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

Discover This Powerful Marketing Technique to Gain Growth

How you present information has a significant effect on how your customers perceive the message. It's no secret; it's why there are marketing departments. However, what is fascinating is that when we present information, we can take advantage of things that shouldn't matter when you think about them rationally, but that do matter quite a bit when it comes to customer-driven growth.

For example, if I were to tell you Forrester, a global research company, predicted that 1 in 4 Customer Experience professionals would lose their jobs this year, does that sound like good news? It doesn't seem to be to me—and probably not to you if you happen to have a job title with Customer Experience in the title.

Now, let's pretend that I told you Forrester predicted that 3 out of 4 Customer Experience professionals would keep their jobs this year. Does that sound as dire as the first prediction? In my opinion, it doesn't. I am not sure I would even mention it if it were positioned that way.

Both predictions tell you the same thing and have the same facts supporting them. However, one sounds like doom and gloom, and one does not. How we perceive the news about the future of Customer Experience employment is affected quite a bit by how we heard the prediction.

This phenomenon has a psychological term that describes it called Framing Effects. The scientific community defines Framing Effects as giving people information that does not change, but varying something about how you present it to position the data in a specific way.

Framing art is a useful way to understand how Framing Effects work for information. If you think about mounting a painting or photo, different frames change how you perceive the artwork. A different color frame might bring out a color in the picture, or a different material might present the art as more or less valuable than it is in reality. The way you present the art in the frame will affect how it affects the viewer.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses how Framing Effects change how people perceive the same facts or situations and why. We also discuss how you can use the way Framing Effects change communication to foster customer-driven growth or improve the Customer Experience for your organization.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.

Customer experience has a credibility problem, and it isn't the ideas. Forrester has found that over half of CX teams can't prove the ROI of their own projects — and predicts one in five CX programs will simply vanish as a result. Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton sit down with the person who built the opposite case.

Maersk Line, the world's largest container shipping company, conducted one of the most successful CX implementations Colin has seen in over twenty-four years in this business — a 40-point Net Promoter Score lift. That translated into a 10% rise in shipping volumes. The project leader, Michel Patterson, wasn't a customer experience professional. Her background was Lean Six Sigma and statistics, and she built the entire program without ever opening a CX textbook.

What she did instead is the part worth stealing — including one leadership decision that should have sunk the whole initiative, and didn't.

"I really had to go in with sound research to show that this was true. This is founded in science. This is about a sound business strategy." — Michelle Patterson

Why the person behind one of the best CX turnarounds Colin has seen had never worked in customer experience before.

The move Colin made before Maersk had even agreed to the pitch — and why it ended the argument on the spot.

The leadership call that should have killed the whole program, and instead created a groundswell nobody expected.

Why having almost no budget turned into the project's biggest advantage.

The unglamorous governance structure quietly doing more work than any dashboard — and why most organizations skip it.

If you've ever sat in a budget meeting unable to answer "what did this actually return," this episode is the corrective. It's not a framework pitched by consultants — it's the inside account of how one practitioner built the business case CX teams are still failing to build, nearly three years after Forrester first raised the alarm.

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

Connect with Michelle Patterson on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelpatterson/

Beyond Philosophy — Maersk Line case study (NPS up 40 points in 30 months, 10% rise in shipping volumes): https://beyondphilosophy.com/about/case-studies/maersk-line/

Forrester — 54% of CX teams can't prove project ROI; one in five CX programs predicted to disappear: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/predictions-2023-customer-experience-cx

CX Network, State of CX 2026 — demonstrating ROI and finding budget remain the top two barriers for CX practitioners: https://www.cxnetwork.com/cx-experience/articles/why-cx-budgets-are-won-at-mid-year-not-year-end

Medallia, 2026 State of Customer Experience Report — 66% of practitioners believe experience improved last year; only 17% of consumers agree: https://www.medallia.com/press-release/medallia-releases-2026-state-of-customer-experience-report/

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 89,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 760,000 downloads—and author of seven best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book 'The Intuitive Customer'. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan's new book was launched in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Before his first trip to Japan, Colin asked his mobile provider's chatbot one simple question — and the confident answer it gave him could have cost him a small fortune. It's a two-minute story, and it cracks open something much bigger.

