer Experience teams that we know works. In this episode, we share the five rules for building successful Customer Experience teams. We hope that they will help you make the team you need to deliver the experience that fosters the customer-driven growth you need.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience When it comes to building Customer Experience teams, there is no considerable difference between them and any other team. So, in many ways, you can consider these rules as applicable for any team-building project.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 04:28 We share Rule #1, which is to hire strategic thinkers and practical doers, so once you know what to do, you can then carry it out. 10:01  With Rule #2, we suggest hiring a team with a high EQ or emotional intelligence so they can understand and manage the emotions of themselves and others. 12:53  We talk about how understanding all the departments of an organization is essential for the CX Team with Rule #3, which is to respect cross-silo knowledge. 17:24  When we talk about Rule #4, which is to find people who can deal with conflict but with integrity, we discuss the importance of handling conflict when you are on the CX team because everyone is happy about the project until you ask them to do something. 23:14   We share Rule #5 and employ people with natural communication skills, which is vital when explaining the concepts behind why you are making changes to people from all walks of life.  29:38   We summarize the rules and why we think they are essential. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

In a discussion that echoes the age-old chicken vs. egg conversation sentiment, we engaged in a debate. After meeting a fellow Customer Experience proponent on a new social media platform called Clubhouse, we invited author and speaker Stacy Sherman to debate. The topic: Is Customer Experience the new marketing, or is it an entity on its own? Sherman and I have a difference of opinion. Sherman, a director of Customer Experience and employee engagement at a global organization by day and the founder of DoingCXRight.com by night, says that Customer Experience is the new marketing, replacing and usurping it. I don't see it this way, and I see it as an entity/team separate from but working closely with marketing.  In this episode, we each make our case for our view. We also define what Customer Experience and Marketing are and the relationships that we see between them. In the end, we settle on an answer that should help organizations make the most of both teams.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience We have set up this episode as a court with Professor Hamilton presiding as the judge and jury to offer his unbiased decision. For our part, Sherman and I know that both the marketing and Customer Experience teams contribute a lot to the bottom line. We also understand that the two departments have many shared goals and metrics that measure their success. However, is one of them swallowing the other or do they both present value to the overall goal in equal parts? You'll have to listen to know for sure. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:44 I define the topic of the debate based on a sentiment I have been hearing that CX is replacing marketing.  08:41 Sherman and I offer our Customer Experience and Marketing definitions, which set the foundation for further discussion of our positions. 15:48  I explain why marketing has a different and equally important role as Customer Experience in defining what the experience should be. 18:25  Sherman explains that the blend of skills and real-world application of experiences that makes Customer Experience the new marketing. 22:15  Ryan asks us why this discussion matters to organizations trying to deliver an experience that promotes customer-driven growth.  26:38 Ryan gives his decision and summarizes the issue for us all.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Some of you might know that I am learning to play guitar. However, almost none of you will ever hear my covers of Pink Floyd. In fact, that audience is quite exclusive, and includes only me and my wife Lorraine. That is because my guitar playing is something that I do in private, not public.  In this episode, we talk about privacy, or rather, the lack of it in today’s online environment. Your customers probably also have some things they would rather keep private, and finding out that you are invading their privacy with undisclosed data collection is not going to do good things for your Customer Experience. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There is a bit of a duplicity in this topic for me. On the one hand, I applaud organizations that use the data they have about customer behavior to anticipate customer needs and provide an elevated, personalized experience for them. However, if customers don’t know that you are collecting data about them and then learn that you have without their explicit permission, it can feel creepy—and creepy is not a good emotion to evoke with your Customer Experience.  We discuss this conflict of interest and some ways that you can address it. Here are some key moments in the discussion: 04:22   Ryan explains the psychology of privacy and the differing needs of it amongst individuals.  06:56   We talk about a TED Talk by journalist Glenn Greenwald who explained that we wouldn’t give our ATM PIN to a company if they asked for it, but we give them plenty of other data about ourselves. 10:50   Colin discusses Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency function and what it revealed to me about some of his apps. 14:35  Ryan talks about how discovering that apps are tracking your data might lead customers to wonder about the safety of it. 19:29   We discuss whether some organizations are collecting data they don’t intend to use.  21:36  Colin shares a shocking story about the vacuum robots, which leads into a discussion about what could happen with data collection at a legislative level. 28:47   We share our insights on how you can manage this situation moving forward to a positive outcome for your Customer Experience.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Maybe it’s a towing service. Perhaps you use an interior designer. It could be that you needed to outsource your call center. Whatever the reason may be, you have outsourced part of your Customer Experience.  There is an inherent risk involved, of course, if there are problems. After all, customers do not distinguish between the part of the experience you provide and the part your third-party does. To customers, it’s all one experience and any problems that happen along the way, whether they were under your control or not, reflect upon your brand. However, by bringing in these additional resources the third-party company provides, you also have created an end-to-end experience that makes it easy for your customers to do business with you.  The question is, was outsourcing that part of your experience really a good idea or a big mistake? In this episode we answer that question and give you some actionable steps to manage your third-party partners.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience This episode has some examples of what we mean by third party partners and how they fit into an experience. We also explore the pros and cons of outsourcing part of your Customer Experience. Finally, we discuss different ways you can mitigate your risk and manage customer expectations to the best possible outcome for your experience.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:20 Ryan shares a story about his friend and her troubles with a trampoline installation.         06:21 For the first time EVER in the podcast, Colin complains a bit about an experience he had with Apple. 07:40 We explain that how you position the third-party’s role in your experience might create some separation for the two parts in your customers’ mind.  09:58 We explain how companies can’t contract out part of the experience and then walk away from their responsibility for it. 12:22 Colin shares a story where a hotel saw their airport shuttle service like it was a favor and he saw it as a failed part of their experience, and why that happens. 15:56 Colin shares a term he learned from BMW when writing his first book, “Only-ers” and why you shouldn’t have them in your company. 19:58 Ryan explains how big companies can sometimes make customers feel like they are dealing with a third-party company if they don’t improve the customer journey between departments. 26:42 We share our advice and actionable items to help you manage the parts of your experience you might have outsourced.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

It’s summertime. Do you know what that means? That’s right. It’s time for your summer reading list. I bet you thought you were too old for such things.  In this episode,  we share 7 essential books for any Customer Experience professional to read, ideally in a tropical locale with a fruity drink in hand.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience From books on Customer Experience to books about psychology to 1990s bestselling business books, we have a wide variety of reading material for Customer Experience professionals. These books will help you understand why customer behavior is the way it is and how you can help move that behavior to a place that delivers customer-driven growth. Best of all, we save the best for last. Here are the 7 books we think you should read this summer: The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore The End of Average How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness by Todd Rose Who Moved My Cheese? By Dr. Spencer Johnson Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial and Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success by Megan McArdle The Intuitive Customer: 7 Imperatives for Moving Your Customer Experience to the Next Level by Colin Shaw and Ryan Hamilton See what we did there? Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:56   Colin introduces his first book, The Experience Economy cowritten by Joe Pine, a recent guest on the podcast from a few weeks back.  05:05   Ryan introduces his first book, The End of Average, and explained the basic idea of the book and the implications for Customer Experience. 06:53    Colin recommends Who Moved My Cheese?, a 90s bestseller that changed his life by urging him to start his own global Customer Experience Consultancy. 12:54    Ryan shares a book called Uncontrolled, a book that emphasizes the importance of experimentation. 17:15   Colin gives a brief summary of the seven habits shared in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.       22:19.   Ryan suggests The Up Side of Down, which shares the idea that failure is critical to growth and lessons learned from failure can lead to future successes. 24:40.  We save the best for last with The Intuitive Customer, our book that explores the 7 imperatives for taking your experience to a new level of greatness. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. The concepts behind behavioral science are powerful stuff. The psychology that drives how people make decisions has far-reaching and critical influences on how people act as customers.  We often hear about small changes that make a big difference on the outcome when you read about the experiments that prove the theories the science produces. However, the theories that play out in an experiment do not always have the same outcome in the real world. Sometimes, the behavioral science works fine, but isn’t as dramatic as the study you read about it. In the worst examples, behavioral science concepts don’t work at all.  In this episode, we explore the 5 rules that will help you set up your business for success in the implementation of the concepts theorized in behavioral science. We love the effects possible using behavioral science in Customer Experience, especially when they, well, work.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Learning about behavioral science is engaging, fun even. However, implementing experience improvements using the theories you enjoyed learning about can be less fun and even a little frustrating if you aren’t getting the results you wanted. The following five rules will help you set up your behavioral-science-inspired Customer Experience design implementation for success: Focus on the goals or problems to be solved rather than applying the theory. You must know what you are fixing to pick the appropriate tool to do the job, which was the subject of another podcast a few weeks ago, “Is This One of the Most Important Jobs in Business Today?” Get granular. Behavioral science doesn’t work in general; it works in specifics. Identify your levers. Determine what parts of the experience are under your control and concentrate your efforts there.  Identify your customers' mindset. Recreating the situation where your customer decides what to buy (and what not to) is essential to effectively applying the behavioral sciences.  Iterate. Behavioral science’s influence on customers works best when fine-tuned over time and measured for success.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:46  Ryan presents how the way we learn behavioral science affects how we want to implement it. 07:26   We discuss the essential nature of getting specific with your actions using behavioral science concepts to drive behavior. 10:40  Colin discusses how people like things in threes, sevens, and so on, and Ryan explains how research has shown that people converge on specific numbers of items. 13:59   Ryan reminds businesses to focus on what they can control when implementing behavioral sciences; Colin explains that the way you manage it should be deliberate. 18:35   We discuss how essential it is to understand your customers’ mindsets when designing your experience and why.  25:05    We explain the importance of fine-tuning your efforts, even after implementation, and why you should measure your results.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

You might not realize it but the failure of the European Super League in soccer, the pros and cons of vaccine passports, and a brand that took a political stand and paid the price for it all have something in common. These things are part of three news stories that can provide insight into improving your Customer Experience.  So how do they provide insight? Like you can learn from other people's experiences, you can learn from other people's mistakes. Either way, it offers an opportunity for vicarious learning. Vicarious learning is beneficial for avoiding the pain of errors but still getting the benefit of the gained wisdom from it.  We see news headlines all the time about different types of vicarious learning opportunities, both good and bad. However, in this episode, we explore the lessons we can gain from the pain of three organization's Customer Experience mistakes and avoid making the same ones.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience There are three news stories that we talk about in this episode that, at first glance, do not seem to be about Customer Experience. However, after taking a deeper dive into the cause of the problem, we discover that Customer Experience is a contributing factor in all three cases. In this episode, we discuss why and how the experience affects the story's outcome and what insight you can glean from the situation.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:12  The discussion begins with a recap of the failure of the European Super League for soccer and how it shows the importance of recognizing the value you provide customers. 13:47 We talk about the movement for and against vaccine passports in the reopening of different venues and experiences after the pandemic and how that will affect CX. 16:15 The discussion turns to what happens when supply shortages disrupt business as usual after the pandemic, and the best way to handle that for your customers.  22:29  We review what happened to Delta in the past couple of months when Georgia, the state where the company is based, passed voting laws that were hotly contested and they decided to come out on the issue.  27:21  We offer advice on how to choose sides when staying neutral on a contentious topic seems impossible.  28:26  We talk about how framing can change how customers perceive your communication, and the benefits of being deliberate about your strategy regarding these issues.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Pricing strategy on its face doesn’t seem complicated. The goal is to get as high a price as you can to ensure you have enough margin to make a profit, while also moving inventory at a sufficient rate. So, the strategy is often to move the price around until you find the sweet spot that hits all these metrics.  However, like most things that have to do with customer behavior, it isn’t as simple as that. There are other variables that can affect your pricing strategy success, and understanding them will help you find that sweet spot faster. In this episode, we investigate pricing strategy and tactics that organizations use to inspire the customer behavior they want. We also talk about the two levels of pricing strategy to consider as well as some practical advice on how you can apply it to your pricing tactics.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Pricing is great in that it produces excellent quantitative data. You can see you sold X amount of product or service at a specific price. Lower the price by ten percent and you can see that you sold Y. Modeling with data can show you a lot more about customer behavior related to price. Unfortunately, what quantitative data can’t always show you about pricing is the psychological effects pricing has on customer behavior. That’s where we come in.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:58   Ryan talks about the two ways to try to understand pricing and the concept of price elasticity. 10:34   Ryan explains the two levels of pricing strategy for different brands: individual pricing and general pricing image. 13:04   Colin shares a story about what he learned about making mistakes in general image pricing with a grocery store chain in the Southeastern US. 16:25   Ryan explains how the common tactics we associate with pricing (aka, sales) work on the individual level impressions. 17:55  Ryan shares the two general principles for pricing that affect customer behavior around price. 26:05  We share practical advice about what you should do with this information. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

When I was unsubscribing to a service online, I encountered some resistance. My unsubscribing experience included a detailed accounting of all the features to which I would no long have access—in bold, red typeface. It also featured a checklist where I had to acknowledge one-by-one all the benefits I was forfeiting.  It was a wonderful example of a company that takes advantage of the effects of Loss Aversion.  Loss Aversion is part of the bigger concept of Prospect Theory, first introduced nearly 50 years ago by Nobel-prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Loss Aversion describes how we hate losing things much more than we enjoy gaining things.  We discussed the effects of Loss Aversion on customer behavior in this episode, part of our new series The Ten Most Effective Ways to Influence Your Customers’ Behavior. Loss Aversion is the 2nd of the ten effective ways. We also explain how you can use these effects to your benefit when presenting your marketing message and in your Customer Experience. Perhaps most importantly, we give you actionable items you can take to implement these ideas into your organization today.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience People hate losing things the most and will often change their behavior to avoid doing so. That means if customers are behaving a way that you don’t like, like unsubscribing, you can steer their behavior to a better outcome by emphasizing what they might lose if they continue in that direction.  Here are some of the key moments in our discussion: 03:49 Ryan explains what Loss Aversion is and how it affects behavior.  05:14   We talk about how this could affect your marketing messaging, with a little strategy. 06:54 Ryan explains the concept of Framing and shares a study about banking consumers in Israel that demonstrates how this works in marketing. 12:26   We talk about how it is essential to understand the effects of losses for your customers. 15:35  Ryan touches on the idea of Prospect Theory and how it relates to Loss Aversion and decision-making. 17:35  We discuss how FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) affects Loss Aversion also. 22:38  We share practicalities of how to apply this to your Customer Experience. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

In the early days of my career, I thought the customer was always right. The idea that one should fire a customer sometimes would have sounded like madness to me. However, as I have matured over the following four decades, I learned that sometimes the customer is not right. Sometimes they are really, really wrong, from how they abuse your systems to how they tax your resources to how they talk to employees. You should fire customers in these cases.  This episode explores the situations where it is critical to fire employees and why. Inspired by the article “Firing a Bad Customer in 2021” by Fred Reichheld, prolific author on customer loyalty and inventor of the Net Promoter Score (NPS),   we discuss why you should fire some customers, how you should attempt to manage the situation, and how to go about it once you decide that a customer needs to go.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience It seems counterintuitive to tell a customer to beat it when you are in business. It seems like you should want every customer you can find, good, bad, or somewhere in between.  However, some customer relationships are not worth saving. Some cannot be fixed with credits and additional services. Moreover, these relationships often cost you the most in time and headache, and that use up valuable resources that could be spent in other areas. Here are some other key moments in the discussion. 04:46 Ryan explains the 80/20 rule and how it applies to customers.  06:25 Colin shares a personal experience about how loud customers are sometimes considered best customers, even when they are not. 12:25 Colin explains why he likes the rating systems on Uber.  15:13 The discussion turns to how difficult customer relationships can sometimes drain the life out of employees.  18:51 Colin explains a significant danger of paying too much attention to customers that don’t deserve it.  24:19 We share specific advice on how you should manage these customer situations to better outcomes and also the termination of the relationship, if it comes to that.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. There is a common misconception in organizations that their business customers buy rationally. However, these same organizations also think that their business is built on relationships. This dichotomy comes from a misunderstanding about business customers: they have emotional needs in their business-to-business relationships just like they do in their business-to-consumer ones.  Business customers want many of the same things retail customers do. Business customers share the same emotional needs to feel cared for by the companies they do business with for their business. They need to know they are appreciated and that they can trust the suppliers they use to help them reach their goals.  In other words, they need to feel happy and pleased with their business-to-business Customer Experience. In this episode, we share the 5 rules for managing your Customer Experience in business-to-business relationships, including: B2B is complicated, so you need to simplify it.  Recognize that customer emotions apply. Manage different customers differently. Define the experience to align the organization. Focus on the art of the possible. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience  Here is a quick summary of why these are the five rules: B2B is complicated, so you need to simplify it. Due to the complex nature of businesses, particularly large corporate entities, it is essential to break down the Customer Experience into smaller, manageable parts.  Recognize that customer emotions apply. Emotions drive value in business relationships the same way they do in personal ones; how business customers feel in your experience is essential to manage.  Manage different customers differently. In your business relationships, you might have multiple contacts with various jobs within an account with different perceptions of your organization; understanding how these individual perceptions define the value your company provides is vital and might require adapting your approach depending upon the contact with whom you interact.  Define the experience to align the organization. It is critical to know what emotions are the most valuable to your organization’s customers and how you want to evoke these emotions with your experience. However, we recommend setting the goal of the emotion and allowing the organization’s departments determine how they will evoke that emotion in their part of the customer process.  Focus on the art of the possible. Not everyone will be on board with your plan, and that’s okay. Some departments will and these early-adopters will score the first wins for the program. Once the other, less enthusiastic departments see the early-adopter’s results, they will come around and join in the effort.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:27 Colin shares some context about the complexity of managing Customer Experiences for large global corporate entities. 07:09 Ryan reviews the concept behind the Dunbar Number, which dictates how many relationships people can manage. 10:57 Colin explains a common dichotomy in thinking he encounters at his meetings with business-to-business clients. 13:40 Colin shares a story about working with a healthcare company and what it taught him about segmenting customers within a single account. 17:35 Colin explains how the Customer Experience manager should empower organizational departments to determine how to evoke the desired emotional outcome from customers in that department’s part of the process. 22:25 Colin shares his advice for managing the departments that buy-in to the process—and how to handle the ones that don’t. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources This podcast is sponsored by Verint. Verint helps the world’s most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work, data, and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and The Science of Customer Engagement to meet ever-increasing, ever-shifting consumer interactions and demands. Download the new Verint research report on the Engagement Capacity Gap, by visiting www.Verint.com/boundless  Customer engagement is critical to your success. Join this three-day, virtual conference to discover tools and techniques that can help you build enduring customer relationships. Register at www.Verint.com/engage LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

People lie. I have done it. You have done it. Even your customers have done it. From little white lies that don’t cause any real damage to great big deceptions with serious repercussions for all involved, lies are a fact of life.  While the scope of the lying is different, the aim is the same: avoiding the truth. You are avoiding the truth about your plans for the evening when you tell your friends you can’t meet them in the pub because you are busy and you are really going home to watch Netflix.  You are avoiding the disappointment your mother would feel to know you already have the sweater she bought you for a holiday gift. You are avoiding getting sacked when you tell your boss that you are almost finished with a project you haven’t started yet.  In this episode, we tell you the truth about lying. We get into why people lie, how they justify it to themselves, and when they can’t. We also explain what happens to your relationships with customers when you lie to them. (Spoiler alert: it’s nothing good.) Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One surprising insight that I learned was that people not only lie to other people, but also to themselves. Author, consultant, and investor Nir Eyal, breaks down lying into a 2 x 2 framework. One axis shows two groupings: other people or yourself. The other axis shows the subject of the lies: facts or values. From this, Eyal divides liars into four groups, which include: deceitful, delusional, duplicitous, and demoralized. By dividing into these groups, you get a glimpse into some of the reasons people lie.  Here are a few more key moments in our discussion: 04:20     Ryan shares research that suggests we think of lies as an economic trade off, what we gain vs. what we lose with lying. 08:58.    Colin explains that most people lie in Customer Experiences to get the sale or to avoid upsetting the customer.     10:58     We compare the fine line between framing information and deceiving the customer through how we present the facts. 16:03     We share the justifications people have for lying; and, surprisingly, there is a good reason there. 17:55     Ryan shares past research of his that explains why people with rapport tend to lie more during negotiations than when they don’t. 26:21      We share our advice on how to manage honesty in your Customer Experience and why it is imperative.       Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources This podcast is sponsored by Verint. Verint helps the world’s most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work, data, and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and The Science of Customer Engagement to meet ever-increasing, ever-shifting consumer interactions and demands. Download the new Verint research report on the Engagement Capacity Gap, by visiting www.Verint.com/boundless  Customer engagement is critical to your success. Join this three-day, virtual conference to discover tools and techniques that can help you build enduring customer relationships. Register at www.Verint.com/engage LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A massive gap exists. It widens every second between what customers expect and what many organizations can provide as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. If companies don't figure out what the future of their experience looks like pretty quickly, they face the grim reality that they will be watching from across a chasm as their profits and customer-driven growth fall into it in 2021.  Verint, the voice of customer experts for over 25 years, has recent research from respondents worldwide and across industries that indicates most companies are confused about what to do. Their respondents indicated that 82% believe the challenges of managing customer engagement and experience will get more difficult this year. The majority of them, 74 percent, didn't hire their planned new hires last year because of COVID and the related economic uncertainty. Moreover, only half say they are prepared for the rest of this year.  Verint's Nancy Porte, VP Global Customer Experience, CCXP, joins us in this episode to discuss the research. She explains what is happening, why this perfect storm of factors has backed organizations into a corner, and what they can do about it to join the few companies that have it figured out.  (Hint: Customer Science is important here.) Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience  Porte says Verint undertook this research because of several factors, not just the end of the pandemic. Before we ever heard of SARS-CoV-2, we were experiencing a digital disruption to business as usual. This disruption accelerated during the pandemic out of necessity, but not every company has succeeded. Also, many organizations saw a change in customer behavior to which they were not prepared to respond. Moreover, companies were experiencing changes in the workforce that were generational and compounded by a sudden work-from-home environment. All of these factors contributed to the environment organizations face today.  Here are a few critical moments in the discussion with Porte: 04:53     Porte shares some surprising statistics that emerged from the research about the state of companies today. 12:14     Porte explains why she thinks companies feel unprepared to meet customer expectations in the coming months.  14:48     We discuss the role technology can and should play in the future of Customer Experiences that meet customers’ expectations. 24:04     Colin talks about a critical and often over-looked aspect of choosing a technology partner for your CX design. 26:44     We talk about the pitfalls of data silos for the future of predictive analytics for customer behavior. 32:03      We share what you should do with this information to avoid letting all your success fall into the gap in 2021.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources This podcast is sponsored by Verint. Verint helps the world’s most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work, data, and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and The Science of Customer Engagement to meet ever-increasing, ever-shifting consumer interactions and demands. Download the new Verint research report on the Engagement Capacity Gap, by visiting www.Verint.com/boundless  Customer engagement is critical to your success. Join this three-day, virtual conference to discover tools and techniques that can help you build enduring customer relationships. Register at www.Verint.com/engage LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Guess what? We got a suggestion from a listener—and we took it. He asked us if we had any advice for businesses with a small budget on how to use concepts from the behavioral sciences to improve moments in their Customer Experience. We created a fictional restaurant called Hamilton’s Fine Dining, which, you can imagine, had no budget at all for Customer Experience Design. Then, we talked about what we would do if our fake restaurant was really in need of improvement.  This episode explores the ways a business with little to no budget can use concepts from the behavioral sciences to create WOW! Moments in their experiences for their customers. We use examples from past concepts we have discussed with practical actions any business can take, regardless of company size or the existence of a Customer Experience improvement budget.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Many times, we think that a new Customer Experience will cost a ton of money. But that isn’t always the case. Many times there are opportunities in your experience that cost you nothing more than time or attention to fix. All told, we came up with 11 practical tips that cost practically nothing that could improve an experience. Here are a few of the key moments in the discussion.  04:03 Ryan explains a common problem that occurs when people learn a new behavioral science concept, and what they should do to avoid it.  07:29 We identify how opportunities to improve often exist that correspond to regular business expenses that cost you nothing extra to fix. 10:35 Ryan takes a closer look at a common pitfall businesses fall into, too many choices and how it can backfire on your experience. 15:04 Colin explains how remembering faces requires a deliberate effort, but is an effective way to appreciate customers. 17:06 Colin shares some things that really bug him at a restaurant and what you can do about it. 21:24 We discuss Kahneman’s Peak-End Rule and how you can use it to optimize your experience for free. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources This podcast is sponsored by Verint. Verint helps the world’s most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work, data, and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and The Science of Customer Engagement to meet ever-increasing, ever-shifting consumer interactions and demands. Download the new Verint research report on the Engagement Capacity Gap, by visiting www.Verint.com/boundless  Customer engagement is critical to your success. Join this three-day, virtual conference to discover tools and techniques that can help you build enduring customer relationships. Register at www.Verint.com/engage LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Brands have a problem sometimes. They get stuck and lose momentum and the ability to respond to changes in the market. Over time that can result in a loss of relevancy to their customers and an inability to keep their customers. Moreover, they lose out on forming solid relationships with customers that allow brands to enjoy the benefits of customer-driven growth.  In this episode, we speak with Jason Ten-Pow, President of  ONR CX and author of the new book UNBREAKABLE: A proven process for building relationships with customers, about how to build deeper and profitable relationships with customers.  Ten-Pow has been consulting in Customer Experience for over two decades. From the customers' perspective, the relationship between customers and brands sits along a continuum, with extremes as a ruptured relationship or an indestructible bond. Ten-Pow sees that the challenge facing brands is to move that relationship to the end of the continuum where the customer sees their organization as the one to which they are exclusively connected. Moreover, he would encourage brands to realize that deep, permanent relationships with customers are not a one-and-done process. It's an ongoing effort. The benefits of this type of unbreakable relationship between customers and a brand are apparent as we come out of the pandemic. Brands with this type of emotional engagement with their customers can weather the storms of global pandemics, economic downturn, and upstart (disruptive) competitors. As Ten-Pow says, organizations gain the ability to take risks, remain relevant in a changing marketplace, and change how they do things when forming these strong and resilient relationships with their customers.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience  Ten-Pow says that there is a common misconception around Customer Experience that it is a "feel-good" exercise with no tangible benefits for the brand. However, excellent and optimal experiences that create emotional engagement with customers deliver much more than that. ONR's research revealed that only six percent of brands had achieved this type of connection to customers. His book addresses the other 94 percent and the necessary steps they should take for their CX Transformation. Here are few critical moments in the discussion: 05:56      We learn the secret to not getting stuck in a CX Transformation process and losing momentum. 07:12      Ten-Pow shares the five levels of the CX Audit, the first step in the Unbreakable CX Transformation.       12:18      We learn about the problem with Brands' data collection and use and what they should be doing with it.     14:50      Ten-Pow explains how technology solves problems, but the human relationship should be the priority and why that is the case. 22:12      We hear about how Adam at JPMorgan Chase crossed the divide between theory and real-world implementation at their organization. 27:35     Ten-Pow reveals the key to implementing successful CX Transformation processes: Pace.       Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

New Podcast Series: The 10 Most Effective Ways to Influence Your Customer Behavior All of us have two systems of thinking that drive our decision making. One is rational and logical, and the other is fast and emotional. There have been many labels for these two systems over the years, but the ones we use are the Rational System and the Intuitive System. These two ways of thinking help us make decisions. However, these two systems do not always agree on the decision we should make.  For example, I bought a car 16 years ago that is falling apart now that I need to replace. I learned there was a subscription service where you can switch cars every six months for a monthly fee—a hefty one. My Rational System tells me that this fee doesn’t make sense because I am not always living there. I split my time between the UK and the US, so there would be months where I couldn’t drive the car. However, my Intuitive System saw the shiny cars and was ready to subscribe.  This episode, sponsored by Verint, explains how these two systems work together (or against each other, in my car example) for customer decision-making. Understanding how people make decisions helps you learn how to persuade them to do something else instead.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience We chose this topic for our new podcast series, The 10 Most Effective Ways to Influence Your Customer because it is foundational to Customer Experience management. Here are a few key moments in the discussion. 02:29   We announce the name and purpose of our new series, the Ten Most Effective Ways to Influence Your Customer. 07:40   Ryan explains the history of the two-system thinking and the foundational elements behind the theory.  11:34   We explain why you need to understand and encourage both types of thinking with the moments in your Customer Experience.     15:19     Colin explains how we train our customers’ Intuitive System with our experiences, good or bad. 22:20     Ryan shares how to anticipate which system is more important to appeal to for any moment and design for it appropriately. 24:29     We talk about how you have a choice to meet people where they are or to move them where you need them to be in their thinking. 25:56     We share our practical advice about what you should do with this information.   Customer Experience Information & Resources This podcast is sponsored by Verint. Verint helps the world’s most iconic brands build enduring customer relationships by connecting work, data, and experiences across the enterprise. The Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform draws on the latest advancements in AI and analytics, an open cloud architecture, and The Science of Customer Engagement to meet ever-increasing, ever-shifting consumer interactions and demands. Download the new Verint research report on the Engagement Capacity Gap, by visiting www.Verint.com/boundless  Customer engagement is critical to your success. Join this three-day, virtual conference to discover tools and techniques that can help you build enduring customer relationships. Register at www.Verint.com/engage LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. Before I founded Beyond Philosophy, I worked in corporate life. I was neck deep in company politics there, too. I learned that navigating through them was tricky and that there was a surprising lack of literature on how to do it better. Back then, there were fewer books on such things, and podcasts and TED talks didn’t exist, at least not to the degree they do today. It seemed there was a void regarding managing company politics. However, doing so is an essential area to master if you want your Customer Experience program to get the support it needs to survive and thrive in your organization. In this episode, we share our 5 Rules for successfully managing your company politics that should work no matter where you are and whatever organizational climate you face. We pull from decades of work experience and supporting clients through their company’s politics to share tried and true advice for understanding and play the game of company politics successfully for your career.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience I have dealt with company politics my entire working life. These rules I share are designed to help you learn vicariously through me—because nobody pulls you aside at the company orientation to tell you how to deal with them. While this list is not exhaustive on the topic, it can certainly lay the foundation for a successful management of the politics you encounter at your organization. Don’t be naïve. Company politics are everywhere and they affect your ability to do your job.  Understand how to play chess.  The game teaches strategy, which is essential to playing the company politics game.  Realize that sometimes you need to lose a battle to win the war. It does no good to win the argument if you lose support from your allies; drop it and revisit the issue later, if necessary. Focus on the customer. Company politics should not get in the way of your doing what is right for the customer. Do a good job. If you do your job well consistently, everyone will want you on the team no matter who has the most power in company politics. Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:53 We define what company politics are and what we are managing. 06:40 Colin shares examples where company politics derailed customer experience programs.  08:53 We discuss how playing chess and managing company politics are fairly similar endeavors.  12:15 Ryan shares how understanding what your customer wants helps you manage your colleagues to get what you want. 15:26 Colin explains how people usually go along with your ideas until you ask them to do something—and what you can do about it. 18:54 Colin shares a story about how he learned that sometimes it’s better to blame the consultant for unpopular moments in your implementation strategy. 21:29 Colin shares the secret to career success his dad taught him that will trump any political games at any organization no matter who is in power.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Throughout human history, it seems that around 150 is the number of meaningful relationships any human can maintain. Oxford University's anthropology professor Robin Dunbar discovered this number by studying monkey groups and extrapolating that number to match the human brain's capacity. Understanding why this is can help you optimize your ability to manage your team, your business, and even your social media feed. In this episode, we discuss Dunbar's number and its implications for our personal and business relationships. Our social brain maxes out around 150 for loved ones, close friends, friends, and so on, but we can maintain relationships with acquaintances and familiar faces for up to 1,500. For those of you with thousands of social media relationships, this might sound crazy. However, if you take a deeper dive, you will likely find a similar number within that range amongst these online connections when it comes to meaningful relationships. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience From our ancestral hunter-gatherers to military troops to the number of people on your Christmas-Card list, the number of relationships hovers around 150. However, this number breaks down further into smaller groups, like five loved ones, 15 good friends, 50 friends, and 150 meaningful contacts. The concept goes beyond 150 as well. Many people have up to 500 acquaintances and 1,500 people that they at least recognize. However, the idea behind Dunbar's number is that those relationships outside of the 150-range need additional effort to move into the inner circle.  When it comes to your relationships from a personal or business perspective, understanding the relationship circles and your human limitations can identify opportunities for you and the teams you manage. We discuss these as well as how you can use this information moving forward: Here are some of the key points in our discussion: 03:32 Ryan explains Dunbar’s number and how Professor Dunbar discovered it. 06:24 We discuss what it implies when it comes to management relationships. 10:11 Colin explains how you see what relationships people value by looking at how they spend their time. 16:19 We discuss what Dunbar’s number means for social media.  19:52 Ryan shares how the pandemic might have changed how our social interactions occur, but the vital nature of rekindling them as much as possible. 22:28 Colin shares how you can use Dunbar’s number in management at an employee and account level. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

