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

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. In my 20 years as a consultant for Customer Experience, I have been involved in several successful implementations. The Maersk Line project that I worked on with Michél Patterson, a continuous improvement expert in Lean Six Sigma was one of the most, with an improvement of 40 points for their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) over 30 months. What's more is they also experienced a 10 percent increase in shipping volumes. Implementation was a big part of that success. To that end, in this episode we share the five rules of a successful customer experience implementation. Michel Patterson takes the lead on this one, as a career-long believer in continuous improvement providing the following five rules she used in her first, and very successful, project with customer experience improvement: Define: What are you trying to accomplish? Measure: How will you know if what you do is working? Analyze: What changes are possible that might improve experiences? Improve: How can you roll these changes out on a larger basis? Control: How can you keep things moving in the right direction? In this episode, we cover these five rules and how they played out in our highly successful Customer Experience implementation for the world's largest shipping container company. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience If you know anything about Lean Six Sigma, you probably recognize the five rules. These phases of the implementation serve as excellent guideposts in a customer experience project like this one. Michel Patterson says that for her first project in the implementation area, these five areas were the natural inclination for organizing their efforts with Maersk. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 06:44 Michel Patterson explains how she didn't have a lot of experience with handling customer experience improvement projects, so she relied on her Lean Six Sigma background and project management structure, starting with Define. 14:43 Michel Patterson explains the concept about putting Measure second in the list and why it is essential it is there. 22:04 We discuss the third in the list, Analyze and how the changes you make are going to improve the experience and move the metric identified in the second step, Measure. 25:00 Colin brings up the Ambassadors, how they were chosen, and the role they played in the implementation. 26:52 After you improve your experience in a bigger way based on the first three steps, you land at Control, which is where you keep things going and improving continuously. 30:58 Colin adds in some details he remembers from the implementation and how they played into the success of the overall project. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Intuition is a concept that plays a major role in decision-making for all humans. Intuition is the way we can "know" things without using our reasoning. It is based on our instincts and experiences, and our need to find patterns for things in our lives. Unfortunately, intuition isn't always right. Knowing when intuition could be correct and when it might not be is a critical skill for any of us, particularly in business. Robin Hogarth's book, The Myth of Experience, can help. In it, Hogarth has theories about intuition and how it forms, and in what conditions it might be more reliable than others. In this episode, we explore the idea of intuition, how cognition affects it, and what environmental factors affect its reliability. We also share some practical advice on how you can overcome your propensity to use instinct and combine it with rational processes to get the best possible outcome for yourself and your organization. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience We talk about intuition as a "gut feeling" or "something we know in our hearts." However, intuition lives squarely in our brains. It is part of the two systems of cognition that we all share. One system is fast and automatic, while the other is slow and methodical. Intuition comes from the fast and automatic part, so understanding how that works will also help you understand when your intuition is serving you—or failing you. 03:48 Ryan discusses what he learned from Hogarth's book regarding where intuition comes from and how it forms. 06:31 We discuss how intuition plays a role in my Apple product obsession. 10:45 Hogarth's research indicates that there are two environments under which intuitions form, kind and wicked, which has a video that explains it well. 15:51 We discuss how you might not always know which kind of environment you are in, kind or wicked, and are often fooled; this video also explains how people get fooled and why. 23:48 Moneyball, either the book or the movie, gives us a good example on how to build upon the instinctive decisions we favor and coupling that with rational processes to ensure it isn't wrong. 25:42 We share the practical advice we can glean from this concept and apply them to your decision making and what resources you trust. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