In this episode, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton dig into why so many AI rollouts quietly make the customer experience worse, not better. Colin is convinced we've seen this movie before. Ryan brings a framework to the table — and Colin tells him, on air, exactly where he thinks it falls short. If you're putting AI anywhere near your customers, this is the conversation to have before you write a single prompt.

"There's nothing new under the sun — and we're rushing headlong into cementing poor experiences." — Colin Shaw

The chatbot exchange that made Colin screenshot his own phone provider — and what it revealed about nearly every AI rollout happening right now.

Why the real culprit isn't the technology — and the uncomfortable question most leaders never stop to ask.

"Inside out" vs. "outside in": the four ways an organization can relate to its customers, and how to tell which one you're really in.

The framework Ryan swears by for deploying AI — and the gap Colin thinks it leaves wide open.

The one thing you must do before you write a single prompt — and why almost nobody does it.

Because "should we use AI?" is the wrong question — and it's the one most leaders are stuck on. In fifteen minutes, Colin and Ryan turn it into the questions that actually protect your brand. Come for the chatbot story; stay for the argument that follows.

Resources Mentioned

Revolutionize Your Customer Experience (Palgrave Macmillan): https://beyondphilosophy.com/books/

Ayelet Israeli, Harvard Business School — Israeli, Ayelet, (2025) "Generative AI in Marketing," Harvard Business Impact, 526022-PDF-ENG https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/526024-PDF-ENG

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI): https://theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/2026/02/10/press-release-national-acsi-q4-2025/

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 89,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 720,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book 'The Intuitive Customer'. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan's new book was launched in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Colin asked his AI assistant one simple question — what time the film started — and it answered, confidently, wrong. A small thing. But it's the crack that reveals something much bigger.

A backlash against AI is building: data-center protests, job fears, "AI slop" everywhere. In this episode, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton ask the question most leaders are missing — what happens when that backlash reaches your customer experience? The answer runs through a psychological trap called the halo effect, a word you won't forget ("enshittification"), and one uncomfortable truth: the brands that win won't be the ones using the most AI.

"The best practice is this: you tell a customer when they're talking to AI, and you tell them when they're not." — Colin Shaw

Why one bad AI moment can poison trust in your entire brand — the halo effect.

"Enshittification": how AI deployed to cut costs quietly makes the experience worse.

The transparency line every company will soon have to draw — tell people when it's AI.

The real danger of AI slop isn't bad content — it's "voluminous mediocrity."

"Should we use AI?" is the wrong question. This episode gives you the right ones — where AI genuinely serves your customer, and where it quietly erodes trust — plus a way to think about it that protects your brand instead of gambling with it. Fifteen minutes now could save you a very public, very expensive mistake.

Resources Mentioned

Data Center Watch — local opposition blocked or delayed $98B of US data-center projects in Q2 2025: https://www.datacenterwatch.org/q22025

eMarketer — visible AI in marketing is four times more likely to cost brands trust than build it (Klaviyo & Datalily study): https://www.emarketer.com/content/visible-ai-marketing-four-times-more-likely-cost-brands-trust-than-build

Emplifi — more than half of consumers would stop buying after an inauthentic experience: https://emplifi.io/press/emplifi-survey-digital-authenticity-ai-report/

Cory Doctorow — the writer who coined "enshittification": https://pluralistic.net/

Ryan Hamilton, The Growth Dilemma (Harvard Business Press): https://store.hbr.org/product/the-growth-dilemma

Duolingo's "AI-first" backlash — Fortune: https://fortune.com/2025/06/09/duolingo-ceo-surprised-backlash-ai-first-company-announcement/

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 89,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book 'The Intuitive Customer'. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan's new book was launched in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton tackle the two processes that decide everything in customer experience: how memories get in, and how they get out. If you haven't heard Parts 1 and 2, start there — Colin and Ryan build on the "memories are structured like fishing nets" idea throughout.

