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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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