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

How Customer-Facing People Should Evoke Emotions in Customers I have always thought that talking about how to do something was important, but not as important as actually doing something. I feel so strongly about this idea that I named my company after it. I want my clients to take their ideas “beyond the philosophy” and into action. To that end, this episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses how organizations can take theories and use them in their everyday operations to improve the Customer Experience. We explore how you can help Customer-Facing teams evoke the proper emotions from customers during their interactions with people by training them to do it properly. The word practical is significant here. Lofty ideas are wonderful inspirations, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of delivering a Customer Experience, you need a much more practical breakdown of what to do. More specifically, your frontline teams do. Talking about psychological theories, research, and studies is a critical part of the process, of course. However, what comes next is even more vital because it crosses the line from a good idea to the “new way to do things around here.” It is not advisable to have a new Customer Experience program that you roll out without training. Imagine all the painstaking research and design that address all the vital customer emotions that drive value for your organization circling the drain before that program disappears forever. That’s exactly what happens if you don’t teach people how to deliver that new Customer Experience program. Most of us know how to evaluate and manage the emotions of the significant others in our lives. You first listen to their responses, then determine how they feel, and finally choose how to respond. It is not any different when dealing with customers. They feel a certain way when they arrive at your customer-facing team. You want the people that greet them from your organization to read the customer for their emotional state, decide how the customer is feeling, and then respond in a way that will create a good emotional outcome for the customer.  However, not everyone knows how to read the customer for their emotional state or even what the readings mean for how the customers feel. Moreover, some people have no idea how to manage other people’s emotion to a better emotional state.  That is, they don’t until you train them. Training your people on these emotional skills is critical to your success. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about training is crucial to How Customer Facing People Should Evoke Emotions in Customers 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.

Can We Trust Facebook? Upon reflection of Facebook’s latest privacy violation and $5 billion fine, one must wonder whether we can trust Facebook. After all, the social media platform hasn’t exactly been keeping our private information under lock and key. On the contrary, it appears as if our likes and dislikes, networks and preferences are for sale to the highest bidder.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the implications for Facebook of this latest privacy violation. It reveals a lot about the focus of the culture at Facebook, and it isn’t on protecting its user’s privacy. Since there are no barriers to exit for Facebook and users are the product they have to sell, how long before the lack of trust between users and Facebook affects their bottom line?     I am a Facebook user, although, I am not as active as I once was. While I do have a business account, I mostly used it to interact with friends and family. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, however I found myself backing away from the newsfeed, so to speak. It is inconvenient in some ways, but worth it to me because I was uncomfortable with the amount of data Facebook was collecting and using. Facebook has a series of scandals over the years, going all the way back to 2007. The social media platform has always had a fast and loose policy with sharing things their users did on the platform. User Privacy concerns came to a head in 2011, when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused them of not upholding their privacy policy of sharing private information publicly. Facebook settled and agreed to an FTC review every other year for the next 20 to ensure it was keeping its promises to users. The latest violation shows that they aren’t keeping their promises. Facebook’s entire value is predicated on its users’ private information. The platform itself is not creating value, the users information does. So, it’s no surprise that Facebook is always pushing the limits of what their customers can see and use for their business purposes. However, if they continue to handle user’s private information with little regard for discretion, a time will come when users leave, taking all that value with them. Then, where will the social media platform be?  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Can We Trust Facebook? 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.

When I worked in the corporate world, people often asked me what I did all day. Facetiously, I would say that I played chess. While it was meant to be cheeky, the joke was not far from the truth. I spent my day navigating company politics. You will not find training programs on company politics or how to deal with them. It is a bit shocking considering their significance in the corporate world. Our latest episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast addresses office politics and how to manage them effectively. Company politics are ubiquitous and influential. Managing them is part and parcel of a career. As a senior vice president, at a large telecoms company, office politics surrounded me. Every organization that I have worked at had office politics. They exist because it is human nature to crave power and influence. You must be able to manage office politics for many reasons. First, it will help you advance your career. When you can get on with management, you can get on with your promotions after all. Also, if you can’t manage company politics, you won’t make it at many organizations. There was a phrase that used to entertain me along these lines that said, “When somebody pats you on the back, they are looking for the place to stick the knife.” However, company politics are worth managing because it can help you move your Customer Experience program forward. Without support from others at the peer level and above, your plan is doomed.  Managing office politics requires different finesse for the various types you will encounter. Typically, office politics have two levels. The first level tends to come from above, meaning those with their names above yours in the organization chart. The second level tends to come at you from your peers, which has a different dynamic entirely. Developing skills for managing up and managing laterally are essential to the success of your Customer Experience program. The first skill you should develop comes from the advice I received from my dad early in my career. He said to me, “Colin if you focus on doing a good job, everyone will want you.” He is correct. Who doesn’t want people on the team that do a good job? Having a reputation for successful work behind you is an excellent strategy for managing company politics also. Not only will everyone want to be on your team or have you reporting to them, but it also allows you access to the influencers at the top. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Manage Company Politics 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.