Here's the uncomfortable truth at the center of this episode: a customer's memory of your experience isn't a recording you can trust. It's reconstructed, emotional, and easy to distort — and most organizations are accidentally reinforcing the worst version of it.

In this episode, Colin and Ryan cover:

Storing memories — why memories live in network structures

Retrieval — the Zeigarnik effect (why an active goal sharpens memory, and why it vanishes once the goal is met),

Forgetting — storage decay, the biology of chemical traces

The danger zone: misinformation — Elizabeth Loftus's famous "smashed vs. hit" car-crash study

The "So What" — why making customers repeat their complaint makes worse memories,

Key quote: "We don't choose between experiences. We choose between the memory of an experience." — Professor Daniel Kahneman

Resources mentioned:

Learn about Memory Maker Training and customer science: email contact@beyondphilosophy.com

Explore all episodes, free tools, and resources: beyondphilosophy.com/podcast

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 700,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Silos are the silent killer of customer experience — but for years we've only argued that from one side of the coin: the customer's. This episode flips it over. Colin and Ryan are joined by Dan O'Connell, CEO of Front, to look at silos from the side that actually moves a boardroom — the cost.

Front's new research, the Coordination Tax, surveyed B2B customer service, operations, and account management leaders and uncovered a startling baseline: the typical company spends nearly three hours coordinating work for every one hour it spends actually solving a customer's problem. Worse, 42% of companies don't track coordination time at all. It's the single largest cost in most customer operations, and almost nobody is measuring it.

Dan, Colin, and Ryan dig into why sophisticated software and AI have so far made the problem worse rather than better, why bolting AI onto broken processes just delivers "a bad job done faster," what the top 14% of companies do differently, and the practical steps any leader can take to start quantifying — and shrinking — their own coordination tax.

Why silos cost you twice: once in customer experience, and once in raw internal inefficiency you're probably not measuring

The three-to-one coordination-to-solving ratio, and why "normal" is far more expensive than leaders assume

Why more advanced platforms and AI have inherited the coordination gap and scaled it

The human cost: how coordination burnout quietly drives your best people out the door

What separates the top 14% of companies from everyone else

Practical first moves — measuring coordination, aligning cross-functional incentives, documenting the real process, and starting small with AI

"Teams are working around broken systems. AI won't fix that. Until companies address the coordination gap, the problem won't go away." — Dan O'Connell, CEO, Front

The Coordination Tax report is free to download at Front - Coordination Tax

Dan O'Connell is the CEO of Front, the customer operations platform built for B2B complexity. Before Front, Dan was the Chief Strategy & AI Officer at Dialpad, where he delivered the first set of generative AI features powered by Dialpad's proprietary large language model.

Since joining as CEO in March 2024, Dan has repositioned Front from a shared inbox tool to a category-leading platform for complex customer operations, leading the company past $100M in ARR in September 2025. More than 9,300 businesses rely on Front, which has raised $204M in venture funding from Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Battery Ventures, Threshold Ventures, and Uncork Capital, as well as executives from Atlassian, Okta, PagerDuty, Qualtrics, and Zoom. Prior to that, Dan was the CEO of TalkIQ, a real-time speech recognition and natural language processing start-up acquired by Dialpad. Dan has also held various sales leadership positions at AdRoll and Google. He holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.Follow Dan on LinkedIn

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 89,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 750,000 downloads—and author of seven best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book ' The Intuitive Customer '. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan's new book was launched in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton continue their deep dive into memory — arguably the most underused idea in customer experience. Because here's the uncomfortable truth: customers don't act on the experience you give them. They act on the memory of it.

