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

Why Are Insignificant Things So Significant? Have you ever had the feeling that something about a buying experience didn't feel right? Chances are if you did, you didn't buy the product or service. Most times, how a purchase feels is a driver for our customer behavior. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores why insignificant things are so significant. In other words, why do the little things have such a big influence on what we do as customers? Also, we discuss how you can assess and address the insignificant parts of your experience to influence your customers to keep coming back rather than driving them away. Each of us has two parts of our brains that influence our buying decisions. There is what we call the Rational System, which is logical and methodical, and the Intuitive System, which is emotional and automatic. These two systems work solo or in tandem to help us make buying decisions. When it comes to your Customer Experience, the Intuitive System is the one that interprets how an experience feels. It is also the system that processes all the little things that occur in your experience, kicking up emotional reactions in the conscious mind that you are aware of, and processing emotional reactions in the subconscious mind that you are not. The difference between an insignificant part of the experience you are conscious of and one of which you are not is the frequency with which you encounter the insignificant element. For example, if you have several instances where your Intuitive System has processed an emotional reaction to an insignificant element of an experience in your subconscious, it will kick it up into the conscious mind with a caption, "X keeps happening, and I like/don't like it." Once you have a few varying insignificant elements causing emotional reactions, they join together to influence the buying decision. In other words, the insignificant elements gain significance. The question is, are the insignificant moments in your Customer Experience deliberate in their strategy to deliver a positive outcome or have you left them up to chance and are hoping for the best? Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why Are Insignificant Things So Significant 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.

What Customer Emotions Drive the Most Value 15 years ago, in Munich, I was asked a question I couldn't answer when presenting to an insurance company. The person asking understood what I was saying about evoking the proper emotions in a Customer Experience. No, he wanted to know how much money he would get back by investing in my idea. I didn't know. That was in 2004. For the next two years and in partnership with the London Business School, we undertook research to answer that question. After millions of answers from thousands of respondents in hundreds of countries, we discovered the answer. We discuss what we found in our research on this episode of The Intuitive Customer. We learned there are 20 emotions that either drive or destroy value in a Customer Experience. When I say value, what I mean is whatever an organization is trying to do with the business, whether that is increasing revenue or minimizing costs or increasing loyalty. The value part of this statement is a bit like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books. The twenty emotions are each part of one of four clusters. These clusters include: The Destroying Cluster: Evoke these emotions, and you will not increase value for your bottom line, but instead lose it. The Attention Cluster: These are the emotions your marketing department is responsible for, meaning they get the customers interested in what you have to offer. The Recommendation Cluster: The recommendation cluster has the emotions that satisfy customers and are also the foundational elements of a trust relationship, which can lead to a recommendation when the customer is asked for one. The Advocacy Cluster: These are the emotions that not only create loyalty but also make your customers your active advocates to their friends and family. Here's a funny story about the Advocacy Cluster. When the statistician was revealing the results of the study to the group, he referred to the Advocacy Cluster emotions as the "big daddies" of Customer Experience. They are because they deliver big daddy results. Many organizations have made progress about emotions in business. That is to say, they recognize that emotions play a part in business. However, we still have some work to do on being specific. To that end, in our global Customer Experience consultancy, we recommend knowing the answers to the following two questions: What is the emotion you want to evoke? Which emotions drive the most value for your organization? Without the answers to these two questions, you can't move forward to the Advocacy Cluster, at least not on purpose. You could luck into it, I suppose. However, I always heard that luck favors the prepared. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what customer emotions drive the most value 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.

