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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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