Ryan introduces a brilliant analogy: memory works like a fishing net. Pull up one memory and you drag a whole network of related memories with it. Colin and Ryan then walk through the major types of memory — explicit, implicit, episodic, and the one that matters most for CX, evaluative — before landing on Professor Daniel Kahneman's peak-end rule and why it should sit at the heart of how you design every experience.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why memory behaves like a fishing net — and what that means for the moments you'd never think to design

The difference between explicit, implicit, episodic, and evaluative memory (and why the last one runs the show)

How habits live inside procedural memory

The peak-end rule explained: why customers remember the most intense moment and the final moment, and almost nothing else

Why a great recovery from a problem can build more loyalty than a flawless experience

Memorable moment: "You don't pull up one knot in the net. You drag the whole thing with it." — on why a single bad moment activates every adjacent memory a customer has of your category. Professor Ryan Hamilton

Resources:

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Qualtrics XM Institute on the financial value of emotion: https://www.qualtrics.com/articles/customer-experience/capture-financial-value-customer-emotions/

Beyond Philosophy's Memory Maker Training: https://beyondphilosophy.com/contact

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Nobel laureate Professor Daniel Kahneman said we don't choose between experiences; we choose between the memory of an experience. If that's true — and the science says it is — then most organizations are investing in the wrong thing. In this episode, Colin and Ryan explore how memories are actually formed, the difference between short-term (working) and long-term memory, and why your brand is really just a memory structure in the minds of your customers. They dig into how heuristics and biases shape what we remember, why humans are relentless pattern-recognition machines, and what all of this means for the experiences you design. It's the first in a three-part series on the topic Colin calls his favorite of all.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why memory — not the live experience — drives customer decisions, loyalty, and price tolerance

The difference between short-term/working memory and long-term memory (and why most of your experience gets "binned" within seconds)

How memories are stored as a connected network of "nodes," not isolated facts

Why a brand, from the customer's point of view, is simply a memory structure, making brand management a form of memory management

How customer expectations are built from memory, and what that means for "meeting and exceeding" them

Where heuristics and biases come from — what's innate, what's learned, and what's situational

The practical "so what" for designing experiences that customers actually remember

Key quote: "We don't choose between experiences. We choose between the memory of an experience." — Professor Daniel Kahneman

The hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

Resources & links:

Kahneman, The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory (TED): https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory

HBR, An Emotional Connection Matters More Than Customer Satisfaction: https://hbr.org/2016/08/an-emotional-connection-matters-more-than-customer-satisfaction

Beyond Philosophy training & resources: https://beyondphilosophy.com

Episode Summary

Trust is the foundation of every customer relationship. But here's the uncomfortable truth: most businesses assume they have it when they don't. PwC's latest research found that 90% of executives believe their customers trust them highly — yet only 30% of customers actually do. That's a 60-point gap. And it's growing.

In this episode, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton from Emory University break down the five rules that are guaranteed to build genuine, lasting trust with your customers. These aren't theoretical — they're drawn from decades of real CX work, rooted in behavioural economics, and illustrated with the kinds of real-world examples that make you realise how often companies (and people) get this wrong.

What You'll Hear in This Episode:

Why trust is earned, not given — and why that changes everything about how you approach customer relationships

The authenticity trap: why trying to appear authentic is worse than not trying at all

Why you should always tell customers the bad news early — and why hiding it always costs you more in the end

The Fiverr story: how a supplier destroyed trust before they'd even started the job

Why consistency and reliability are not soft values — they're heuristic signals that your customers use to judge whether they can trust you for the things that really matter

How the "emotional bank account" works — and why you need to be in credit before something goes wrong

Quote of the Episode:

"The danger is people will be too strategic about authenticity. The point is not to act like you're authentic. The point is actually to be authentic."

— Professor Ryan Hamilton, Emory University

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Colin Shaw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Connect with Professor Ryan Hamilton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prof-ryan-hamilton/

Beyond Philosophy website: https://beyondphilosophy.com

PwC Trust in Business Survey: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/trust-in-business-survey.html

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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After more than a decade of companies pouring money, technology, and consultants into customer experience, US customer satisfaction sits almost exactly where it did in 2013. Flat. Now AI arrives as the promised cavalry — and leaders are racing to bolt it onto everything before they understand what they're actually trying to fix.