Is Facial Recognition Creepy or Is It Just the Future? Technology can analyze people's facial expressions and determine what emotion they feel. It's called Facial Expression Analysis and it uses Facial Recognition technology. This technology presents the most authentic option for capturing data on customers' emotions during your Customer Experience. This technology is the next level of Customer Experience analysis and the future for the industry. Take a look here: https://beyondphilosophy.com/authentic-emotion-recognition/ In some cases, however, it is the now, for facial recognition technology anyway. Big brands like Walmart and KFC use facial recognition technology already. Passengers on Delta can check into flights in the Atlanta airport using facial recognition technology. I unlock my phone and pay for purchases using facial recognition technology. However, one must wonder….is this technology a little bit…creepy? In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, our guest Professor Bill Hedgecock from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota shares his expertise on facial recognition and facial expression analysis technology and its application in Customer Experience programs. Hedgecock is an academic marketer and an expert in neurology who studies how the brain works in decision-making and often participates in psychology-based research that uses this technology. Hedgecock begins by defining what the two technologies are: Facial recognition matches a face it has captured to other images in a database. Facial expression analysis determines the emotions felt based on how the face it has captured looks. As you can see, the data potential for authentic customer emotion capture is enormous with this technology. To be able to determine how a person feels during the different moments of an experience in real time is invaluable to Customer Experience analysis and design. However, like everything else, we have an emotional reaction to this technology. The idea that a camera is recording you during a transaction and analyzing what you might be feeling at different times is, to many people, uncomfortable at best and all the way creepy at worst. The future for data collection is Facial Recognition and Facial Expressional Analysis technology. So how do we get over these uncomfortable feelings about it? More importantly, how do we get our customers over their uncomfortable feelings about our using it? This episode explores the potential and the pitfalls of this innovative and intimidating software and how it can be used to take your Customer Experience to the next level. In addition, we share important ways for you to help ease your customers uneasiness about its use. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Facial Recognition and Facial Expression Analysis technology use 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.

People like choices. They just don't like choosing, at least not when there are too many options. However, if you give people the option of shopping where there are only two options or where there is a wide selection, people will nearly always choose to shop where there are many choices. Then, when they get there, they can't make a decision and feel frustrated and disappointed about it. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the issues of too many choices and the adverse effects it can have on how your customer feels during your experience because of them. We also share ways that you can make choosing easier in your experience. It's clear that too many choices don't do anything good for your Customer Experience. However, too few are a problem, also. Years ago, I was in Moscow at a store that resembles Best Buy. We were undertaking a Customer Mirror, where we act as if we are customers to get an idea of how the experience makes us feel. I decided that I would buy a webcam—this was before they were built-in to the computer. I went to the webcam section and what I saw there left me feeling gobsmacked. There were hundreds upon hundreds of webcams. They were all different in various ways, none of which meant very much to me at the time. I was paralyzed with choices. So, I did what any sensible customer would do; I gave up. My webcam story demonstrates one of the ways that too many choices have negative consequences for your Customer Experience. I lost my motivation. When we have too many options, we feel overwhelmed trying to sort through all the information to find the best option. We run out of energy for choosing so we don't, and the store doesn't make a sale. The other way too many choices have negative consequences for a Customer Experience is that it can change your reference point for satisfaction. If you have more options, you have more chances to pick the wrong thing. However, you can help your customers make choices that will make them feel happy instead of frustrated. You can help them navigate your offerings and feel satisfied with what they pick. First, you have to understand all the psychological concepts at work in the decision-making process. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why Too Much Choice is a Bad Thing 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.

Being the Guardian of Your Service Culture Keeping up your culture of customer service is not easy. Leadership in many organizations find maintaining the customer service culture they have established is a substantial issue. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, we spoke with three-time best-selling author, coach, and conference speaker Marilyn Suttle. She helps leaders and teams make subtle shifts to create breakthrough success for customers. Her clients have gone on to increase their scores for customer satisfaction and improved employee engagement. Many have also earned awards in their industry. So, what is the secret to maintaining your customer service culture to all these critical gains and accolades? Suttle says it is first defining your customer service culture and then, for leadership to take responsibility for being the guardian of it. Your customer service culture is essential to your organization. It is your competitive differentiator that gives you an identity in the marketplace. Moreover, a customer service culture is more than words on a page, more than your written mission statement, stated values or desired vision for your company. It's the actions you take day to day and the emotions you evoke in your customers when you interact with them. Suttle recommends you start by defining what your organization's customer service culture is going to be. Once you have an agreement, you then must establish standards that show you are achieving success and accountability measures to ensure you hit them. Next is implementation, a part of the process that has its challenges. Sometimes, when an organization lacked a focus on customer service before or had a much different style, change can be difficult for the team and can foster resistance. Also, your leadership team usually wants to show an ROI for all the time and money they have invested in this effort, which only adds to the pressure. However, you are not done with hard times yet. After running the gauntlet of implementation, you now face the task of upkeep and maintenance of the culture as you lose and gain employees and your workforce spreads across the country or even the globe. Suttle has much experience with organizations that have been successful in defining, establishing, and maintaining their customer service culture. She shares her unique insight into what makes it work for them along with many of their best practices that helped along the way. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about [TOPIC] 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.