What do the song “Fine Line” by Hootie and the Blowfish and the scent of air conditioning have in common? They are two things my family associates with taking holidays in the US. Once they hear the song or walk into an air-conditioned building, they are transported to our family trips in the US when they were young. However, these examples also represent critical areas for your Customer Experience design. Sound and Smell are an area often overlooked by organizations when it comes to the details and how it supports your brand image.  In this episode, we speak with sound and smell design expert Simon Faure-Field, CEO of Equal Strategy. He shares his expertise and examples of how organizations can use both sound and smell to deliver the experience that evokes the proper emotions that can lead to customer-driven growth.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Many organizations have their focus on other areas of the experience, so when it comes down to choosing hold music for their call center, they are likely to say, “just play whatever comes with the system.” While this decision is simple, it reflects poorly on your brand unless you want to be a whatever-comes-with-the-system-type company.   Likewise, smells can be distracting from your experience. For example, many casinos allow smoking at their tables. It’s great for the casino because smoking tables often result in a higher take than non-smoking tables. However, it’s terrible for the guests who don’t fancy the odor cigarettes tend to leave behind. Faure-Field and his team at Equal Strategy addressed this problem in a Singapore Casino by developing a fragrance that cut through the smell of tobacco, and everyone won—just not as much as the house. Addressing moments like these in your experience are examples of how you can use the areas of sound and smell to elevate and improve your experience.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   03:39 Faure-Field shares how your hold music at the call center can affect the Customer Experience more than you think. 05:11 Faure-Field shares how music reflects the brand personality that you want to show your customers. 10:24 We hear how Faure-Field’s team attacks sound design for a brand and examples of what worked for some of his company’s clients. 24:19 Faure-Field describes the types of scents they use to manage customer behavior and how they work together to create atmospheres. 26:09 We hear how a casinos in Singapore let their customers enjoy a cigarette while gambling without letting the environment go up in smoke. 31:47 Faure-Field explains how you can combine scents with opposing effects on customer behavior to provide an elevated experience. 34:10 We share our advice on how you can apply these concepts to your own Customer Experiences with any type of budget.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

You might be surprised to learn that when golf courses make less revenue, Disney World's attendance goes up. You might also find it weird that Mississippi's marriage rate correlates 99.3% with the US per capita consumption of whole milk. Perhaps most shocking is the fact that more people die of fire, smoke, and flames in years when Nick Cage is in fewer movies. All of these are 100 percent true. Why do you think that is? If you just tried to think of the answer, congratulations! You are human. Also, don't worry about it. While each of these things is true, they are called a Spurious Correlation, which describes two parallel and completely unrelated statistics.  This episode discusses how your brain encounters something like a Spurious Correlation, and it tries to make sense of them, even when there is no sense to make. We see this kind of behavior in many different areas, including big data, pictures from Mars, and even your customer behavior analysis. Could you see something in the numbers that isn't there?  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Spurious Correlations are statistics that are closely parallel, but there is no relation between them. We often see correlations in customer behavior statistics. Usually, you can explain why you know what you see, so you fix it. However, what happens if you are wrong about what you saw? We discuss what you can do about this problem before it ends up causing you more significant issues in your Customer Experience. Here are some key moments in the discussion:   04:11   Ryan explains what a spurious correlation is and how it relates to Customer Experience. 07:28   Ryan tells us what our brains do when we see a correlated statistic, even when there is not an obvious connection 09:17   We share what Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman says about this phenomenon. 14:17   Colin shares why we evolved to seek patterns in data we receive about the world around us.   17:16   We talk about Professor Gary Smith’s article on Spurious Correlations in Big Data and what dangers that portends for Customer Experience analysis. 19:51   Ryan explains how the peer review process keeps scientists from making their opinions their conclusions. 28:40   We share three actionable things you can do to avoid making this mistake with your analysis of customer behavior. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Ep 178 5 Rules for Making Customers Feel ‘Cared For’ and ‘Valued’ A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. We know that the most significant influence on a Customer Experience outcome is how a customer feels about it, for good or ill. Therefore, it is essential that you are deliberate about which specific emotion you evoke (for example, we want more good than ill). In my experience the best emotion for facilitating customer-driven growth is making customers feel “Cared For” and “Valued.”   In this episode we share the five rules for Making Customers Feel Cared For and Valued. These five rules will help you deliver a Customer Experience that delivers the customer-driven growth you want and need for your bottom line.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Here are the 5 Rules for Making Customers Feel Cared For and Valued: Define which emotions drive value. My experience dictates that many organizations need customers to feel Cared For and Valued, but that might be different for you. Customer research will tell you for sure.  Define the action that you need to take. Once you know what emotion you want customers to feel, you should determine what little things you can do all along the Customer Experience to evoke that specific emotion. We usually do that by reflection on our personal experiences when someone made us feel that way.  Design that into your Customer Experience. Now that you know what makes people feel the way you want them to, you design those moments into the experience where you can. Train your people on how to evoke these emotions.  It is critical that you teach people how to carry out these actions appropriately. Some people know naturally; many people don’t. However, with a little training, many people can learn how to do it well.  Measure your results.  As in all things Customer Experience, it is paramount that you measure how your changes have yielded value to the bottom line.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 01:53   Colin explains why Valued and Cared For are such important emotions regarding Customer Experiences. 05:42   Colin uses Ryan’s life experiences to demonstrate how you find the specific actions that evoke emotions for people by examining your own.  11:49   Colin shares how getting members of the team involved in the second rule activity helps solidify the concept throughout the organization. 15:52   Colin shares thoughts about why traditional Journey Mapping falls short for many organizations. 18:33   Colin reflects on his personal experience to demonstrate how you train teams to recognize customer emotions.  25:28   We summarize the five rules and share our final thoughts on customer emotions in an experience. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

In the UK, there is a lot of talk about how to come out of the pandemic stay-at-home orders now that more people have been vaccinated. The idea of a vaccine passport has been circulating, which would allow those that are vaccinated to do things unvaccinated people cannot. However, some think that vaccine passports are discriminatory, particularly as it pertains to getting a job.  The idea of vaccine passports certainly gives you a lot to think about for your Customer Experience, and is also excellent fodder for a little friendly debate. In this episode, we discuss the idea behind the vaccine passport, what it could mean to these waning days of the pandemic, and whether we think it is a good idea, and why—or why not.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Vaccine passports are not a thing, not yet anyway. However, the concept is a thorny one, to say the least. In some cases, requiring a vaccine of participants seems like a reasonable request. However, in others, it seems discriminatory. We untangle some of the finer points of the concept.    Here are some highlights of the discussion:     02:54 We share some of the organizations in the UK who have already adopted ideas similar to vaccine passports. 12:51 We discuss the two factors that influence perceptions of fairness associated with vaccine passports.  18:21 Ryan shares the less often discussed side of Prospect Theory that affects our assessment of risk. 20:10 We explain how social proofing could affect mask-wearing compliance. 21:44 Ryan explains a concept called reactance, which can happen when people feel their autonomy has been violated. 22:41 We discuss how framing the message is crucial to a rollout of any policy regarding vaccine passports. 24:31 We both share our take on whether or not vaccine passports are a good idea or not.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.    Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We often hear requests for the best practices in Customer Experience. We understand why, too.  Who wants to endure trial and error if there is a tried and true idea guaranteed to get results? However, no tried and true idea always gets results. Instead, there are only expert opinions served as advice about what has worked in the past. These are often the “best practices.” We argue that best practices, no matter how solid a suggestion they are, could use a bit of challenge and a dose of skepticism.  Moreover, calling them best practices stifles creativity. They encourage people to follow the well-trodden path to an outcome without divergence. As a result, many people use them as an excuse to implement them blindly and wait for results.  However, this strategy will not prevail, and success could remain elusive to those who follow this non-divergent, uncreative path.  In this episode, we explain why best practice stifles creativity and the best approach to accept best practice advice. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience When people ask me about Customer Experience's best practices, they know I have 20 years in the industry. They also surmise that I have seen a thing or two that worked for other organizations along the way. They probably want to avoid the mistakes the organizations I have worked with and I might have made along the way, too. To be clear, I don't take issue with this approach.  People ask for my informed opinions, and as an expert in the field, I should offer those when asked. My issue is with the meaning behind the term "best practice." It implies that you should do it without questions and expect results.  Unfortunately, that type of thing doesn't exist. Instead, it would help if you learned what worked before, challenge that with what you know from your expertise in your field, and adapt the practice, so it is "the best" for you. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:57 We empathize with why people find best practices desirable and then why we think the concept is flawed. 04:36 Colin takes a counter argument that experts should know what best practices are, so their advice is valid.  09:07 We discuss why people don’t always take experts’ advice anymore, and the spectrum of reaction between gullibility and total skeptic. 11:27 Colin shares a useful tool he picked up at a client meeting that encourages debate in a healthy way. 17:33 We discuss the dangers of convergent thinking for your long term success. 20:51 We share the advice we have for people moving forward with “best practice” advice. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Way back in 1998, I read a book by Joe Pine (@joepine), co-founder of Strategic Horizons, LLP,  and Jim Gilmore called The Experience Economy. I was gobsmacked by it.  I dashed down the hall to my boss at British Telecom. He read it and had a similar reaction to mine. The next thing I knew, he put me in charge of improving the Customer Experience for our company, and the rest is history.  You could say that Joe Pine changed my life. His insight into how the experience would be vital to business today has shaped my career for 23 years. So, when I got to host him on this episode of The Intuitive Customer, you can imagine how excited I was.  We talk to Pine about how the pandemic changed in-person events, trade shows, and conferences for the better and what we can learn from going virtual. The future, it seems, will take the best of both worlds. The important thing is to avoid the worst of both worlds.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience  Starting in March 2020, Pine watched as all the events he had booked canceled. At first, the organizers canceled them. But then, they began to migrate to an online format. It turns out, virtual events, for the interested attendee, could be excellent resources for information. Pine was fascinated at how effective virtual events were and the extent of their reach.  However, they weren't a replacement. The information was great, but Pine and the other event participants missed the interaction with other people in the field and the inherent networking involved.   Businesses responded to this need with hybrid events. The idea behind the hybrid event is a live event with attendees, and then a simultaneous online event complements the in-person one. Pine's book, Infinite Possibility Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier, discusses how technology can enhance the event's value in business post-pandemic. Whether it's a conference or symposium or a sporting event or concert, the hybrid event could be the format's future. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 06:50  Pine explains what the new trend of hybrid events. 08:50  Pine says online experiences like Twitch predict what people will want from events moving forward. 12:31 Colin shares the value of comments given by the audience during a presentation. 15:08 Colin talks about the emotional value people feel connecting to a presenter even when you are not in person.  22:17 Pine advises that hybrid events should have a producer handle the management of the virtual event. 20:15 We break down the four different possible levels of value for a hybrid event. 25:24 We share the top recommendations and tips we have for using the hybrid event in your experience.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. Customers buy habitually, and that’s great when their habit is to buy from you. The problem is sometimes they aren’t buying habitually from you, but instead from your competition. Changing customer habits is essential in this case, and requires a deep understanding of why customers have the habits they do.  Years ago, I read the Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, and have been obsessed with habits ever since. In it we learn the habitual cycle of customer behavior and also how to change habits using the different parts of it. In this episode, we explore this cycle and the 5 rules for changing customer habits, which include: Understand your customer habits. Understanding customer triggers. Distract your customer from their existing habit. Reinforce new habits with rewards. Measure the difference. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Here are the critical points we make regarding each of the 5 rules: Understand your customer habits. Duhigg defines the habitual cycle as Cue, Response, then Reward. Understanding customer triggers. The Cue is the trigger for the response. When you know what makes your customers initiate habitual behavior, you have an opportunity to change it if necessary. Distract your customer from their existing habit. Changing customer habits requires disrupting the trigger so customers don’t start in on their automatic response.  Reinforce new habits with rewards. Once you have disrupted the habit cycle, supply an immediate reward so customers adapt to the new desired response quickly. Measure the difference. Like all things with Customer Experiences and customer habits, you should measure the difference your efforts make in terms of what drives value for your organizations (i.e., $$$).  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:37 Ryan explains what a habit is and what part of our brain governs them and why. 07:50 We discuss the steps of the Habit Cycle as outlines by Duhigg’s The Power of Habit.  09:37 We share a story about how Delta understood my trigger at the airport, and got me to change my habits using that information, and why it worked. 20:16 We describe the different ways you can disrupt the trigger for habitual behavior so you can re-train customers to do what you want them to do. 25:15 We explain why the third stage of habitual behavior, Reward, is essential to forming habits (hint: It’s the reason we have the habit in the first place).  28:52 We cover the vital nature of measuring the effects of your efforts and how it can help you with your Customer Experience. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

In job descriptions and resumes, there are new required skills for candidate’s resumes in Behavioral Science. These jobs might be the most important new jobs in business today. But why? Behavioral science and the scientists that use it will tell you that understanding the “why” of what customers do has become table stakes in some industries today.  In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we discuss with two behavioral scientists their job descriptions, what they actually do, and what they wish people knew about what they do.   Anne Wilson, Ph.D., earned her doctorate at Harvard Business School, and now works in behavioral finance for a national investment firm. Lauren Cheatham, Ph.D., got her doctorate at Stanford University, and after a stint at the University of Hawaii and then Apple, she now works in Silicon Valley at a social media giant. Both scientists have been charged with applying what they know about the behavioral sciences to guide both internal decision making, and external customer decision making.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience As passionate promoters of the behavioral sciences in Customer Experience design, we are thrilled to hear that large, national brands are embracing these essential principles. We asked our guests why those firms hired behavioral scientists, what they wished everyone understood about the behavioral sciences, and if they had examples of how they were able to solve a problem using their behavioral sciences background.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 04:09 Wilson shares what she does for the financial company with her skills. 05:36 Cheatham share why she thinks behavioral science works for organizations of all kinds, including hers. 12:17 Cheatham explains what drives her crazy about the perspective gap that exists with behavioral sciences in business. 13:20 Wilson explains why a basic knowledge of behavioral sciences is a good start, but not enough to handle the heavy lifting in the science.  21:03 Cheatham shares how her behavioral sciences tool kit resolved an issue in their Customer Experience measurement. 24:24 Wilson shares what her team looks for to resolve poor financial decision-making in their customers.  30:16 Colin asks the guests what advice they have for organizations that are considering hiring a behavioral scientist.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

You have only half a second to make an excellent first impression with your customers with your digital experience. Per the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at Harvard, most people form a first impression of a website in 500 milliseconds. So, the question is whether you are proud or concerned about your digital experience after hearing this stat? This episode explores the science behind how people form first impressions of digital experience and some of the ways you can use psychology and the behavioral sciences to improve your chances of making a good one.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience First impressions are lasting impressions. First impressions also become the anchor for experience evaluation, meaning that customers adjust either up or down from their first impression point. So, the better your first impression, the higher your first impression, the higher your customers' final evaluation of the digital experience will be. How we evaluate websites has many other influences also. First, we tend to compare websites to the best websites we have ever used. For example, when I track a package on any website, I expect it to have the same level of clarity and information as Amazon. However, most of them do not. Also, we have experience with a wide variety of websites that set expectations or that we use as a comparison against our digital experiences. Digital experiences give you new challenges and new opportunities in the area of customer experience also. One challenge is that you cannot see how your digital experience affects customers because you aren’t there. However, as we covered in a different podcast about measuring customer emotions, there are ways to gather this data. One of the new opportunities a digital experience presents is that it is easy to test what works and what doesn’t because you can measure everything. Moreover, as we have said in other podcasts about Digital Transformation, changing a digital experience is easier than changing a different channel, like a retail store or a call center. The bottom line is whether it's face-to-face, on the phone, digitally, or through social media, people take in information and form an impression based on it. Understanding that, the key idea to remember is that all the things that improve an offline experience also apply in the digital experience. Here are few highlights of the conversation:  01:47 Colin shares the story of how we met his father-in-law and made a less-than-ideal first impression.  05:43 Ryan summarizes the findings from the research published about website first impressions. 07:52 We explain how first impressions can affect the overall impression of your digital experience. 14:43 Ryan explains how you can use ideas from customer segmentation to improve the first impression of the website.  17:36 We discuss the importance of measuring customers emotions in digital experience and how you can do that. 21:22 Ryan explains the website may not be your digital experience’s entry point for customers, so mind the other ways customers come to you online as well.  23:14 We share our key takeaways for what you should do to optimize the possibilities of making an excellent digital first impression.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We recently spoke to Customer Experience experts who shared an interesting insight. They all say they wish people understood that there was no one thing to do, no silver-bullet-solution for Customer Experience. We couldn’t agree more. We believe that the best way to improve Customer Experiences is to do a lot of little things that add up to significant improvements. In other words, there is no one thing, but many things that you should do to improve your Customer Experience in 2021.  One of the contributing factors to this mindset is the number of stories we hear in business books, blog posts, white papers, and TED talks that describe how organizations change this one small thing and revenue increases by 50 percent. While that makes an interesting story, it isn’t the typical result of making a small change. Perhaps why they are so engaging; because results like that are so hard to come by. Unfortunately, they often create unrealistic expectations. Upon encountering that mindset with my clients, I find myself quoting Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, upon election, said to his cabinet, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” Part of the reason this situation is reality is that Behavioral Science is complicated. Many factors affect how it works and what it does to customer behavior. Moreover, outside factors change how the concepts work with decision-making, and these factors are often out of your control. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience In this episode, we discuss the problem with seeking a silver-bullet solution for your Customer Experience problems, where this problem originates, and how you can avoid making that mistake in 2021.   Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:12 Ryan shares how people’s misconceptions about what science is contribute to the problem.   07:35 Colin shares a story about another contributing factor to the mindset. 12:08 Ryan introduces the ideas about boundaries to science using Newtonian Gravity as an example. 17:31 Colin compares the idea of boundaries to how you segment customer groups. 23:06 Colin shares his recommended actions with two essential things to do in 2021. 24:44 Ryan explains the difficulty with avoiding CX Management theories and how you can manage it to a successful outcome. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

No matter what business you are in, the best way to connect with your customers is through the experience you provide them. However, connecting requires knowing what customers want, and today, that isn’t the same as it was 20 years ago. The Experience Economy dictates that people value experiences over material things these days.  In addition to knowing what customers want, wouldn’t it also be great to know what works in Customer Experience Management? Wouldn’t it be even better to know what doesn’t work before you waste your time and energy (and budget) trying it yourself? These ideas are the concept behind Customer Experience expert James Wallman, founder of the World Experience Organization (WXO). The WXO is a Customer Experience organization that encourages worldwide collaboration and debate on what is—and what isn’t—critical to Customer Experiences.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Among other things, Wallman says the bid idea behind the WXO is to separate the useful CX concepts from the ones that are merely hot air. He hopes that the WXO will further legitimize the Experience Economic and CX movement, allow all the members to learn from each other, and see new ways to achieve customer engagement. Here are some highlights from our discussion.  03:28 Wallman explains the idea behind founding the WXO and why he did it.  05:08 Wallman describes the Experience Economy and how the WXO will help move it forward. 11:55 Wallman talks about how not having an organized and defined effort can delegitimize the CX movement.  18:06 Wallman discusses the reasons behind choosing CX pioneers to establish the WXO. 21:03 Colin explains how the human being is always at the center of the experience, no matter what type of experience it is. 23:49 Wallman shares his idea that we are all on a “Hero’s Journey” and how those should look in a journey map.  30:50 We give the information on how what to do if you are interested in joining the WXO.  Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.    Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Vital for 2021 - Digital Nudging Will Revolutionize Your CX Whether you realize it or not—and even if you don’t know what they are—you use Digital Nudges in your online experience today. Digital Nudges are the interactions you have with customers online in your experience that inspire their actions. Every online experience has them, but not all of them are deliberate. In this episode of the podcast, we are going to take a closer look at what Digital Nudges are, how they work, and why, and share some examples of Digital Nudges that work and some that don’t. We argue that designing these moments intentionally to help people make decisions that drive value for them and your organization is key to revolutionizing your Customer Experience in the post-pandemic era. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Digital Nudges build on Nobel-prize winning economist Professor Richard Thaler and Professor Cass Sunstein's concept of Nudging. Thaler and Sunstein's 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness explained that a Nudge is a way you present your customers' choices that tips the scales towards a particular option. Digital Nudges are the same idea, but specifically to the online experience.  The reason Digital Nudges work is because they play into our biological psychology as human beings. People who study how consumers make buying decisions use concepts from the Behavioral Sciences to explain customer behavior. From concerns about availability to worrying about risking losing something to gain something else to finding ways to shortcut a challenging decision, the Behavioral Sciences can explain what concept (or concepts) are at work when people decide to buy from you. Perhaps most importantly, Behavioral Sciences can also show you why they don't. 02:50 We explain what we mean by the term Digital Nudging. 04:40 We give examples of what we mean by Digital Nudging and the concepts from Behavior Science behind them, starting with Scarcity. 09:05 We explain how Social Proofing can help with a Digital Nudge. 14:51 Colin shares a story about a website that did an excellent job of leveraging the ideas of Anchoring, Extremeness Aversion, and the Decoy Effect. 20:43 We explain how the Evaluability Heuristic comes into play in Digital Nudging and how to use it to buy things like an uninterruptible power supply. 23:30 We talk about how Framing Effects influence customer behavior and buying decisions. 25:46 We share the recommended actions, so you can use this information to Digitally Nudge your customers intentionally instead of leaving it to chance. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

There's light at the end of the tunnel! - Re-imagine your customer experience! There was a time when we thought this moment would never come, but we are almost there. As vaccines roll out worldwide for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we can see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. This unique situation provides an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine your Customer Experience to respond to how the pandemic has changed customer behavior.  Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience  In this episode, we discuss this exercise's critical question to present a new experience for your customers. Do you go back to how you used to do things, scrap all that and carry on doing what you have been doing this past year, or come up with some combination of the two? We believe that taking what is working now with what was working before the pandemic and creating a new optimized experience is the best course of action to foster customer-driven growth.  However, it is essential to ensure that you know what your customers want, and, frankly, if you haven't researched it in the past month, you probably don't know. Understanding this crucial information is essential before you can move forward. People have changed and what they consider business as usual has too. You must know what they think is the value you provide, so you don't unwittingly eliminate it from your new experience.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 04:35 Colin presents how he came to this discussion when working with a client. 09:32 Colin shares how the milkman ruined the relationship with the Shaw family by accident. 14:04 Colin gives examples of things that have become normal for people over the past few months, which have some advantages over the old way of doing things. 18:32 Colin and Ryan emphasize what the goal should be for this exercise over the next couple of months. 22:17 Ryan shares the drawbacks that digital transformation has had on the education space, particularly in graduate school level education. 25:02 Colin and Ryan share their recommended actions to tackle this project over the next couple of months. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

This is the Most Significant Thing We Learned in 2020! Like many people, we are not sad to see the year 2020 slip into the past. We look to ringing in the new year with happy anticipation of better things to come. With a vaccine headed to us all and a new appreciation for what we share when things are “normal,” we are all practically giddy at the prospect of sending this year off to the annals of history. However, even a year as challenging as this one presents new insights and opportunities for us all. Every year we usually take time to reflect on what has happened and what we have learned, and this one is no different, even if unprecedented. This episode, we share five significant insights that we gleaned from the notorious year 2020. Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience From the impressive power of human resilience and ingenuity during crises to a renewed appreciation for the most important things in life, we share both personal and professional lessons we learned this year. In this episode, we also discuss what we see for the future in Customer Science and Customer Experience. Here are some highlights of the discussion: 02:27  Ryan shares his first insight about how this terrible year taught him a lot about how humans can adapt to challenging times. 05:36 Colin shares how he remembered to appreciate what he has but also what is most important to appreciate. 07:15 Ryan talks about how he sees the beneficial impact of empathy both customer- and employee-facing. 10:47  Colin explains how the future of Customer Experiences is in the area of Customer Science, which is a fusion of data, technology, and the behavioral sciences. 16:02 Colin explains how the iPhone took existing technology and changed the world and how Customer Science at a similar inflection point. 17:59 Ryan explains why Customer Science is close to changing everything as we know it. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.   How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Designing Country Culture into Your Global Experience A dull and awkward presentation in Singapore many years ago taught me an important life lesson: One must know the local culture when presenting an experience to people to evoke the desired response. In this case, I didn't realize it was going to be different to presenting in the USA or UK. So, I kept asking for audience participation like I usually do and hearing crickets in response. It was a long morning. Many organizations with a global presence have probably had a similar situation; what works in one country does not in another. You present your carefully planned and executed Customer Experience from Country A, where it is a wild success, roll it out in Country B, and you get nothing but crickets back.  The good news is that you don't have to keep having this problem. The most successful global organizations know that an overarching strategy is essential, but so are relevant and localized tactics to achieve success. Once I adapted my expectations in Singapore, the presentation went well (i.e., no crickets). You can do the same with your customer experience. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience In this episode, we discuss the realities of having the same emotional outcome when having Customer Experiences within different countries. The foundational elements of the process will remain the same. However, once you implement the experience you have defined for your organizations, you must adopt the tactics to reflect the country's culture where your customers live. Perhaps most importantly, you need to recognize that localized management and ownership will be the key to your success.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:50 – We introduce the key idea behind a Customer Experience Statement and using it internationally. 09:40 – Colin explains the 20 emotions that drive and destroy value and how that applies to the tactics you use for different cultures. 15:31– We discuss these ideas' practical applications for organizations, starting with a general step-by-step plan for segmentation. 18:15 – We discuss the importance of diversity in the global team and management representation. 20:16- We suggest that many of these nuanced differences are noticed by and affect the subconscious. 21:51 – We explain our recommended actions and the critical nature of measuring your results in your efforts to adapt locally. Customer Experience Information & Resources Please provide us feedback on our podcast in a quick 4 minute survey. Click here for a chance to win a $ 100 Amazon voucher. LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC , which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

 If the Stress Is Becoming Intolerable, This is What to Do If there is one thing 2020 has given all of us, it's a lot of stress. Coping and managing stress is a skill leaders need to relieve the pressure in their lives and help employees manage their stress so they don't pass it on to customers.  I often say, Happy Employees Make Happy Customers, which is also the title of my latest book. However, happy employees are not stressed out, making managing stress a priority for today's leaders.  However, managing stress is easier said than done. To get some help in this effort, we share the advice of Carmen Mohan, MD, FACP, founder of Hello Health. Dr. Mohan started Hello Health, a comprehensive executive health and wellbeing program, to help leaders manage and cope with stress themselves and their teams. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience  In this episode, we discuss Dr. Mohan's consultative approach to stress management. She says leaders often feel alone in their experience and, even when overwhelmed, push hard to keep going, so they meet other people's needs. She suggests leaders should realize they are not alone and that stress is common among leadership positions. Stress comes from making critical decisions quickly and professional and personal demands pulling leaders in many directions at once. Some people feel stressed because they know other people are struggling more than they are, and they feel guilty that they have it pretty good. Managing this stress is essential. First, it is hard to lead a team to success in a stressed-out state. When leaders are stressed, they often can't get the perspective they need to solve problems in the best possible way. Finally, stressed managers cannot help their teams cope with their pressures, leading to a less than exemplary Customer Experience.  The COVID-19 pandemic isn't helping matters, either. None of us has ever been through a pandemic before, so we don't know what to do. We also do not know when it will end, and uncertainty does not do anything good for anyone's stress level. Add to it the acute pressures caused by the pandemic, like the fear of getting yourself or someone you care about sick or the financial insecurity caused by the shut-downs and stay-at-home orders, among others, and you have a perfect storm of high-stress times and truly anxious people. To combat these effects, Dr. Mohan has a few actionable steps.  Make time for self-care and sleep. Dr. Mohan says that addressing your needs makes you better equipped to handle others' needs, even if it feels like there is no time for it.  Celebrate what you did accomplish so you can rest deeply. Dr. Mohan encourages leaders to write down at least one accomplishment each day to focus on, so the mind can relax and rest deeply at night, giving the best restorative sleep to the body.  Start the day by meeting your needs. Dr. Mohan encourages people to start the day doing something they like, not checking the phone and diving into the day. If your brain knows you will begin the day this way, it will relax more and sleep better.  Find that decompression time you have lost. Many people find that the loss of decompression time resulting from working from home or blurring the lines between work and home life difficult. Dr. Mohan encourages people to take a walk outside to clear their minds. Find a way to keep your thoughts in the present. People who feel anxious or guilty that other people are having problems and are struggling would be well served to occupy their thoughts with the here and now. By keeping your mind occupied in the present with a task, you cannot worry about the past or the future. Here are some highlights of the discussion: 04:28            Dr. Mohan addresses the problem of marginal thinking in stress management for leaders. 07:36            We have a few actionable steps for coping with stressors. 14:18            Dr. Mohan shares how to get your mind to relax enough to get into the deep restorative sleep necessary for stress management. 20:17            Find out the easy fix to "bookend" sleep and help the mind relax during stressful times. 25:04            We cover the importance of finding moments to decompress from work to home life. 26:49            Dr. Mohan addresses how to alieve guilty feelings when you are not struggling as much as other people you know with essential activities. 28:40            We get into the advice for leaders to pass this along to their teams.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services

The Five Rules for Measuring and Managing Customer Emotions A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. Ignoring emotion in your Customer Experience strategy is a big mistake and one you can’t afford to make. Emotions are a significant influence on customer behavior with implications for your customer retention, customer loyalty, and, perhaps most importantly, customer-driven growth. Incorporating ways to measure and manage customer emotions is critical for your business strategy today. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Managing emotions can feel overwhelming. Many times we hear from clients that they don’t know where to start. However, we have a plan that can set you up for success, empower your thinking, and help you tackle this critical task. In this episode, we discuss The 5 Rules for Measuring and Managing Customer Emotions, which are: Be specific. Define which emotions drive the most value for you. Measure the specific emotions across the customer journey. Design the emotions into your journey maps. Train your people on how to evoke emotions. Here are some highlights of the discussion: 02:58 We discuss why being specific about the emotions is critical and a significant improvement on breaking down emotions into “positive” and “negative.” 05:29 We break down rule number two into two parts: figuring out how customers feel coming into your experience and defining what you want them to feel when they leave. 07:59  Colin shares a story of when a German insurance actuary gave him the idea for research with the London School of business, and the subject of his third book. 15:06  We clarify why you should measure your success with evoking the desired emotion, not only at a top level, but throughout the experience so you can respond appropriately where you should. 19:17 We tell you why your journey maps need you to design emotions into them with specific actions and deliberate strategy. 22:24  Colin explains how his marriage of nearly 40 years has taught him that training people in emotional intelligence is a winning strategy for any business (or marriage, for that matter). Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services

Retail is Broken: This is the Solution Some might say that retail is dead, another victim of COVID-19. However, I would argue that it is merely changing but far from finished. The pandemic has hastened changes to physical and digital retail experiences and customer behavior. Still, organizations that recognize and anticipate the shift can adapt and benefit from the new business-as-usual. Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience There are both theoretical reasons and practical reasons why customer behavior is changing. In this episode, we discuss the key ideas of both.  Psychological theory underlays much of our behavior in retail experiences. For example, customers like to touch things when making decisions to inform themselves that they are making a good one about a product. People also use body stimuli in thinking. So, what we buy when we feel warm is different from what we purchase when cold. In theory, we also sometimes make other buying decisions in public than we would in the privacy of our homes in the glow of a computer screen. That also goes for our unplanned purchases; we choose different impulse buys online than in person. From a practical perspective, customer behavior follows some general patterns as well. First of all, we have a well-worn process for decision making for purchases. These adapt to both physical and online experiences. Also, we want different types of retail experiences depending upon our perceived importance of the purchase. In other words, we don’t need a physical experience for commodity items, but we might for a more significant investment item, like technology or appliance purchase. The physical experience is sometimes the reason customers shop with you, whether that’s because it is fun or because being there makes people feel like part of the club. Sometimes, it’s because you are buying something that you feel you need to see, like the fish you will serve to dinner guests (you know, back when having dinner guests was still a thing).  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 01:18 – Colin shares a recent experience of buying a large television for the living room vs. a smaller one for the kitchen. 05:02 – We introduce the four key theories that underly the changes in retail today. 07:28 – Colin shares a story about when he consulted the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. (No, really.) 15:13 – We share the practical observations of customer behavior in both types of experiences. 19:18 – We explain that physical experiences often help build confidence for a customer’s buying decision. 20:51 – We discuss how customer segmentation could help determine if customers want a physical retail experience for specific purchases.  27:40 – We talk about what you should consider and the recommended actions when designing your respective physical and online experiences. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Digital Transformation Didn’t Work: This Is What You Should Do Now. Experts estimate that companies wasted around $900 billion in 2018 on failed digital transformation projects. Nevertheless, organizations have spent upward of $2 trillion (with a t) on digital transformations in 2020. How do we know that this is not just a big waste of time and money this time around? This episode of The Intuitive Customer hosts guest presenter Zhecho Dobrev, Principal Consultant for Beyond Philosophy, and our lead for digital transformation consultations. Dobrev shares what is working well, what isn’t, and what organizations should do to improve their experiences. Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience One of the reasons digital transformations are so unsuccessful has to do with preconceived notions of what a company needs to do before they know for sure. Moreover, many organizations do not understand what drives value for customers, even though they think they do. Understanding the Value Drivers for customers in online or digital experiences is essential to success, much like it is with the rest of the Customer Experiences people have with you. Digital transformation success requires you to recognize the moments in your online experience that drive or destroy value for you.  Here are some highlights of the discussion: 03:58 – Zhecho explains how Customer Experience and digital transformation trends have stagnated over the past five years. 09:52 – Zhecho explains the main problem with digital transformation is preconceived ideas of what needs to be done without understanding what drives value.  13:58 – Zhecho explains what four-category value drivers are for digital transformation, which include Economic, Functional, Experiential, and Symbolic Value. 26:29 – We discuss the key takeaways from this research, including the importance of defining which of these categories drives the most value for your organization. 28: 33- Dobrev explains that the next most crucial thing is to determine what experiences can be digital and what should remain human-controlled.   30:24 – We explain the recommended actions that every organization should do with their digital transformation to set themselves up for success. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. https://bit.ly/2UholUM Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