Choice architecture is a significant factor in buying decisions you make every day. From how they stock the buffet line to how likely you are to donate your organs after you die, the psychology of choice is influencing your decisions every day. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore the concept of Choice Architecture and how it affects our daily lives. We also discuss the different variables that you need to consider in the way you present your choices to customers as part of your CX Strategy. It all started with a new public bench. You see, I live in Sarasota, Florida. and recently, there have been some interesting changes to the public benches. Halfway along the seat, there are armrests. At first I thought, “Well, that will be more comfortable to sit in for sure.” Then, I realized that the armrests were not there for my comfort, but instead to convince the homeless who sleep on the benches sometimes to find a more comfortable spot for their repose. The armrests on the public benches are a type of Choice Architecture design. Choice Architecture is the way you present options to people who are making a decision to influence the outcome. By changing the way Sarasota presents their benches, they influence the decisions of their citizens.  Obviously, this situation is different than how you would use Choice Architecture in your Customer Experience. That said, the way you present your options can either draw people in and build a relationship with customers, or it can repel them and send them looking for a more comfortable spot.  Choice Architecture manifests in many different ways. It can be something physical like the armrest in the bench or it can be wording that is used on the packaging. It can be the way you price items or even the sizes you package and what you name them. Choice Architecture is part of many of the decisions you make each day. Consider the following:  When you order a drink at the restaurant, do you calculate the cost per ounce and choose the best value or do you just order the medium and call it a day? When you go to a buffet, do you discover that you loaded your plate with chips and bread and now don’t have room for the prime rib that you found at the end of the line? Is there ever a time besides a movie theatre when you would buy more popcorn than you could ever eat for $15? Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How Choice Architecture Can Revolutionize 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 Vital Art of Creating Memorable Messaging  When we make buying decisions, we usually are choosing from a short list of options. Our memory assembles these options. So, from a Customer Experience perspective, it is vital that your product or service is one of these options recalled at the moment of the buying decision. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, we explore how our memories generate these choice sets for buying decisions. We also take a look at how you can ensure that your product or service is one of the options your customers’ memories retrieve. (Spoiler alert: it has to do with customers’ emotions.) Let’s say that you were out with friends and the dinner hour arrives. You all decide to go out to eat together and begin discussing where to go. You will likely: Think about what you want to eat (e.g., comfort food, pizza, fast-food, healthy options, etc.) Consider the size of the group and the type of restaurant serving the food you like that you want to go to (e.g., buffet, pizzeria, family-style, fast-casual, white table cloth, etc.) Make a list of restaurants you like in that style of service Remember what restaurants are close to where you are at the moment (or at least not so far away that you don’t want to wrangle everyone there) that meet your chosen criteria. Offer up a list of options from which the group begins a decision-making consensus. From a restaurant owner’s point of view, if you and your group don’t think of their restaurant when you are making this list and narrowing down your options, it’s like the restaurant does not exist. In other words, if you can’t remember the restaurant at this moment when you are deciding where to eat, the restaurant’s marketing message wasn’t memorable.  We often say that customer loyalty is a function of customer memory. What we mean by that is that customers return to you not for the Customer Experience you provide, but for the Customer Experience they remember you provide. Making a memory that brings customers back has been a topic we frequently discuss, as a result. However, you must also ensure that the customers retrieve your memory at the right moment. For example, if you remember that Italian place that serves family-style homemade pasta just after you paid the bill at the restaurant you chose with your friends, that Italian restaurant was memorable, just a little bit too late to fill their tables.  Memorable messaging is an essential part of this process, too. Your marketing makes a promise to customers, but it also builds a memory of your brand. Putting a cue in the message that triggers the mind to retrieve your message at the moment of the buying decision is an Customer Experience strategy that could make the difference for your bottom line. So how are these memories retrieved, and why are they associated? What can you do to ensure that your customers remember you at the right time? The answers, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear, have a lot to do with emotions.   Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Vital Art of Creating Memorable Messaging 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.

