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

The 5 Rules for Making and Managing Customer Memories A lot of Behavioral Economics 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. What Are The Five Rules? I love the subject of customer memories. From how they form to how they change to how they drive your customer loyalty, customer memories are a crucial aspect of your Customer Experience. Knowing the role your Customer Experience design plays in the formation of customer memories is critical to enabling customer-driven growth. Here are the five rules to bear in mind when making and managing customer memories: Five Rules for Making and Managing Customer Memories Embrace that we don't choose between experiences, but between the memories we have of experiences. Emotions create memories. Map your customers' "fishing nets." Define what you want a customer to remember. Discover how your customers retrieve their memories. What Should You Do With Them? Embrace that we don't choose between experiences, but between the memories we have of experiences. Full disclosure, this rule is not mine. Professor Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-prize winning economist, came up with it. It is a foundational element of your entire Customer Experience strategy. If you think about it, memories are what make us who we are. Moreover, memory is how we learn and what we use to make future decisions. For all of these reasons, it is essential to have a plan for making customer memories that drive value for your organization. Emotions create memories. How you feel affects memories in two main ways. The first way is that the strength of the emotion is the catalyst for memory formation. Those things you feel most strongly about are what you remember. The other stuff you didn't have strong emotions about? Not so much. The second way feelings affect memories is that they are essential. Professor Kahneman gave us the Peak-End rule, which says that what forms a memory is the peak (or most intense) emotion you felt and how you felt at the end. Therefore, we encourage you to determine what peak emotion you want customers to feel and when, and how you want them to feel when the experience concludes. Then, we want you take deliberate actions to deliver these emotions to customers. Map your customers' "fishing nets." There is also the idea that your memories are part of networks, which means that memories connect to one another. An analogy we use to describe this is a fishing net. If each memory is a knot in the fishing net, the connected memories are the knots that are attached to it. Now, if you imagine you have hold of a knot in a fishing net and you are drawing it up to the surface of a shallow pool, you can see that the connected knots will rise with the knot you are holding. Some knots will break the surface while the others hang out just below. We like to think of the knots above the surface of the water as conscious memories, and the ones below are subconscious memories. We want you to see if you can discover what memories customers will associate with the memory of your experience and use that to your advantage in your Customer Experience design. Define what you want a customer to remember. There are practicalities to consider regarding managing customers' memories. First, choose what you want the customer to remember. Second, have strategies in place to reinforce these memories. For example, if you manage a theme park and you know your experience has a strong emotion at a particular moment, like the top of the roller coaster as the cars start to plummet down, how can you help customers remember it? Many theme parks have identified that moment as a strong emotion and have cameras that take photos so their guests can see themselves in that thrilling moment right after they get off the ride. Even if the customer doesn't purchase the pic, that photo reinforces the exhilarating moment in the guests' memory right away. Research can help you find these valuable moments in your experience to reinforce. Moreover, research can help you focus on the areas in your Customer Experience that give you the most impact first. Our Emotional Signature® Research defines what drives value for your customers emotionally. Then, you can look at the customer process to see when there are moments with potential to evoke that emotion. Discover how your customers retrieve their memories. Helping your customers create fabulous memories of your experience does not do you any good if they do not remember them at the right time. Understanding how your customers recall experiences is essential. Remember the fishing net analogy we shared? We want them to pull the right knot at the right time and associate the memory to a moment when they make a buying decision in your area. Also, you should be aware that every time a customer accesses a memory, they re-remember it. This tendency can make the intensity of emotions increase. It's great when they get more positive. However, if you experience has the customer repeat what went wrong over and over to different members of your customer service team, you could be making a bad memory worse. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