What happens when you get three Customer Experience Pioneers together to discuss the past, present, and future of Customer Experience? This episode of The Intuitive Customer, for starters. Recorded in celebration of the recent CX day, Colin joins fellow experience experts and champions Lewis Carbone and Joe Pine to talk all things Customer Experience.  Lewis Carbone is the author of Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again and the founder of ExperienceEngineering™. Joe Pine is the author of the book that started it all, The Experience Economy. He and his partner, Jim Gilmore, are true pioneers of the Customer Experience movement and the founder of their consultancy, Strategic Horizons, LLP. Key Takeaways There are a few things from this discussion everyone should remember in today's business environment, which include: Each of us has failed at some point during our career in one way or another. For my part, I often operated with the mindset that valuing the emotional connection that the Customer Experience evokes is an opinion everyone shared. However, I learned that tying your work to measurable results is the proper way to obtaining that shared mindset, and it is a value that I espouse to this day. If you don't tie your work to results, you will likely find that your mindset is your own.  Pine made the mistake of underestimating how difficult it would be to get companies to be the first to undertake a Customer Experience improvement program. Failure is a possibility, and, for some organizations, too much of one. Pine learned that what you design and what you deliver might not produce the results you intended when you mix in real-live customers. As a result, he advises his clients to reserve around 20 percent of their budget to make real-world adjustments for those parts of the experience that aren't working as they had hoped.  Carbone said his mistake was not being clear enough with people what the real meaning of Customer Experience is. There is not the depth of understanding that he assumed, and he believes that to fix it, we need a new way of talking about experiences that use distinctive language that better defines the concept for people. The future of customer experience is infused with technology and data. I have a passion for a new concept called Customer Science, which combines technology with artificial intelligence and mountains of data to predict customer behavior. The data-based approach Customer Science provides is an excellent path to anticipating your customers' needs and increasing your emotional bond with them.  Pine agrees, adding that the shift from physical to digital experiences occurring with the COVID-19 Pandemic has accelerated this fusion of technology and psychology. He sees the value that an organization can generate by amplifying in-person experiences with digital ones and capitalizing on their desire for meaningful experiences that they value more than stuff.  Carbone sees the future of Customer Experience in the cultures of the organization.  Champions of the concept should build a culture that echoes the sentiments of their desired experience within their organizations. Moreover, the idea that science and art combine to create a higher level of experience management has begun to transform how companies approach business-as-usual. Carbone says using technology and humanity combined can create what he describes as Experience Management 2.0. There are things you can do right now to prepare for the future of Customer Experience at your organization.  In addition to tying your efforts directly to return on investment (ROI), I advise champions of Customer Experience to determine the lifetime value of customers they serve. Often this amount helps justify expenses for an experience program that demands an organization's resources. Also, I encourage organizations to identify ways to improve the experience that take advantage of the most significant opportunity rather than only fixing the problems. The ROI on delivering a solution for a substantial opportunity is far more valuable than repairing a small problem that has costs associated with it. Carbone suggests deepening your understanding of how customers think vs. what they think. When you understand the role of unconscious thought and emotions and the influence they exert on our actions, you have an opportunity to surpass the benefits of customer centricity and reap the rewards of a customer-driven business model. Pine says preparing for the future means making a few adjustments to your thinking. First, he wants organizations to realize they are in an experience economy, not a service-providing one. Next, he encourages businesses to consider what they would change in their experience offering if they charged admission for it. That mindset is the correct one for innovation and the creation of a good experience that customers think is worth having. Finally, he wants a focus on the individual reactions that highly-customized experiences deliver. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

The 5 Rules for Designing Great Digital Experiences A lot of Behavioral Economics can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. In 2020, we have all been doing many more online customer experiences than we thought we would. Some of these digital experiences have been excellent, and others were not.  Suppose these are the only experiences that your customers have with your organization this year. How important is it to you that the digital experience is as easy and convenient as possible? We would be surprised if you said anything less than "very important." This episode of The Intuitive Customer shares our five rules for designing great digital experiences. Follow these directives, and you will deliver the kind of online experience that your customers appreciate, leading to the customer-driven growth you need.  What Are The Five Rules? The Five Rules for Designing a Great Digital Experience Design in a digital "nudge." Analyze how customers really behave.  Design your experience to anticipate your customers' needs.  Plan to evoke emotions and measure them.  Humanize technology.  What Should You Do With Them? Design in a digital "nudge." The term digital nudge refers to the book Nudge by Nobel-prize winning economist Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. They suggested that the way you present a choice can influence how people choose. The subtle clues you include can affect how people behave. For example, if you make it seem like the normal thing to do is to participate in the company's 401(k) plan by making people who don't want to opt-out, most people participate in the program. The same concept can apply to your digital experience. We recommend using any number of psychological concepts that are part of the behavioral sciences in your design that nudge people toward the online behavior you want them to have.  Analyze how customers really behave. A significant plus to working in the digital space is that you can measure everything. From how long people stay on the page to what they load (and unload) from their carts to what they look at the longest, you have a plethora of data, enabling you to understand how customers behave—in real life. Moreover, you can test what happens to customer behavior if you change things, and analyze that data, too.  Design your experience to anticipate your customers' needs.  Knowing what you know from the first two rules, you can now design into your digital experience features that anticipate your customers' needs. It could be that you make it easy for them to find their past orders. Perhaps you ensure that you have a shipping calculator available to them or other information necessary to decide. Whatever you choose to do, you must make it easy for them and present an experience that doesn't take up too much of their attention that they would rather be giving to something else.  Plan to evoke emotions and measure them. Just as you should with your in-person experience, your digital experience should have specific actions that evoke a particular feeling that drives value for your organization. We would recommend that you participate in your digital experience as if you were a customer or have someone from the outside do it to provide a fresh perspective of the emotions your present experience evokes.  Humanize technology.  People respond differently to technology than they do to people. Moreover, people sometimes don't like it when they feel like they can't interact with other people. Suppose you use technology to interact with your customers at any point in the digital experience. In that case, we recommend that you ask yourself if that interaction would have a more positive emotional outcome if handled by a human. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

When I am shopping on Amazon, and a product has 3.5 stars, I don’t buy it. Now, 3.5 stars isn’t a bad rating; in fact, it’s above average. However, for me to place that item in my Amazon cart, it needs to have a rating of at least four stars or more. My behavior on Amazon is part of a broader concept called Negativity Bias, and it’s a massive influence on customer behavior.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the concept of Negativity Bias and how it affects people’s behavior in your Customer Experience. We also share some positive ways you can make negativity work in your favor.  Key Takeaways  Negativity Bias describes how we emphasize negative information over positive and find it more compelling for decision-making. It’s the reason we remember negative reviews more than positive ones. It’s also why we think about what could go wrong in specific situations rather than what could go right.  Here are a few more things you should know about Negativity Bias: We all have a negativity bias. This bias is not reserved for a particular type of person or demographic. A compulsion to remember and focus on the negative is a psychological concept that we all share, and it affects all of us in different ways regarding how we behave.  Negativity Bias is related to Loss Aversion. Loss Aversion describes how we feel more pain from losing things than gaining things makes us feel good. Negativity Bias is a focus on the negative, which is a focus on the potential loss. It can lead to less rational decision-making. However, it can also motivate us to improve the situation too.  Negativity Bias leads to specific actions to protect oneself.  As customers dealing with uncertainty, as we often are when trying a product or service for the first time, we tend to take a what-could-go-wrong perspective. To prevent the potential bad outcome, we take specific actions to avoid it. These actions could include scrolling through customer reviews (focusing on the bad ones), buying only from brand names we know and trust, or looking for referrals from friends and family.   While a little Negativity Bias can do good, too much only leads to bad.  A focus on the negative can lead to good things, like process improvements or problem-solving exercises. However, too much stress there can lead to a skewed world view. It can lead to making poor decisions or missing the good things that are happening in an experience.  Recommended Actions There are a few ways that you can use the Negativity Bias to get a good outcome. These include: Perform periodic checks of negative assessments to ensure that you have a realistic view of the situation. It is essential to determine if the negative feelings you have about your customer experience or business performance are based on objective measures or not. It’s great to use Negativity Bias to motivate improvements, but it shouldn’t squeeze the life out of your organization either. Remember to highlight success and reward good outcomes whenever possible.  Remember that everyone tends to focus on the negative, including customers. When you understand how it works for people’s perception, you can counteract its effects with specific tactics. Look for ways to mitigate the Negative Bias’ poor outcomes for your bottom line by addressing it in your Customer Experience.  Provide people with solutions in today’s negative environment. Without a doubt, a global pandemic inspires quite a bit of Negativity Bias. Your customers feel it, and if you can find ways to be helpful in light of the present challenges, it will pay off later when customers remember this time. In other words, you can build customer loyalty by taking extra care of customers right now when they need you.  Communicate positively. Understand how customers can glean the negative much more quickly than the positive and take special care to positively frame your messaging. Whether in direct customer communication channels or advertising, keeping the message positive is essential to inspiring customer-driven growth. An outside perspective can help you maintain positivity in your experience. Our Experience Health Check, where we pretend we are customers and then give you specific recommendations to improve your experience, can give you a fresh set of eyes on your communication efforts throughout the customer journey.  Remember that fixing problems is good, but not always the best opportunity in your experience. Organizations often want to focus on what is going wrong in experience and fix it. That is a good instinct. However, many times in our Emotional Signature Research®, we discover that customers have other wants and needs that present a much more significant opportunity than fixing the various problems in the experience. While we aren’t saying that you should ignore problems, we are saying to keep an open mind about addressing other opportunities in your experience that might yield a better return on investment in the long term.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

5 New Rules Guaranteed to Build Trust A lot of Behavioral Economics can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. A great idea is a beautiful place to start when it comes to improving your Customer Experience to benefit your bottom line. When combined with a deliberate strategy and cunning tactics, a great idea is almost enough to make you successful, but only "almost enough."  While these elements are fundamental to your success, affecting a real culture change at your organization is vital to achieving the customer-driven growth you hope to inspire. This episode of The Intuitive Customer shares our five rules for affecting real culture change. With these rules guiding your actions, you are well on your way to fostering the proper environment for your idea, strategy, and tactics to deliver the results you want. What Are The Five Rules? The five rules for affecting real culture change build upon each other. They include: The 5 Rule for Affecting Real Culture Change Create or define a burning platform. Recognize this is a long-term goal. Be clear on your vision for the future. Remember that "you don't make an omelet without breaking eggs." Lead from the top.  What Should You Do With Them? Create or define a burning platform. Change is difficult and a bit painful for people. Therefore, unless the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same, most people will resist making a change. Consequently, it would be best if you defined the problem and the pain it will cause the organization. Without the burning platform that only change will extinguish, you will have difficulty making meaningful changes in your organization. Just ask Circuit City, Blockbuster, or Kodak.  Recognize this is a long-term goal. If you think you will implement and complete a culture change in six months, I wouldn't recommend taking it on. While you can get an excellent start and even make progress, six months is not long enough to affect the fundamental changes needed to foster customer-driven growth in many organizations. A more reasonable term is three to five years.  Be clear on your vision for the future. It is imperative that you know what you want the culture to change to, and also what things you need to do to change the culture from where it is presently. You need to know what you want to start doing and what you need to stop doing. Moreover, communication (and re-communication) will be vital to get the team on board with your plan.  Remember that "you don't make an omelet without breaking eggs." Despite your best efforts, not everyone is going to approve of your plan or your changes. Some may go so far as to obstruct progress. It would be best to resolve yourself to the idea that you might need to remove someone from their position because they are getting in the way of progress. You can't make a Customer Experience omelet without breaking a few eggs.  Lead from the top. It takes more than words to effect change. People take notice of what you do to support your ideas. Specifically, you should examine how you prioritize your time. For example, if putting the customer at the center of what you do is essential to your plan, you should have time set aside in your schedule to do that for customers, too. When you show your team that you are not asking them to do anything you are not willing to do yourself, you increase employee engagement and improve the Employee Experience.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

When you bring attention to something, it influences people’s behavior. For example, The food and household goods supplier in the UK, Tesco, was recently accused of profiteering by raising the prices of a yeast extract spread called Marmite. There was quite an uproar about it in the UK. You would think that this would mean sales of Marmite would go down.  You would be wrong. After the kerfuffle about the love-it-or-hate-it spread, Marmite sales increased by 61 percent. The reason Marmite sales went up has a lot to do with Priming.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer cover what Priming is, how it works, and how you can employ it in your Customer Experience to foster customer-driven growth.  Key Takeaways  Priming is a term derived from the early water pumps, as in “priming the pump.” That phrase refers to the fact that you would need to pour a little water into old water pumps so that more water would come out of it. The psychological concept is similar. Priming describes how doing a little bit of something can activate cognitive systems in peoples’ minds and influence their behavior.  Here are a few more things you should know about Priming: Priming affects what customers remember at the moment. Customer Loyalty requires memory; after all, you can’t return to an experience if you don’t remember it (at least not on purpose). However, because memories exist in a network or a connected group of recollections associated in some way, Priming the memory pump affects what memories a customer remembers before they make a decision, and it can affect how they decide.   Little things are often the Primers, and they appeal to the subconscious. Priming works best in a subtle way, triggering the subconscious. For example, researchers observed that when a wine store played French music over the sound system, French wine sales increased by a ratio of five to one. However, the customers were unaware of why they bought French wine that day.  The two systems of thinking are part of the reason Priming is so effective. The automatic and fast thinking Intuitive System is always looking for ways to present information useful in decision making. When you send a Prime through your experience, the Intuitive System pushes the memories associated with the prime to the customers’ consciousness if the customer needs it.  Priming Customer Experience happens whether you are deliberate about it or not. Many little things in your experience are priming the customers’ subconscious right now. However, few organizations engage in a deliberate strategy there. How the store looks, smells, or sounds, is a significant influence on how customers behave. However, even your advertising primes customers; unfortunately, it is often by setting customers’ unrealistic expectations that fall short in reality.  Recommended Actions There are a few things we recommend that you do with Priming in your Customer Experience.  Recognize that Priming exists now in your Customer Experience. Whether or not you intended them to, little details of your experience are priming customers right now. There is no neutral priming. We recommend taking an outside approach to determine what these Priming elements are, so you are not surprised.  Consider whether these existing Priming elements are working. Once you recognize the primes that already exist, can you trace them to your desired customer behavior?  Adjust the Priming elements that are not working. To adjust your primers, you should have a clear idea of what experience you want to deliver. This experience should inspire the customer-driven growth you want. If you are not getting the results you want currently, trace the customer behavior back to the moment they encountered the prime, and consider how changing it could inspire new action. In one of our client consultations with an insurance company in the UK, we changed one word that their customer service agents used in the new policy-holder interaction and reduced their new customer call back volumes by 70 percent in three weeks. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Like the rest of the world, the Customer Experience world is changing. Customers have new expectations and are doing business in new ways. While we adapt to the world that COVID-19 presents, we change what we want as customers and how we think about our relationships with the entities we buy. As Customer Experience managers, we must rise to meet this challenge by getting inside our customers' minds.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer hosts Lewis Carbone, Customer Experience expert and speaker, and founder of ExpereinceEngineering™. His book,  Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again, discusses his methodology for designing into your experience clues that signal to your customers that you have what they are looking for, so they keep coming back for more.  Key Takeaways  Carbone shared several essential insights from his decades in the field of Customer Experience. Here is a quick summary of what he had to say:   The unconscious mind makes decisions long before the conscious mind rationalizes it. Many decisions we make happen at a primitive, emotional level, per Carbone. Therefore, it is essential to build your Customer Experiences on this foundational principle to increase your emotional engagement with customers.  Few companies are using this principle as their foundation, even still today. Many companies know that customer emotion is vital to experiences, but they still don't emphasize them in their day-to-day. Carbone says this is because they don't know what to do, so they stick to methods with which they are comfortable.  Knowing how customers think is more valuable than what they think. Carbone believes that once you have the code for customer decision-making, you can unlock how to give customers what they want and evoke the emotion you want them to feel.  The clues you leave in an experience help you achieve this outcome. Carbone shares the example of how the toilet paper triangle signals a freshly-cleaned hotel bathroom. If he ever uses his bathroom for the first time and the paper doesn't have a triangle, Carbone wonders who was there before him or if the staff forgot to clean the room. In other words, if the clues you leave send the wrong signal, you evoke the wrong emotions.  Recommended Actions Carbone says that when it comes to the next evolution of Customer Experience, it is essential that organizations and individuals who seek to manage them should increase their self-awareness of how well they understand the field. The behavioral sciences are crucial to help you design experience that leaves the appropriate clues.  Carbone also shared his Five Absolutes for Customer Experience Management, which include: Moving from the idea of "making and selling" to the concept of "sensing and responding is the best approach. Considering the emotional and rational bonds you have with customers is essential.  Ensuring that you understand and leverage the role the unconscious mind plays in customer decision-making is foundational to your design. Becoming "Clue Conscious" of signals your experience sends in the language you use, physical space characteristics, and gestures by employees, among others, is critical to your success. Developing a robust system for clue management, along with a Clue-Conscious culture, is vital for your organization.  Also, an outside perspective can help. As global Customer Experience consultants, we find that we can see experiences with new eyes. We often engage in what we call Customer Experience Health Checks, which involves us walking the experience as if we are customers, and conducting internal interviews to get an idea of the company culture. Then, we present our recommendations based on what we discover. Finally, remember to design not only for fixing problems but also for customer motivations. Whether it's feeling safe or feeling cared for, knowing what motivates customers to do business with you helps you design the right experience to give it to them. Solving problems often have too narrow a scope; widening your perspective will yield better results in the long-term.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

The 5 Rules for Driving Down Costs Without Affecting Customers A lot of Behavioral Science can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. If you are like most businesses in 2020, you are facing a very different year for your bottom-line performance, and in many cases, it’s not a good kind of different. Naturally, many organizations have responded to a tumultuous and tentative market for growth by balancing the business scales with cost-cutting measures. However, if you cut the wrong things in the wrong areas, you can end up making the situation worse. Don’t get me wrong; cutting costs is essential in business, even when there isn’t a global pandemic. The critical thing to remember is what to cut, when, and how so that you don’t wonder later why everything went sideways. This episode of The Intuitive Customer covers my 5 Rules for Driving down costs without affecting customers. They might help you navigate the remaining weeks of 2020 with less turmoil than cutting costs without them. What Are The Five Rules? The 5 Rules for Driving Down Costs Without Affecting Customers Do not think there is one "silver bullet." Do not over-emphasize the easily-measured costs. Strive for balance. Look at the lifetime value of the customer. Select the areas that drive the least value for you. What Should You Do With Them?  Do not think there is one "silver bullet." The first step is to avoid thinking that one big cut will make the business all balance out. A proper approach to cost-cutting is to cut a little in many areas, which, when added together, get you the cost savings you need. Perhaps even more importantly, small five percent cuts across several areas will be less traumatic for the organization than one massive one. Do not over-emphasize the easily-measured costs. Some cuts are easy to measure because the direct costs are in black and white. However, there are indirect costs associated with these items too. I would advise companies to consider all the costs for any item on the ledger before making any cuts. It could mean that you get to your goal faster with fewer cuts when you integrate all the costs associated with any item you eliminate. Strive for balance. First off, let me tell you that I have never been involved in a customer experience improvement program that has not resulted in cost savings. That's because poor experiences cost you money, too, in actual amounts and opportunities missed. Moreover, unintended consequences can result from any action, and especially when cutting expenses. Instead, I would ask that you look for ways to reduce costs that don't involve stopping something. It could be that adding budget to specific areas can prevent expenses from piling up in another place and improve the process simultaneously. Look at the lifetime value of the customers. Often, organizations only consider the annual value of a customer. However, depending on your customer lifecycle, that could only be a small percentage of their overall worth. When you consider the customer's real lifetime value, the expenses associated with providing a solution that costs more is less significant. Sure, you are out the expense in the short-term, but the long-term gains far outweigh them. Select the areas that drive the least value for you. Some parts of the experience might be more valuable than you think at first glance. It is essential to consider what customers use and appreciate most when making cuts. What you don't want to do is unwittingly cut the most important part of your experience in the interest of cost savings, and end up taking away what your most valuable customers loved the most. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

How Well Do You Know What You Really Want? Have you ever bought a book you thought you should read and then didn't read it? Did you ever buy a variety of yogurt flavors and then throw out some of them after they expired because you never wanted that flavor when it was time to eat yogurt?  We do these things because we often overestimate how much variety we want in the future. In psychology, it's called Naïve Diversification Bias, and it means that we are notoriously bad at predicting our future selves' wants. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores this concept and what you can do about it for your customer experience.  Key Takeaways  As always, with the behavioral sciences, Naïve Diversification bias isn't the only thing that is happening when we make these forecasting errors. However, it is a significant driver of these decisions to overestimate our desire for variety in the future. Here are a few things to remember about this psychological concept that influences customer behavior: Research shows we choose the same thing in the moment, and more variety for the future. Itamar Simonson, Ph.D., The Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at Stanford University, showed in the 1990s that we do this. When his students chose snacks for the next three weeks ahead of time, he saw that they picked more variety than when they decided the snack for the day each week.  We all overestimate our need for variety in the future. Naïve Diversification bias is one we all share. Part of the reason we choose more variety in the future is that we think we want more variety than we do. When the future becomes the now, we are content with the same choice, usually our favorite one.  Naïve Diversification Bias does not mean people do not want a variety of choices. People like having options, just not too many of them. However, most people don't know that they don't like having too many choices until they face them, and they feel overwhelmed.  Mapping out customer behavior can help you identify Naïve Diversification Bias when it occurs. Many organizations participate in journey mapping, which is an excellent way to identify these moments in the customers' process. However, it does not show customer behavior. Behavioral Journey Mapping takes traditional journey mapping to a new level that helps you see what customers do and how their choices could be creating dissatisfaction for themselves. Recommended Actions There are a few ways to mitigate the consequences of this natural bias we all share. Here are our suggestions for combatting its effects in your customer experience: Be able to recognize Naïve Diversification Bias. It is essential to know what is when you see it. Identify where in your experience it occurs and the circumstances that surround that decision-making moment.  Understand that customers change their minds. Knowing that regret is not an emotion that drives value for your bottom line, find ways to mitigate the effects of Naïve Diversification Bias in your experience whenever possible. We recommend discovering these moments by mapping customer behavior rather than process.  Develop strategies to manage the potential negatives of the bias. To improve the experience for them, offer customers opportunities to remedy their wrong choices. Have a clear return policy or give them regular opportunities to re-evaluate their options in subscription services. Compress the time between choice and consumption. People make choices that create more satisfaction when the timeline between the decision and the time they use or consume the product is short. Whenever possible, it would be best to shorten this interval to facilitate customer satisfaction with their choices. Build filtered-diversification into your offer. When customers make decisions for future consumption, they want options. However, if you present too many choices, you can overwhelm customers. Therefore, we recommend offering a wide variety of products or services and a way to narrow down the field from which the customer can choose. This way, you offer enough choice to satisfy customers and prevent them from getting weighed down from too many options.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

I heard a new term that I think has the capability of being the next wave of change in business today. Customer Science. ‘Customer Science’ is the fusion between technology, behavioral science and data. This new concept is forming now, making this an exciting time for all us interested in customer-driven growth.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores this nascent concept of Customer Science and what it could mean to organizations seeking customer-driven success.  Key Takeaways  Customer Science to me in the integration between a number of existing disciplines; Behavioral Science, Technology (AI) and Big data. It is about using science to understand Customers in a much deeper, meaningful way. We often say there is a big difference between what Customers say and what they do. Customer science gets under the skin of what the real motivators of human behavior are using data and technology to inform us. Here are a few more things you should know about Customer Science: Science is how we know things. Science can be defined as a rigorous identification and measurement of phenomena, leading to a systemic understanding which can then be explained by a causal link or theory. In other words, we know more after we use science than when we started.  The definition of science helps us define Customer Science. Using the definition of science as a basis, you could define Customer Science as the rigorous identification of systems in customer experiences that help you create theories for customer behavior in future experiences.  Companies don't use science on the customer side of the business. Few organizations employ a scientific approach to customer behavior, choosing instead to focus on a company's finance or operations. However, applying those same skills to the customer side could yield excellent results that mirror those achieved in the usual "scientific areas" for business. Customer Science is an idea whose time has come, much like the iPhone was. If you will recall, the technology for taking digital pictures, texting and calling, listening to music, and online shopping were all available to us before the iPhone. What Apple did was integrate all of these existing functions into one device and changed our fundamental understanding of what was possible with a handheld device. Customer Science could do the same with the customer experience and the psychological influences that exist as separate entities, combining them into a robust science that drives customer growth.  Data will be the next competitive battleground for organizations. A key ingredient for scientific discovery is data. Collecting data about your customers' behavior is essential for organizations that want to analyze it for ways to identify strategies that encourage customer-driven growth. Recommended Actions You can do a few things to prepare for the use of Customer Science for your organization, including: Recognize that there is external pressure to change. The pandemic accelerated changes for all businesses over the past few months, including increased cloud computing use, digital transformations, and the impending rollout of 5G. All organizations have been changing the way they do things, leading to either good or bad outcomes.  Use Customer Science to document how your efforts work or don't. Without science, you can't be sure what causes the needle to move in either direction. The rigor and measurement inherent to science can, and it will enable you to track how things changed. Also, A/B testing can help you see what works and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn't.  Research to gather essential data for this effort. If you do not have the data you need to undertake science, research can help you get it. Our Emotional Signature Research® is an example of data gathering that can help you understand why your customers behave the way they do now and what you can do to change their future behavior.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

I have the box my iPhone came in. So do many of you, I would guess. Many people keep their iPhone boxes. We keep them for various reasons, and most of them boil down to because we like how they look. It turns out, customers care a lot about how things look, and it influences their buying (and box-keeping) behavior.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the research of Claudia Townsend, associate professor of marketing at the University of Miami at the Miami Herbert Business School. She discovered that how things look and how you display items affects how people think about them and, often, whether they will buy them. Key Takeaways There are a few things to remember about esthetics, per Professor Townsend. A deliberate focus on esthetics was once reserved for luxury items but not anymore. In the beginning,  luxury brands were the most interested in creating outstanding esthetic design. It was for products that had met every other function and needed a differentiation from the competition. Today, however, the focus on elevated esthetics is universal. Esthetic preferences affect even hyper-rational buying decisions. We are aware that looks drive purchases like cars and clothes, but they also influence which companies stock we buy. In one of Professor Townsend's early papers, she analyzed stockholders' buying behavior after receiving an annual report. The research team learned that how many colors and images the firm used in the annual report affected investor behavior—and this behavior was the same even among experienced investors.  The appreciation of esthetics is universal. We all have preferences, even if we don't know fashion or trends.  Our appreciation is innate an unconscious. We don't do it consciously. We like what we like. The space between items in a display also affects our buying decisions. In another paper, Professor Townsend did with Julio Sevilla, their research suggested that the amount of space in a display affects the value we assign to objects. When items have a lot of space between them, we think they are more expensive than when they are close together. Professor Townsend says this innate judgment is hard to change.  There are two things organizations should learn from this:    Recommended Actions There are a few ways you can use this concept to manage your Customer Experience: Recognize that esthetics matter. Customers make buying decisions based on how things look, so your esthetic is a significant part of your Customer Experience. Design a deliberate appeal to your offerings. Consider all the details of your visual effects to appeal to a customer's preferences. Any investment you make here will be worth the money.  Don't ignore this effect just because you offer an intangible. Esthetics still matter even when you present a service and maybe even matter more when there is no actual product to use for comparison. Customers will equate things like a clean, organized office with things like professionalism and skill. If a website is hard to use, they might think it isn't up-to-date with its technology.  If you don't know what is vital to the esthetics of your design, find out. Researching to find out what matters to people can help you in your design efforts. Our Emotional Signature® research can help you discover your customers' underlying wants and needs to point you in the right direction with your visual appeal.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Why What We Believe Is Sometimes Just Wrong! Many sports fans will tell you their team is the best. However, only one of the sports teams wins the championship and is definitively the best. Moreover, many organizations that never get close to the championship have fans who would say these teams are the best. For this last lot, the claim that their team is "the best" creates some serious conflict compared to reality.  The sports fan situation I described is an example of Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is a universal concept for the behavioral sciences that describes how we can hold a belief contrary to reality. Moreover, the idea explains why we feel uncomfortable when confronted with the facts and will often seek irrational ways to resolve them.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deeper dive into the broad idea of Cognitive Dissonance and the many ways we try to resolve the discomfort it causes.  Key Takeaways  Cognitive Dissonance is everywhere. It is best to think of it as a behavioral science concept that is like a giant umbrella with many more specific forms of it that fall underneath. Here are a few things to remember about this essential concept: We all have contradictory beliefs that we hold to be true at the same time. Continuing with my sports fan example, I think the Luton Town Football Club is the best team in the English Football League. But, the truth is I know they are not. They are only in the second or Championship level of the four tiers of the league and probably should be playing in the third. Since the best teams play at the Premier level, which is a level up from Luton Town, they can't be "the best."  Contradictory beliefs cause us discomfort.  Having conflicting feelings bothers us. They create tension that we want to resolve by dropping one of them, but we can't. So, the pressure remains.   We resolve the discomfort in different ways.  Eventually, we will either change our beliefs to match our behavior or change our behavior to match our ideas. However, when we cannot do this, we resort to irrational methods of resolving the conflict, like finding ways to change our perception of the conflict (i.e., rationalizing our actions). Sometimes we minimize the conflict by making excuses for the behavior. Other times we change our recollection of the story to line up better in our heads with what we believe.  Cognitive Dissonance happens at an organizational level, too. Sometimes the brand promise and the actual Customer Experience create the Cognitive Dissonance for customers, creating problems for your customer-facing team. They are left trying to reconcile reality with what the customer feels the marketing promised them. Recommended Actions Wanting to reduce the feelings of Cognitive Dissonance is universal. From a Customer Experience perspective, you want to help ease your customers' uncomfortable feelings about it. Here are a few suggestions on how to manage it in your experiences: Understand Cognitive Dissonance and how it makes people uncomfortable. Customers are often dealing with trying to resolve what they believe with reality, even as customers. When customers have these conflicting feelings, it can affect their behavior. Customer-facing employees should recognize when it is happening and be prepared to help manage them.  Employ Cognitive Dissonance reduction strategies. It would be best to find ways to help customers feel less discomfort during their buying decisions. Giving your Customer-Facing team the tools they need to help manage customer emotions to a positive outcome is critical. For example, use humor to recognize the situation and ease the customer's tension. Another way could be to point out ways features or benefits that appeal to the customer's strongly-held belief that appears to them to conflict with the reality of your offer.  Recognize that sometimes customers don't understand what they want. People can't always tell you what they want. It's up to you to dig deeper and discover what motivates their behavior. We have Emotional Signature® Research that takes into account the difference between what people say is important to them and what actually is.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

5 New Rules Guaranteed to Build Trust A lot of Behavioral Economics can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. When you choose to do business with a company, which do you prefer, Company A, that you trust, or Company B, that you don’t? If you chose A, then you chose wisely—and you decided to like your customers would.  People like to do business with people, brands, or organizations they trust. This episode of The Intuitive Customer shares our five new rules guaranteed to build trust. With trust, you can have the kind of relationship that yields the customer behavior you want to get the customer-driven growth you need.  What Are The Five Rules? The five rules guaranteed to build trust are not complicated. Instead, the rules are simple, or at least simple to say. Doing them is a bit more complicated—but still not that hard. Here are the five rules: The 5 New Rules Guaranteed to Build Trust 1. Remember that trust is earned, not given.  2. Be authentic. 3. Be transparent. 4. Do what you say are going to do. 5. Be consistent. What Should You Do With Them?  Remember that trust is earned and not given. If you think about it, none of us start off trusting people (in general), which is especially true with businesses. However, if you approach customers with a deliberate strategy with specific actions designed to build your credibility, you can earn people’s trust and deepen your relationship with them.   Be authentic. You can build trust when you are genuine with people. However, people still won’t necessarily believe you are sincere. So, one way to show your authenticity is to offer a contract. Contracts can provide peace of mind that you mean what you say, and if you don’t deliver, the customer has recourse. Contracts also help customers relax and let you do what you do without feeling the need to watch you or micromanage the project, which gives everyone a little more room to work.   Be transparent. Along with authenticity, letting the customers know everything is another way to prove you are genuine. This policy includes lousy news. There is no point in hiding bad news; the customer will find out anyway, and it will be that much worse that they didn’t find out from you. The same goes for mistakes; admitting them and trying to correct them goes a long way to prove that you are a trustworthy company or individual that customers can rely on. Furthermore, suppose you have a good standing with your customers, what Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People calls an emotional bank account, customers will usually forgive your mistake without losing trust.  Do what you say you are going to do. Actions speak louder than words. So saying you are going to do something isn’t enough; you have to do it. If you always do what you say you are going to do, people will learn to trust your words.   Provide consistency. The continual delivery of customers’ expectations leads to trust. Moreover, it makes a brand promise that can follow you all over the world. For example, people know when they go to a Hilton anywhere in the world, they will get roughly the same level of experience. Another example is being consistent about many of the little things in a Customer Experience. For example, when we choose a specialist for medical care, we don’t always know if they are “good” at their job. However, we do know that the office appears organized, that they always listen when we talk and look us in the eye when they speak to us. While these little things do not tell us explicitly that they are good at what they do, they do indicate a level of trustworthiness that helps us move forward without as much stress about it. Don’t forget all the little things when you are interacting with customers, because what seems like an irrelevant detail might have more impact on your relationship with customers than you might think.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