My iPhone is getting bossy. It suggested widgets based on the time of day I was using it. This proactive experience is the future of experiences. Unfortunately, few organizations know how to build them. While the definition of proactive experience is somewhat fluid at the moment, perhaps the best way to describe it is to solve a problem before the customer knows they have one. This proactive experience is powered by the emerging field of Customer Science, a convergence of data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the behavioral sciences. Intaking a variety of consumer inputs, the machine will output a response intended to resolve these customers' predicted needs creating a positive engagement tool for customer service. There are benefits to customers with proactive experiences. Many customers want a proactive experience because it feels more personal, improving consumer satisfaction. It makes a person feel more important and appreciated when a system tries to recognize what they want. Organizations benefit, too. To the company, proactive experiences provide a different advantage: customer retention. If customers feel more satisfied with their experience, they are more likely to return to your site in the future. In this episode, we invited Vasili Triant, Chief Operating Officer of Ujet, to tell us more about what is possible with proactive experiences. He shares many go-to-market activities that can help organizations gain the first-mover advantage rather than we-are-getting-left-behind hustle. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience A company can do a few things to create this positive engagement tool for customer service. It all starts with understanding your customers, which involves customer segmentation, dividing them into similar groups, and appealing to what they have in common and value collectively. From there, you must hire people to transform this information into algorithms that can predict what the customer wants to do based upon indicators provided by said customer. Here are a few critical moments in the discussion: 06:17 Vasili introduces the concept of proactive customer service, its definition, and its benefits. 10:33 We discuss the process of formulating a proactive customer experience and how to ensure its success. 15:45 We discuss how proactivity contributes to the future of customer experience. 25:22 Vasili explains how proactive customer experiences help to predict customer behavior. 27:50 Vasili details his frequently asked questions and the answers he uses to help organizations take advantage of this engagement tool to boost the customer service experiences. This podcast was produced in partnership with Ujet.cx. You can find more on them on their Twitter page here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as a 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' He has 290,000 followers. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Is your idea of an ideal evening a nice meal at home and a book or a Netflix queue? Or would you rather be at a cocktail party with people from all walks of life exchanging stories or jumping up and down to a throbbing beat in the middle of a crowded dance floor? How you answer this question is one of many ways that you can explore your personality type. The personality you have will help you determine how to leverage your strengths (and confront your "opportunities") on your path to success. Psychology research determined that there are common areas of personality that all people share with many characteristics that fall under them. They are the Big Five Personality Dimensions and they might be useful to you on a journey of self-discovery. In this episode, we explore the Big Five Personality Dimensions and how they might affect your preferences. We also look at the characteristics that fall under those dimensions to determine how these facets can affect our choices. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The Big Five Personality Dimensions are the areas of our personality that drive our decisions. They include Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness. For each dimension, there are personality traits that are associated with the area. For example, Extroversion, which determines how you generate your energy around (or away from) people, has facets like warmth, assertiveness, and excitement seeking, as a few of them. We think taking an online quiz is a great start in a journey of exploration for better self-awareness, as well as understanding the people around you. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:00 Ryan shares his insight on the differences between the two personality camps for psychological research and how it relates to the Big Five Personality Dimensions. 11:32 We discuss some of the psychology tests that human resources departments often use and how we think they should be applied to a journey of self-awareness and discovery. 17:05 We cover the Five Dimensions of Personality and explain what they are, as well as the characteristics associated with each area. 24:26 Colin shares a story about how a leadership conference revealed to him several years ago how his personality traits were interpreted by his team through communication, and how they didn't necessarily match his self-view. 27:50 We share the practical applications we see for personality exploration in customer experience, customer strategy, and personal self-discovery. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers! To vote, please click here. I am grumpy about customer experience these days. Recently, I vented a bit of my frustration on LinkedIn and asking has the world gone mad? This realization came with a bunch of different things in my life as a customer went wrong, from gate delays on the tarmac for transcontinental flights on both sides of the pond to a house in shambles because of materials delays and poor project management. Interestingly, it is not simply a case of a single company or industry experiencing failures; the problem is everywhere. From theme parks to airlines, the responses to my rant revealed issues that seem to encompass a wide range of businesses. The reader's replies voiced many opinions about the possible causes and solutions for these declining experiences. One reader suggested that the lack of good service is due to a lack of motivated workers wanting to be paid more for less work. Another commenter theorized that the culprits might be high expectations, insufficient staffing, and a lack of empathy. In this episode, we talk about many of the problems with experiences we are seeing today and what we can do about them—and how we can adapt to the new normal. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience While many may be quick to blame the entire situation on COVID, many of the problems we are seeing today are also influenced by other factors. For example, many labor pool shortages in the UK are affected by population migration resulting from Brexit, which makes organizations hard-pressed to find warm bodies, let alone the right warm bodies, to fill their open positions. Also, some of the problems are cultural. For example, one reader shared her perspective as a Dutch person living in Britain. Then, of course, there is the computer to deal with, and sometimes it says no (Warning: Fruity language at the end of this video). Regardless of the causes for this shift in customer service quality, we must begin to repair some of the damage. Here are a few more key moments in the discussion: 1:38 Colin talks about his frustrations with flights to and from JFK Airport and the subsequent LinkedIn post about the world going crazy. 04:30: We discuss the declining customer satisfaction index and some of our listeners' responses. 08:05: We evaluate a commenters assessment that customer service quality has declined due to a shrinking labor pool. 12:40: We look at COVID-19 and how it may have affected quality of Customer Experience by raising consumer expectations. 17:12: We examine a listener's poor experience with Disney and how it is representative of a larger labor shortage problem around many larger corporations. 22:52: We explain how COVID did not cause all customer service issues but rather worsened previously existing ones. Specifically, we look at Brexit and economic downturn in Europe. 32:40: Ryan discusses a listeners review of good customer service and then we look at solutions for these customer and employee experience issues. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers! To vote, please click here. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an incredible technology with potential to shape the future of humanity. However, it is fundamentally flawed. Who messes it up? That's right, human programmers. The common misconception is that AI is a pure technological brain built from scratch without the risk of human influence. The truth is the program is incapable of performing tasks beyond the boundaries of the specific situations for which the algorithms were designed. Take the basic linear regression formula: y = mx + b. This simple equation is a program to figure out the output or "Y" by means of the input "B" through the algorithm "mx." All that an AI is doing can be summarized at a basic level in this equation. It is finding an output from an input using a fundamental algorithm. Since the AI is simply doing the math, the algorithm is the most important part of any AI. Understanding these principles, it is apparent what really matters in AI construction is the importance put upon the inputs in the coding process. Currently, AI is not capable of making these decisions; only human coders have that power. In this episode, we talk about today's AI and its flaws with our guest Broderick Turner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Marketing at Virginia Tech., and founder of TRAP LAB (Technology Race and Prejudice LAB). We explore the inherent biases built into programmers' decisions when making AI's—and the ridiculousness of a robot uprising with the technology we have today. So, What's AI Good for Then? Many of us perceive AI as mysterious as a magic trick. However, in reality, AI is a series of algorithms. In other words, AI is merely the means of producing an output from an input based upon the algorithm put in place by the programmer. Therefore, AI tends to work best when the inputs are limited. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:46 Dr. Turner introduces "Weapons of Math Destruction", the concept that AIs are merely opinions written in code, and what that means for AI. 05:30 We discuss the absurdity of the idea of an AI takeover and why this would be impossible with our current technology. 09:32 Ryan asks Dr. Turner to explain what scenarios AI is good for and we discuss some of the most successful AI products in the modern world. 13:09 Dr. Turner discusses his own private research including how AI is used in conjunction with YouTube thumbnails to determine optimization for view counts for advertisers. 17:12 We discuss how AI is used to determine which thumbnails will be the default based upon data collected through user trials and how AI is effective in this field. We then discuss how AI audits are conducted in these scenarios. 26:28 We discuss the results of the audits conducted by Dr. Turner and what this means about the user groups of the sites tested. 32:40 Dr. Turner discusses the racial and gender biases found in websites like Twitter and how the algorithms the sites use affect them. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could you vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers! To vote, please click here. There is a compelling and interesting Sci-Fi show on Netflix called "The OA." But I don't recommend watching it. I wouldn't watch it because this show was victim of outdated broadcast content strategy in a streaming-dominated world of television. However, I mention it because it represents what can happen if you neglect to update your customer strategy to invest in your Long Tail business model. The Long Tail refers to a different inventory approach made possible by the Internet. It represents the ability to have any number of options available in virtual form for the consumption of consumer groups of any number and still be profitable. It allows you to offer more options without regard for the shelf space needed in a physical space. The Long Tail strategy is particularly applicable to content, like books or television shows, but it likely has applications in many other business verticals as well. In this episode, we explore the implications of the Long Tail strategy for customer experiences and how we can learn a lot from Netflix's mistakes in this area. We also give you practical ways to apply these business lessons to your own Long Tail customer strategy. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience "The OA" is a show with two seasons, referred to as parts, that ends the second season with a significant cliff hanger. However, since the other three parts of the original five-part story arc were never made, it hangs there in the Netflix Original inventory unresolved, forever. It is an unsatisfying end to an otherwise compelling show. That's why even though you can watch the "The OA" right now, I don't recommend it. You will never get the answers you seek about what happened. We take a look at why this happens and what we can learn from it for your Long Tail customer strategy. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 01:36 Ryan introduces the premise of what happened with the Netflix show "The OA" and why their content strategy creates problems with their catalog. 04:32 Colin explains the concept of Long Tail and how it applied to Amazon's business model in the early days and later became an essential part of other businesses' offerings. 12:16 We discuss how Netflix might be a victim of using an old broadcast strategy to their approach to creating and renewing content, and how it can poison their Long Tail offering. 17:04 Colin asks Ryan to explain why humans need completion from a psychological standpoint, which Ryan ascribes to cognitive dissonance and our discomfort with feeling unresolved. 22:26 Ryan tells the story of France's Maginot Line and how fighting an old war did nothing to help defend the country from the Germans in World War II. 24:52 We explain how you can apply what we see happening at Netflix to your own experience and its Long Tail possibilities and opportunities. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers! To vote, please click here. Usually, we have one pickle per podcast. However, today's podcast has two pickles per podcast. Sure, it's still The Intuitive Customer Podcast, just now with an extra pickle. Our first pickle comes from Jane, who works at a large business-to-business company. They are implementing a Voice of Customer program to identify critical improvements necessary for the organizations. However, to get the insight they need to make sweeping changes, they need robust data collection. Jane asked us for advice on how to increase their survey response rates to get the data they need, and also how to get the local team to get on board with the data collection process. Our second, extra pickle, comes from Elizabeth, who asks, how is inflation affecting people's ability to buy? Since I am sure that we are all curious about this issue—both as businesses and consumers—we thought we would include this one as a bonus. In this episode, we respond to both Jane and Elizabeth's business pickles. First, we discuss how Jane can increase her response rates to her survey and get the team on board with the new initiative. Then, we dive into research from consumer research firm Attest that tells us a bit about how people feel about inflation and how that is going to affect their customer behavior. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Previous podcasts might help take a bit of a deeper dive on each of our listener's pickles. We had a podcast, that we produced in partnership with Attest, on the 5 Rules for Customer Research a few weeks ago, which addresses the areas of Jane's pickle. Also, we did an episode recently called, Inflation is Going to Kill My CX, and that addresses some of the ways to respond to inflation in your experience. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:07 We hear the background on Jane's pickle and what their company is trying to do. 06:37 Ryan shares perspective on how you can motivate people to respond to the survey in different ways, and Colin adds that considering who you are asking will also influence how you motivate them. 14:23 Colin explains how communication about how you will use the data you collect and being selective about how often you ask will both boost response rates. 20:44 We learn about Elizabeth's question regarding inflation, and Colin shares interesting statistics that he gleaned from Attest's US inflation sentiment tracker. 24:06 Ryan explains how the way we buy gas might make the feelings about gas prices more painful. 26:08 Both Ryan and Colin share their insights on how organizations can respond to customers that are bombarded with price hikes and personal cutbacks that build relationships instead of destroying them. We produced this podcast in partnership with Attest. Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