What A Face Mask Can Do for Customer Segmentation Everyone has an opinion about face masks. Some think they help stop the spread of COVID-19; some think they are unnecessary and a nuisance; others fall somewhere in between. However, what you probably didn't know about face masks is they can help you customize moments of your Customer Experience so that no matter what opinion your customer has, they feel like you understand them. Key Takeaways This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses this essential and relevant chance to participate in customer segmentation. Customer segmentation, you might recall, is the opportunity to take your more substantial groups of customers and put them in groups based on a characteristic(s) they share. In this case, our segmentation example is regarding face masks by asking customers when they wear them to determine how they feel about the global pandemic. Here are the key takeaways from this episode: People have had different experiences during the pandemic this far, and it will affect customer behavior. Different countries and states had varying degrees of "lockdown," ranging from none at all to shelter in place. It is essential to understand what conditions your customers had to determine how they feel before they walk through your door. People will emerge from the pandemic in different emotional states about their safety. Like the conditions they experienced, people have varying degrees of regard for their safety as the world returns to the new normal. Some are terrified and will avoid returning to brick and mortar locations; some flout requirements to wear face masks, calling the pandemic a "hoax." It would be best to know what type of emotional state your customers are in so you can provide the appropriate response in your Customer Experience. We know that in some countries face masks are being politicized. This doesn't matter for this segmentation as we are talking about how Customers Behave. A Golden Questions helps determine the customers' emotional state regarding the pandemic. If you ask people how they feel about the threat of COVID-19, they probably won't tell you the whole truth, especially if they don't know you. To get to the heart of their feelings, you should ask a different way. A Golden Question is an example of a query that reveals how a customer feels about something without asking them about that something directly. In the case of face-mask segmentation, we think the Golden Question is, "When have you been wearing a face mask?" We have identified five likely segments of face mask wearers. We have determined the five divisions of face mask wearers here: Full Metal Jacket: Someone that has been locked in and is venerable or looking after someone venerable. The nervous face mask: Forced to go out for food shopping or work but is nervous. The social conscious face mask: They are concern but understand the science. They are not that worried about face mask but realize their social responsibility The pocket face mask: They have a face mask in their pocket/purse and will see what others are doing or will wear it in certain conditions. The freedom fighter: Never wear a face mask as I don't want government to tell me what to do. It's all overblown. It is important not to judge any group. Empathy for each of the groups will make this exercise more successful. Recommended Actions Segment your customers into the face mask wearers. Once you have asked your customer the Golden Question about Facemasks, you should then segment them into one of the five groups we identified based on their answers. Try to step outside your feelings. Like everyone else, you probably identify with one of these groups. You find their feelings easy to understand because you feel the same way. However, we recommend that you try to "step outside your feelings" and see the issue from the other group's perspective. Use the face mask wearer segmentation to customize your experience (and messaging) for each group. Since each group shares an emotional state about the threat of COVID-19, you can design responses that appeal to each group's unique psychological needs. For example, you can communicate to Full Metal Jacket face mask wearers all the things you have changed to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in your experience and send a warm, "Welcome Back!" to your Freedom Fighters. Recognize that what people need now is not what they needed three or four months ago. Customer's needs change based on the situation they experience. Before the pandemic, we would have said that having an easy experience was essential; after the pandemic, I would say safety is paramount. Adapting and responding is key to your ability to navigate the "new normal" successfully. To discuss this further, contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com. About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste I am fond of an old saying that goes like, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Part of the reason I like it is it points out that even something as grim as the COVID-19 Pandemic has a silver lining. In this case, it presents an opportunity to reimagine what you do with customers and take advantage of the environment of change that the "new normal" in business will offer. Key Takeaways This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how organizations respond to the crisis and which ones will be the most successful. There are similarities across industries in how business is handling the changes, some more successfully than others. Also, customers are in a different place than they were at the start of 2020 as well. Here are a few of the key takeaways from what we observe: There are three ways organizations have responded to our current economic climate: Reacting: They have changed but believe the changes are only temporary until we return to normal. Responding: They have made changes they intend to continue in the short-term, meaning for at least a year or so. Reimagining: They see the advantage of the disruption of business-as-usual and are using it to pull forward plans they were delaying. Loss Aversion is at play, also. Businesses are in a loss mindset, which can drive unusually risky behavior. In other words, things are bad, so some companies are willing to try something they otherwise wouldn't be able or ready to try. Different places have different experiences. Sweden didn't shut down; the UK did. The state of Georgia opened in April and California in June. People have had varying degrees of disruption to their former daily lives and will respond accordingly. The Kubler-Ross stages of grief model is affecting customer behavior. Where your customers are in the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—influences how they feel today. Someone who has accepted the changes will behave differently than someone who denies that the pandemic is real. There is likely going to be a second wave. Without a vaccine, people are likely in for another wave of "stay-at-home" orders in the fall. Will you be prepared? Recommended Actions Knowing that the crisis does present opportunity, we have been advising our clients to do the following as they re-open: Interpret new customer behavior. Can you observe customer behavior and the emotions that influence them to act that way? Identify the accelerants that are in your marketplace. What did the pandemic do to change the market in your industry, and can you capitalize on it? (If you don't know, you can find out with research.) Determine if there is a further segmentation. Are there new market segments or customer segmentations you can make based on your customers' experiences geographically or emotionally? Review your strategy. Do you have long-term plans that you can pull forward to the short-term? Do you have a plan if there is a second wave of infections? Redesign your Journey Maps. Have you introduced new nudges in your customer process that address the emotional needs people have in the "new normal?" Train employees in managing emotional experiences. What have you done to get your customer-facing team ready to handle customers' emotional experience? To discuss this further, contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com. About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs, thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to find out more.