THIS is the Big Reason You Make Mistakes We make a lot of subjective decisions. Without the guide of "right" and "wrong" to direct us, we weigh the pros and cons and do the best we can. However, our brains can thwart our best efforts for an optimal outcome by focusing on the wrong things.  Focalism is a concept that describes how our minds can overemphasize specific points of information over others, and often the wrong ones. Focalism is a reason we often make mistakes. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores Focalism, why it happens, and what you can do to overcome this natural bias we all share.  Key Takeaways  There are a few things you should know about Focalism: Objects of Focalism in a Customer Experience tend to be notable, easy-to-remember moments that make for good stories. For instance, if you're evaluating your customer experience and someone was rude to you in a way that makes for a good story, you might overemphasize this moment in your whole evaluation of the experience.  When it comes to overemphasizing the wrong things, the person making the decision is who puts the weights on those decisions. However, people are influenced by what's going on around them. For example, if your sales team emphasizes miles per gallon fuel efficiency for a car, then the customer might also. However, the customer could also react by exaggerating the importance of another feature in response. People are not as happy with decisions made using Focalism long-term. A study in the 1970s showed that student participants who justified why they chose a poster for their dorm room didn't keep it hanging as long as those students who chose the one they liked best without justification.  We make the best decisions by integrating the information. One way of doing that is by allowing the Intuitive System (fast, automatic thinking) more time while the Rational System (slow, deliberate thinking) is distracted to process information.  Recommended Actions We have a few recommended actions that you can use to manage Focalism in yourself and your customers: If you want to make the best decision as a customer, we recommend that you do something else before making it. Focus on something else for a while, and then come back to the decision and see if you have a different perspective. If you manage the experience for your organization, it would be best to look for these attributes that will become the overemphasized focuses of a customer's evaluation later and improve those aspects of the experience. These will be the easy-to-remember moments of an experience.  We recommend that you have an A/B test regarding how changes to the experience affect your customer behavior. Have a control group carry on doing what you have always done and another group where you change something, whether it's a suggested or mandatory "waiting period" before they sign up with you or a distracting activity before you push for the close, or something in-between. Then, analyze the results to see which process or experience drove the most value for your customers and your bottom-line.  Remember also that Customer Experience has many influences that affect the outcome. Focalism is one of many forces at work at any given moment, so solving it will not necessarily fix all your problems or drive all your success. This part is one of a much more complex system, and it is better to integrate all of that information than solve for the one piece. We recommend additional training on Customer Decision Making to help you identify and manage all the moving parts involved. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Did you know that if you were to write a Customer Experience review on your mobile phone, it would be more emotional than if you did it on your computer? Did you also know you are more likely to tell me your email and or home address and your substance abuse history if I ask you on your mobile?    You might be thinking that this can’t be true. However, recent findings by Shiri Melumad, Assistant Professor of Marketing for the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania suggest that you would. It turns out that the technology we use to share information affects what we include in the content.  Key Takeaways  A few different reasons exist for this phenomenon, but what they have in common is they are related to how we feel and where we are when we feel it. Assistant Professor Melumad has a few different critical takeaways from her research for two published papers.    We are more emotional in reviews on our phones than on our computers. There are a few reasons for this, which include: One of the critical drivers of more emotional reviews on the phone is the phone’s size. The smaller screen and keyboard are more challenging to use, so people want to get to the point and write shorter reviews. The brevity enforced by the phone’s size means that what content makes it in is often emotional.  People who have experiences in the extreme are more likely to give a review. However, those who had an okay or satisfactory experience are less likely to provide a review.  Another influence on the content of the review is temporal proximity. In other words, the closer you are to the experience, the more emotional it is. After you get home, your emotions settle a bit, and your content output reflects that.  People are more likely to write a positive review than a negative one on their smartphone-generated content. This slant is the result of our self-presentational concerns. In other words, we don’t want to come across as a negative person.  The emotional reviews written on mobile phones are more compelling to readers than those written on a computer. Boundary conditions exist for this emotionality. A review of a refrigerator may not be as emotional as your written response to a current events story. There is always a context to your emotional evaluation that might make some information more pertinent in some instances than others. Professor Melumad says there are two important points about these boundary conditions, which include: People are more likely to disclose personal information on their phones than their computers. Everything from their current home address to bankruptcy history found its way into inboxes from mobile phones, per Assistant Professor Melumad. Have the phones with us all the time because they are small when compared to a computer Rely on the phone to help us stay in touch wherever, whenever Use the phone to maintain our closest relationships  We really love our phones. Our intense psychological relationship with our phones as a comfort device because we: Using your phone in public leads to Attentional Blindness, which describes how we are so absorbed in our activity, we are unaware of what is going on around us. Assistant Professor Melumad says Attentional Blindness occurs because our cognitive resources are concentrating on using the smartphone, leaving little room for other activity. Recommended Actions There are a few ways to apply this information on behalf of your organization, which include:   Realize that mobile phones can help with critical health-related disclosures. Assistant Professor Melumad says this phenomenon would be helpful in contact tracing for COVID-19. People would be more likely to use the app on their mobile. The same concept applies to gather medical information at a doctor’s appointment. People might be more forthcoming with personal medical information via the smartphone than they are with other methods.   Focus on smartphone-generated content for persuasive reviews. Study participants found the emotional content more compelling than other reviews. Also, it would be best to data-mine the survey to get more candid feedback on your experience since people tend to be more accurate about their wants and needs through their mobile devices.    Remember that little things have big effects on customer behavior. Professor Melumad’s research reinforces our long-held belief that little things mean a lot in your experience. Figure out what you want to get out of your customer reviews, and use it to target customers appropriately for their smartphone-generated content.  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

How to Make Your Experience Easy and Gain Growth   I hear things like this when I go into an organization: "We want to delight customers at every moment of contact." I nod my head and smile, but secretly I think it sounds exhausting. Moreover, it is unnecessary in many parts of the experience. People many times do not want to be delighted; they want to be done already. Keeping it as easy as possible for customers to get it done is a direct path to gain growth.    Key Takeaways    Whenever you make customers think about something in your experience, you create what we call Customer Effort. A Customer Effort Score measures how difficult a customer thinks it is to work with you as an organization. Like other Customer Experience measures, deriving your Customer Effort Score involves asking your customers how difficult they thought their experience was and then having them rate it on a scale.    There are a few significant takeaways behind reducing Customer Effort and keeping it as easy as possible.      Rational thinking, which is the type that takes a lot of energy to do, is something customers are not super excited to do most of the time. We prefer to use easy, automatic thinking and save our energy for other activities. Humans established this preference over the cour thousands of years, because, for many of these years, securing food was a challenge. We needed to preserve our energy for other things, like avoiding predators.    We also use habits to simplify our thinking. Many times, we learn to do something using the rational side of our thinking. Repetition makes the behavior habitual, which is governed by our automatic and intuitive thinking system.    As a general rule, customers want things easy. However, some specific instances exist where the experience should be a little complicated. These rare occasions usually involve status items, like the American Express Centurion Card, a card so hard to get you can't ask for it; American Express asks you if you want it. Since it isn't for everyone, and it is hard to get, customers like that the experience is challenging. Examples like this, however, are not the norm.    You must make your experience as easy as possible for customers, so you get a low Customer Effort Score and get your customers to come back for more.    Recommended Actions   Authors Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Tobin wrote in the Harvard Business Review the article "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers." There were five principles they shared help organizations reduce the Customer Effort in your experience, which includes:   Don't just resolve the current issue; head off the next one. I like how this principle is proactive and removes obstacles that would keep customers from doing more business with you.  Arm reps to address the emotional side of customer interactions. When your team is minding the customer's emotions, it eliminates moments in your experience that can cause uncertainty or stress for customers. For example, changing the language reps use with customers can communicate better and put customers' minds at ease.  Minimize channel switching by increasing self-service channel stickiness. You train your customers on navigating your experience, whether you are deliberate about it or not. People have ways that they get what they want based on the experience you design for them. Therefore, creating it without friction is essential. Moreover, we would encourage you to ensure that you weigh the benefits of any changes you want to make to your experience against the hassle and disruption it will cause your most valuable customers.  Use Feedback from disgruntled or struggling customers to reduce Customer Effort. I hope this one doesn't need any additional explanation; it's a no-brainer.  Empower the front line to deliver a low-effort experience. If your company policies are getting in the way of customers having a smooth experience, especially when resolving problems, change them. If your people have the freedom and ability to solve customers' issues right away, it reduces a lot of Customer Effort.    I would add the following two principles to the previous five from the HBR article:   Think about the interactions with the customers that drive the most value for you.  This area is excellent for fulfilling the current unmet needs in your industry. Look for ways to simplify your experience to meet these unsatisfied wants and create competitive differentiation with your competitors. Remember, it doesn't pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical. Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, and author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense says doing things your way differentiates you from the competition and allows for you to satisfy these unmet needs, too.    To discuss this further, contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com.   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs, thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. Resonate Recordings produce this podcast. Click here to find out more. 

The 5 Rules for Behavioral Journey Mapping   A lot of Behavioral Economics can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   What Are The Five Rules?   We were training customers with journey mapping recently when it became apparent that people didn't understand what journey mapping could do for them. Moreover, they thought they did. To respond, I came up with five precepts for advanced journey mapping skills, which can serve as a guide to your desired outcome.    Before we get into the rules, I should clarify for those of you that aren't familiar with Journey Maps what they are. They are essentially what a customer does in your experience. This exercise is excellent, and I support their use in designing your Customer Experience.    My criticism for journey mapping is that most people only do a superficial version that does not dip much outside their interaction with customers. Moreover, they usually don't indicate why customers do what they do. In many cases, it feels more like a customer process than a journey map, mostly because it isn't going to take you where you want to go.    Our version of journey mapping is called Behavioral Journey Mapping. It is different because it expands past the actual customer interaction where the experience starts and stops. It also identifies how customers feel entering the experience. Also, Behavioral Journey Mapping digs deeper into how each of the moments of the experience influences customer behavior, which is essential if you want to get customers to behave the way you want.    Now, for the rules:   The 5 Rules for Advanced Journey Mapping   Embrace that the journey is rational, emotional, subconscious, and psychological.  Look for the hidden aspects of a customer journey. Define strategically what specific emotions drive most value across the market. Build deliberate memory points.  Identify how to nudge customer decision-making.     What Should You Do With Them?     Embrace that the journey is rational, emotional, subconscious, and psychological. The first step is to understand that it is essential to know what customers do and why they do it. It is also necessary to know how they feel entering the experience. When you have this understanding of all the aspects of a customer journey, from practical to emotional and all the psychological stops in between, the rest of the rules will make more sense and yield more useful actions to get to where you want to go.   2. Look for the hidden aspects of the customer journey. Here is where you begin to plot out what is happening in your Customer Experience. You should include where the experience starts, recognizing it often happens way before the customer ever interacts with your organization. Furthermore, it would be best if you carried the journey map out to the end of the experience, which may conclude long after your organization's last interaction. Furthermore, third-party providers that take over parts of your experience (e.g., shuttle drivers, installers, tow truck operators) are also part of the experience and should make the map.    3. Define strategically what specific emotions drive most value across the market. Now that you have detailed what is happening in the customer journey comprehensively, you can plan how you want to enhance it. A crucial part of this strategy is the emotion your customer feels at the end of the experience. Whatever feeling you choose, from satisfied to safe to appreciated, the sentiment should drive value for your organization, which could mean anything from Net Promoter Score® to customer-driven growth. Then, your job is to design an experience that evokes these emotions. If you don't know what these emotions are, you should do research, like our Emotional Signature® Research, which uncovers the customers' unmet, hidden needs that can drive value for your Customer Experience if you were to meet them.   4. Build deliberate memory points. Memory is vital to your experience. Your customers don't choose you based on the experience you provide; they choose you because of the experience they remember you provide. Therefore, building a positive memory of your experience is essential to your customer-driven growth. Memories form based on the peak experience of the experience and how customers felt at the end, called the Peak-End Rule, first introduced by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman. If the peak emotion that occurs in your experience and the one at the end, as identified in your customer journey map from Rule 2 do not drive value for your organization, you need to change them.    5. Identify how to nudge customer decision-making. There will be moments in your experience that present an opportunity to nudge customer behavior to something that you prefer to what is occurring now. Understanding how people make decisions, and the psychological concepts that explain them will help you design your situations to make it easy for customers to make the decision that you want. After all, isn't that what spending all this time and money on customer journey mapping was meant to do?     To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Mastering the Illusion of Control   Humans often feel like we have more control over things than we do. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—and even regular common sense—we think that if we do things in a certain way, we can influence what happens around us, particularly during sporting events. This concept is called the Illusion of Control.   Key Takeaways  In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we delve into the idea of the Illusion of Control and why it is essential to how you design your Customer Experience. The concept has a few key takeaways, including:   The Illusion of Control is pervasive in our daily lives. You can see humans under the influence of the Illusion of Control when they participate in superstitions or pre-game rituals before sporting events. You can also see it in business situations, like when a sales manager criticizes a sales representative for missing quota, which may or may not be within the sales representatives’ control.  The Illusion of Control manifests in several different ways for a Customer Experience. Customers think they decide for themselves, and they do, but they don’t control everything that leads to that decision. The design of your experience has an enormous influence on how people decide to take action. It starts with advertising messages and package design, but other things along the way affect the purchase also. Furthermore, in brick and mortar situations, even the location in the aisle can affect how a customer chooses. The Two-Systems model reinforces the concept. The concept that the Intuitive and Rational Systems in our brains work together to make decisions supports this concept as well. We often say that customers buy emotionally and then justify the purchase rationally. The rational justification that occurs could be our minds trying to take control of our impulses.  The Illusion of Control does not mean it is okay to manipulate people. We believe that deception is wrong. Instead, we encourage you to design your experience to get a particular outcome but leave control in the hands of the customers. After all, that’s usually what customers want anyway.  The Locus of Control is also an essential concept. This concept describes how some people perceive the power as internal, meaning they control how things go by what they do, and others think of the force as external, that someone or something is doing things to them. We all have different ideas on the Locus of Control and they change situationally. For example, many of us feel the pandemic is an external power that is controlling our lives.    Recommended Actions   We have a couple of suggestions for how you can use these concepts to your benefit.  Recognize the changing nature of the feelings of control. Control is something we feel we have, even when we don’t. With control as a feeling, it makes it subject to change. It is essential to recognize this changing nature and the bias it creates and correct for it in your actions.  Consider the Locus of Control in your experience design. It is crucial to determine whether your customers have an internal or external bias for Locus of Control and accommodate those feelings with a customized reaction. Developing a way to manage the side-effects of those biases can help improve the experience for people and encourage customer-driven growth.  Determine your customers’ expectations for the Illusion and Locus of Control. Many times, customers want to feel in control. However, there are times when they want to surrender that control to your organization, particularly in safety situations. Your experience design should meet those expectations, or you could end up with an “area of conflict” with customers.  If you are unfamiliar with customer expectations, do research. With so many things changing in recent months, you might not know what your customers expect. We recommend researching to find out, like our Emotional Signature Edge®. Uncovering these hidden, unmet expectations and needs is essential to designing an experience that facilitates customer-driven growth.      To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.  

The Big Mistake People Make with AI     Business leaders of today have to understand the technology of tomorrow. Specifically, one would be wise to understand what AI is, how it works, and what problems it can solve for your business.    This episode of The Intuitive Customer is a conversation with Bikram Ghosh, associate professor of marketing at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, Tucson about AI in business today and what is possible for your business processes.   Key Takeaways   Ghosh studies AI and its overlap with behavioral economics. He believes that the future of Customer Experience management and the way to foster customer-driven growth is AI, and here’s why:   AI is machine intelligence driven by algorithms. The goal is to mimic the human mind. By taking stimuli from an external environment, called inputs, machines try to predict the outcome.   There are many types of AI. Machine Learning is a type of AI where machines attempt to learn from their mistakes. We learn from our mistakes; machines seek to do the same thing by making mistakes, recognizing them, sourcing them, and then fixing them moving forward.   Attitudinal Data refers to how customers talk about products on blogs and social media. From attitudinal data, the algorithm can extrapolate behavioral nuances.   Natural Language Processing makes it possible to detect behavioral nuances, and is a significant area of work in Machine Learning.   Computer Vision is when the machine analyzes micro-expressions or picture data to determine how people react to a product of brand.  This AI helps companies learn how people react to their product or brand from studying customers’ micro-expressions or from picture data analysis.   AI is great at determining how a large group feels in general, but not individually. Machines are improving in these areas, however. Amazon is working on capturing the data about the nuances of customer emotions.   AI is excellent at categorizing groups. This news is excellent as many organizations do not have sufficient segmentation in their customer groups. The potential for segmenting by customer behavior is a possibility in the near future, which would allow for tracking the dynamic nature of customer actions and emotions.   Recommended Actions   Ghosh realizes that it can be daunting for people not familiar with AI to dive into the process. However, he offers some practical tips in this area:   Begin with a form of sentiment analysis. Getting the customer’s emotions allows you group your customers based on how they feel. Decide what the appropriate response would be to each group. Map the outcome variables for the groups and their responses to design the process. Have your AI begin collecting data at every level down to deployment. Track your desired data, whether that is pertaining to customer loyalty, behavioral measures, or whatever else you want.  Here, I would discover what drives value for each group.   Some additional takeaways are:   Use AI to help with your categorizing. Solving many problems starts with effective segmentation for improved targeting. Best of all, AI can do thing your human resources cannot—and faster, too.   Do not use AI at activities that require creativity, judgment, and decision making. That's where humans come in.    Think of AI as complementary to human work. Ghosh recommends that you find parts of your business process that are repetitive or physical that you can automate with AI.   Remember you only have to understand what it can do; you don’t have to program it. Most of us can’t anyway. You hire people to do the programming. Your job is to determine what part of the process you can have them program.   Educating the team about how customer behavior is affected by emotions is essential. Helping people in your organization understand the importance of the emotional experience and how AI can help improve it, is critical as we move forward to the Customer Experiences of the future.     To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

The 5 Rules for Making and Managing Customer Memories   A lot of Behavioral Economics can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   What Are The Five Rules?   I love the subject of customer memories.  From how they form to how they change to how they drive your customer loyalty, customer memories are a crucial aspect of your Customer Experience. Knowing the role your Customer Experience design plays in the formation of customer memories is critical to enabling customer-driven growth. Here are the five rules to bear in mind when making and managing customer memories:   Five Rules for Making and Managing Customer Memories   Embrace that we don't choose between experiences, but between the memories we have of experiences.  Emotions create memories. Map your customers' "fishing nets."   Define what you want a customer to remember.  Discover how your customers retrieve their memories.      What Should You Do With Them?   Embrace that we don't choose between experiences, but between the memories we have of experiences. Full disclosure, this rule is not mine. Professor Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-prize winning economist, came up with it. It is a foundational element of your entire Customer Experience strategy. If you think about it, memories are what make us who we are. Moreover, memory is how we learn and what we use to make future decisions. For all of these reasons, it is essential to have a plan for making customer memories that drive value for your organization.     Emotions create memories. How you feel affects memories in two main ways. The first way is that the strength of the emotion is the catalyst for memory formation. Those things you feel most strongly about are what you remember. The other stuff you didn’t have strong emotions about? Not so much.  The second way feelings affect memories is that they are essential. Professor Kahneman gave us the Peak-End rule, which says that what forms a memory is the peak (or most intense) emotion you felt and how you felt at the end. Therefore, we encourage you to determine what peak emotion you want customers to feel and when, and how you want them to feel when the experience concludes. Then, we want you take deliberate actions to deliver these emotions to customers.   Map your customers' "fishing nets."  There is also the idea that your memories are part of networks, which means that memories connect to one another. An analogy we use to describe this is a fishing net. If each memory is a knot in the fishing net, the connected memories are the knots that are attached to it. Now, if you imagine you have hold of a knot in a fishing net and you are drawing it up to the surface of a shallow pool, you can see that the connected knots will rise with the knot you are holding. Some knots will break the surface while the others hang out just below. We like to think of the knots above the surface of the water as conscious memories, and the ones below are subconscious memories. We want you to see if you can discover what memories customers will associate with the memory of your experience and use that to your advantage in your Customer Experience design.   Define what you want a customer to remember. There are practicalities to consider regarding managing customers’ memories. First, choose what you want the customer to remember. Second, have strategies in place to reinforce these memories. For example, if you manage a theme park and you know your experience has a strong emotion at a particular moment, like the top of the roller coaster as the cars start to plummet down, how can you help customers remember it? Many theme parks have identified that moment as a strong emotion and have cameras that take photos so their guests can see themselves in that thrilling moment right after they get off the ride. Even if the customer doesn’t purchase the pic, that photo reinforces the exhilarating moment in the guests’ memory right away.      Research can help you find these valuable moments in your experience to reinforce. Moreover, research can help you focus on the areas in your Customer Experience that give you the most impact first. Our  Emotional Signature®  Research defines what drives value for your customers emotionally. Then, you can look at the customer process to see when there are moments with potential to evoke that emotion.     Discover how your customers retrieve their memories. Helping your customers create fabulous memories of your experience does not do you any good if they do not remember them at the right time. Understanding how your customers recall experiences is essential. Remember the fishing net analogy we shared? We want them to pull the right knot at the right time and associate the memory to a moment when they make a buying decision in your area. Also, you should be aware that every time a customer accesses a memory, they re-remember it. This tendency can make the intensity of emotions increase. It's great when they get more positive. However, if you experience has the customer repeat what went wrong over and over to different members of your customer service team, you could be making a bad memory worse.   To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

What A Face Mask Can Do for Customer Segmentation   Everyone has an opinion about face masks. Some think they help stop the spread of COVID-19; some think they are unnecessary and a nuisance; others fall somewhere in between. However, what you probably didn't know about face masks is they can help you customize moments of your Customer Experience so that no matter what opinion your customer has, they feel like you understand them.    Key Takeaways    This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses this essential and relevant chance to participate in customer segmentation. Customer segmentation, you might recall, is the opportunity to take your more substantial groups of customers and put them in groups based on a characteristic(s) they share. In this case, our segmentation example is regarding face masks by asking customers when they wear them to determine how they feel about the global pandemic.    Here are the key takeaways from this episode:   People have had different experiences during the pandemic this far, and it will affect customer behavior. Different countries and states had varying degrees of "lockdown," ranging from none at all to shelter in place. It is essential to understand what conditions your customers had to determine how they feel before they walk through your door.    People will emerge from the pandemic in different emotional states about their safety. Like the conditions they experienced, people have varying degrees of regard for their safety as the world returns to the new normal. Some are terrified and will avoid returning to brick and mortar locations; some flout requirements to wear face masks, calling the pandemic a "hoax." It would be best to know what type of emotional state your customers are in so you can provide the appropriate response in your Customer Experience. We know that in some countries face masks are being politicized. This doesn't matter for this segmentation as we are talking about how Customers Behave.      A Golden Questions helps determine the customers' emotional state regarding the pandemic. If you ask people how they feel about the threat of COVID-19, they probably won't tell you the whole truth, especially if they don't know you. To get to the heart of their feelings, you should ask a different way. A Golden Question is an example of a query that reveals how a customer feels about something without asking them about that something directly. In the case of face-mask segmentation, we think the Golden Question is, "When have you been wearing a face mask?"   We have identified five likely segments of face mask wearers. We have determined the five divisions of face mask wearers here:   Full Metal Jacket: Someone that has been locked in and is venerable or looking after someone venerable.   The nervous face mask: Forced to go out for food shopping or work but is nervous.   The social conscious face mask: They are concern but understand the science. They are not that worried about face mask but realize their social responsibility   The pocket face mask: They have a face mask in their pocket/purse and will see what others are doing or will wear it in certain conditions.   The freedom fighter: Never wear a face mask as I don't want government to tell me what to do. It's all overblown.    It is important not to judge any group. Empathy for each of the groups will make this exercise more successful.    Recommended Actions   Segment your customers into the face mask wearers. Once you have asked your customer the Golden Question about Facemasks, you should then segment them into one of the five groups we identified based on their answers.    Try to step outside your feelings. Like everyone else, you probably identify with one of these groups. You find their feelings easy to understand because you feel the same way. However, we recommend that you try to "step outside your feelings" and see the issue from the other group's perspective.    Use the face mask wearer segmentation to customize your experience (and messaging) for each group. Since each group shares an emotional state about the threat of COVID-19, you can design responses that appeal to each group's unique psychological needs. For example, you can communicate to Full Metal Jacket face mask wearers all the things you have changed to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in your experience and send a warm, "Welcome Back!" to your Freedom Fighters.    Recognize that what people need now is not what they needed three or four months ago. Customer's needs change based on the situation they experience. Before the pandemic, we would have said that having an easy experience was essential; after the pandemic, I would say safety is paramount. Adapting and responding is key to your ability to navigate the "new normal" successfully.      To discuss this further, contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com.   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste   I am fond of an old saying that goes like, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Part of the reason I like it is it points out that even something as grim as the COVID-19 Pandemic has a silver lining. In this case, it presents an opportunity to reimagine what you do with customers and take advantage of the environment of change that the "new normal" in business will offer.    Key Takeaways    This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how organizations respond to the crisis and which ones will be the most successful. There are similarities across industries in how business is handling the changes, some more successfully than others. Also, customers are in a different place than they were at the start of 2020 as well. Here are a few of the key takeaways from what we observe:   There are three ways organizations have responded to our current economic climate:   Reacting: They have changed but believe the changes are only temporary until we return to normal. Responding: They have made changes they intend to continue in the short-term, meaning for at least a year or so. Reimagining: They see the advantage of the disruption of business-as-usual and are using it to pull forward plans they were delaying.   Loss Aversion is at play, also. Businesses are in a loss mindset, which can drive unusually risky behavior. In other words, things are bad, so some companies are willing to try something they otherwise wouldn't be able or ready to try.   Different places have different experiences. Sweden didn't shut down; the UK did. The state of Georgia opened in April and California in June. People have had varying degrees of disruption to their former daily lives and will respond accordingly.    The Kubler-Ross stages of grief model is affecting customer behavior. Where your customers are in the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—influences how they feel today. Someone who has accepted the changes will behave differently than someone who denies that the pandemic is real.    There is likely going to be a second wave. Without a vaccine, people are likely in for another wave of "stay-at-home" orders in the fall. Will you be prepared?   Recommended Actions   Knowing that the crisis does present opportunity, we have been advising our clients to do the following as they re-open:   Interpret new customer behavior. Can you observe customer behavior and the emotions that influence them to act that way?  Identify the accelerants that are in your marketplace. What did the pandemic do to change the market in your industry, and can you capitalize on it? (If you don't know, you can find out with research.) Determine if there is a further segmentation. Are there new market segments or customer segmentations you can make based on your customers' experiences geographically or emotionally?  Review your strategy. Do you have long-term plans that you can pull forward to the short-term? Do you have a plan if there is a second wave of infections? Redesign your Journey Maps. Have you introduced new nudges in your customer process that address the emotional needs people have in the "new normal?" Train employees in managing emotional experiences. What have you done to get your customer-facing team ready to handle customers' emotional experience?   To discuss this further, contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com.   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs, thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market.   This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to find out more. 

General Show Notes:   Have you ever driven a long way to a vacation, perhaps with kids in the backseat, and heard the whining query, "are we there yet?" Have you ever wanted to ask that question yourself? It turns out there are good reasons for that. It's called the Return Trip Effect, and we discuss it on this episode of The Intuitive Customer.    Key Takeaways   Assistant professor Zoey Chen from the University of Miami Business School published a paper with her colleague on the concept of the Return Trip Effect titled, "Are We There Yet?" Here are a few key takeaways from our discussion with her.    The Return Trip Effect explains how the trip to an anticipated destination often feels like it takes longer than the trip back. Research narrowed it down to two reasons why it felt this way.    When you go the first time, you see different landmarks for the first time that create time markers. The more time markers you create, the longer the trip feels. On the way back, you do not see them for the first time, so they might not be as notable, creating fewer time markers. The fewer the time markers, the faster the trip feels.    Anticipatory feelings can contribute to how long the trip feels. When you want to be somewhere already, it seems like every second you are not there is an eternity. The return trip home usually does not carry the same anticipatory feelings.    The Return Trip Effect demonstrates how outside influences can affect memories. In this case, feelings are making you remember how long it took to get somewhere. Whether or not it did take longer does not bear the same influence on memory.    We know that most memories are subject to the Peak-End Rule, first introduced by Professor Daniel Kahneman. The Peak-End Rule says that what we remember about an experience is the most intense emotion we felt and how we felt at the end. However, memory sometimes begins before the event, in anticipation of it, which can be the peak emotion.    The Sleeper Effect is a concept that your brain might overwrite a memory over time, replacing the experience with the anticipatory experience. This effect occurs because research shows that positive memories tend to outlast negative memories.    People also remember the unique experience more. The first time makes a significant impression, but the second of third experience of the same thing does not.    People also remember experiences with brands they feel are personally relevant, meaning brands that are part of their identity. For example, Apple is a brand I love and identify with, so I remember my experiences with them more.     The information introduced after an experience, especially close to the conclusion of it while your feelings are still percolating and memories are forming, can change your perception of the experience. Additional information can improve your perception of an experience and also your memory of it.    Recommended Actions   There are seven actions you can take today to help you use what you know about how memories form to design into your Customer Experience a way to enhance customers' memories about yours.    Decide what type of memory you want people to have about your experience. Different strategies enhance different types, so knowing what memory you want customers to have will shape your enhancement strategy.  Strive to make experiences unique. Are you finding ways to create a novel experience for your customers so they remember them more? Consider the post-experience. Have you provided additional information that will improve the experience in customers' minds and thereby improving their memory of it? Remember that endings are essential. Have you designed a deliberate way to end the experience that evokes emotions like happiness and pleasure from customers? Balance building excitement with maintaining proper expectations. Be sure that you can deliver on any promises you make customers. Falling short sabotages your success in creating excellent memories of your experience. Design an experience that reinforces positive memories. People come back to you not for the experience they have with you but for the experience that they remember they had with you.  Be deliberate. Don't leave the memory formation up to chance; be specific and detailed about how you deliver your Customer Experience to create the type of memory that brings customers back for more.    To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

The 5 Rules to Managing How Your Customers Make Decisions   A lot of Behavioral Economics can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   What Are The Five Rules?   How people make decisions is a complicated and fascinating subject. Understanding the process and the role your Customer Experience design plays in it is essential to providing the platform to encourage customer-driven growth. To that end, here are the five rules to bear in mind when managing customer decision-making:   Embrace the fact that customers don't always make rational choices.  Strive to make customers buy from you intuitively.  Discover your customers' decision-making strategy.  Map your customers' habits.  Design your experience understanding the different ways customers make decisions.   What Should You Do With Them?   Embrace the fact that customers don't always make rational choices. Before you can proceed in this management process, you should first accept that your customers do not make rational decisions all the time. Rationality plays a role, of course, but it not always the driving force behind the yes or no customers give you. This concept applies to the business-to-consumer as well as the business-to-business market. Many organizations have based their experiences on the idea that rational decision-making is the driving force. If you do the same, you run the risk of ruling out ways you can create a competitive advantage. By opening up your solution set to include the emotional in addition to the rational, you not only create a winning formula for winning customers and prospects over, but you also create a competitive differentiation that is hard to beat by your competition.    Strive to make customers buy from you intuitively. Intuitive purchases are automatic and occur without the customers giving it a second thought. This situation is ideal for obvious reasons. However, it requires creating an easy experience that appeals to customers' need for simplicity while also meeting their needs.   Discover your customers' decision making strategy.  There is a multitude of ways that customers use their rationality and irrationality in tandem to make buying decisions. Some methods are based on how you position the offer, others on the customers' tolerance for risk; others are based on how much effort they are willing to put into the purchase process. We recommend determining how your customers make decisions and use that pattern to help you design an experience that leads them to the choice you want. When you can do this successfully, you create a competitive differentiation few organizations are willing to undertake.   Map your customers' habits. Habitual behavior is one of the ways customers make intuitive decisions to go with your product or service. A trigger in your experience signals the habitual response to start. However, your competitors have triggers, too. When you can spot the triggers, either yours or the competition, you understand how to meet your customers or move your customers to a different behavior where you want them to be.    Design your experience understanding the different ways customers make decisions. When you apply the previous four rules in an exercise we call Behavioral Journey Mapping, an advanced take on traditional journey mapping, you can see how the different touchpoints in an experience influence customers' decisions. You can then determine what experience you wish to deliver so that you can take deliberate actions in the appropriate moments to encourage or change customer behavior. The Behavioral Sciences do not work "in general," but instead work "in specific."    To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Have you ever picked a line at the store only to realize that you chose the longest, most slowly moving line? Have you ever waited forever to receive a shipment and then felt like they owed you an explanation for what could possibly take that long? Have you ever had such a great time laughing and talking in line with other people that you didn’t even notice how long you waited?   If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are a typical customer with common perceptions of waiting in a Customer Experience. Years ago, David Maister wrote a paper called "The Psychology of Waiting Lines." Maister suggests that sometimes waiting in lines can seem longer than it is. Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, wrote an article on Psych Central that details eight reasons that waits seem longer.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the psychology of waiting and what you can do to mitigate it for customers. We address Rubin’s eight reasons and share what you can do about them to promote customer-driven growth.