How Can We Measure Customer Emotions in Our Digital World When you think about the Olympic medalists on the podium during the awards ceremony, who do you think is happier, the silver medalist or the bronze? Objectively, you might say the silver medalists because, after all, they came in second and the other competitor was third. Objectively, the silver medalists had a better outcome and should be happier.  However, the happier medal winner is the bronze medalist, and the reason we know this is the subject of this episode of The Intuitive Customer. With guest Dr. Bill Hedgecock, professor at the University of Minnesota in the Carlson School of Management, we explore the power of facial recognition with facial expression analysis software and what it can do to help you improve your Customer Experience.  Hedgecock is a leader in academic circles on facial recognition technology and facial expression analysis. He also studies neuromarketing, which is how the brain works when we make decisions. His psychology-based research shows us the wealth of knowledge available to us when we measure customer emotions in real time. So much is revealed from our facial expression in the moment, and it can be essential to your Customer Experience design strategy. He and his team used the technology to prove that bronze medalists were happier than silver medalists, and it was all in the eyes. It turns out that in a genuine smile the muscles contract around our eyes. This involuntary reaction is difficult (but not impossible) to fake. When studying the photos of the past five years of summer Olympic medalists, it was clear that gold was happiest, naturally, followed by bronze, and silver, ironically and yet understandably, coming in last on the happiness meter. Like Olympic medalists’ mix of triumph and disappointment, customer behavior is complicated. At any given moment, you might have two or three different psychological theories that explain why customers do what they do. However, Hedgecock says when you combine those theories with the data about how the customer felt at different moments in your experience, it can help point you in the right direction of which theory is correct. What’s more, once you know how a moment makes them feel and why people are doing what they are doing, you can respond. Responding can lead to many excellent outcomes, including an improved experience for your customer, the better impact for your marketing campaigns, and more emotional engagement with your customers—the foundational element of customer retention and loyalty. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How We Can Measure Customer Emotions in Our Digital World 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 podcast discusses customer journey mapping using behavioral science. It emphasizes the importance of viewing the journey from the customer's perspective. The hosts use a McDonald's drive-thru example to explain the impact of emotions and the difference in perspectives. They also explore the challenges of filtering ideas, designing new experiences, and gaining valuable insights from the customer journey process. Testing ideas and gradual implementation are addressed as well.

How to Understand Customers Preference Have you ever noticed how some people put a lot of letters after their names in their signatures and bylines? Some of them go on for quite a while, like a second surname. It annoys me sometimes. Then, I remember that when I introduce myself, I often refer to my status on LinkedIn as one of the top 150 Business Influencers. I do it because I am proud of it. I presume that people with the degrees are feeling proud of their hard work and accomplishment earning that degree and qualification, too. However, there is another reason people list their degrees and qualifications with their signatures, and I let everyone know about my LinkedIn achievement. We talk about it in this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast.   We all maintain a self-perception of ourselves. We use the items around us to serve as evidence that we are whom we think (hope) we are. What surrounds us becomes symbolic of who we are, where we are in life, and what we have accomplished or hope to achieve. Sometimes, we use the things around us to help reassure ourselves that we are whom we think we are. This concept is called symbolic self-completion.  Symbolic self-completion describes how we surround ourselves with evidence that we are what we hope we are. The evidence serves to help us overcome our insecurities. Our external collection offsets our internal doubts. Both of these concepts surrounding the self can affect customers behavior in your experience. Not all the time, of course, because with psychology, there are always a few things at work at once. However, on the margins and with certain groups for specific items, self-perception and self-completion could work in your favor, if you understand your customers, of course. Take a closer look at your customers’ behavior. Whether it is to satisfy a self-perception or to help facilitate self-completion, understanding your customers’ preferences can help you provide an experience that helps your customers feel the way they need to come back to you again.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Understand Your Customers Preference 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.