General Show Notes: Have you ever driven a long way to a vacation, perhaps with kids in the backseat, and heard the whining query, "are we there yet?" Have you ever wanted to ask that question yourself? It turns out there are good reasons for that. It's called the Return Trip Effect, and we discuss it on this episode of The Intuitive Customer. Key Takeaways Assistant professor Zoey Chen from the University of Miami Business School published a paper with her colleague on the concept of the Return Trip Effect titled, "Are We There Yet?" Here are a few key takeaways from our discussion with her. The Return Trip Effect explains how the trip to an anticipated destination often feels like it takes longer than the trip back. Research narrowed it down to two reasons why it felt this way. When you go the first time, you see different landmarks for the first time that create time markers. The more time markers you create, the longer the trip feels. On the way back, you do not see them for the first time, so they might not be as notable, creating fewer time markers. The fewer the time markers, the faster the trip feels. Anticipatory feelings can contribute to how long the trip feels. When you want to be somewhere already, it seems like every second you are not there is an eternity. The return trip home usually does not carry the same anticipatory feelings. The Return Trip Effect demonstrates how outside influences can affect memories. In this case, feelings are making you remember how long it took to get somewhere. Whether or not it did take longer does not bear the same influence on memory. We know that most memories are subject to the Peak-End Rule, first introduced by Professor Daniel Kahneman. The Peak-End Rule says that what we remember about an experience is the most intense emotion we felt and how we felt at the end. However, memory sometimes begins before the event, in anticipation of it, which can be the peak emotion. The Sleeper Effect is a concept that your brain might overwrite a memory over time, replacing the experience with the anticipatory experience. This effect occurs because research shows that positive memories tend to outlast negative memories. People also remember the unique experience more. The first time makes a significant impression, but the second of third experience of the same thing does not. People also remember experiences with brands they feel are personally relevant, meaning brands that are part of their identity. For example, Apple is a brand I love and identify with, so I remember my experiences with them more. The information introduced after an experience, especially close to the conclusion of it while your feelings are still percolating and memories are forming, can change your perception of the experience. Additional information can improve your perception of an experience and also your memory of it. Recommended Actions There are seven actions you can take today to help you use what you know about how memories form to design into your Customer Experience a way to enhance customers' memories about yours. Decide what type of memory you want people to have about your experience. Different strategies enhance different types, so knowing what memory you want customers to have will shape your enhancement strategy. Strive to make experiences unique. Are you finding ways to create a novel experience for your customers so they remember them more? Consider the post-experience. Have you provided additional information that will improve the experience in customers' minds and thereby improving their memory of it? Remember that endings are essential. Have you designed a deliberate way to end the experience that evokes emotions like happiness and pleasure from customers? Balance building excitement with maintaining proper expectations. Be sure that you can deliver on any promises you make customers. Falling short sabotages your success in creating excellent memories of your experience. Design an experience that reinforces positive memories. People come back to you not for the experience they have with you but for the experience that they remember they had with you. Be deliberate. Don't leave the memory formation up to chance; be specific and detailed about how you deliver your Customer Experience to create the type of memory that brings customers back for more. To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