Business as usual is anything but usual today. How things will change in the “new normal” and what you can do to manage it is almost anyone’s guess. However, if you can open your mind to trying new things other than what you normally would do, you might discover the magic trick that makes it all work well for managing your customer behavior.   In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we continued our discussion on these ideas with Rory Sutherland, an author, speaker, and the Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy in the UK. Here is what we discussed.    Key Takeaways    Dare to be trivial. We like this rule of Sutherland’s 11 rules of succeeding with nonsensical ideas, because it supports the idea that little things matter a lot to the Customer Experience and can have a significant effect on customer behavior. Sutherland adds that this rule is tied into the idea of “magic,” which is what he calls getting significant results from little changes. He also thinks these magic details can cause butterfly effects in the best possible ways.    If there is a logical answer, we would have already found it. Perhaps most importantly, Sutherlands last rule tells us that there likely isn’t a reasonable explanation for why this type of thinking works (or doesn’t, as the case may be). He points out that many, many people have well-established systems of analysis to come to precisely that answer and haven’t. Moreover, it’s hubris to believe you can do it better, so don’t hang your hat on your ability to do so. However, if you leave behind the well-established system and forge a new one, you open up possibilities to get the customer behavior you want in exciting ways. For example, before airlines, cruise ships crossed the Atlantic to the states, and there was a lot of competition to be the fastest crossing. However, once airplanes could manage the crossing in an afternoon, the cruise line competition was pointless. Instead, cruise lines went to extremes to make the journey more enjoyable than an airplane and created a whole new industry for holidays and travel.    We will do more of what we did during the crisis and less of what we didn’t do during it. Sutherland predicts that the pandemic will change customer behavior in many ways he cannot foresee, but in one way that he can. We will all have adapted to a new way of doing things during this time that we will continue doing after it ends. For example, Zoom calls might replace some meetings and business trips. Grocery deliveries will enjoy more widespread use. Some people might continue working from home.    Recommended Actions   Open yourself to magic. If you can leave behind the usual ways of doing business and open your mind to new ways of doing things, you broaden your potential solutions considerably and often economically.  Avoid following the crowd. Many organizations, especially those that use management consultants, are more comfortable doing what has always been done because it is easier to measure, quantify, and report results. Now, the ability to do those things is lovely, however, they are also well-known and well used. If you can break away from the pack, what you give up in certainty you gain in potential competitive differentiation.  Read Sutherland’s book. To get into these ideas in greater detail, we would encourage you to read Sutherland’s book, Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense. Another option is to look up his TED talks or engage with him on Twitter (@rorysutherland).    To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market.   This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more. 

The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense Part 1   If you go into business, you probably have checked out what the competition is doing first. In many cases, you might be tempted to do the same thing. After all, it is working, at least to some extent.     However, we think that taking a different tack, choosing a different road, or embracing that idea that doesn’t make sense, will be a way to create competitive differentiation that you would otherwise not have. Without new ideas, you offer the same old same old.    In this first episode of a two-part series of The Intuitive Customer, we host speaker and author Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, who is known for his TED talks and being a general advertising legend. His book, Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense, discusses how you can create products driven by ideas that are irresistible to customers.   Key Takeaways    Part of Sutherland's book is 11 rules of succeeding with nonsensical ideas, which a few of these were the subject of our discussion. Let’s take a closer look at the few we asked him about and what he had to say.   It doesn’t pay to be logical when everybody else is being logical. Sutherland says that when you worry about the same things as the competition and run the same metrics for success, you are essentially becoming the same business. Moreover, you can commoditize your market. However, when you strike out on your path with your concerns and ways of measuring success, you diverge from the competition’s path. In other words, you abandon the comparison to find your comparative advantage. Most companies choose to be objective with their focus on concrete issues and problems that they can analyze and report. The risk here is that you spend a lot of time focusing on optimizing things that do not drive significant behavioral changes for customers. If you choose a subjective focus, you open up the possibilities for how you can change your business for the better.   The opposite of a good idea can be another good idea. There is often more than one path to success in a market. Your competition might have a great idea, but not the only plan. If you were to do the exact opposite of what your competition does, you could have another great idea that speaks to a different segment of the market share. Moreover, you might uncover some hidden unmet needs that people might not have realized they wanted, and area that we often discuss regarding our Emotional Signature research.   The problem with logic is it kills off magic. When your focus is on the rational, you miss out on all the irrational magic that can occur in your customer experience. Moreover, you don’t recognize it when it presents itself to you; instead, you think it’s a trick or cheating. However, using solutions that work with customers’ irrational nature will help change their behavior in ways you didn’t know possible. Moreover, you have more solution options to choose from to do so.   Solving problems with only one rationality is like playing golf with only one club.  Businesspeople tend to approach issues and opportunities with a similar mindset. Sutherland describes it as a financial engineering, Newtonian-reductionist mindset. However, when you define a problem, you often also determine the solution. If you think about the issue in economic terms, you often limit yourself to financial solutions. However, when you open up your definition of the problem to include a lot of different areas, you have may options for the direction of your solutions. For example, solving problems using persuasion, Sutherland says, will allow you to marry economics and behavioral science, which is at least two clubs from your solutions bag.   To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Post Pandemic Silver Lining: Are You Grasping This Incredible opportunity?   As everything starts to open, what is the silver lining of the pandemic? This is a unique opportunity to change customers’ habits and there has never been a better time to help customers form new habits. As states have reopened and people are emerging from their homes into the bright light of the post-pandemic world, we have a unique opportunity to make some changes in customer behavior that can lead to customer-driven growth.     In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we are going to talk about how habits form and why. We will also discuss why this is an unprecedented chance to get your customers to change habits that will benefit your bottom line.     Key Takeaways:   Here are a few key takeaways from this episode:   Habits are a cycle of Cue, Routine Reward. The cue is the stimulus; the routine is the reaction to the cue, and the reward is the benefit of the action. Consistent participation in the cycle results in a habit, for good or ill.  The Intuitive System governs the realm of habits. You might recall that we all have two systems of thinking: the fast and emotional Intuitive System, and the slow and logical Rational System. As habits are automatic reactions to the cycle, they are picked up by the Intuitive System.  Habits can be challenging to overcome once initiated.  The automatic nature of the cycle makes habits challenging to manage. This fact is troublesome to managers of Customer Experiences, mainly when the habitual behavior is for the competition.  A common misconception about habits is that they cannot be overruled. While it is true that habits can be challenging to overcome once initiated, they are not an overwhelming desire that cannot be changed. If you decide you want to do something different, you can. It will just take a conscious effort to change the behavior when the cue initiates.  The reason now is a great time to change behavior is because business-as-usual is already disrupted. COVID-19 stay at home orders have already disrupted everything for customers, including their usual habitual cues.    Recommended Actions:   Since the world is not going back to the way it was, everything is going to be different. As a result, there are a few key takeaways we have for how to change customers’ habits, which include:   Figure out the cues that triggered the customers’ routines. What happened to the customer right before they exhibited habitual behavior?  Determine what habit you would prefer to see at that moment. What would you change about the habitual behavior you observe currently? Research whether there are hidden, unmet needs. What is something that customers do not get right now that would create a lot of value for them? (For this one, we recommend doing a deeper dive into what customers really want, not what they say they want. Our Emotional Signature® can help.) Choose a strategy to implement a change in the cue that will encourage the new desired habit. What can we do in our experience that addresses these unmet needs that will inspire a new pattern to form? Do not wait until the new normal is established. Is there something we can do today to set up the new customer behavior we want?  To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

General Show Notes:   Practical Advice on How to Influence People: 6 Key Principles   Many years ago, Robert Cialdini introduced the principles of influence. Today they are crucial skills for salespeople worldwide. They are also foundational to your Customer Experience. If you enrich your experience with these principles, which include things like learning to genuinely like other people and encouraging a favorable environment for reciprocity by your sincere generosity, you can benefit your bottom line.    In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, we speak to our guest Brian Ahearn, CMCT®, Chief Influence Officer at Influence People about Cialdini’s Six Principles of Influence. We discuss how you can use them to create the experience you want that will deliver the customer-driven growth you need.    Key Takeaways    There are six fundamental principles of influence, according to Cialdini. These are what Ahearn uses in his work to help people strengthen relationships, overcome uncertainty, and motivate other people to action. They include:   The Principle of Liking. Many people make the mistake of thinking this principle is about getting other people to like you, but it isn’t. What Cialdini is saying is that if you genuinely like other people and communicate this fact to others, it will set the stage for a relationship that can move forward.  The Principle of Reciprocity. When people do something for us, we often feel like we should return the favor. However, these feelings of reciprocity only occur when we feel like the other person is sincerely helping us, not just trying to get something out of us. Ahearn says that this principle is about helping other people get what they want, not getting what you want in return. Ahearn explains when you demonstrate sincere generosity these things you want will come back to you naturally as a result.  The Principle of Authority. When we feel like someone is an expert in something, we appreciate their advice more. It’s why we hire a CPA to file our taxes and go to the doctor when we have symptoms. We want sound guidance, and it saves us a lot of time to get it from an expert. Making yourself an authority in a relevant area to people makes you a credible resource with advice others want to hear. The Principle of Social Proof. There is an evolutionary imperative in the idea of safety in numbers. Therefore, showing people how other people just like them have taken action and enjoyed a significant benefit as a result, is a compelling motivator for all of us humans.  The Principle of Consistency. We all want to believe that we are as good as our word. When we agree to something, most of us intend to deliver and feel great shame when we don’t. So, gaining agreement to move forward in some way is an excellent way to persuade people to change their behavior. They want to live up to your expectations—and their own.  The Principle of Scarcity. In the time of our COVID-19 pandemic, we all have seen plenty of customer behavior motivated by feelings of Scarcity. We all want to have what we need when we need it. Creating feelings that a person needs to act to have what they need before it’s gone is a strong motivator for action. However, Ahearn cautions that it is essential to keep people working together instead of in competition. If you don’t believe him, consider the empty shelves of toilet rolls in stores as of late.   Recommended Actions   We often talk about the psychological principles that are behind the customer behavior inspired by  Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence. Your customer-facing teams must recognize this behavior and its motivations. We recommend training your employees in the soft-skills of emotional intelligence and the concepts of Behavioral Economics, in a program like our Memory Maker Training, so that they can manage it to a better place for your organization.    For his part, Ahearn advises us to stop telling people what to do and start asking. This minor adjustment in your approach can make a major difference in your ability to persuade other people to do what you want. Moreover, he tells you to have a fallback position if the person cannot agree with your original request. That way, you have a better chance of still moving forward with your desired action, even if you don’t get agreement for what you originally asked.     For my part, I believe talking to people on a human level, with empathy and an eye toward helping others, we can meet everybody’s needs—and that includes your need for customer-driven growth.    To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com   About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

I hate my cable providers. That’s right, providers is plural. I have two different providers, one in the UK and one in Florida, and they both provide poor experiences. In many ways, I see cable companies as the perfect example of what not to do with your Customer Experience.   This Episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a look at all the ways cable companies provide experiences that do not promote customer-driven growth. Moreover, we share the ways that these experiences promote customer behavior that demonstrate principles studied in Behavioral Economics. Perhaps most importantly, we explore how you can avoid making the same mistakes in your organization.

Understanding Human Behavior During the Pandemic, and What to Do About it   Let us begin by wishing you all our best during these unprecedented times. We hope that you and your family are all safe and sound, and novel coronavirus-free. While no one knows what to expect, we are all in this together.   The pandemic has shown how uncertainty can affect human behavior. This episode of the Intuitive Customer explains why, how it makes us feel, and what we can do about it for ourselves and our customers once we make it to the “other side” of the COVID-19 crisis.

There is a lovely mirror leaning against the wall in my garage in England. My wife thinks we should sell it. I think we should give it away, to which my wife tut-tuts. She argues it is a beautiful mirror and believes it will fetch a handsome sum on the Internet. I disagree. So, the mirror sits there, ignored for the time being, and not selling, and I hold the Endowment Effect fully responsible.    The Endowment Effect explains how we value our possessions more highly than others do because they are ours. It is one of the reasons some prices for products and services end up too high. It is also the subject of this episode of the Intuitive Customer.

I don't know if it's age talking here, but it probably is. Life becomes a lot clearer as you go on. I am at the point where I feel comfortable telling you what I think. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, I am going to tell you about seven mistakes organizations make while trying to gain growth in revenue or market share. 

Loss Aversion teaches us that people like to gain things, but that they like hanging on to what they have even more and feel losses much more profoundly than gains. So, you would think that effective policy to reduce disposable bag usage by charging a surcharge for a grocery bag would tap into these feelings.   Not so fast. New research reveals that Loss Aversion is not the reason for the grocery bag surcharge’s success.    In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, our guest host Alicea “Allie” Lieberman, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of California, San Diego, shares her findings with us regarding why incentives work. The Harvard Business Review also published an article about her results, “Why We’re Incentivized by Discounts and Surcharges” in February of this year. She and her research partner Kristen Duke also published their study in a peer-reviewed journal that shows how Social Norms help drive the effectiveness of incentives to change customer behavior.  

What You Should Learn from Apple’s Outstanding Experience   I am a huge fan of Apple products. If there were already a waiting list for the next iPhone, I would be on it. For me, buying Apple products is emotional, intuitive,  and automatic—all the things a brands needs to foster customer-driven growth.   Apple is excellent at incorporating principles of behavioral economics and psychology that are hugely influential on customer behavior in all the right ways. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how Apple does it and what you should do, too.

A global pandemic wasn’t in your plans this quarter. However, we see an opportunity to enhance your relationships with customers in this global crisis.    In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we share ten strategies for managing the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. Our practical tips help you manage the stress and anxiety at your front lines to the best possible outcome. Our approach will bring you closer to your customers at a time when world leaders are calling for social distancing as the norm.  

Shark attacks have overblown importance compared to how often they occur. But since TV and movies have made so much of these rare, and rarely fatal events, we are sure we will be the next victim. These unlikely worries are the result of a psychological phenomenon called the Availability Heuristic.   This episode of the Intuitive Customer explores the Availability Heuristic and how it can help your brand promote customer-driven growth. Turns out, being available is a more significant influence than you think.

You all want growth, don’t know what to prioritize to get it, and aren’t nearly worried enough about the disruption AI will have on your industry. At least, that’s what our research late last year told us.    This episode of The Intuitive Customer reveals the trends we identified in our research late last year. While some of it was what we expected to hear, a few trends left us gobsmacked. Hear what we learned. We also share advice for understanding customer behavior to drive customer-driven growth from here.

We all misjudge other people’s motivations at times. The academic term for it is a Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). An FAE describes how we misinterpret our limitations and the motivations of others and how we mistakenly attribute successes and failures for ourselves and others.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores FAEs’ effects on customer-driven growth. Understanding customer behavior avoids FAEs so you can manage the Customer Experience to a profitable place.

Research in Harvard Business Review last year suggested that some companies with poor customer service are terrible on purpose to wear out disgruntled customers so they don’t have to fix customer problems. Moreover, the HBR authors suggest that this method makes these organizations more profitable. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores this idea in more detail. We discuss businesses that might benefit from this strategy, and which ones would not. Find out which group you belong to and why.

Where AI Meets CX: The Remarkable Future for Humanizing Brands   Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform the customer experience in many ways in the coming years. One area that we see interesting applications of AI Technology is the brand personification and social media management. This new way of creating meaningful interactions with your customers will build emotional engagement with your company, even though the entity doing it is not a human being.    Brand personification is a fundamental principle of the concept of Conversational Commerce first introduced in 2016 by Chris Messina, tech expert, and inventor of the hashtag. Conversational Commerce is a way to describe how customers interact with brands on social media and other channels to move them through the sales cycle. These interactions will be handled more and more by AI, at least in the beginning stages. Brand personification represents how the values of your brand become a persona that interacts with customers in this way.    When you consider brand personification, you can see it follows the “cult of the entrepreneur” prevalent over the past 20 years. Brands like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla all have a persona, and it seems to resemble the founders that introduced them to us. These organizations are a manifestation of the entrepreneurs themselves, from how they do business to the culture that supports their work.    Messina says that you don’t have to have a super-famous founder to have a brand persona. Any organization can adopt one. By using a set of principles your team decides best represents the values you want to deliver in your Customer Experience, you can “humanize” your brand to be a persona that says and does things that communicate these values. Many of these communications will take place on social media platforms. In other words, you use your values to envision what that would look like in a real human. Then, you communicate as if that human were your brand in your social media presence.    As this technology progresses, chatbots will do the heavy lifting in these efforts. Moreover, they will populate with responses from AI-powered technology. AI will help technology mimic authentic human behavior. However, organizations will still need to determine what they want these personas to be.    In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we discuss with Messina how an organization should undertake humanizing its brand for customers in the second of a two-part interview. Building on the concept of Conversational Commerce addressed in Part 1, we take a deeper dive into the practicalities of developing an AI-powered anthropomorphized brand that will interact on social media on your behalf to build a relationship and how that might affect customer behavior and, perhaps most importantly customer-driven growth.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.    To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.    This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.   

Social media has changed many things about our lives. Not only can we have a blow by blow account of what our friends and family are up to, but we can also see what they had for dinner. We can even see what friends of our friends had for dinner.   One of the other ways social media changed our lives is in how we interact with brands. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter gave us direct access to brands in a way we hadn’t had before. However, it also gave them direct access to us.    Conversational Commerce was conceived in 2016 by the inventor of the hashtag, Chris Messina. It describes how we interact with brands over several different channels in various ways, including social media. Messina, who has a career in tech and tech platforms, recently co-founded and launched a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) company called Molly. Molly will skim your social media presence to find answers to your customer questions on your behalf.    However, Messina sees applications like Molly as just the beginning of AI handling customer interactions on the social media platforms. He also sees a future where brands interact with people as if the brand was a person. Humanizing brands is the future of social media. Moreover, it will be handled by AI, not humans.     But how should organizations create this anthropomorphized brand for themselves? What should they use to create it and how should it respond to queries? After they establish a humanized brand that can respond, how should it affect the customer journey and contribute to the relationship. These are all questions that Messina and other experts ask about the future of brand interaction.    This is the first of a two-part interview with Messina about his concept of Conversational Commerce and how it will affect the future of Customer Experiences on social media and the relationships that develop there. We also discuss the essential considerations that every brand should make before launching their personalized interactions that aim to deepen the customer relationship and facilitate customer-driven growth.  The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.    To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.    This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.   

This is The New Imperative for 2020    Our global Customer Experience consultancy engaged research at the end of 2019 to determine our direction for the next decade. We learned that, first and foremost, organizations want to gain growth. So, we have a new focus for 2020, helping organizations achieve the growth they want by assisting them in providing the Customer Experience they need to do so. Growth is challenging today. Competition is intense due to many factors. One critical reason is that the time from innovation to imitation is down to weeks in many cases. Today’s businesses must face the challenges of new product and service launches in a commoditized market, fueled at least in part to massive growth in online commerce.  However, gaining growth is not impossible, in fact, far from it. Growth can come from many different strategies. Chief amongst the approach is by providing a Customer Experience that meets your customers’ needs, even the ones they are not entirely aware they have. Meeting these unmet needs is the foundation of what we call customer-driven growth, which is growth powered by exemplary Customer Experiences.   Since 2002, Beyond Philosophy has focused on growth driven by an improved Customer Experience. Our work with Maersk Line, the largest shipping container company in the world, improved Maersk’s Net Promoter Score® (NPS)by 40 points in 30 months, a statistic I often share. However, the next part is essential to realize; they also increased their shipping volumes by 10 percent. Moreover, our work with RICOH Canada, the printer company, improved their NPS by 34 points in 30 months and also increased printer sales by 10 percent—and this was in a declining market.   If organizations want growth, we are going to give it to them. So, how do we get growth? Where do we get new customers? This episode of the Intuitive Customer explores the types of growth that organizations can focus on, how to approach gaining it in today’s marketplace, and the four essential steps to take to be successful in this effort. Moreover, we show how improving Customer Experience leads to this growth and why.  The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.  To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.  This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.

Discover This Powerful Marketing Technique to Gain Growth   How you present information has a significant effect on how your customers perceive the message. It’s no secret; it’s why there are marketing departments. However, what is fascinating is that when we present information, we can take advantage of things that shouldn’t matter when you think about them rationally, but that do matter quite a bit when it comes to customer-driven growth.    For example, if I were to tell you Forrester, a global research company, predicted that 1 in 4 Customer Experience professionals would lose their jobs this year, does that sound like good news? It doesn’t seem to be to me—and probably not to you if you happen to have a job title with Customer Experience in the title.   Now, let’s pretend that I told you Forrester predicted that 3 out of 4 Customer Experience professionals would keep their jobs this year. Does that sound as dire as the first prediction? In my opinion, it doesn’t. I am not sure I would even mention it if it were positioned that way.    Both predictions tell you the same thing and have the same facts supporting them. However, one sounds like doom and gloom, and one does not. How we perceive the news about the future of Customer Experience employment is affected quite a bit by how we heard the prediction.    This phenomenon has a psychological term that describes it called Framing Effects. The scientific community defines Framing Effects as giving people information that does not change, but varying something about how you present it to position the data in a specific way.    Framing art is a useful way to understand how Framing Effects work for information. If you think about mounting a painting or photo, different frames change how you perceive the artwork. A different color frame might bring out a color in the picture, or a different material might present the art as more or less valuable than it is in reality. The way you present the art in the frame will affect how it affects the viewer.    This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses how Framing Effects change how people perceive the same facts or situations and why. We also discuss how you can use the way Framing Effects change communication to foster customer-driven growth or improve the Customer Experience for your organization.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.   This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.

Discover This Powerful Marketing Technique to Gain Growth   How you present information has a significant effect on how your customers perceive the message. It’s no secret; it’s why there are marketing departments. However, what is fascinating is that when we present information, we can take advantage of things that shouldn’t matter when you think about them rationally, but that do matter quite a bit when it comes to customer-driven growth.    For example, if I were to tell you Forrester, a global research company, predicted that 1 in 4 Customer Experience professionals would lose their jobs this year, does that sound like good news? It doesn’t seem to be to me—and probably not to you if you happen to have a job title with Customer Experience in the title.   Now, let’s pretend that I told you Forrester predicted that 3 out of 4 Customer Experience professionals would keep their jobs this year. Does that sound as dire as the first prediction? In my opinion, it doesn’t. I am not sure I would even mention it if it were positioned that way.    Both predictions tell you the same thing and have the same facts supporting them. However, one sounds like doom and gloom, and one does not. How we perceive the news about the future of Customer Experience employment is affected quite a bit by how we heard the prediction.    This phenomenon has a psychological term that describes it called Framing Effects. The scientific community defines Framing Effects as giving people information that does not change, but varying something about how you present it to position the data in a specific way.    Framing art is a useful way to understand how Framing Effects work for information. If you think about mounting a painting or photo, different frames change how you perceive the artwork. A different color frame might bring out a color in the picture, or a different material might present the art as more or less valuable than it is in reality. The way you present the art in the frame will affect how it affects the viewer.    This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses how Framing Effects change how people perceive the same facts or situations and why. We also discuss how you can use the way Framing Effects change communication to foster customer-driven growth or improve the Customer Experience for your organization.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.   This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.

The Secret of Pricing Academia has a problem with names. They are not always, well, intuitive. Hyperbolic Discounting is an excellent example of a pertinent business area disguised in a difficult-to-interpret label.   Hyperbolic Discounting does not mean what you might think. If you take a look at the words in the name, you probably imagine it means embellished markdowns. However, Hyperbolic Discounting is a vital psychological concept that influences your customer’s behavior and could be getting in the way of your customer-driven growth.   Hyperbolic discounting describes how we undervalue the benefit of something that happens in the future. Also, the concept covers how we overvalue the cost to us for waiting for something. In other words, we want what we want right now, and if we have to wait, then you better offer us something good for our trouble.   Unlike many psychological concepts, Hyperbolic Discounting is easy to predict. Why? It is easy to anticipate because all of us have this bias for immediacy. When faced with a situation where we choose between gratification in the short term vs. more significant rewards in the long run, we feel tempted to choose the former over the latter. It is one more way that we, as a human race, are irrational.   Now, we can overcome our bias and make decisions that have long-term benefits, especially when it is something essential, like retirement savings or investing in life insurance to protect our family if something happens to us. However, with less critical choices in life, options with long-term benefits often get passed over for opportunities with immediate gratification.   One example from life is my diet. I know that if I eat less and exercise more, I will lose weight and feel healthier than I do now. However, the cookie I have in my hand will taste good now.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the critical (and poorly named) concept of Hyperbolic Discounting. We explain in more detail what it means and how Academia came up with the name, as well as how you can recognize it in your customer’s behavior. Perhaps most importantly, we discuss how you can use it to promote customer-driven growth in your organization.     The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.

How AI will Change CX for the Future Customer loyalty is what most businesses want. The more your customers buy from you, the more you improve your bottom line, not only in increased sales but also in decreased customer acquisition costs. Improving your Customer Experience to foster customer loyalty is often an expense that senior management can get behind. However, there is a common misconception that customers are loyal to you based on the Customer Experience you deliver. The truth is that customer loyalty is based on memory. In other words, customers are loyal to you based on the customer experience they remember you deliver. How memory works is a fascinating thing. There are experiences, thoughts and feelings, and facts and ideas that all mix to comprise them. Also, there are associated memories that connect, some more closely than others. Furthermore, other people’s memories can mix in there too and connect to the personal memories a customer has of your brand. We often compare memory to a fishing net, where each knot of the net represents a memory. If you imagine picking a net up off the floor by a knot, you can picture how all the related knots in the net rise with it. You are holding the one knot, but all the other knots are there dangling close by, too. Artificial intelligence (AI) has some exciting capabilities to create these fishing nets on behalf of your customers. It can analyze past customer behavior to predict their future actions. It can make connections between experiences based on the data it explains. Then, once it has constructed the virtual fishing net, it can tell you what knot the customer wants to make next. But will AI get it right or wrong? This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the relationship between customer loyalty and the future applications of AI in Customer Experience strategy. We take a look at the complicated way memories associate to influence our behavior. We also look at how AI can mimic this process and use the results to predict customer behavior. Finally, we discuss what you can do to prepare for this technology and how you can use it to personalize a Customer Experience that gives that individual customers what they really want next.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.   

1 in 4 Will Lose Their Job in 2020 At the end of 2019, global research firm Forrester predicted that 1 in 4 Customer Experience jobs will be cut in 2020. While we find this prediction grim, we do not disagree. We believe that this reality has been on the horizon for some time now.   There are many reasons why it has come to this point. One of the most significant is a misconception about what Customer Experience is and how it affects the bottom line.   Customer Experience requires an investment in time and resources. It should be no surprise that businesses expect to see a return on investment. When Customer Experience programs lack proper measurement of their results, how can senior management justify their expense?   Another reason Customer Experience as a concept is under fire is because many organizations do not understand what it requires to improve it. They underestimate the importance of tackling the more significant causes of dissatisfaction in favor of smaller (and easier) changes. However, these less significant areas will not produce the results needed to justify the programs moving forward.   I began working in Customer Experience nearly twenty years ago. I was into Customer Experience before it was a corporate term bandied about by consultants and marketing conferences. I have seen it rise into the spotlight and saw the bandwagons roll by, crowded with the latest organizations that decided they should embrace the idea of Customer Experience because “well, everyone else is.”   Unfortunately, many organizations don’t understand how to improve the Customer Experience. One thing I have learned over the years is that Customer Experience is, in many ways, a mindset. Once you have it, you realize how it works and how it is integral to everything that happens at an organization, not the least of which is customer-driven growth for your bottom line.   Many things come together to create success for the concept of customer-driven growth. It is essential to understand what drives value for your organizations and design ways for you to engage customers and promote that value to them. Perhaps most importantly, you need to measure your results, if for no other reason than to prove it works to people who do not share your mindset of putting the customer at the center of everything you do.   In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore the ways that Customer Experience professionals can be a part of the 75 percent that keep their jobs and what they can do to facilitate an environment that nurtures customer-driven growth.     The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.  To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.

If I asked you for $100, what would you say? My guess is no. You probably have a rule against giving people money just because they asked you.  But what if I asked you for $1? Most of us would probably be okay with that. Sure, it’s still giving money, but it’s only $1, and that isn’t the same thing. However, by saying yes to giving me $1, you broke your rule about giving people money just because they asked you. It’s not a big deal, of course, but it does make it more likely that if I came back and asked for $5, $10, or $20, that you would give it to me. Moreover, if you discovered that you didn’t mind giving me money, you might say yes the next time I ask for $100.  There is a name for this method of getting people to do what you want. In psychology, it’s called the Escalation of Commitment. In laymen’s terms, it’s called “in for a penny, in for a pound.” We refer to it as making it easy for your customers to say yes.  Escalation of commitment works on more than just money. It also works for time, like volunteering, or effort, like getting someone to work harder or run farther. The idea is you make it easy for someone to say yes to you over something small and then slowly increase the amount of whatever resource you want from them over time.  In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore how Escalation of Commitment works and applies to Customer Experience. We also explain how you can use it to segment your customers to give you an idea of where they are on the commitment spectrum with you. Finally, we caution you on what not to do when getting your customers to yes to avoid creating negative feelings toward your brand and organization.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How to Ensure You Make Good Decisions   I am an Apple Superfan. As a loyal customer, I notice all the positive moments in my Customer Experience with them. They reinforce that my brand is the best and buying from them was a good decision.   Moreover, if I ever see an article that is negative about Apple, or positive about a competitor of Apple, I don’t believe it or, worse, don’t read it. I don’t trust that it will be accurate, useful, or trustworthy to listen to that garbage.   My customer behavior here is indicative of Confirmation Bias. The psychological concept describes how people hold tightly to their beliefs and seek out support for what they “know” to be true. It also says that people will resist or ignore information that is contrary to their viewpoint. Moreover, if we do get information that is contrary to our view, we will interpret it in a way that supports our opinion.   Confirmation Bias is why we think that when our team loses, it is because the referees made bad calls, not our beloved team’s performance.   Confirmation Bias is why people with one type of political view watch one new network, and people with the opposing view watch the other one.   Confirmation Bias is why people worked on the three presidential campaigns of US Politician Ralph Nader, even though he did not have support from either Democrats or Republicans and absolutely no chance to win the election.   Everyone is affected by Confirmation Bias. We all have beliefs that, when challenged, trigger our defenses to protect what we know deep down in our hearts to be true by denying the other point of view’s validity. Because we all have it, overcoming Confirmation Bias is challenging and, in some ways, emotionally draining and existentially exhausting.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores Confirmation Bias and how it affects our decision-making as humans. We also take a look at how you can overcome your Confirmation Bias to make decisions that improve your Customer Experience, your Work Experience, and your organization’s bottom line.     The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.    