When I was still a lad, around 10, I brought home a school report that read, "Colin is the class clown." I am still proud of that report card to this day. Humor is an essential part of life and, surprisingly enough, business. There are numerous ways to use humor to your advantage in your customer strategy. You might have heard the phrase, "Laughter is the best medicine." That's because it is. There are many health benefits of laughter. Laughter reduces tension and increases trust in relationships. It can make an uncomfortable situation more bearable, which is good for everyone's mental health, too. Laughter is an excellent strategic tool in business, as well as in life. When we laugh, it feels disarming, and we are more willing to listen to people who make us laugh—because we hope they will do it again! When people are listening to you, there are many more opportunities to be persuasive. I always want my team to use humor, appropriate humor, of course. I also encourage them to read the room, or, to put it another way, ensure that their joke is coming at the right time. In this episode, we explore the many ways that humor can encourage your customer strategy in a positive direction. We also talk about the four theories behind what makes something funny, and have many clips that demonstrate what we mean. (Also, it is important to note that the comedy clips have a bit of fruity (aka, bad) language, so be careful if you play them at work or around your mum.) Key Ideas to Improve Your Customer Experience We discuss the four theories of humor, which, to be honest, don't sound funny at all. As we go through them, some of you naturally funny people will understand these concepts intuitively. However, for those that want to be more amusing and use comedy more effectively in their customer strategy, it is helpful to be familiar with what makes something funny to people. So, consider how you can apply these concepts to business, whether through the contact center and account management interactions, or marketing messaging, or even in the conference room. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 09:05 We begin with the first of four theories of humor, Superiority Theory, which is much better than the other three for sure. 14:51 Ryan talks about the second theory of humor, Relief Theory, and we all felt a lot better afterward. 19:50 Incongruity Theory is the third theory we discuss, but it didn't go at all like we expected. 25:05 The last theory, Benign Violation Theory, explains how breaking social norms or language meaning is what makes this type funny that Ryan probably made up because he needed a fourth one to finish out the list. 27:03 Colin asks Ryan to explain where sarcasm falls into all of this and then proceeds to use a bunch of British slang that really cleared things up for all of us. 35:51 Colin and Ryan break down how all of these theories can be useful in your customer strategy. We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers! To vote, please click here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

I was recently out and about and thought how happy I was that the pandemic was behind us. Many people must feel the same way because retail is bouncing back after two terrible years. However, it's not bouncing back to the way it was before. Customers have changed how they want things and organizations should take advantage of how a physical and virtual experience work together in their customer strategy. Bjorn contacted us with this very question. He has a business pickle that he wants help with, specifically, how to leverage the technology like Customer Science and online tools developed during the pandemic to enhance the brick-and-mortar Customer Experience. In this episode, we explore this subject. We give examples of some excellent versions of this integration as well as areas of opportunity for them. We refer to two other podcasts, Nissan and the Metaverse, that discuss these types of integrations that might also help surrounding this topic. We also give Bjorn and the rest of you the practical advice that can make this process work for your customers and your bottom line. Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Different people want distinctive experiences at various times. This idea is the foundation of Customer Segmentation and targeted marketing. When discussing an integration between online and physical Customer Strategies, it is essential to consider why people want one over the other or why they were motivated to be in the type of interaction they are at any given time. This understanding will help you create an integration strategy that enhances things for your customers rather than detracts. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 02:40 We hear about Bjorn's pickle from Bjorn himself and reflect on how the pandemic changed both online and brick-and-mortar interactions likely forever. 06:01 Colin shares a story about a recent shopping experience that was an excellent example of what is possible with the physical/virtual experience integration until they blew it at the end. 11:35 We talk about how the most important question to ask when comparing shoppers between online and in-person is their motivation for being there. 14:30 Colin shares some interesting statistics from McKinsey's "What's Next for Digital Consumers? May 23rd, 2021," which leads to a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of human interactions in Customer Experiences and how organizations should adapt experiences regarding that. 22:53 Colin talks about how Customer Science and the AI involved will enable more customer segmentation that was possible in an analog world. 29:24 We summarize our discussion and what it means for practical steps organizations can take to successfully integrate digital and physical experiences moving forward. Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. We hope you enjoy today's show. If you do, could vote for us in the People's Choice Podcast Award? It doesn't take long to cast your vote and it would really mean a lot to both Ryan and I. Thanks very much. Cheers! To vote, please click here. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.