The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth

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 (MichaelIsrael@Zuper.co), 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.