The Biggest Thing We Learned in 2019 If there is one thing we have learned in 2019, it is that customers give us a lot to think about regarding their behavior. How they behave and why are fascinating topics and one that has much influence on our Customer Experience outcomes. As we embark on a new year and a new decade, it is an excellent time to reflect on what we have learned and what made the most significant impact on us regarding customer retention and loyalty.  For example, one concept about Customer Experience that has gradually proven to me to be essential to customer loyalty is the whole area of customer memory. This year, as in years past, we talked a lot about how the customer’s memory of experience forms. From Nobel-prize winning economist professor Daniel Kahneman, memories follow the Peak-End rule. His rule tells us that what customers remember most about an experience is the point when they felt the most emotion (the peak) and how they felt at the end of it. However, this year, I also learned how memories are connected, like a fishing net. We may consciously remember one thing about an experience, but also our subconscious memories attach to that conscious memory. If you picture the conscious memory as one of the lines in a fishing net that you grab with your fingers, the subconscious memories are all the lines of the net that you draw up with it, connected and continuous. The image of it fascinates me because it illustrates how influential and essential memories are in Customer Experience management at a conscious and subconscious level.  This concept is my favorite because we know that people don’t choose your experience based on the one you gave them. They choose it based on the one they remember you gave them. The Peak-End Rule, in this case, has significant implications on how you manage your Customer Experience. The Peak-End rule and the essential nature of customer memory is an example of how the lessons we learn and embrace can change the trajectory of our actions moving forward.    Among other things, this episode of The Intuitive Customer is a year in review, a chance to take stock of what we know now about the reasons that customers do what they do in your experience. Understanding customer behavior and the drivers behind it can help you take your Customer Experience and the results you get from it to the next level in the new year and the new decade.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

What is Important in 2020? Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees Coach once said, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” Predictions can be difficult; it is true. However, they can also be helpful, especially if you are trying to plan for a new year. I have been in the Customer Experience industry since before there was such a thing. When I founded Beyond Philosophy back in 2002, no one was talking about Customer Experience. Then, things changed, and over the next decade, it changed from no one talking about Customer Experience to everyone talking about it. A few years into it, bandwagons formed. Soon after that, people that had no idea about the depth and breadth of the concept of Customer Experience were jumping on it, touting the importance of minding the Customer Experience to anyone who would listen. However, they kept trying the same things they were doing before they heard of Customer Experience and were getting the same results. Looking a new year and a new decade is a time for reflection for me. I have been working in Customer Experience for nearly 20 years now. Bandwagon riders notwithstanding, I am enheartened by the way the broader business world has embraced the importance of putting the customer at the center of everything you do, even if they don’t always understand what the term means. However, we are also at a point where Customer Experience is a concept that has had a fair chance to prove its worth. The results we expected should be appearing in organizations that have taken the idea and applied it to their business model. It is reasonable to expect for the time, energy, and resources to show a return on investment, whether in customer loyalty, customer retention, or even just cold hard cash. So, will we? Like it is for many of these questions, the answer is it depends. On this episode of The Intuitive Customer, I further explain my answer and share my predictions about the fate of Customer Experience. We will look at what led to our current situation and what will carry us onward in the coming year.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why the Strength of Customer’s Emotion is Critical  Customers’ emotions are a critical part of Customer Experience. Our research shows that over 50 percent of a Customer Experience is about customer emotions. Furthermore, we know that emotion drives customer behavior. Having awareness of what emotions your experience evokes when and why is critical to your Customer Experience Outcome.   However, did you know that in addition to being aware of the what, when, and why of customer emotions, you should also know how much intensity they feel them with at any given moment? If not, don’t worry; you are not alone. Many organizations do not pay any attention to the intensity of customer emotions and then wonder why things happen the way they do in their other metrics like sales growth and profitability. The amount of any emotion that a person feels affects many things about Customer Experience. The most important one is how their memory of it forms. According to Nobel-Prize winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman’s Peak-End Rule, what we remember about an experience is our most intense emotion and how we felt at the end. So, you might be thinking, who cares about their memory of the experience? The fact is you should because people do not choose to come back to you based on their experience; they return based on what they remember about your experience. If they remember how intensely disappointed they were with their experience how likely will they be to buy more from you? For all these reasons, we believe that it is essential that your customer-facing employees can not only recognize the emotion a customer feels, but they should also know how intensely they are feeling it. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores all the reasons that the strength of customer’s emotions are critical and what effects it has on the Customer Experience. It turns out, the what, when, and why are incomplete until you know the how much, too.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Does Giving Gifts Mean More Business? It is the season of giving. No doubt, many of you sent out your gifts to your clients, suppliers, and other business associates already. But will your gifts result in more business? They might, and they might not. Like most things about interpersonal relationships, it depends on a lot of different variables. Researchers study gift giving and have for many years. In the beginning, it was considered a Sociology area, which suggested that gift-giving was primarily an exercise in reciprocity. The idea behind gift-giving was that recipients should return the favor. Because of this fundamental concept, gift-giving became a way to move a relationship forward with someone. Today, research has changed regarding gift-giving. While there is still the fundamental idea of reciprocity at work, there are also new agendas observed in the gift-giving area. One of the essential variables in gift-giving success is the alignment between the giver and receiver. Both parties must be in sync as far as relationship status, agendas, reciprocity, and value. Ironically, this variable is often the one that isn’t, forgive the pun, present. Research on gift-giving shows that misalignment is the norm for when gift-giving goes wrong, and usually, it has to do with agendas. Now, many of you might think, agendas? Besides being nice, is there any other agenda behind gift-giving? It turns out that there is more going on with gifts than you might have thought. Many different agendas exist with gift-giving, and they may or may not help you win more business. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores all the agendas and misfires on gift-giving and what you can do to optimize them. Guest host Marketing, Professor Morgan Ward from Emory University, shares her insight on gift-giving and what makes it go wrong. Moreover, we talk about what kinds of gifts are best for deepening a relationship and what you can do to become a better gift-giver for business and beyond.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Psychology has a lot of influence on customer behavior. When it comes to making decisions, we like to find ways to make them more manageable. Anchoring and Adjustment is a mental short cut or heuristic. We use to help evaluate numbers.  Anchoring and Adjustment help us generate numbers. It works like this: First, there is a base number established either by the individual or an outside influence. Then, you adjust up or down from there. It helps simplify decision making.  For example, if you needed to estimate the height of a tree, it can be hard to come up with an estimate just by looking at it. But if there is a building next to it, and you know how many stories the building has, you can use the approximate building height to determine the baseline. Then, adjust the height of the tree up or down from the baseline as appropriate.  Retailers you Anchoring and Adjustment, too. Neiman Marcus, the luxury retailer, does it in its annual holiday catalog. The “Fantasy Gifts” featured in the opening spread and their sky-high prices make the rest of their high-priced items look like a relative bargain.  However, it isn’t just the upscale retailers who use this psychological phenomenon. Warehouse stores do it, too, by putting their most expensive items right at the entrance of their retail locations. If you see a $3,000 TV upon arrival, won’t the 30-pound jar of pickles seem to be a steal at $50? This episode of the Intuitive Customer explores Anchoring and Adjustment and the influence it exerts on customer behavior. We also reveal how you can follow the lead of retailers of all types to benefit your Customer Experience strategy, as well as your bottom line.   Anchoring and Adjustment is a specific heuristic used to generate numbers; The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The 7 Telltale Signs of a Company NOT Committed to Customers I discovered many years ago that I could determine whether a company was committed to customers pretty quickly. When I thought about how I recognized it, I found that organizations that did not commit to customers had some shared company culture cues that indicated where their focus was. The ideas behind this discovery later became my second book, Revolutionize Your Customer Experience. I developed for the book my Native to Natural™ model, which measures how customer-centric a company culture is. There are four types of companies arranged on a spectrum. It starts with Naïve, which are the least customer-focused companies and are unaware of it. Next come the Transactional and Enlightened stages, which are firms that now recognize the problem and are consciously working to change their behavior to have a customer-focus. Finally, there are Natural organizations, which are the most customer-focused companies that put the customer at the center of everything they do without thinking about it. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we use the Naïve to Natural model to help organizations realize where they are with their present Customer Experience regarding Customer Centricity. It also helps them see areas where they need to improve to get where they want to go. This exercise requires self-analysis and answering critical questions about the priority placed on Customer Experience. Few companies, if any, would want to be known for not committing to customers. If you asked most senior management a question like, “True or False: The customer should be at the center of everything you do?”, few of them would say false. Therefore, our questions ask about day to day operations and decisions, which are where the rubber meets the road concerning customer focus. This episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast shares the seven questions that get an organization started at determining whether they have the customer focus that they want to compete in today’s crowded and cutthroat business landscape. The answers to these questions reveal the telltale signs of a company that is or, perhaps more importantly, isn’t committed to the customer.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

What is Really Happening on Black Friday? It’s that time of year again: Black Friday sales are next week. A US tradition, Black Friday was named for the idea that it is the day retailers finally move out of the red for the year and into the black of profits. It is also the official kickoff of the holiday shopping season. However, what is really going on here? Why do people trample through the doors of a retailer they likely frequent three times a week most months mere hours after polishing off far too much food than is healthy for them? How to marketers compel people to stand in the dark and cold for hours to shop in their stores? Black Friday is the way it is because of the psychological concept called Scarcity. Scarcity is a motivator like none other for customer behavior—specifically their buying behavior. Scarcity stems from the idea that resources we think are harder to come by are more valuable. In the distant past, our ancestors did not have access to the jumbo pack of Cheetos at their friendly big-box retailer. Instead, they had to compete for food, water, and shelter with other humans. For them, overcoming Scarcity was a matter of survival. No one could argue that buying a discounted giant flat-screen TV for pennies on the dollar one Friday morning in November is a survival instinct. However, the motivations behind our behavior have the same origins. We try harder when something is hard to get. What’s an elbow in the face of your fellow shopper when you are talking about 4k Ultra HD Now, Black Friday is next week in the US, but it is not the only time we see this behavior or even the only country where it happens. The idea of a day of big sales that bring out the animal in us is global. Similar events occur in the UK (the January Sales), and China (Single’s Day). Even other sales in the US can create a frenzy, like Presidents’ Day sales or Labor Day “Events.” In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore the concept of Scarcity and how it affects customer behavior, both good and bad. We also talk about how marketers create the idea of scarcity in the minds of consumers, and the effect it can have on Customer Experience and their bottom line.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Marketing Yourself We usually talk about how you should use the principles of brand management to deliver excellent Customer Experience. However, brand management is an essential part of your job search, as well. In other words, marketing your Customer Experience has given you everything you need to know about selling yourself. Moreover, it has taught you all you need to know about improving your experience as a person. For example, one of the first things you do in a job search is to determine what position you want. In brand management, we call this a positioning statement. In a job search, we call it, well, a positioning statement. You need a firm positioning statement to ensure that you get a job you want as the next step of your career. Positioning statements are usually followed by building your brand. In brand management, it means that you begin a process that delivers a consistent experience, which creates a reputation for your product or service. In a job search, you have similar needs for a steady reputation. Your reputation becomes your brand, and hiring managers need to choose yours over the competitions’. It turns out, each of the steps and their related support work as you continue along the process of brand management align with what each of us needs to do with our career and current job search. It could be that everything you need to know about marketing yourself you already know from your experience marketing Customer Experiences. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we delve into all the things you should do to manage your personal brand in a job search. From marketing yourself to managing the needs of the hiring manager to making strategic moves that serve your long-term goals, you will discover that getting the job you want is a lot like what you want to do at the job once you get it.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Tribalism: Are You In with The In-Crowd? As humans, the need to belong is essential to us. Most of us have a deep need to feel we are part of a broader community that shares our values and interests. In other words, we need to find our tribe.  Tribes are connections between people that form communities, which can be formal or informal. Sometimes tribes are associated with where you were born and from whom, which are the formal types of tribes. However, they can also be the result of where you shop, what you drive, or which device you prefer to watch your cat videos on. The latter is the informal type—and a significant asset to your marketing strategy.  Some brands have been very successful in fostering tribes. As you may know, I love Apple products. I was in Apple the other day, and I had a sense that it was more like a club than a store. As I surveyed the group, I felt like I was with “my people.”  Now, I didn’t know the other people there. It could be that the only thing I had in common with every other person in that store was that I like Apple products. However, that is enough for me to feel like I am part of the group, the In-Crowd, as it were. Also, that feeling of belonging ramps up the Customer Loyalty. The emotional bond you have with your Tribe that is associated with your sense of self makes you feel emotional toward the brand. The connections that form as a result of these feelings form a foundation on which you can build a strong sense of Customer Loyalty with your product or service. When your brand forms a community amongst your customers, you are also creating a tribe. However, it is almost as essential to have people that are not in your tribe to help your tribe thrive. In some ways, having outsiders makes you feel closer as a group.  In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we discuss what a tribe is, how they can form, and how you can foster one with your brand. You may discover that the community your customers share does a lot of the hard work for marketing your brand and Customer Experience.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

People know an expensive brand when they see one. They also can spot a discount retailer at fifteen paces. So, why do they get it wrong so often? They get it wrong because of a concept called Price Image. Price Image is a concept that describes how people form impressions about whether your brand is high- or low-priced based on many non-price indicators. These ideas have a lot of influence on customer behavior. However, the Price Image is different from actual prices. Instead, Price Image is more like your reputation for prices; it would be how your customers describe your prices when you are not around. Another way to look at it is Price Image is where your price and brand intersect. To demonstrate what we mean consider the following: Will an Apple product be the most affordable version on the market? Do you think the airline ticket will be the most expensive one if you buy it from Southwest Airlines? Is Wal-Mart a high-end boutique? As you can see, each brand has a reputation, and none of these questions agrees with it. It is their Price Image, which these brands have carefully cultivated through their Customer Experience choices. However, you don’t have to be careful about it. The Price Image is a product of the details included in your Customer Experience, and they tell customers everything about your prices long before they ever see a price tag. In other words, every brand has a Price Image, whether you were deliberate about what it is or not. So, how is it that people form these impressions? Price Image is the result of two things, the prices themselves and lots of what we call “non-price” information. If you focus on your pricing, you can manage at least part of your Price Image. However, the significant influence is non-price influences. Appearance, atmosphere, employee type, and other environmental factors create these customer perceptions. Unfortunately, a brand’s Price Image is not always correct. Also, it can be challenging to change an established Price Image and tricky to navigate when you try to make the transition. This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deep dive into the idea of Price Image and how customers form them about your brand. We discuss what signals you send through your Customer Experience that affect your customers’ perception of price and what you should consider if you want to change that impression one way or the other.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Are We Talking Ourselves Into a Recession You hear it all the time on financial media. “Consumer Confidence is low.” It describes how people think that something terrible is going to happen to the economy, and it affects their spending behavior. Confidence is a feeling, not a fact or a physical item. However, this emotional reaction has serious implications on the economy, as well as your bottom line. Not only is consumer confidence an emotional concept, but it is also contagious. Sometimes having it makes other people have it, too. Other times not having it makes people lose theirs also. So, does that mean when we hear things like, “consumer confidence is low,” and the “stock market was down XX points today,” that we are talking ourselves into a recession? Recessions are an economic reality. They occur when the economy is out of balance in some way or operating inefficiently with its resources. In many ways, recessions get an economy back on track. So, in some ways, we should be grateful for a downturn. However, if you are one of the people caught in an economic correction and lose your job or your livelihood, you likely have a different opinion of it. There are objective or physical forces that can affect whether a recession occurs. For example, natural disasters can disrupt the flow of goods, whether it’s a Hurricane that stops logistics or a drought that kills crops. Also, human-made disasters like wars can affect the economy, too. However, there are also subjective forces that affect the likelihood of a recession. Studies have shown that things like the weather or the win or loss of the British National Soccer Team in the playoffs can affect how the stock market performs. And, yes, things like consumer confidence. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how much influence our emotions have on things like the stock market or the economy. We also talk about how confidence—or the loss of it—can be contagious and wreak havoc on both our business and personal bottom line. Finally, we use what we have learned through past recessions to strategize for you to come out ahead of the competition on the other side if we do have a recession.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Unless you serve robots exclusively, your customers are humans. Human feelings influence our actions and drive customer behavior. Therefore, you must design a Customer Experience that makes your customers feel a way that drives value for your organization. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have said for nearly 20 years that customer’s emotions account for over half of the outcome in any Customer Experience. At first, people thought we were crazy, but now, many organizations understand the significance of emotions in their Customer Experiences. However, too many organizations do not get specific enough about customer emotions. They are content with determining whether the customers feel positive or negative about their experience or whether the customer’s assessment was good or bad. In our Customer Experience consultancy, we feel like this general approach is not taking customer emotions far enough. We recommend choosing an emotional outcome that is specific and then designing a Customer Experience that has actions built into it to evoke those emotions. In other words, we don’t want the customer to feel “satisfied” with their experience; we want them to feel “cared for” and “valued.” Some organizations have embraced this concept, too. They have designed experiences that evoke feeling cared for and valued from their customers. However, they don’t measure success in this area. Instead, they continue to monitor their operational efficiencies, margin percentages, and sales growth in their measurements. It is a mistake not to measure your success in evoking the proper customer emotions. After all, you wouldn’t tell one of your managers to design a program to achieve a goal and then never keep track of whether it works. That is ridiculous. Only a fool wouldn’t measure their results. However, this emotional perspective to measurement can be challenging for many organizations. Measuring success in a psychological strategy can seem strange and unachievable. Many firms do not know where to begin. That’s where we can help. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores The Secrets of Measuring Customer Emotions. We review the four essential steps to emphasizing customer emotions as an outcome in your Customer Experience design strategy. Then, we determine how you can measure your success afterward with practical, real-world tactics.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Understanding Customer Habits: A Practical Guide Habits can be excellent or terrible for your Customer Experience. When it is the customer’s habit to buy from you, then there is not a problem. However, when it goes the other way, well, let’s just say some habits are meant to be broken. Understanding what habits are and how they work is vital to your Customer Experience. When you understand customers’ habits, how they form and how they are governed by the mind, you have a much better chance of making those crucial changes in customer behavior to become their habitual brand. So, what are habits? Habits are automatic behavior for a repetitive action that is triggered by a cue. Maybe the cue is a time of day or an activity. Perhaps it is the aisle at the grocery store where customers do most of their shopping. The important thing about triggers or cues is that you must disrupt them somehow to interrupt the automatic response that will follow.  When discussing habits, we talk a lot about the two systems of thinking that we all share. Originally conceived of by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, there are two systems we use in our thinking. Kahneman called them System One and System Two. System One is fast and emotional thinking and it is always running in the background ready to jump in when needed for making decisions. System Two is slow and deliberate thinking that is used for logic and reasoning. It is not always running, however. Instead, System Two is resting a lot of the time. We used the two systems of thinking in our own book The Intuitive Customer. We called System One the Intuitive System and System Two the Rational System. As it turns out, System One or the Intuitive System is the part of our thinking that handles habits. That means if you want to change behavior you need to appeal to the quick and automatic thinking of the Intuitive System. This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deeper dive into habits and how they work in our brains. We also share a practical guide on how we can use the way habits work—and the system of thinking that governs them—to change them for the better.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

What is the Secret of Airbnb? I would never be an Airbnb host. Having a stranger staying in my house doesn’t fit with my personality.  That said, there are a lot of people that would do it. Airbnb has over seven million listings in 100,000 cities worldwide and reported revenues of $1 Billion (with a b) in the second quarter of this year. They are so successful; they have plans to become publicly traded in 2020.   That’s saying quite a bit considering that the entire home-sharing platform developed from people’s willingness to allow strangers to stay in their house. But it works.  I might not host for Airbnb, but I do use them. One of the things I enjoy about the experience is that you stay in a place you wouldn’t usually visit.  Having spent my fair share of time in hotels, I am a bit of an expert in that experience. My Airbnb experience is different in a refreshing way.  I began to wonder what the secret to their success was. To find out, we spoke with Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., C.P.S., about his experience with Airbnb when writing his latest book, The Airbnb Way. Dr. Michelli is considered a global guru for Customer Service. He works with organizations and leadership to change their experience to be better for both their customers and their employees. He consulted Airbnb and wrote his book to share the insights he gained from their success.  Dr. Michelli says that there are many things that Airbnb gets right. One of them is that they understand what makes them unique and how they can differentiate themselves from the competition. They also recognize that the emotional connection they can create with guests is what brings their users back again and again. They also see that the Airbnb user and host is a type of community and belonging to it is one of the things that both sides of the equation value.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores what Dr. Michelli saw in Airbnb’s business model and approach to employee and customer experience that makes them so successful and disruptive to the hospitality industry. He also explains how technology played a role in changing customer behavior, which paved the way for their success. Also, he shares how they accomplish their branded and elevated Customer Experience across properties, host styles, and cultures around the world. We also discuss how you can apply these concepts to elevate and brand your experience to your business as well.    The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.  To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here. 

A practical guide to Customer decision making When the Nobel-prize winning economist professor Daniel Kahneman wrote his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he introduced the concept that we had two ways of thinking about things. He named them System 1 and System 2. The two systems work together to help us make decisions about things.  When we applied these concepts to decision-making in Customer Experience for our book, The Intuitive Customer, we renamed them. The Intuitive System is System 1, and the Rational System is System 2. The Intuitive System makes instant judgments on things and is always running. You aren’t aware you are using the Intuitive System. The Rational System concentrates on thinking about something and is called into service when needed. You are always aware you are using your Rational System. We discuss the differences between the two ways our brains think about things to make decisions a lot. Often, they don’t agree and come to different conclusions. However, the two systems do not always conflict. Sometimes they run in tandem, serving different functions and complementing one another with their strengths. Sometimes only one of them is working at any given time. Flying solo, the system in play will make the final decision, and the other one won’t interfere. In other words, the two systems are not exclusive. It is complicated how the two systems work together. Understanding the two as well as you can helps you see patterns in customer behavior. Moreover, knowing how the two systems work can help you design a Customer Experience strategy that works with these patterns to make it as easy as possible for customers to decide to go with you. This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses what the two systems of thinking are and how they interact in our minds when making decisions. We discuss which system is better for what and why the two systems tradeoff tasks. We also give pointers on what you should do with your Customer Experience strategy to take advantage of these tradeoffs, as well as what pitfalls you should avoid when working with this crucial customer behavior concept.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Case Study: RICOH Printers (Canada)  I spend a remarkable amount of time complaining about how organizations get things wrong with Customer Experience. However, not every cause is lost. Some companies get their Customer Experience right, and we can all learn a lot from their journey. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have the honor of working with fantastic organizations that are committed to doing the difficult work of improving their Customer Experience from the inside out. One of these companies is RICOH Canada. Years ago, they were facing enormous changes in what can only be described as a declining industry. Moreover, there were few differentiations between the product from the top tier firms from a hardware standpoint. As a result, the printer business was heavily commoditized and highly cutthroat. RICOH Canada decided the only way forward in an aggressive industry with little competitive differentiation was in the Customer Experience. They embarked on a Customer Experience Journey that they are still on today—and with great success. They increased their Net Promoter Score®[i] (NPS) by 34 points over 30 months. Furthermore, in a declining market, they enjoyed a ten percent increase in sales. Since that time, they have climbed another 15 points to an all-time high. A question I always get in my global Customer Experience consultancy is whether business-to-business customers are subject to the same emotional decisions that we have as consumers. The answer is a resounding yes. One thing RICOH Canada understood early was that by enhancing that emotional connection with their business customers, they not only improved their relationship, but they also improved their customer retention and loyalty.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer is the story of how RICOH Canada did it. We spoke with the President and CEO of RICOH Canada, Glenn Laverty to hear how and why they did it. Plus, we will hear about the new challenges they face and what they are doing to address them.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.  To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.   [1] Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

The Key to Successful Marketing Communications There are a lot of people that do not know the difference between Marketing and Advertising. Many people assume they are the same thing, but they are not. Marketing is deciding what you are going to say; Advertising is saying it. In my corporate life, I worked in Marketing for a long time. One of the things I learned was that Marketing should know the marketplace and understand their customers. Marketing communication should reflect this understanding. Moreover, every campaign, script, web page, and tweet should have a purpose, something that you are hoping the communication will cause people to do. In other words, the marketing communications in your advertising should show that you know who you are saying it to—and why.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the fundamentals of Marketing communications through advertising and how it affects the Customer Experience. More importantly, we share the three general goals of marketing and how to do them right, as well as how it looks when you get it wrong. One of the reasons these things are essential is because when you advertise, you communicate what a customer can expect. It is your brand promise, your value proposition. If you get it wrong, the Customer Experience will fall short of the expectations you set, which does not do your Customer Experience Strategy any favors. When crafting your Customer Marketing Strategy, you need to have an idea of who you want to talk to and why. You should know what those people want and what they value. You also have to understand the obstacles keeping them from being a customer right now. Then, when you advertise, you address all of these issues. Moreover, you tie it to the overall Customer Marketing Strategy so that you stay on brand and set the proper customer expectations. Furthermore, advertising should have a specific action you want to evoke, as well. All of these things are fundamentals of Marketing, or what I sometimes call, “a blinding flash of the bloody obvious.” That said, you might be surprised how often you learn that an organization does not have a clue about any of that when they choose, launch, and execute a marketing campaign. In this episode, we review the basics of marketing communications. We also discuss how you can avoid having a brilliant campaign that is wildly successful at getting attention but fails to move the needle for your bottom line.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How To Overcome Organizational Silo’s To Make Progress In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf the wizard calls all the creatures of Middle Earth—the elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits— to a council. Their goal is to determine what to do with the Ring that threatened to end life as they knew it. Gandalf reasoned that since the Ring was a problem for all of Middle Earth, everyone should be involved. A Customer Experience Council (CX Council) follows Gandalf’s lead. Although, to be sure, the stakes are a little lower. Your goal with the CX Council is to gain alignment of actions toward a common goal, improving Customer Experience, a vital but not (middle) Earth-shattering purpose.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the CX Council and how to create one for your organization. We also take a look at what their objectives should be and how to set up your meetings. The CX Council is designed to help you get everyone on board with your Customer Experience goals. A CX Council is a team of people that represent all the different departments of your organization, from Marketing to Sales to Customer Service to Operations. Each member of the team determines how to adapt their actions to align the other departments and improve the Customer Experience. Best of all, it is inexpensive from a balance sheet perspective, so senior management is usually on board with your plan. It was in my role at British Telecom as Customer Experience Manager that I first saw the importance of a CX Council. My program affected all the departments, but none of them were doing the same things to get to where we needed to go. Moreover, they operated so independently, like silos, that they often stepped on each other’s toes. I realized that if I wanted to improve the Customer Experience, I needed everyone marching in the same direction toward the same goal. I also knew to do that effectively, I needed all of their buy-ins. I was from these epiphanies that the idea for a CX council was born. Over the years in our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have learned a thing or two about CX councils, what works, and, perhaps most importantly, what doesn’t. This podcast explores the details and shares critical information about how to make them useful in your organization. Plus, it doesn’t involve anyone fighting an Orc or walking up the side of an active volcano, so, how can you afford not to listen to it?   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Is Any Attention Good Attention?  I like Oscar Wilde. His best quote is, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Of course, there are times when people are talking so bad, one might wonder if it is worse than being ignored. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores if there are times when the bad press can be good news for your brand. In other words, are there times when bad news is good? Is any attention good attention? The answer, for my part, is it depends. It turns out scientific research says the same thing. There are no absolute answers to this question. The circumstances of the attention, the bad press, and the goals for your organization all play a part in how you answer the question. In the early days of our global Customer Experience consultancy, Wilde’s statement sums up the marketing efforts for my brand. We started back in 2002, when nobody knew who we were, or, frankly, what a Customer Experience was. To get attention, I published my thoughts on customer behavior and emotional experience anywhere I could. Back then, the idea that customers had an emotional experience in business or consumer situations instead of rational ones was not widely accepted. (You might argue that we are still working on that one.) It was controversial, and many people in the industry thought I was mad and, well, wrong. The result was I debated a lot of people. These disagreements were fantastic for us. Why? People knew who we were and what I did. Now, in this case, the negative attention I generated from my views was positive for my brand. I needed people to know who we were and, based on my beliefs that few people agreed with at the time, they discovered us. However, this result is not always the case. There are times when the bad press is good news for your brand. There are also times when it isn’t — knowing which is which and whether it’s suitable for your current marketing goals is essential to your brand message. Do you and your marketing team know the answer? In this podcast we help you figure out how to get there and get the results you need.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Customer Satisfaction is Declining in the UK! A new report by the Institute of Customer Service indicates that Customer Satisfaction is declining in the UK. Earlier this year reports from both Nunwood and Forrester, two firms entrenched in the Customer Experience movement, presented similar sentiments. All of this disappointing news about the state of Customer Experience makes one wonder what is going on in business today? We decided to ask the expert Joanne Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service what she thought the problem was with Customer Satisfaction. Moreover, we asked her why we are seeing the results we are and what we can do about it moving forward. It is important to note that the ratings are not plummeting. The downward tick is from 78.2 to 77.1. It is not a significant drop. The concern is the direction of the numbers and how long they have been moving in the wrong direction. Two years, it seems, is indicative of a trend. The Institute of Customer Service is an independent membership body that undertakes research designed to help businesses up their customer service games. Their survey, the UK Customer Satisfaction Index Report, is one of the most robust in the industry. They run their research twice a year and have done so for the past ten years. For all of these reasons, the Institute is considered a barometer for Customer Satisfaction. Furthermore, it addresses 13 different industry verticals and receives over 45,000 responses. The areas the survey covers include the following five: How professional is the website or how knowledgeable are the people with whom you interact at the organization? How easy is it to do business with them? Does the product or service meet your expectations? Is the company sufficient at resolving conflict, and do you feel resolution from the outcome? Are they timely in their responses? This year, the Institute also explored some of the emotional indicators that predict customer satisfaction. For example, they asked if customers felt the organization was doing the right thing? Also, they asked respondents to judge whether organizations were transparent in their business dealings. To summarize the report, overall Customer Satisfaction is declining in the UK. Fixing it is complicated because there are several factors at work that are dragging the number down. One of the most significant problems, however, is that many organizations focus on the wrong things in Customer Experience. In my view, too many organizations do not concentrate their efforts on areas that create value for the customer. What’s worse, they don’t know what those areas are. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about why Customer Satisfaction is Declining in the UK and what that means for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to help you improve your Customer Experience by unlock the ‘hidden’ aspects of your experience and what drives value for you to enable you to take your experience to the next level If you would like to find out more in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How and Why We Stereotype People and Things Stereotyping is not considered a good thing, certainly not in politically correct circles. However, our ability to do it is hard-wired into our brains, and it doesn’t only apply to people. We can stereotype an organization, too. Let’s say you need to name a type of business that is frustrating across the board. My first thought is internet service providers, aka, the cable company. No matter which carrier you have, you probably have a beef with your service (or lack thereof) or with at least some part of your Customer Experience.  However, stereotypes work the other way, too. If you were to name a business where the representatives were universally excellent, you could do that, also, like a spa. Another example could be candy stores that hand out free samples. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how and why we create these stereotypes and what purpose they serve in making decisions. We also take a close look at what happens in an experience that can put you into a stereotyped group—and what to do about it if that stereotype is hurting your bottom line. Stereotypes are the product of a shortcut in thinking, or heuristic, called Representativeness. The Representative Heuristic is how our brains look for ways to group separate entities and associate them with characteristics so we can make quick and straightforward decisions. For example, when I ask you on a scale from one to ten of how likely it is that I am a male model, what is the first thing you do? You probably think of how male models look and then compare that mental image to my profile pic to determine what number you would give me. The “male model” entity you compare me to is an example of Representativeness. (For the record, I don’t need to know what number you gave me. It was only a way to demonstrate the process for the heuristic.) Now, heuristics work pretty well most of the time, which is why we use them. However, heuristics are not foolproof. It is here where heuristics fail that decision scientists focus their interest. Usually, the Representative Heuristic fails when you reach the extremes, and you forget about how probability works. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How and Why We Stereotype People and Things for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Secret of Creating an Effective Customer Experience (CX) Strategy  What is the experience you are trying to deliver to your customers? This is one of our key questions we ask organizations when we consult with them. It seems a very simple question and yet in reality, the answer is very strategic and critical to moving your CX to the next level. What is surprising is most organizations do not know the answer to this question! Be clear, everyone thinks they know the answer, but in reality every part of the organization does what they think is the right thing. Marketing, Sales, Customer service, Finance, IT, etc. all do what they think is the right thing, but it is not aligned, it is different and as a result the Customer is confused, there are overlaps and gaps in the experience. This leads to re-work, overlaps, gaps and all this costs money. More importantly, the Customer looks at your organization as a whole and ends up being frustrated. This does not build Customer loyalty. It is therefore vital to define the answer to this question. What is the experience you are trying to deliver to your customers? The answer to this is a strategic choice. The experience that you should be delivering should be one that drives value ($) for the organization. It should be decided strategically by the senior executive of the organization. It should be debated and argued about. Once agreed, it should set the direction of the whole organization and as a consequence it should outline all the things that you need to start and stop doing as a result of the strategy. In this podcast we outline how to go about this. We give you an example of one organization who, by setting the strategy in this way, improved their Net Promoter Score® by 40 points in 30 months that lead to a 10% rise in volumes.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to help you improve your Customer Experience by unlock the ‘hidden’ aspects of your experience and what drives value for you to enable you to take your experience to the next level If you would like to find out more in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