Happy Employees Make Happy Customers When your employees are happy, they are more likely to make your customers happy. Common sense dictates that this is logical. However, despite the rationality of this statement, too many organizations do not spend enough of their resources ensuring their employees are happy—and their Customer Experience suffers for it.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer dives into Colin’s new book on the subject ‘Happy People Make Happy Customers’ and we explain why the experience you provide your employees is just as critical as the one you want to deliver to customers. With special guest, Michael Lowenstein, author of Employee Ambassadorship and Beyond Philosophy’s employee engagement expert, we explore how your Employee Experience contributes to how customers feel about your company and why you should design one that is complementary with your Customer Experience strategy.  The question is, how do you get happy employees? The answer is harder to do than it is to answer: To get happy employees, you must design an experience that makes them feel emotion toward your organization that drives value for you. In other words, your Employee Experience strategy is to create one that makes it possible to deliver the Customer Experience you want.  Lowenstein, who instructs on this concept, explains that with the Employee Experience, you have to understand the emotional bits of it the same way you do a Customer Experience. Then, you can determine how they link with the emotional components of the Customer Experience you have designed. When you get these parts aligned, your employees feel an emotional bond with your company, a commitment to the value proposition of your organization, and a strong sense of duty to deliver on it for customers. In our global Customer Experience Consultancy, we see the most opportunity in this alignment of the emotional components. Many companies do an excellent job of this. However, the majority do not, and many have a long, long way to go in this effort to provide an exceptional Employee Experience.  For most companies, the issues stem from the following problems: Lack of commitment: It is difficult to put the customer first and improve the employee experience at the same time. It takes time, energy, and resources, which can be in short supply for most companies. Management oblivion: Sometimes, the people in charge are too far removed from the day-to-day to recognize the issues with their teams’ experience.  Incentivizing the wrong things: That which gets incented gets done. When you reward other initiatives, you do not emphasize the proper actions that support improving the experiences for employees or customers.  It is all about human behavior. The same principles apply with employees as they do with customers. You must treat them with the same eye for detail and with a focus on evoking the proper emotions.  Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how you can create an Employee Experience that promotes the environment necessary to deliver the Customer Experience you want.   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 Are We Scared of New Technology?  We have some exciting new technology for CX. Facial recognition technology and facial expression analysis yield some new and exciting data about how customers feel during a Customer Experience. The only problem is that many people find it creepy. This episode of The Intuitive Customer asks the question Why Are We Scared of New Technology? It turns out, we have been here before with new technology. Of course, that time, it was something far more crazy than recording facial expressions and using software to determine how a person feels.  What was this crazy technology? It was trains. According to mentalfloss.com, some people believed back when the first trains were running that if women traveled over 50 mph, their uteruses would fly out of their bodies. Other people thought humans would just melt. Luckily, neither prediction came to pass. Now we travel at hundreds of miles an hour with no concern for melting or reproductive organs flying out of anyone. In other words, we got used to the idea of riding trains and other transport at high rates of speed, and we don’t worry anymore. I believe the same pattern of fearing technology and then getting used to it will be valid for facial recognition and facial expression analysis technology also. However, before we get into it any deeper, we should clarify the difference between the two technologies. Facial Recognition: Uses your facial features to identify who you are. Facial Expression Analysis: Uses your facial expression to identify how you feel. In both technologies, the software records the spatial relationships of your features and compares them to a database. However, with facial recognition, it’s a database of people’s identities. With facial expression analysis, it’s a database of unconscious reactions our face makes in response to how we feel, e.g., dilation of the pupils or a widening of the eyes, tightness around the mouth, etc. There are excellent applications for this technology for Customer Experience strategy and design. As global customer loyalty consultants, we believe knowing how your customers feel at the different moments of their interaction with your organization is invaluable when you are seeking to foster customer retention. Best of all, you don’t have to ask them about it, which can introduce some other influences that may or may not skew the data. However, we have also learned that many don’t like the idea that cameras are recording their reactions and analyzing their unconscious reactions to how something makes them feel.  Facial recognition and facial expression analysis is the future of research for Customer Experience. I think we can get over this creepy factor and embrace the technology for our industry. Also, before too long, I believe we will wonder how we ever lived without it. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why We Are Scared of New Technology 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.