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

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.