I have a few things that drive me crazy in the business world. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we are going to talk about how organizations often define loyalty, and why I think they have it all wrong. It makes me upset when I think about it. Many, if not most, companies believe that when a customer gives you all their business, it means they are a loyal customer. After all, isn’t that what we all want, all the business our customers have to give? If they are giving it to us, then they must be loyal right? Not so fast.. A customer giving you all their business doesn’t always mean they are loyal customers. It could be because they have a habit of buying from you, or it could mean they haven’t bothered to seek out an alternative. It might also be that they have no other choice, but as soon as they do, they will leave and take all that business with them. (I’m talking to you, Internet Service Providers.)  Customer Loyalty is more than an automatic, indifferent, or begrudging action. It is an emotional connection with a brand. Customer Loyalty is hard to earn but also hard to lose. However, it can be lost, so don’t rest on your laurels. When you think about who you are loyal to, you likely think of family and friends. That’s because you have a relationship with them. Over time, you have had a consistent and positive interaction with these people, and you share an emotional bond because of it. Sometimes friends and families disappoint you though, don’t they? However, you don’t cut ties over it. With time and communication, most families work it out. Many friendships endure despite quarrels or disagreements, too. Again, that is because of the history and the emotional tie that you share with these people. When you have loyal customers, you have a relationship with them, too. It is built through your consistent positive actions. Also, when you make a mistake or do something they don’t like, they don’t cut ties with you over it. Why? Customer Loyalty is an emotional bond with your company, and it persists over time and troubles. One thing is certain about Customer Loyalty; it is the result of what you do in your Customer Experience. We examine what Customer Loyalty is, why it works that way, and, perhaps most importantly, how it benefits your relationship with them and all that business of theirs you would like to have. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Secret of Creating Loyal Customers with your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Relationship Types and How to Use Them We act differently in our various relationships. We have a way we operate at work or school; we act a certain way in public and another way with our friends and family. The difference is the type of relationship we have with the other people involved. This variance in behavior is also at work in our relationships as customers. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore how our relationship with customers affects how we interact with them. For this episode, we characterize relationships into two types, Relational and Transactional. You might think that one is better than the other, but it is not the case. For example, let’s say you want to sell an old car. You make the listing and wait for the responses. It turns out you get one, but it’s from your brother. Would you change your approach to selling the car? My guess is you would—unless you and your brother are on the skids. For my part, my brother and I would enjoy the match up and would have a no-holds-barred approach. The fact is, most of us wouldn’t haggle the same way with a family member the way we would a stranger. In my case, I would not only skip the haggling, but I would probably back off the price. Moreover, I would worry every time that I saw them that they would tell me there was something wrong with the car. Advantages and disadvantages exist for each of these relationships on both sides of the equation.  Relational: This relationship is emotional. It focuses on value instead of price. These relationships are the foundation of customer loyalty and related customer behavior. Transactional: Unlike Relational interactions, transactional relationships tend to be a one-time thing. Rational parts of the experience, e.g., price or shipping costs, etc., often drive the buying decisions. Instead of loyalty, these relationships tend to focus on What’s In It For Me (WIFM). If we go back to the car example, the idea of selling a used car to your brother is one point in a much more extended relationship. As a result, you feel more responsibility to ensure that it is positive. You also feel more guilt if it is not great. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Relationship Types and How to Use Them for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Are You Using the Right Measures? Measuring your progress for your Customer Experience strategy is an essential aspect to your program’s success. Not only will it show if your program is working to provide an excellent experience for your customers, but it also shows what customers really value, which can be an elusive thing to discover. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we discuss the importance of measuring Customer Experience correctly. We invited Don Peppers, bestselling author, business strategist, and engaging keynote speaker to joins us to share his wisdom on the subject. With 11 books on marketing and Customer Experience, he had much to add to our discussion about the best way to handle Customer Experience measurement.     There are two types data marketers can user for measurement: Voice of Customer (VOC) data, which involves an interaction with customers. Observational data, which involves analyzing numbers and operational reports, among other things.   Peppers says that VOC data is excellent for many things. It can provide you feedback on moments in your experience that are or are not working. It also gives you the opportunity to respond to problems immediately and repair damage to a relationship before it has repercussions on customer behavior. However, it has some drawbacks for Customer Experience measurement. Let me give you an example. I fly on Delta a lot. Every time I fly back and forth to England, they send me a survey. They want to know more about my experience on the flight. However, I never fill out the survey unless I had either a very good or very poor flight.  This survey is an example of why VOC data measurement is flawed. Since I don’t fill out the survey every time, they have a skewed view of how I feel about their airline. Sometimes I am delighted; other times I am disgusted. Now, if Delta were to look at my flight purchases over the past six months, that would be observational data. If they were to see that I purchased fewer flights compared to the previous year, they would see that my customer behavior had changed. Then, they would know how their Customer Experience is performing and they could react. To be fair, both types of measures are useful and have their place in Customer Experience Measurement. However, in many ways, marketers tend to favor VOC measurement over observational measurement. The reasons for this preference are understandable; VOC is easier and more popular, and who knows better than the customer how they felt about the experience, right? However, it is in the observational data that you get a much clearer understanding of how your Customer Experience performs. Observational data shows customer behavior, and that is a far more accurate indicator of how customers feel about your experience. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Are You Using the Right Measures for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why Some Friction is Good We owe you an apology. Even though the lawyers say we shouldn’t say this, we feel we might have misled you on the subject of friction in your Customer Experience strategy. We have been telling you to make your experience as easy as possible, and you should. However, there is some merit to making things a little bit difficult in some cases. In other words, it turns out that the discussion of friction is more nuanced than we at first led you to believe. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we dive a little deeper on the subject of friction in Customer Experience, what kind is detrimental and what kind is beneficial, and the qualities of the friction that can help you tell the difference.   We encourage you to make your Customer Experience as easy as possible, and we stand by that. Having an experience that is convenient and simple for people will be one of the reasons they form a bond of customer loyalty. However, we also think some friction in an experience can be a good idea based on customer behavior. Do you remember the days when you first heard a complicated order of Starbuck’s? You likely heard words like Venti, half-caff, and Frappuccino, as well as particular focus on the “number of pumps.” Starbucks regulars have a language they speak, and they all understand each other. The language at Starbucks is an example of good friction. The fact that regular customers took the time to learn the language of ordering indicates that they value that friction in their experience. Ikea furniture is another example. The cheaply made (and likely lopsided) pressboard bookshelf with at least one piece turned the wrong way is a lot more valuable to you after you spent four hours assembling it on your living room floor. Plus, there is the fact that you saved a lot of money by assembling it yourself. These are examples of good friction. However, there is bad friction, too. Bad friction is the type of challenges that arise because the organization is focused on operations instead of customers, or worse no one cares enough to fix it for customers. Bad friction is long hold times on the phone, poor user experiences on the website, and adversarial return policies, to name a few.  It is imperative that you eliminate bad friction first and foremost. Then, when you have make it as smooth as possible for customers to do business with you, you then look for deliberate ways to add friction that increases the engagement of customers with your brand. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why Some Friction is good for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How Customer-Facing People Should Evoke Emotions in Customers I have always thought that talking about how to do something was important, but not as important as actually doing something. I feel so strongly about this idea that I named my company after it. I want my clients to take their ideas “beyond the philosophy” and into action. To that end, this episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses how organizations can take theories and use them in their everyday operations to improve the Customer Experience. We explore how you can help Customer-Facing teams evoke the proper emotions from customers during their interactions with people by training them to do it properly. The word practical is significant here. Lofty ideas are wonderful inspirations, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of delivering a Customer Experience, you need a much more practical breakdown of what to do. More specifically, your frontline teams do. Talking about psychological theories, research, and studies is a critical part of the process, of course. However, what comes next is even more vital because it crosses the line from a good idea to the “new way to do things around here.” It is not advisable to have a new Customer Experience program that you roll out without training. Imagine all the painstaking research and design that address all the vital customer emotions that drive value for your organization circling the drain before that program disappears forever. That’s exactly what happens if you don’t teach people how to deliver that new Customer Experience program. Most of us know how to evaluate and manage the emotions of the significant others in our lives. You first listen to their responses, then determine how they feel, and finally choose how to respond. It is not any different when dealing with customers. They feel a certain way when they arrive at your customer-facing team. You want the people that greet them from your organization to read the customer for their emotional state, decide how the customer is feeling, and then respond in a way that will create a good emotional outcome for the customer.  However, not everyone knows how to read the customer for their emotional state or even what the readings mean for how the customers feel. Moreover, some people have no idea how to manage other people’s emotion to a better emotional state.  That is, they don’t until you train them. Training your people on these emotional skills is critical to your success. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about training is crucial to How Customer Facing People Should Evoke Emotions in Customers for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.  To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Can We Trust Facebook? Upon reflection of Facebook’s latest privacy violation and $5 billion fine, one must wonder whether we can trust Facebook. After all, the social media platform hasn’t exactly been keeping our private information under lock and key. On the contrary, it appears as if our likes and dislikes, networks and preferences are for sale to the highest bidder.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the implications for Facebook of this latest privacy violation. It reveals a lot about the focus of the culture at Facebook, and it isn’t on protecting its user’s privacy. Since there are no barriers to exit for Facebook and users are the product they have to sell, how long before the lack of trust between users and Facebook affects their bottom line?     I am a Facebook user, although, I am not as active as I once was. While I do have a business account, I mostly used it to interact with friends and family. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, however I found myself backing away from the newsfeed, so to speak. It is inconvenient in some ways, but worth it to me because I was uncomfortable with the amount of data Facebook was collecting and using. Facebook has a series of scandals over the years, going all the way back to 2007. The social media platform has always had a fast and loose policy with sharing things their users did on the platform. User Privacy concerns came to a head in 2011, when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused them of not upholding their privacy policy of sharing private information publicly. Facebook settled and agreed to an FTC review every other year for the next 20 to ensure it was keeping its promises to users. The latest violation shows that they aren’t keeping their promises. Facebook’s entire value is predicated on its users’ private information. The platform itself is not creating value, the users information does. So, it’s no surprise that Facebook is always pushing the limits of what their customers can see and use for their business purposes. However, if they continue to handle user’s private information with little regard for discretion, a time will come when users leave, taking all that value with them. Then, where will the social media platform be?  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Can We Trust Facebook? for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

When I worked in the corporate world, people often asked me what I did all day. Facetiously, I would say that I played chess. While it was meant to be cheeky, the joke was not far from the truth. I spent my day navigating company politics. You will not find training programs on company politics or how to deal with them. It is a bit shocking considering their significance in the corporate world. Our latest episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast addresses office politics and how to manage them effectively. Company politics are ubiquitous and influential. Managing them is part and parcel of a career. As a senior vice president, at a large telecoms company, office politics surrounded me. Every organization that I have worked at had office politics. They exist because it is human nature to crave power and influence. You must be able to manage office politics for many reasons. First, it will help you advance your career. When you can get on with management, you can get on with your promotions after all. Also, if you can’t manage company politics, you won’t make it at many organizations. There was a phrase that used to entertain me along these lines that said, “When somebody pats you on the back, they are looking for the place to stick the knife.” However, company politics are worth managing because it can help you move your Customer Experience program forward. Without support from others at the peer level and above, your plan is doomed.  Managing office politics requires different finesse for the various types you will encounter. Typically, office politics have two levels. The first level tends to come from above, meaning those with their names above yours in the organization chart. The second level tends to come at you from your peers, which has a different dynamic entirely. Developing skills for managing up and managing laterally are essential to the success of your Customer Experience program. The first skill you should develop comes from the advice I received from my dad early in my career. He said to me, “Colin if you focus on doing a good job, everyone will want you.” He is correct. Who doesn’t want people on the team that do a good job? Having a reputation for successful work behind you is an excellent strategy for managing company politics also. Not only will everyone want to be on your team or have you reporting to them, but it also allows you access to the influencers at the top. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Manage Company Politics for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.  To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Choice architecture is a significant factor in buying decisions you make every day. From how they stock the buffet line to how likely you are to donate your organs after you die, the psychology of choice is influencing your decisions every day. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore the concept of Choice Architecture and how it affects our daily lives. We also discuss the different variables that you need to consider in the way you present your choices to customers as part of your CX Strategy. It all started with a new public bench. You see, I live in Sarasota, Florida. and recently, there have been some interesting changes to the public benches. Halfway along the seat, there are armrests. At first I thought, “Well, that will be more comfortable to sit in for sure.” Then, I realized that the armrests were not there for my comfort, but instead to convince the homeless who sleep on the benches sometimes to find a more comfortable spot for their repose. The armrests on the public benches are a type of Choice Architecture design. Choice Architecture is the way you present options to people who are making a decision to influence the outcome. By changing the way Sarasota presents their benches, they influence the decisions of their citizens.  Obviously, this situation is different than how you would use Choice Architecture in your Customer Experience. That said, the way you present your options can either draw people in and build a relationship with customers, or it can repel them and send them looking for a more comfortable spot.  Choice Architecture manifests in many different ways. It can be something physical like the armrest in the bench or it can be wording that is used on the packaging. It can be the way you price items or even the sizes you package and what you name them. Choice Architecture is part of many of the decisions you make each day. Consider the following:  When you order a drink at the restaurant, do you calculate the cost per ounce and choose the best value or do you just order the medium and call it a day? When you go to a buffet, do you discover that you loaded your plate with chips and bread and now don’t have room for the prime rib that you found at the end of the line? Is there ever a time besides a movie theatre when you would buy more popcorn than you could ever eat for $15? Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How Choice Architecture Can Revolutionize Your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Vital Art of Creating Memorable Messaging  When we make buying decisions, we usually are choosing from a short list of options. Our memory assembles these options. So, from a Customer Experience perspective, it is vital that your product or service is one of these options recalled at the moment of the buying decision. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, we explore how our memories generate these choice sets for buying decisions. We also take a look at how you can ensure that your product or service is one of the options your customers’ memories retrieve. (Spoiler alert: it has to do with customers’ emotions.) Let’s say that you were out with friends and the dinner hour arrives. You all decide to go out to eat together and begin discussing where to go. You will likely: Think about what you want to eat (e.g., comfort food, pizza, fast-food, healthy options, etc.) Consider the size of the group and the type of restaurant serving the food you like that you want to go to (e.g., buffet, pizzeria, family-style, fast-casual, white table cloth, etc.) Make a list of restaurants you like in that style of service Remember what restaurants are close to where you are at the moment (or at least not so far away that you don’t want to wrangle everyone there) that meet your chosen criteria. Offer up a list of options from which the group begins a decision-making consensus. From a restaurant owner’s point of view, if you and your group don’t think of their restaurant when you are making this list and narrowing down your options, it’s like the restaurant does not exist. In other words, if you can’t remember the restaurant at this moment when you are deciding where to eat, the restaurant’s marketing message wasn’t memorable.  We often say that customer loyalty is a function of customer memory. What we mean by that is that customers return to you not for the Customer Experience you provide, but for the Customer Experience they remember you provide. Making a memory that brings customers back has been a topic we frequently discuss, as a result. However, you must also ensure that the customers retrieve your memory at the right moment. For example, if you remember that Italian place that serves family-style homemade pasta just after you paid the bill at the restaurant you chose with your friends, that Italian restaurant was memorable, just a little bit too late to fill their tables.  Memorable messaging is an essential part of this process, too. Your marketing makes a promise to customers, but it also builds a memory of your brand. Putting a cue in the message that triggers the mind to retrieve your message at the moment of the buying decision is an Customer Experience strategy that could make the difference for your bottom line. So how are these memories retrieved, and why are they associated? What can you do to ensure that your customers remember you at the right time? The answers, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear, have a lot to do with emotions.   Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Vital Art of Creating Memorable Messaging for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How Can We Measure Customer Emotions in Our Digital World When you think about the Olympic medalists on the podium during the awards ceremony, who do you think is happier, the silver medalist or the bronze? Objectively, you might say the silver medalists because, after all, they came in second and the other competitor was third. Objectively, the silver medalists had a better outcome and should be happier.  However, the happier medal winner is the bronze medalist, and the reason we know this is the subject of this episode of The Intuitive Customer. With guest Dr. Bill Hedgecock, professor at the University of Minnesota in the Carlson School of Management, we explore the power of facial recognition with facial expression analysis software and what it can do to help you improve your Customer Experience.  Hedgecock is a leader in academic circles on facial recognition technology and facial expression analysis. He also studies neuromarketing, which is how the brain works when we make decisions. His psychology-based research shows us the wealth of knowledge available to us when we measure customer emotions in real time. So much is revealed from our facial expression in the moment, and it can be essential to your Customer Experience design strategy. He and his team used the technology to prove that bronze medalists were happier than silver medalists, and it was all in the eyes. It turns out that in a genuine smile the muscles contract around our eyes. This involuntary reaction is difficult (but not impossible) to fake. When studying the photos of the past five years of summer Olympic medalists, it was clear that gold was happiest, naturally, followed by bronze, and silver, ironically and yet understandably, coming in last on the happiness meter. Like Olympic medalists’ mix of triumph and disappointment, customer behavior is complicated. At any given moment, you might have two or three different psychological theories that explain why customers do what they do. However, Hedgecock says when you combine those theories with the data about how the customer felt at different moments in your experience, it can help point you in the right direction of which theory is correct. What’s more, once you know how a moment makes them feel and why people are doing what they are doing, you can respond. Responding can lead to many excellent outcomes, including an improved experience for your customer, the better impact for your marketing campaigns, and more emotional engagement with your customers—the foundational element of customer retention and loyalty. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How We Can Measure Customer Emotions in Our Digital World for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Customer Journey Mapping Using Behavioral Science Journey mapping is how organizations look at the customer journey, or the steps a customer would take from the beginning to the end in their experience. However, we would say regarding journey mapping that it is not only vital to consider the customer journey from beginning to end but also to view it from the customers’ perspective. Journey Mapping employing this approach is what we call Behavioral Journey Mapping. We discuss how to undertake customer Journey Mapping using Behavioral Science in this episode of The Intuitive Customer Podcast. We take a deeper dive on practical applications around our type of Journey Mapping, as well as advice for how to go about it.     Organizations often think a customer journey begins with the process, or when they first interact with a customer. However, when you look at an experience from a customer perspective, customers don’t see it that way. Instead, it begins for them long before that, usually when they first realized they had a problem and your product or service might help them fix it. The interesting bit here is how the experience starts is effectively outside of your control.  This example is just one way that how you think your experience is from the inside differs from how customers see it from the outside. Furthermore, it illustrates how events beyond your control can affect how they feel upon arriving at your experience. When designing a Customer Experience Strategy, you must consider not only the rational parts of your experience but also emotional. Therefore, from a Journey Mapping perspective, understanding how customers feel when they arrive at your experience is an essential starting point for your design.   In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we use customer Journey Mapping using Behavioral Science to try to correct where organizations get off track by including these emotional elements and getting specific about them.   When we do Behavioral Journey Mapping, we try to correct what organizations get wrong by including the rational, emotional, subconscious, and psychological moments of a Customer Experience—and getting specific about them.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Customer Journey Mapping Using Behavioral Science for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How to Understand Customers Preference Have you ever noticed how some people put a lot of letters after their names in their signatures and bylines? Some of them go on for quite a while, like a second surname. It annoys me sometimes. Then, I remember that when I introduce myself, I often refer to my status on LinkedIn as one of the top 150 Business Influencers. I do it because I am proud of it. I presume that people with the degrees are feeling proud of their hard work and accomplishment earning that degree and qualification, too. However, there is another reason people list their degrees and qualifications with their signatures, and I let everyone know about my LinkedIn achievement. We talk about it in this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast.   We all maintain a self-perception of ourselves. We use the items around us to serve as evidence that we are whom we think (hope) we are. What surrounds us becomes symbolic of who we are, where we are in life, and what we have accomplished or hope to achieve. Sometimes, we use the things around us to help reassure ourselves that we are whom we think we are. This concept is called symbolic self-completion.  Symbolic self-completion describes how we surround ourselves with evidence that we are what we hope we are. The evidence serves to help us overcome our insecurities. Our external collection offsets our internal doubts. Both of these concepts surrounding the self can affect customers behavior in your experience. Not all the time, of course, because with psychology, there are always a few things at work at once. However, on the margins and with certain groups for specific items, self-perception and self-completion could work in your favor, if you understand your customers, of course. Take a closer look at your customers’ behavior. Whether it is to satisfy a self-perception or to help facilitate self-completion, understanding your customers’ preferences can help you provide an experience that helps your customers feel the way they need to come back to you again.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Understand Your Customers Preference for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Happy Employees Make Happy Customers When your employees are happy, they are more likely to make your customers happy. Common sense dictates that this is logical. However, despite the rationality of this statement, too many organizations do not spend enough of their resources ensuring their employees are happy—and their Customer Experience suffers for it.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer dives into Colin’s new book on the subject ‘Happy People Make Happy Customers’ and we explain why the experience you provide your employees is just as critical as the one you want to deliver to customers. With special guest, Michael Lowenstein, author of Employee Ambassadorship and Beyond Philosophy’s employee engagement expert, we explore how your Employee Experience contributes to how customers feel about your company and why you should design one that is complementary with your Customer Experience strategy.  The question is, how do you get happy employees? The answer is harder to do than it is to answer: To get happy employees, you must design an experience that makes them feel emotion toward your organization that drives value for you. In other words, your Employee Experience strategy is to create one that makes it possible to deliver the Customer Experience you want.  Lowenstein, who instructs on this concept, explains that with the Employee Experience, you have to understand the emotional bits of it the same way you do a Customer Experience. Then, you can determine how they link with the emotional components of the Customer Experience you have designed. When you get these parts aligned, your employees feel an emotional bond with your company, a commitment to the value proposition of your organization, and a strong sense of duty to deliver on it for customers. In our global Customer Experience Consultancy, we see the most opportunity in this alignment of the emotional components. Many companies do an excellent job of this. However, the majority do not, and many have a long, long way to go in this effort to provide an exceptional Employee Experience.  For most companies, the issues stem from the following problems: Lack of commitment: It is difficult to put the customer first and improve the employee experience at the same time. It takes time, energy, and resources, which can be in short supply for most companies. Management oblivion: Sometimes, the people in charge are too far removed from the day-to-day to recognize the issues with their teams’ experience.  Incentivizing the wrong things: That which gets incented gets done. When you reward other initiatives, you do not emphasize the proper actions that support improving the experiences for employees or customers.  It is all about human behavior. The same principles apply with employees as they do with customers. You must treat them with the same eye for detail and with a focus on evoking the proper emotions.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how you can create an Employee Experience that promotes the environment necessary to deliver the Customer Experience you want.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why Are We Scared of New Technology?  We have some exciting new technology for CX. Facial recognition technology and facial expression analysis yield some new and exciting data about how customers feel during a Customer Experience. The only problem is that many people find it creepy. This episode of The Intuitive Customer asks the question Why Are We Scared of New Technology? It turns out, we have been here before with new technology. Of course, that time, it was something far more crazy than recording facial expressions and using software to determine how a person feels.  What was this crazy technology? It was trains. According to mentalfloss.com, some people believed back when the first trains were running that if women traveled over 50 mph, their uteruses would fly out of their bodies. Other people thought humans would just melt. Luckily, neither prediction came to pass. Now we travel at hundreds of miles an hour with no concern for melting or reproductive organs flying out of anyone. In other words, we got used to the idea of riding trains and other transport at high rates of speed, and we don’t worry anymore. I believe the same pattern of fearing technology and then getting used to it will be valid for facial recognition and facial expression analysis technology also. However, before we get into it any deeper, we should clarify the difference between the two technologies. Facial Recognition: Uses your facial features to identify who you are. Facial Expression Analysis: Uses your facial expression to identify how you feel. In both technologies, the software records the spatial relationships of your features and compares them to a database. However, with facial recognition, it’s a database of people’s identities. With facial expression analysis, it’s a database of unconscious reactions our face makes in response to how we feel, e.g., dilation of the pupils or a widening of the eyes, tightness around the mouth, etc. There are excellent applications for this technology for Customer Experience strategy and design. As global customer loyalty consultants, we believe knowing how your customers feel at the different moments of their interaction with your organization is invaluable when you are seeking to foster customer retention. Best of all, you don’t have to ask them about it, which can introduce some other influences that may or may not skew the data. However, we have also learned that many don’t like the idea that cameras are recording their reactions and analyzing their unconscious reactions to how something makes them feel.  Facial recognition and facial expression analysis is the future of research for Customer Experience. I think we can get over this creepy factor and embrace the technology for our industry. Also, before too long, I believe we will wonder how we ever lived without it. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why We Are Scared of New Technology for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Massive Importance of Memory in a Customer’s Experience Customer loyalty is a function of customers’ memories. That is to say, customers don’t choose your experience over another; customers choose the memory of your experience over another. Therefore, we feel it is vital that you ensure your customers have an excellent memory of your Customer Experience. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the massive importance of memory for a Customer Experience and how our brain influences what we remember about them. The human memory is imperfect. Our brains hold onto specific types of information when forming memories and let other information go. So, good experiences might not always turn into equally good memories, and vice versa. We could remember things better or worse than they were. Understanding how memories work is essential to building customer loyalty. If you don’t understand how the brain forms memories, you could end up creating the wrong memories about your Customer Experience. To understand how memories work, you must first know the Peak-End Rule. The Peak-End Rule says that what people remember about an experience is how they felt at the moment when emotion was the strongest and how they felt when the experience was over.  When it comes to Customer Experience design, an organization must be clear where the peak emotion occurs during the customer interaction, as well as how the customer feels at the end. These emotions can make or break your chances for customers to form Customer Loyalty. To create the memories you want, you need to evoke the customer emotions that you want. To do that, we suggest you start with these three key questions: What's the experience that you're trying to deliver? You need to define what that is so that everyone on the team is working toward the same goal. What emotions are you trying to evoke? These feelings are your target for the peak of the experience and how it ends to ensure that your customers remember the right things about your brand. How will you deliver these emotions consistently? We suggest walking the experience as if you were a customer yourself so you can see when and where you are evoking emotions you want, and, perhaps more importantly, where you aren’t.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Massive Importance of Memory on Your Customer’s Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Creating a Frictionless Experience  As a global customer experience consultant for nearly two decades, I have never heard a customer say, “Gee! I wish that buying process was just a little more complicated!” Why? All customers want their experiences to be easy. When things aren’t easy in a given moment, we describe that as friction. Every organization needs to find their moments of resistance in a Customer Experience and fix them—before the competition beats them to it.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores friction in Customer Experience with special guest Roger Dooley, international speaker, blogger, and author of Friction: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage. Dooley explains why friction happens, how to find out where it is happening, and how to fix it for your organization’s Customer Experience. People don’t like when a Customer Experience is convoluted. We don’t want to exert too much time and energy making decisions unless it is absolutely necessary. Moreover, when we are tired or distracted, we have even less patience for tricky Customer Experiences. Many times, when there is too much friction in a Customer Experience design, we give up and walk away—a result that is not doing your Customer Loyalty any favors, not to mention your bottom line. Organizations already know friction is a problem. Whenever we talk to clients in our global Customer Experience consultancy, they always tell us that they want to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with them.  However, few organizations understand what it takes to determine where the friction is in their experience. Often, it takes an outside perspective—usually ours—to point it out to them. So why do companies have problems spotting friction on their own? Dooley says it is because organizations got used to the “way things have always been done.” Also, organizations often neglect to observe customer behavior that will typically reveal a friction-filled moment in an experience. In addition, companies often think that what they have designed in their Customer Experience strategy puts the customer first. However, in our experience, they rarely do this; instead, they are putting the needs of their business first to the detriment of the frictionless experience they want to deliver. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Creating Frictionless Experiences for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.  To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

We don’t like uncertainty. It affects our lives in many ways, and especially as customers. Consider the fact that we buy insurance. We purchase peace of mind that we are covered if something unlikely (and terrible) happens. Likewise, we buy Powerball tickets in the improbable event that we will win. In other words, we are terrible at estimating the probability of unlikely events, for good or ill. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores why that is at a psychological level and what you can do about it in your Customer Experience Design. The governing theory that presides over our collective inability to predict the likelihood of unlikely events is Prospect Theory. The brain-child of the Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Professor Daniel Kahneman and his research partner and collaborator Amos Tversky, Prospect Theory explains how we make decisions that involve risk and uncertainty. Two areas of concepts fall under Prospect Theory. The first is the Value Curve and the second is Probability Estimation. The Value Curve explains evaluating the subjective. Loss Aversion is part of the Value Curve and addresses how we hate losing more than we are happy to gain. Also, the Value Curve covers the ideas of Diminishing Marginal Returns, which is why we are sensitive to changes in the status quo, and Reference Points, which are how we usually have a standard that we use to compare two things.  Probability Estimation is our ability to think the most unlikely events are imminent. We overestimate the likelihood of good and bad things happening. For example, we might be sure we are going to be eaten by a shark or convinced we picked the winning numbers in Powerball. Probability Estimation proves that when it comes to human behavior, we are pretty terrible at predicting the future as it pertains to the extraordinary. This particular part of Prospect Theory is inextricably linked to our behavior as customers—and probably more than we think. We all worry about weird things. There is a phrase I love that applies to this concept: I have had many crises in my life, but few of them actually happened.  Managing uncertain moments in your Customer Experience design is essential. People need to know what is coming next and predict the future. It makes them feel comfortable and cared for, critical emotions for forming Customer Loyalty. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about managing customers’ uncertainty for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why Are Insignificant Things So Significant? Have you ever had the feeling that something about a buying experience didn’t feel right? Chances are if you did, you didn’t buy the product or service. Most times, how a purchase feels is a driver for our customer behavior. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores why insignificant things are so significant. In other words, why do the little things have such a big influence on what we do as customers? Also, we discuss how you can assess and address the insignificant parts of your experience to influence your customers to keep coming back rather than driving them away. Each of us has two parts of our brains that influence our buying decisions. There is what we call the Rational System, which is logical and methodical, and the Intuitive System, which is emotional and automatic. These two systems work solo or in tandem to help us make buying decisions.  When it comes to your Customer Experience, the Intuitive System is the one that interprets how an experience feels. It is also the system that processes all the little things that occur in your experience, kicking up emotional reactions in the conscious mind that you are aware of, and processing emotional reactions in the subconscious mind that you are not.  The difference between an insignificant part of the experience you are conscious of and one of which you are not is the frequency with which you encounter the insignificant element. For example, if you have several instances where your Intuitive System has processed an emotional reaction to an insignificant element of an experience in your subconscious, it will kick it up into the conscious mind with a caption, “X keeps happening, and I like/don’t like it.” Once you have a few varying insignificant elements causing emotional reactions, they join together to influence the buying decision. In other words, the insignificant elements gain significance.  The question is, are the insignificant moments in your Customer Experience deliberate in their strategy to deliver a positive outcome or have you left them up to chance and are hoping for the best?  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why Are Insignificant Things So Significant for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.  To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

What Customer Emotions Drive the Most Value 15 years ago, in Munich, I was asked a question I couldn’t answer when presenting to an insurance company. The person asking understood what I was saying about evoking the proper emotions in a Customer Experience. No, he wanted to know how much money he would get back by investing in my idea. I didn’t know.  That was in 2004. For the next two years and in partnership with the London Business School, we undertook research to answer that question. After millions of answers from thousands of respondents in hundreds of countries, we discovered the answer. We discuss what we found in our research on this episode of The Intuitive Customer.  We learned there are 20 emotions that either drive or destroy value in a Customer Experience. When I say value, what I mean is whatever an organization is trying to do with the business, whether that is increasing revenue or minimizing costs or increasing loyalty. The value part of this statement is a bit like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books.  The twenty emotions are each part of one of four clusters. These clusters include: The Destroying Cluster: Evoke these emotions, and you will not increase value for your bottom line, but instead lose it. The Attention Cluster: These are the emotions your marketing department is responsible for, meaning they get the customers interested in what you have to offer. The Recommendation Cluster: The recommendation cluster has the emotions that satisfy customers and are also the foundational elements of a trust relationship, which can lead to a recommendation when the customer is asked for one. The Advocacy Cluster: These are the emotions that not only create loyalty but also make your customers your active advocates to their friends and family. Here’s a funny story about the Advocacy Cluster. When the statistician was revealing the results of the study to the group, he referred to the Advocacy Cluster emotions as the “big daddies” of Customer Experience. They are because they deliver big daddy results. Many organizations have made progress about emotions in business. That is to say, they recognize that emotions play a part in business. However, we still have some work to do on being specific. To that end, in our global Customer Experience consultancy, we recommend knowing the answers to the following two questions: What is the emotion you want to evoke? Which emotions drive the most value for your organization? Without the answers to these two questions, you can’t move forward to the Advocacy Cluster, at least not on purpose. You could luck into it, I suppose. However, I always heard that luck favors the prepared. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what customer emotions drive the most value for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Is Facial Recognition Creepy or Is It Just the Future? Technology can analyze people’s facial expressions and determine what emotion they feel. It’s called Facial Expression Analysis and it uses Facial Recognition technology. This technology presents the most authentic option for capturing data on customers’ emotions during your Customer Experience. This technology is the next level of Customer Experience analysis and the future for the industry. Take a look here: https://beyondphilosophy.com/authentic-emotion-recognition/ In some cases, however, it is the now, for facial recognition technology anyway. Big brands like Walmart and KFC use facial recognition technology already. Passengers on Delta can check into flights in the Atlanta airport using facial recognition technology. I unlock my phone and pay for purchases using facial recognition technology. However, one must wonder….is this technology a little bit…creepy? In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, our guest Professor Bill Hedgecock from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota shares his expertise on facial recognition and facial expression analysis technology and its application in Customer Experience programs. Hedgecock is an academic marketer and an expert in neurology who studies how the brain works in decision-making and often participates in psychology-based research that uses this technology.  Hedgecock begins by defining what the two technologies are:  Facial recognition matches a face it has captured to other images in a database. Facial expression analysis determines the emotions felt based on how the face it has captured looks. As you can see, the data potential for authentic customer emotion capture is enormous with this technology. To be able to determine how a person feels during the different moments of an experience in real time is invaluable to Customer Experience analysis and design. However, like everything else, we have an emotional reaction to this technology. The idea that a camera is recording you during a transaction and analyzing what you might be feeling at different times is, to many people, uncomfortable at best and all the way creepy at worst. The future for data collection is Facial Recognition and Facial Expressional Analysis technology. So how do we get over these uncomfortable feelings about it? More importantly, how do we get our customers over their uncomfortable feelings about our using it?  This episode explores the potential and the pitfalls of this innovative and intimidating software and how it can be used to take your Customer Experience to the next level. In addition, we share important ways for you to help ease your customers uneasiness about its use. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Facial Recognition and Facial Expression Analysis technology use for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

