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

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.