Brand Or Customer Experience - what comes first? The ubiquity of brands is undeniable. With the constant exposure to them, we all feel like we know what a brand is. However, when we are asked to explain it, we often fumble. In fact, it is remarkable just how different our answers are. It seems as if no one really knows what a brand is at all. Branding is imperative to having an outstanding Customer Experience. The relationship between your brand and the outcome of your experience, at least in the customer's eye, has deep roots in customer loyalty as well. We are often asked which comes first, the brand or the Customer Experience? Sometimes people want to know which is more important. Others simply want to know which of the two should they make the effort to improve? The answers are: neither, neither, and both. Let us explain. Brand is the promise you make to customers. Customer Experience is keeping that promise to customers. Both of these are essential elements to your Customer Experience. Both of them are vital and you can't work on one without inherently working on the other. Or can you? This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deeper dive on the concepts of Brand and Customer Experience, and the complicated relationship they have with one another. We also explain how these two concepts are essential to forming Customer Loyalty. Best of all, we share ways that you can implement these ideas in your Customer Experience in practical terms. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about branding and 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 to Manage Uncertainty My team is the Luton Town Football Club. I heard the manager say about the team that you have to control the controllable. I quite like that phrase and I believe it is the key to managing uncertainty in your business for your customers. Now, he didn't come up with the phrase. It's a well-used epithet by many coaching organizations—and not just for football. The reason the saying is so well-known is it helps us as human beings cope with uncertainty. It means that even as the world is changing, and in some cases going crazy, you can still keep some parts of your experience in check. These are "the controllable" parts. In some ways, this is how you manage uncertainty. We talked about how to manage uncertainty for yourself, your organization, and your customers in this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast. Like so many things involving human beings, managing uncertainty is not simple. People don't like to risk making a bad decision. When they have uncertainty, making decisions is difficult. This feeling falls under the umbrella of the psychological principle of Risk Aversion. Human beings all have risk aversions, just not about everything and not all the time. Otherwise, no one would smoke or drive fast on a mountain road or invest in race horses. However, as a general rule, uncertainty and risk are things we just don't like. Managing risk aversion for ourselves and our customers is a vital part of what we need to address in our Customer Experience strategy. I often ask the following question when I am speaking to groups: Is business going to get easier than it is today or harder? Obviously, the answer is harder. Part of what makes business hard is the uncertainty of it. I once attended a conference for the CBI (Confederation of British Industries). Something one of the speakers said helped me understand how vital certainty is for businesses. It drives how much inventory they produce, how many people they hire, and how they plan for future products and services. Making these decisions is difficult when you are uncertain about the future. Unless you have a special gift, a time machine or an awesome psychic friend, none of us do know the future. That means that uncertainty about the future is built-in to all decisions. Learning how to avoid uncertainty is not an option. Instead, you have to learn how to manage uncertainty. Listen to the podcast in its . to learn more about [TITLE] 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.

Customers Are Irrational! Why? What Can We Do About It? Many times, when I talk about irrationality in customer behavior, people in the business-to-business (B2B) arena tune out. However, this is a mistake. All customers are irrational, whether they are making business decisions or consumer ones. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores customer irrationality. We talk about what we mean by it, how it changes our perception of an experience, and what organizations can do to design Customer Experience strategies that work with irrationality. Many years ago, I worked at British Telecom (BT). I was leading a team of 15 people in a project to purchase a new CRM for the organization, a large investment with big repercussions for our day-to-day operations. Naturally, you might assume since this was a business decision, I was going to be very "business-minded" about it, which is to say rational or logical. It turned out, however, that when it came time to go with the rational decision to buy one company's CRM that the team more or less agreed upon, my irrational or emotional side came out. Surprisingly, we went with the emotional decision and chose another company's CRM. There were a lot of risks with this decision, not the least of which was that it was more expensive than the other product we were considering. Spoiler alert: It worked out well with the CRM we chose. And thank goodness for that! Your Customers Probably Don't Know They Are Behaving Irrationally If present-day-me were to travel back to talk to BT-me and say I was behaving irrationally, I likely wouldn't have believed present-day-me. Most people think they are rational about decisions. What's more is that we had specifically designed the CRM decision to be as rational as possible. There was a pre-discussion about the CRM systems we would consider and how we would evaluate them fairly. We even had an elaborate matrix that would assist us in making the decision. But when push came to shove, we went with our instincts, not the company the matrix recommended. Even though we meant to make a purely logical decision, we didn't, for completely emotional reasons. Your customers are doing the same thing. The word irrational in this context means how we behave when motivated by emotions. Likewise, rational means how we behave when motivated by logic. Human behavior is rarely motivated by pure logic. Emotions almost always get involved. However, this idea is intimidating to many "business-minded" individuals. When you talk about emotions, you talk about touchy-feely subjects that don't appeal to people who pride themselves on making rational decisions. That is where the disconnect occurs. Ironically, the rational individuals are making an emotional decision about managing customer emotions. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what customer irrationality is, why it happens, and what you can do about it 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.