People like choices. They just don’t like choosing, at least not when there are too many options. However, if you give people the option of shopping where there are only two options or where there is a wide selection, people will nearly always choose to shop where there are many choices. Then, when they get there, they can’t make a decision and feel frustrated and disappointed about it. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the issues of too many choices and the adverse effects it can have on how your customer feels during your experience because of them. We also share ways that you can make choosing easier in your experience. It’s clear that too many choices don’t do anything good for your Customer Experience. However, too few are a problem, also. Years ago, I was in Moscow at a store that resembles Best Buy. We were undertaking a Customer Mirror, where we act as if we are customers to get an idea of how the experience makes us feel. I decided that I would buy a webcam—this was before they were built-in to the computer. I went to the webcam section and what I saw there left me feeling gobsmacked. There were hundreds upon hundreds of webcams. They were all different in various ways, none of which meant very much to me at the time. I was paralyzed with choices. So, I did what any sensible customer would do; I gave up. My webcam story demonstrates one of the ways that too many choices have negative consequences for your Customer Experience. I lost my motivation. When we have too many options, we feel overwhelmed trying to sort through all the information to find the best option. We run out of energy for choosing so we don’t, and the store doesn’t make a sale.  The other way too many choices have negative consequences for a Customer Experience is that it can change your reference point for satisfaction. If you have more options, you have more chances to pick the wrong thing. However, you can help your customers make choices that will make them feel happy instead of frustrated. You can help them navigate your offerings and feel satisfied with what they pick. First, you have to understand all the psychological concepts at work in the decision-making process.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why Too Much Choice is a Bad Thing for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Being the Guardian of Your Service Culture Keeping up your culture of customer service is not easy. Leadership in many organizations find maintaining the customer service culture they have established is a substantial issue. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, we spoke with three-time best-selling author, coach, and conference speaker Marilyn Suttle. She helps leaders and teams make subtle shifts to create breakthrough success for customers. Her clients have gone on to increase their scores for customer satisfaction and improved employee engagement. Many have also earned awards in their industry. So, what is the secret to maintaining your customer service culture to all these critical gains and accolades? Suttle says it is first defining your customer service culture and then, for leadership to take responsibility for being the guardian of it. Your customer service culture is essential to your organization. It is your competitive differentiator that gives you an identity in the marketplace. Moreover, a customer service culture is more than words on a page, more than your written mission statement, stated values or desired vision for your company. It’s the actions you take day to day and the emotions you evoke in your customers when you interact with them. Suttle recommends you start by defining what your organization’s customer service culture is going to be. Once you have an agreement, you then must establish standards that show you are achieving success and accountability measures to ensure you hit them.  Next is implementation, a part of the process that has its challenges. Sometimes, when an organization lacked a focus on customer service before or had a much different style, change can be difficult for the team and can foster resistance. Also, your leadership team usually wants to show an ROI for all the time and money they have invested in this effort, which only adds to the pressure. However, you are not done with hard times yet. After running the gauntlet of implementation, you now face the task of upkeep and maintenance of the culture as you lose and gain employees and your workforce spreads across the country or even the globe. Suttle has much experience with organizations that have been successful in defining, establishing, and maintaining their customer service culture. She shares her unique insight into what makes it work for them along with many of their best practices that helped along the way. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about [TOPIC] Experience   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Brand Or Customer Experience - what comes first?   The ubiquity of brands is undeniable. With the constant exposure to them, we all feel like we know what a brand is. However, when we are asked to explain it, we often fumble. In fact, it is remarkable just how different our answers are. It seems as if no one really knows what a brand is at all. Branding is imperative to having an outstanding Customer Experience. The relationship between your brand and the outcome of your experience, at least in the customer’s eye, has deep roots in customer loyalty as well.     We are often asked which comes first, the brand or the Customer Experience? Sometimes people want to know which is more important. Others simply want to know which of the two should they make the effort to improve? The answers are: neither, neither, and both. Let us explain. Brand is the promise you make to customers. Customer Experience is keeping that promise to customers. Both of these are essential elements to your Customer Experience. Both of them are vital and you can’t work on one without inherently working on the other. Or can you? This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deeper dive on the concepts of Brand and Customer Experience, and the complicated relationship they have with one another. We also explain how these two concepts are essential to forming Customer Loyalty. Best of all, we share ways that you can implement these ideas in your Customer Experience in practical terms. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about branding and Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How to Manage Uncertainty My team is the Luton Town Football Club. I heard the manager say about the team that you have to control the controllable. I quite like that phrase and I believe it is the key to managing uncertainty in your business for your customers. Now, he didn’t come up with the phrase. It’s a well-used epithet by many coaching organizations—and not just for football.     The reason the saying is so well-known is it helps us as human beings cope with uncertainty. It means that even as the world is changing, and in some cases going crazy, you can still keep some parts of your experience in check. These are “the controllable” parts.  In some ways, this is how you manage uncertainty. We talked about how to manage uncertainty for yourself, your organization, and your customers in this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast. Like so many things involving human beings, managing uncertainty is not simple. People don’t like to risk making a bad decision. When they have uncertainty, making decisions is difficult. This feeling falls under the umbrella of the psychological principle of Risk Aversion.   Human beings all have risk aversions, just not about everything and not all the time. Otherwise, no one would smoke or drive fast on a mountain road or invest in race horses. However, as a general rule, uncertainty and risk are things we just don’t like. Managing risk aversion for ourselves and our customers is a vital part of what we need to address in our Customer Experience strategy.  I often ask the following question when I am speaking to groups: Is business going to get easier than it is today or harder? Obviously, the answer is harder. Part of what makes business hard is the uncertainty of it. I once attended a conference for the CBI (Confederation of British Industries). Something one of the speakers said helped me understand how vital certainty is for businesses. It drives how much inventory they produce, how many people they hire, and how they plan for future products and services. Making these decisions is difficult when you are uncertain about the future. Unless you have a special gift, a time machine or an awesome psychic friend, none of us do know the future. That means that uncertainty about the future is built-in to all decisions. Learning how to avoid uncertainty is not an option. Instead, you have to learn how to manage uncertainty.  Listen to the podcast in its . to learn more about [TITLE] for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Customers Are Irrational! Why? What Can We Do About It? Many times, when I talk about irrationality in customer behavior, people in the business-to-business (B2B) arena tune out. However, this is a mistake. All customers are irrational, whether they are making business decisions or consumer ones. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores customer irrationality. We talk about what we mean by it, how it changes our perception of an experience, and what organizations can do to design Customer Experience strategies that work with irrationality.   Many years ago, I worked at British Telecom (BT). I was leading a team of 15 people in a project to purchase a new CRM for the organization, a large investment with big repercussions for our day-to-day operations. Naturally, you might assume since this was a business decision, I was going to be very “business-minded” about it, which is to say rational or logical. It turned out, however, that when it came time to go with the rational decision to buy one company’s CRM that the team more or less agreed upon, my irrational or emotional side came out. Surprisingly, we went with the emotional decision and chose another company’s CRM. There were a lot of risks with this decision, not the least of which was that it was more expensive than the other product we were considering. Spoiler alert: It worked out well with the CRM we chose. And thank goodness for that!   Your Customers Probably Don’t Know They Are Behaving Irrationally If present-day-me were to travel back to talk to BT-me and say I was behaving irrationally, I likely wouldn’t have believed present-day-me. Most people think they are rational about decisions. What’s more is that we had specifically designed the CRM decision to be as rational as possible. There was a pre-discussion about the CRM systems we would consider and how we would evaluate them fairly. We even had an elaborate matrix that would assist us in making the decision.  But when push came to shove, we went with our instincts, not the company the matrix recommended. Even though we meant to make a purely logical decision, we didn’t, for completely emotional reasons.  Your customers are doing the same thing. The word irrational in this context means how we behave when motivated by emotions. Likewise, rational means how we behave when motivated by logic. Human behavior is rarely motivated by pure logic. Emotions almost always get involved. However, this idea is intimidating to many “business-minded” individuals. When you talk about emotions, you talk about touchy-feely subjects that don’t appeal to people who pride themselves on making rational decisions. That is where the disconnect occurs. Ironically, the rational individuals are making an emotional decision about managing customer emotions.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what customer irrationality is, why it happens, and what you can do about it for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

One thing many positive Customer Experience stories people tell have in common is they involve a moment that surprised and delighted customers. Customer loyalty consultants refer to it as Innovative Customer Experience, and it is the key to getting your customers to talk about your experience to everyone they know. Author, speaker, and customer loyalty expert Dr. Chip Bell is our guest on this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast. As a customer loyalty consultant to Fortune 100 Companies, Bell explains how Innovative Service is the kind that gets talked about, and what inspires the customer behavior you want. Bell says that while good Customer Experience is often appreciated, it rarely results in people talking, posting, or tweeting about it. However, when people have a unique experience with innovative service, they talk, post, and tweet about it all the time. Innovative service is the pleasant surprise, the moment they didn’t expect in your experience. Bell describes innovative service as a moment that doesn’t make customers say, “Wow!” but the moment that makes customers say, “Whoa!” These Whoa-moments are what people talk about in person and online.   Innovative Customer Experiences are more than value-added. Bell says they are value-unique. The main difference is that customers expect your experience to be value-added. When they get more than they expected, however, it is unique—and that has a lot more value. Delivering Innovative Customer Experience requires a few important considerations:  When have you been surprised in a good way by an experience or customer service in the past? How did it make you feel about the company? Did it lead to an increase in your business or you recommending them to others? What would be an appropriate and creative moment to deliver in your organization’s experience that would surprise and delight customers? Do you have the proper culture for your front-line employees to deliver Whoa -moments to customers as they see fit in the moment? This episode of our podcast explores How to Create Innovative Service and explains why people feel more loyalty as a result of them. It also will talk about what you can do in your organization to create these Whoa-moments in your CX strategy that will get your customers telling stories about you to all their friends, families, and followers.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Innovative Customer Experience   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

A significant influence on your Customer Experience outcome is how customers feel during your experience. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we say that emotions are over 50 percent of a Customer Experience. For good or ill, customer feelings have a profound effect on how they remember your experience also. Despite my belief and routine pronouncement of these facts, I am astonished by how many companies don't bother with measuring customer emotions. Those that do measure customer emotions don’t think about how they will use it. Measuring customer emotions in real time is paramount for your Customer Experience strategy. You need to know when your experience is producing appropriate feelings and, perhaps more importantly, when it is not.   “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” applies to this situation. To measure customer emotions, you need the proper tools to do a job. This episode of The Intuitive Customer talks about the tools you use to measure customer emotions in real time. However, here is some free advice: Before investing any time or money in customer emotion research, be sure you have a plan in place to use it. At British Telecom (BT), I learned the significance of having a plan for the research you receive. I was sitting in a presentation about BT’s customer satisfaction that year regarding our products and services. Our presenter had a “why bother?” attitude. It was apparent to everyone in the room. I couldn’t let it lie. I had to ask why she didn’t seem to care about what she was telling us.   Surprisingly, she told me straight out. “This is the third year you've employed us to do this research,” she explained. “And every year we come back and tell you the same results. And every year you do nothing about it. Why do you bother?” This conversation predates my next reference, but I could swear I heard a distinct Mic Drop.  She was right, of course. We hadn’t a bloody clue what to do with the information she was sharing. Or, perhaps more accurately, could not have cared less about what to do with the research. It was a cultural thing. Also, it was before Customer Experience was the popular concept bandied about in corporate speak today.  Research is essential to take your Customer Experience to the next level. Knowing how your customer feels during your experience and how it influences customer behavior is vital to your customer-centric Customer Experience Strategy. As Customer Experience consultants, we think measuring customer emotions in real time is a crucial aspect of your customer success. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Measure Authentic Customer Emotions in Real Time for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

There is a big challenge when measuring customer emotions as you are asking customers how they felt in an experience, as this is done retrospectively, a while after they had the experience. Many times, Customers don't remember how they felt or, for several reasons, they don’t want to tell you. Using technology, you can now measure customer’s emotions in real time! Critically you can measure their AUTHENTIC emotions, i.e: The REAL emotions they are feeling, through the use of micro expressions. These are involuntary, automatic movements the customer makes without even realizing what they are doing. Measuring customer emotions is vitally important as over 50% of a customer experience is about how a customer feels. The key is the authentic emotions. This appears to be a significant challenge for researcher’s in today’s world, as well as getting Customers to answer surveys in the first place.    One key area this Authentic Emotion Measurement is being used by more progressive organizations is in digital transformation. They are using this to understand how the customer feels prior to the transformation and then by testing various ways of undertaking the transformation they can determine which has the most benefit before implementation. Another application is measuring a face-to-face interaction, where the Customer and the employee are both being measured for their emotions. This means you can now understand the emotional interaction between the two parties. Furthermore, this means you can measure the effect of employee training. For example, if an employee is trained on soft skills, what was their customer’s emotions before and after this new training? This is an exciting new development in measuring customer emotions and in this podcast we delve into this in much greater detail. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Measure Authentic Customer Emotions in Real Time for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

We often discuss the Intuitive and Rational System and how they work together to help customers make decisions. The Intuitive System is automatic and emotional, and the Rational System is deliberate and logical. What we don’t usually share is that by academic standards, this concept is relatively new. An older theory also explains why we act the way we do as customers, and you need to know about it to promote customer success. This episode of The Intuitive Customer Podcast explores the concept of bounded rationality first introduced by Nobel-Prize winning professor Herbert Simon in the 1960s. We also discuss how this concept applies to your customers’ behavior and your CX strategy.   People Make Decisions within Constraints Herbert Simon was a polymath, which means he was a genius in several fields. He contributed a lot to a lot of different areas. Simon was a city planner, a professor, a psychologist and one of the first computer science professors. In fact, many of the theories that we use today in computer programming are the brain-child of Simon. Simon’s concept of bounded rationality is an essential concept in modern behavioral science. It means that people are rational, but they do not have infinite amounts of rationality. They are logical within constraints. The constraints that Simon refers to are common to all people. We have a limit to our attention span and memory capacity. We only have so much energy to devote to thinking. Often, we don’t have all the information and cannot forecast future events with a ton of accuracy. However, if we were rational all the time, none of these limits or shortcomings would matter. To put it another way, people are not computers. They don’t make rational decisions all the time, but they also don’t make random decisions based on emotional whims either. We use rationality but within the boundaries of the circumstances of the decision-making environment. An example of bounded rationality influencing customer behavior could be opening an email from a retailer you like and seeing a special sale that is going to end in a short amount of time. When you are sorting through the details of the offer, which leave a little to be desired regarding clarity, your work calls to ask if you can come back to the office for an emergency. The decision-making environment you are experiencing, which includes a limited-time offer with murky details and a big crisis at the office that needs your immediate attention, will affect how you make a decision.   Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how customers make decisions using bounded rationality.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Organizations do not have the luxury of focusing solely on operations these days. Over the past decade, retail as an industry has changed. To survive, retailers must put the customer at the center of everything they do.  That said, not everyone believes it yet.    Not so long ago, I was having a conversation in the C-Suite of a company about Customer Experience. Unfortunately, this company was not into the idea of putting the customer at the center of everything they do. Now, I won’t tell you the name of the company, but I will tell you that when I read the room, I had an image of what it must have been like in the room when Blockbuster decided not to buy Netflix because “streaming is never going to catch on.” Don’t just take my word for it. Take Professor Barbara Kahn’s from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. As a guest on our recent podcast, she spoke about how retailers are winning in today’s hypercompetitive retail market. (Spoiler alert: their strategy is built around the Customer Experience.) Professor Kahn co-hosts a weekly program on Sirius XM Channel 132 called “Marketing Matters,” and her new book, The Shopping Revolution: How successful retailers win customers in an era of endless disruption, discusses the chaotic world of retail. She shares the details of what worked and what didn’t when she had a front-row seat to witness it unfold as the director of the Patty and Jay H. Baker Retailing Center. When she was the director of the center, she spoke with a lot of retailers. She asked them to describe their idea of the perfect retailer. They mentioned a lot of operational details from products to managing inventory to optimizing the supply chain. While their definition included understanding products and building an attractive mix of wares that a customer wants, it didn’t mention the Customer Experience. Kahn decided to research her marketing library to see if there were any frameworks that were about customers, but to no avail. The frameworks she found were product and logistics-focused.  She wasn’t satisfied with these. So, she decided to write her own. The result was the Kahn Retailing Success Matrix, which she included in her book. http://whartonmagazine.com/issues/spring-2018/the-4-best-retail-business-strategies/#sthash.hob4hi4Z.ji6jXm2z.dpbs  This episode of our podcast explores how the Kahn Retailing Success Matrix can help you with your Customer Experience. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how The Kahn Retailing Success Matrix could work for your Customer Experience.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Beyond Philosophy won an award named one of the Best Management Consultancy Firms in the UK, by the Financial Times (FT). This was voted on by clients and peers, we couldn’t be more honored or proud. This bonus episode podcast explores how you can take your idea and turn it into an Financial Times Award-Winning consultancy, too. We share our 10-Step Plan for Success and ask our listeners, what would you do if you weren’t afraid?   The 10-Step Plan for Creating Your Award-Winning Business: Recognize that you are an expert in something, and then tell everyone you are. When I started my Global Customer Experience consultancy, no one knew me or even what Customer Experience was. So, I told them, starting my marketing efforts with my first book, Building Great Customer Experiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Then I began conference speaking. Eventually, other people began to recognize I was an expert in customer experience training, which was much better than me saying it. Have an original idea. If you aren’t original, then you aren’t really adding anything of value to the greater business community, or the reputation of marketing consultants in general. Be unique and useful. Be brave. It’s okay to be afraid, better than okay, actually. Fear is an excellent motivator. Focus on your skills. Determine what you are excellent at and what you aren’t. Then, build on those strong skills and focus on using them. Otherwise, you can get out of your area of expertise and lose your way. Give an opinion. Your opinion is why people come to you. You should always have one, even if it isn’t popular. Just be careful how you deliver that unpopular opinion; too much opinion can be as bad as not enough. Know what drives value for your customers. Produce or perish, as they say (do they say that?). If you aren’t getting your customers an outstanding return on investment (ROI), then why should they hire you? Accept when you make a mistake, fix it, and move on. Everyone blows it from time to time. Learn from it and move on. Whatever you do, don’t quit. Success is just around the corner. Appreciate the support you get from friends and family. You need it, so be sure to recognize and reward it as often as you can. Prepare for long hours. Starting your own company is hard work. Period. Remember that consultants are the first to go in a recession. Prepare for the inevitable so you can bounce back when it’s over. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about my ten-step plan and how it can help you do what you would do if you weren’t afraid. We recommend you spend 5 minutes now and take a short CX Healthcheck self assessment to see how your organization is performing. https://beyondphilosophy.com/cx-assessment/survey/. It’s free and will benchmark how you against hundreds of other companies. By answering a few multiple choice questions, you will understand what you need to do to take your Customer Experience (CX) to the next level.     The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

Psychological theories help explain why people do what they do. As customer experience consultants we believe when you are working on a Customer Experience strategy psychological theory is crucial to understanding the behavior of your customers.   However, psychology is unlike other sciences; it isn’t exact. In fact, you might have to consider much of what psychology tells us is provisional, an impermanent hypothesis that explains what many people do most of the time. Just not all the time. This conditional nature of human behavior theory can be problematic when analyzing customer behavior or attempting to address your customers’ psychology in a meaningful way in the Customer Experience.   This episode of our podcast explores how people make a common mistake when applying psychological theory to their Customer Experience strategy. We also share how to fix it.   It comes down to two significant issues with psychological theory:   #1: Theory needs context to be exact.   Unlike some of its scientific colleagues in the so-called “hard” sciences, most of the psychological theory is contingent. What is valid for human behavior at one time and in one environment is entirely different at another time and in an alternate setting. The variables matter to the outcome of human behavior. A lot.   #2: Psychological theory is complicated.   The complexity of human behavior makes the analysis of it equally knotty. Also, a psychological influence is not usually acting alone; multiple influences are affecting the outcome of human behavior. In addition, the boundaries of the theories can muddle matters, too. All of this to say, psychology is not an exact science with consistently predictable outcomes.   Because of this gray area inherent in human behavior theories, it can be challenging to convince people to change their business-as-usual practices to incorporate the “soft stuff.” Most organizations prefer to stick to their knitting and address concrete principles like price, product, and placement, instead of emotional stuff like human decision-making.   Despite these issues, there is hope for using psychology to optimize your CX strategy. Many organizations are able to apply the theories of psychology to great effect regarding customer behavior and behavioral segmentation, and you can, too.   Listen to the podcast in its entirety  to learn more about how to properly apply psychological theories about customer behavior to your Customer Experience strategy.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Customer Experience Industry is suffering from a lack of results. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say, it is suffering from a lack of proof about the results Customer Experience strategy is getting. It is time for all Customer Experience professionals to champion the ROI of their Customer Experience.   The problem is many of our champions do not know how.     We spoke with speaker, author, and CEO of Customer Think, Corporation, Bob Thompson about his recent research and what he thinks the Customer Experience strategy needs to build the business case for its success. He narrowed down the issues to the following: Not enough organizations use their Customer Experience to differentiate themselves from their competition A lack of data exists about the results of Customer Experience efforts, on an individual level, as well as an industry as a whole Too few organizations can demonstrate an ROI in actual figures  An opportunity exists and in a significant way. Moreover, the Customer Experience internal marketing needs to include ROI for Customer Experience. If we don’t, it could mean the resources we have today could be reallocated to another program—one that can produce results.   To be fair, if I were a CEO that had given over a budget for a Customer Experience program that was not able to show me that it had any results, I would not throw good money after bad. We need to make the business case for Customer Experience or suffer the (deserved) consequences.   This episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast explores how Customer Experience consultants and Customer Experience marketers can address these issues and resolve them for their individual Customer Experience strategies. We also share recommendations about what all Customer Experience champions should focus on to solve the problems of the industry in 2019.   Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what Thompson and the Intuitive Podcast team thinks can fix the problems with the Customer Experience Industry.  The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Stay Ahead of Your Competition with New Advances in CX Marketing  This podcast discusses the five areas you can address that will change the results you get with your Customer Experience. With a focus on these five key actions, you will not only improve your Customer Experience, but you can also get a jump on the competition in the new year.   5 CX Concepts to Keep You Ahead of the Competition  Focus on the ROI of CX improvement.   Having a record of your return on investment (ROI) for Customer Experience programs is vital. An increase in sales is excellent. But not all ROI is sales-based. You can have an increase in your NPS (Net Promoter Score, which indicates your customers will recommend you to family and friends). You could also see improved Customer Satisfaction ratings, which are great for building a foundation for loyalty. Another area where ROI is apparent is in the costs you save by providing an improved Customer Experience.     Segment your customers into personas.   People are driven to act by different things, which vary based on life stage, demographic, and personal attributes. Grouping or segmenting your customers based on their behavior is an excellent way to segment your customer base. Then, creating personas that represent these groups help your team understand the concept. With the persona’s characteristics to guide them, your team delivers an experience that appeals to each persona at an emotional level, which is the basis for creating customer loyalty.   Use Digital Transformation as an enhancement, not a replacement.   Digital channels provide a new opportunity for your Customer Experience. However, too many companies approach digital transformation with an aim to cut costs and often cut away programs that are currently working in their experience. Working toward a digital transformation should only lighten the load on other channels, not replace them.   Embrace but manage your use of AI to enhance the experience.   Artificial intelligence (AI) is an up and coming enhancement to Customer Experience that can allow you to anticipate your customers wants and needs. Combined with the power of customer personas, you can target customers right when they are considering a buying decision. However, exercise caution wielding this powerful new tool. When used too efficiently, it can damage customer relationships and cross over to the creepy side faster than you think.    Measure customer emotions, but in real time with facial recognition.   The success of any Customer Experience program rests on how the experience makes the customer feel. Facial recognition technology provides insight into how customers feel at the moment of the experience. New applications of it in Customer Experience can provide data that was previously unavailable at a large scale about how your moments in the experience make a customer feel.   To hear more about how to apply these five concepts to your Customer Experience, listen to the episode.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.   If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.   To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast.

Are You a Risk Taker?  We all have varying levels of risk tolerance. When we shy away from risk, we call that risk-aversion. This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the concept of risk aversion and how it affects customers’ behavior in your Customer Experience. People like sure bets better that come with less significant gains over risky ventures, even when the risky venture proposes a substantial benefit. We hate losing things. Losing things makes us much more upset than gaining things makes us happy. So, if we are risk-averse by nature then we must always be risk-averse, right? Not so fast. Human behavior is rarely predictable, and our behavior regarding risk is no different. There are exceptions and variables that can change our risk preferences. We discussed the four influences on our tolerance for risk in this episode.   Four Influences on Our Tolerance for Risk: The presence of testosterone correlates with risk-taking. Research shows that when more testosterone is present in the body, people are more likely to engage in risky behavior. This correlation occurs in men and women alike. The way choices are presented changes our risk tolerance. We would rather hold on to what we have than commit to a sure loss. When decisions are framed in the context of gains, we choose the conservative options more often than the risky ones. However, when alternatives are framed in the context of losses, we will take more significant risks to avoid losses than when the options are framed as gains. This phenomenon is why bets get riskier at the horse track as the day wears on—and the losses pile up! The domain where the risk occurs affects our decisions. We might be willing to risk some of our hard-earned dollars at the track, but we are less likely to endanger things that are essential to our well-being, like our house or financial stability.  The life stage we are at will affect our risk aversion. Depending on where you are in your life, and the related responsibilities that accompany that life stage will change how much risk you can tolerate. The chances you take as a young single person might be different than ones you take as a parent with a mortgage. People who are late in their career might be less willing to take on new areas than those who are just getting started. People who are close to retirement might not make the same investments as a kid opening their first retirement account, and so on. To find out how you can apply these concepts in you Customer Experience, please listen to this episode. The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. As customer experience consultants, we see risk aversion show up in Customer Experience all the time. Listen in to hear how you can recognize risk aversion in your customers’ behavior and address it in your Customer Experience. If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here. Follow Colin on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX.  

There is an abundance of theory in behavioral economics which can seem overwhelming. How can Marketing and Customer experience teams start using it today. In this podcast we give you an overview of the big ideas. To do this, Ryan has developed a framework of the four key principles - a summary of the four principles of human behavior. Ryan calls this the 4R’s. 1: Reference points. Reference points is the idea that people evaluate almost anything by comparing it to something else. If you want to figure out how people are going to evaluate something you need to figure out where they're starting from. 2: Reason What are the reasons that people have for choosing or not choosing to use your service? What are the reasons people use to for justify their choice? How does Behavioral economics affect this? 3: Resources All businesses want their experience to be easy. Customer crave this. But why? The reason is because people have a limited amount of cognitive resources to devote to things, a limited amount of attention, a limited amount of patience. Try to consider that when you are trying to anticipate how people are going to make decisions and how they're going to evaluate an experience. 4: Replacement This is the idea that people like to get ‘stuff’ done and that includes making decisions. If people need to make some certain evaluation with regards to your experience, your product or service. In fact, evaluating the offering on its merits or are they using some heuristic or some substitution to answer your question? If you would like to find out how you can implement these in your organization, please listen to the podcast to hear Colin & Ryan explain this further. Or please contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com . Follow Colin on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX.

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There is a great deal of information in academia that can help your business, but how do you access it? How do you read it? How can you apply this to your customer experience? Colin will reveal how you can benchmark your performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioral economics  and customer experience. Just complete a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

It seems from two recent surveys that despite all the money and resources that have been ploughed into improving Customers Experience, this is not having any effect? What will happen next is that CEO's and the C-Suite will start to remove their support for these changes. What is the problem and what can be done about it? Who better to answer that than Colin Shaw with 17 years experience in the industry and many successful implementations that have driven a great return on investment.

There are two key ways people make decisions: intuitvely or rationally. We discuss why this is important to designing your customer experience and how this can have a key effect on customer loyalty. We reveal how you can benchmark your organization’s performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioural economics and customer experience. Just complete a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

Customers tend to partition money and resources into different categories and this affects their spending patterns. What are the implications of this for you? How can you use this to take your customer experience to the next level? Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

There is a big difference between what customers say they want and what they buy. For example, Disney know that when they ask their customers what they would like to eat at their theme park that people will say they would like to have an option of a salad. Disney also knows that people don't eat salads at theme parks! They eat hot dogs and burgers. It is therefore vital that you discover what your customers REALLY want, not what they say they want, and what drives most value for you. This will help you prioritize what you focus on. In this podcast we go through a methodology of how to discover this and how you can use this to improve your customer experience and marketing.

What are the best statistics to help you prove ROI for your customer experience program? These are the best statistics that will help you create ROI. Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

We all know the retail landscape is changing. But what should it be changing to? What are the opportunities and problems? Colin and Ryan interview Amit Sharma, CEO of Narvar, about how retailers can create emotional connections with shoppers in a technology-driven world. Colin will reveal how you can benchmark your organization performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioral economics and customer experience. Just complete a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

Customers make rules for themselves that help them in their buying decisions. Some of these rules are common to many people. Some are specific to individual customers. Do you know what your customer's rules are? How do you find out how to move your customer experience to the next level. Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

Some people spend a great deal on money on expensive products just so they can be seen using them. Other people buy very cheap items. Both of these groups could be 'consuming conspicuously'. What does this mean and how can you use this to move your customer experience to the next level? Colin will reveal how you can benchmark your organizational performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioural economics and customer experience. Just fill out a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

To improve your customer experience it is vital you address these seven key strategic questions. Colin reveals these questions at a keynote conference speech in Bahrain. Do you know the answers to these questions? Colin also interviews Rami Sweis, CEO of GolfCX on how customer experience is becoming a key area in the Middle East region. Finally, Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience for free!

What are the six strategies for making your experience convenient? Colin and Ryan interview Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience expert about his latest book "The Convenience Revolution'. Shep reveals these strategies.

To improve your customer experience you must also become much more customer centric. How do you do this? What should we focus on? Colin and Ryan discuss what you need to do and how this impacts building a great customer experience. Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

How can other people make you sell a product? How do reviews influence customer behavior? How should you design your experience? Colin and Ryan discuss the psychological theories and how they can be practically implemented in your customer experience.

We all want to sell more, so how do we do this? Are you using this powerful sales technique? The best organizations are, the worse, not so much. Learn what you should be doing.

Does the time of the day that you sell or deal with your customers affect how much they buy or how they see your customer experience. The answer is yes, but why is this the case and what should you do about this?

How do we measure a feeling? What emotions should we be measuring? Where and when should we be measuring them? Colin and Ryan discuss what is best practice and what you should be doing.

Many times, people do not say what they mean or what they are thinking. Why is this? What are the implications on a customers experience? In this special interview with expert Steven Gaffney we look at the role of honest communication to improve workplace quality and the Customer Experience. Find out more at https://www.stevengaffney.com

Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton explore the study of customer emotions and how they influence customer experience and tendencies to buy. Explore the latest academic studies and how researchers have evoked specific emotions, what they mean, and how you can use them.

Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton discuss how to understand the rules of customer decision making. If you don't know how customers make decisions you cannot influence them to best effect. Explore the decision-making process and listen for actionable advice you can use today.

Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton explore customer segmentation strategies. It's amazing that most organization's segmentation is so basic. In today's new world, segmenting your customers is going to be a key to success, especially with AI on the rise. What should you be doing? Listen for actionable tips and insights in this episode.

Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton discuss why customer experience programs fail. The episode explores the key issues and why too many CX programs fail to get results. Colin has led hundreds of successful programs and understands the key issues to avoid. Listen for actionable steps you can take today. 

Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton explore how positioning your message is critical in communications from a leadership and marketing perspective. How is this best achieved? Listen to Colin & Ryan debate this and get tips of what you can do.

Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton discuss how emotions drive customer behavior. So, what is an emotion? How are they evoked? How can you deliberately evoke a customer's emotions? How is an emotion different to a mood and what you should do about it?

We discuss the key principle of scarcity with guest Professor Kelly Goldsmith, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing at Vanderbuilt University. Kelly is a behavioral scientist who examines consumers’ responses to uncertainty and scarcity, uncovering and explaining seemingly paradoxical effects.

Many drivers of human behavior can be traced back to caveman days. Colin Shaw and Prof. Ryan Hamilton explore what they are, how you can identify them, and what you should do to respond.

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss non-conscious influences: What are subliminal messages? How do they affect your behavior? Can we use them when building a customer experience?

Are your customers indifferent to you? Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss what it means if they are...and how can you move them to recommend you.

Why do customers tell you they will buy your service, but then don't? Are they deliberately trying to trick organizations? Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how you can you find out what customers really want.

Do you want your customers to buy your product or service over and over again? If you do, you need them to form a habit. Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how and why are habits formed. What can we do to discover customer's habits and change them to our advantage?

All the theory is great but implementing a successful CX program is vital. Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss exactly how do you do that...and the key steps to take.

All too often organizations suddenly see customers leave and have no idea this was going to happen. Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how can you tell when a customer is going to leave you...and what can you do about it.

How should I set the price for my product or service? Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how customers separate money into different mental accounts based on many subjective criteria. What does this mean for your pricing policy?

How can we guide our customer's decision-making through the menu of options we provide? How can you structure your offering to make it most attractive to customers?

Customer expect different things. Its a constantly moving goal. How do we keep up with these? Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss this and other topics.

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how customers make complex decisions, even when they don't really understand what they are doing or how they can make a decision. Find out what you can do to understand this and what you can do to design a great customer experience.

Once customers move from planning to implementation, they pass across a metaphorical Rubicon. People justify their thinking and it is then difficult to change their decisions. How do you recognize this and what can you do?

Facebook is a glimpse into the future for most businesses. Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss the recent controversy and the implications. What can we learn from the Facebook scandal? What are they doing with data? What action should we be taking?

Why are you getting so many complaints? What are the hidden reasons customers complain? How can you identify what the hidden reasons are and reduce the number of complaints you receive?

Why do customers ask for multiple competitive quotes? When they get them how do they decide what to buy? Customers have a natural tendency to avoid extremes. How can you use this to your advantage?

Every business wants loyal customers, but what does it really mean? Why do organizations get confused between inertia and customer loyalty? How can you truly gain loyal customers?

Customers will fight harder to keep what they have than they will to gain new things. This is called Loss Aversion and it’s a big driver of customer behavior. This can be the route of customer complaints. What are the implications for designing a customer experience?

Too many organizations don't know what customers really want! They blindly undertake research and then wonder why the rest of the organization ignores it. Colin Shaw & Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss why this is the case and what organizations should be doing to ensure success.

Diminishing Sensitivity is part of Prospect Theory. This refers to customer sensitivity to further changes based on where they have started. What are the implications for business, customer experience and designing and delivering experience? 

Didn't Blockbuster, Kodak and Circuit City see the end was in sight? Why did they not change? Too many people reject new thinking that will improve their Customer Experience. Why? What is it about human behaviors that does this? In this podcast Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton will debate why this is the case and what you should do about it.

How do 'social norms' affect the Customer Experience? What does this mean for organizations who sell to minorities or people in other countries?

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss why Customers need 'Reference Points'. This is part one of a fundamental behavioral economics theory called Prospect Theory – It looks at how human decision making is effected by a reference point that a Customer uses to evaluate a Customer Experience and what you should do about it.

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss why customers often focus on seemingly unimportant things and how these thing can in fact be the most important. Classic research from the University of Chicago shows that customers tend to focus on product details or attributes that have nothing to do with the true value, but have a great deal of influence on customer perception and experience.  

Special Episode - Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss the recent $185 million fine placed on Wells Fargo by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the largest such penalty the agency has issued. What should Wells Fargo do now? How will this impact the viability of the bank in the eyes of consumers? What should other organizations do to avoid a similar CX disaster? Find out in this special episode.  

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss the ‘Peak end rule‘ and its effect on Customer Experience. The peak end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e. its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton examine the question: Why do customers change their minds? What makes a customer change their minds when they have been so certain the day before? Critically what can we do about it? Ryan discusses research by psychologists that give us some clues, and pointers for improving your customer's experience. Hosts, Colin Shaw and Ryan Hamilton.  

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how customers make intuitive and rational decisions. We learn that sometimes these can be in conflict with each other. It is important that you understand which system your customers are using.  

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how customers evaluate your organization. They do so buy looking at the interactions they have, but this is also affected by the 'Halo' that you project. What does this mean for your organization? How can you use this to improve your Customer Experience? Evaluate the people they are dealing with? What affects this evaluation? What do the organizations do? Brought to you by BeyondPhilosophy.com    

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss how customers use 'shortcuts' to make decisions. Learn how you can use this to improve your Customer Experience. They also discuss how customer decisions are affected by how many times they see things.      

Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton discuss the fact that we all think that we make logical decisions but the reality is we don't. We are irrational, customers are irrational. What should we do about this?      

Colin and Ryan discuss why customers complain. What psychology drives this behavior? Most importantly, what can you do about it? The discussion is grounded in real world business situations and bolstered by techniques and approaches you can do today that will make a difference.  

Episode Zero - Colin Shaw discusses what you can expect from The Intuitive Customer podcast. Colin outlines in very understandable way, how behavioral economics and psychology fundamentally influences your customers experience and how you can use these to improve your customer loyalty and customer retention.