The 5 Rules to Managing How Your Customers Make Decisions A lot of Behavioral Economics 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. What Are The Five Rules? How people make decisions is a complicated and fascinating subject. Understanding the process and the role your Customer Experience design plays in it is essential to providing the platform to encourage customer-driven growth. To that end, here are the five rules to bear in mind when managing customer decision-making: Embrace the fact that customers don't always make rational choices. Strive to make customers buy from you intuitively. Discover your customers' decision-making strategy. Map your customers' habits. Design your experience understanding the different ways customers make decisions. What Should You Do With Them? Embrace the fact that customers don't always make rational choices. Before you can proceed in this management process, you should first accept that your customers do not make rational decisions all the time. Rationality plays a role, of course, but it not always the driving force behind the yes or no customers give you. This concept applies to the business-to-consumer as well as the business-to-business market. Many organizations have based their experiences on the idea that rational decision-making is the driving force. If you do the same, you run the risk of ruling out ways you can create a competitive advantage. By opening up your solution set to include the emotional in addition to the rational, you not only create a winning formula for winning customers and prospects over, but you also create a competitive differentiation that is hard to beat by your competition. Strive to make customers buy from you intuitively. Intuitive purchases are automatic and occur without the customers giving it a second thought. This situation is ideal for obvious reasons. However, it requires creating an easy experience that appeals to customers' need for simplicity while also meeting their needs. Discover your customers' decision making strategy. There is a multitude of ways that customers use their rationality and irrationality in tandem to make buying decisions. Some methods are based on how you position the offer, others on the customers' tolerance for risk; others are based on how much effort they are willing to put into the purchase process. We recommend determining how your customers make decisions and use that pattern to help you design an experience that leads them to the choice you want. When you can do this successfully, you create a competitive differentiation few organizations are willing to undertake. Map your customers' habits. Habitual behavior is one of the ways customers make intuitive decisions to go with your product or service. A trigger in your experience signals the habitual response to start. However, your competitors have triggers, too. When you can spot the triggers, either yours or the competition, you understand how to meet your customers or move your customers to a different behavior where you want them to be. Design your experience understanding the different ways customers make decisions. When you apply the previous four rules in an exercise we call Behavioral Journey Mapping, an advanced take on traditional journey mapping, you can see how the different touchpoints in an experience influence customers' decisions. You can then determine what experience you wish to deliver so that you can take deliberate actions in the appropriate moments to encourage or change customer behavior. The Behavioral Sciences do not work "in general," but instead work "in specific." To discuss this further contact us at www.BeyondPhilosophy.com About Beyond Philosophy: Beyond Philosophy help organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). We then capitalize on this by improving your customer experience to meet these needs thereby retaining and acquiring new customers across the market. This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here find out more.

Have you ever picked a line at the store only to realize that you chose the longest, most slowly moving line? Have you ever waited forever to receive a shipment and then felt like they owed you an explanation for what could possibly take that long? Have you ever had such a great time laughing and talking in line with other people that you didn't even notice how long you waited? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are a typical customer with common perceptions of waiting in a Customer Experience. Years ago, David Maister wrote a paper called "The Psychology of Waiting Lines." Maister suggests that sometimes waiting in lines can seem longer than it is. Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, wrote an article on Psych Central that details eight reasons that waits seem longer. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the psychology of waiting and what you can do to mitigate it for customers. We address Rubin's eight reasons and share what you can do about them to promote customer-driven growth.

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

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

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

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