One thing many positive Customer Experience stories people tell have in common is they involve a moment that surprised and delighted customers. Customer loyalty consultants refer to it as Innovative Customer Experience, and it is the key to getting your customers to talk about your experience to everyone they know. Author, speaker, and customer loyalty expert Dr. Chip Bell is our guest on this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast. As a customer loyalty consultant to Fortune 100 Companies, Bell explains how Innovative Service is the kind that gets talked about, and what inspires the customer behavior you want. Bell says that while good Customer Experience is often appreciated, it rarely results in people talking, posting, or tweeting about it. However, when people have a unique experience with innovative service, they talk, post, and tweet about it all the time. Innovative service is the pleasant surprise, the moment they didn't expect in your experience. Bell describes innovative service as a moment that doesn't make customers say, "Wow!" but the moment that makes customers say, "Whoa!" These Whoa-moments are what people talk about in person and online. Innovative Customer Experiences are more than value-added. Bell says they are value-unique. The main difference is that customers expect your experience to be value-added. When they get more than they expected, however, it is unique—and that has a lot more value. Delivering Innovative Customer Experience requires a few important considerations: When have you been surprised in a good way by an experience or customer service in the past? How did it make you feel about the company? Did it lead to an increase in your business or you recommending them to others? What would be an appropriate and creative moment to deliver in your organization's experience that would surprise and delight customers? Do you have the proper culture for your front-line employees to deliver Whoa -moments to customers as they see fit in the moment? This episode of our podcast explores How to Create Innovative Service and explains why people feel more loyalty as a result of them. It also will talk about what you can do in your organization to create these Whoa-moments in your CX strategy that will get your customers telling stories about you to all their friends, families, and followers. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Innovative 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.

A significant influence on your Customer Experience outcome is how customers feel during your experience. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we say that emotions are over 50 percent of a Customer Experience. For good or ill, customer feelings have a profound effect on how they remember your experience also. Despite my belief and routine pronouncement of these facts, I am astonished by how many companies don't bother with measuring customer emotions. Those that do measure customer emotions don't think about how they will use it. Measuring customer emotions in real time is paramount for your Customer Experience strategy. You need to know when your experience is producing appropriate feelings and, perhaps more importantly, when it is not. "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" applies to this situation. To measure customer emotions, you need the proper tools to do a job. This episode of The Intuitive Customer talks about the tools you use to measure customer emotions in real time. However, here is some free advice: Before investing any time or money in customer emotion research, be sure you have a plan in place to use it. At British Telecom (BT), I learned the significance of having a plan for the research you receive. I was sitting in a presentation about BT's customer satisfaction that year regarding our products and services. Our presenter had a "why bother?" attitude. It was apparent to everyone in the room. I couldn't let it lie. I had to ask why she didn't seem to care about what she was telling us. Surprisingly, she told me straight out. "This is the third year you've employed us to do this research," she explained. "And every year we come back and tell you the same results. And every year you do nothing about it. Why do you bother?" This conversation predates my next reference, but I could swear I heard a distinct Mic Drop. She was right, of course. We hadn't a bloody clue what to do with the information she was sharing. Or, perhaps more accurately, could not have cared less about what to do with the research. It was a cultural thing. Also, it was before Customer Experience was the popular concept bandied about in corporate speak today. Research is essential to take your Customer Experience to the next level. Knowing how your customer feels during your experience and how it influences customer behavior is vital to your customer-centric Customer Experience Strategy. As Customer Experience consultants, we think measuring customer emotions in real time is a crucial aspect of your customer success. Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Measure Authentic Customer Emotions in Real Time 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.