In this episode, Colin and Ryan separate the smart play from the slow-motion mistake. "AI-first" is sound management: if AI delivers a better, faster, or cheaper experience than a human, use it. But "AI-only" — AI sprinkled over everything like fairy dust because leaders are terrified of being left behind — is where companies quietly automate themselves into a commodity and erode the one thing they can't easily win back: trust.

Using the now-infamous "microwave test" (brilliant for the peas, a disaster for the steak), Colin and Ryan dig into why so much CX investment has produced so little, and why the companies that win the next decade won't be the ones that adopted AI fastest — but the ones who knew exactly what they wanted it to do.

Why is a tool used without a strategy just an expensive way to make a bad experience happen faster

The critical difference between "AI-first" (smart) and "AI-only" (reckless) — and how to tell which one you're actually doing

The one question almost no organization can answer — and why you can't deploy AI well until you can

How over-reliance on AI quietly costs you on two fronts: differentiation (the same prediction machine is available to every competitor) and trust (the moment customers feel they have to double-check you, you've lost)

A simple, strategy-first decision framework for where AI lifts the experience and where a human still wins

The companies that win the next decade won't be the ones that adopted AI fastest. They'll be the ones who knew exactly what they wanted it to do — and never lost sight of the most important thing: the customer's experience.

US customer satisfaction flat since 2013 — American Customer Satisfaction Index

Research on cognitive offloading and weakening judgment — Societies, 2025

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book, "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things," Harvard Business Press. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Summary

Artificial Intelligence is transforming marketing faster than almost any technology before it. Brands can now create professional-quality advertisements in hours rather than months and at a fraction of the cost. But as AI-generated creative becomes more common, an important question is emerging: Are brands becoming more efficient while losing some of the humanity that customers value?

In this episode, Ben Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton explore the growing use of AI in advertising and marketing. They discuss why customers may care less about how cheaply content is produced and more about whether it feels authentic, trustworthy, and emotionally engaging. They also examine why AI may unintentionally create a flood of mediocre content, why consumers often value effort and craftsmanship, and how marketers can use AI without sacrificing what makes their brands distinctive.

The discussion reveals that while AI is a powerful tool, it is not a substitute for customer understanding, emotional insight, or great strategy.

Best Quote from the Episode:

"The companies that win won't be the ones using the most AI. They'll be the ones using AI without losing their humanity."

Ben Shaw

Key Takeaways:

Customers don't buy efficiency—they buy value, trust, and emotional connection.

AI-generated advertising may lower production costs, but it can also reduce perceived authenticity.

Consumers often use effort and craftsmanship as signals of quality and credibility.

As AI-generated content becomes widespread, "realness" may become an increasingly valuable differentiator.

Unlimited AI revisions can lead to creative dilution and "death by a thousand prompts."

AI won't fix poor marketing strategy; it simply allows marketers to produce more content faster.

Great marketing still comes from human insight, emotion, creativity, and understanding customer needs.

The most successful brands will use AI as a tool, not as a replacement for strategic thinking.

Why You Should Listen:

If you're a marketer, business leader, customer experience professional, or simply curious about how AI is changing the relationship between brands and customers, this episode offers a balanced and practical perspective. You'll learn where AI genuinely creates value, where it creates risks, and why authenticity may become one of the most important competitive advantages in the years ahead.

Resources Mentioned

Ben Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benshawuk/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

Ben Shaw is Group Head of Strategy at Smarts, a global PR and Creative agency. Ben also led strategy at BBH and worked client-side with fast-growth start-ups Wheely and Unmind. He's passionate about how brands can challenge culture convention and create ideas people want to spend time with, working on brands like Audi, Google and Burger King. Beyond advertising, Ben champions mental health awareness and rare disease research, drawing on both personal experience and professional curiosity.

Nostalgia isn't just "remembering the good old days." It's a bittersweet emotion—the strange mix of warmth, loss, pride, and longing that can make you feel good… even when the memory you're describing sounds objectively terrible.

In this episode, Colin and Ryan dig into why nostalgia is so powerful (and why it's everywhere right now). They explore the paradox: people don't just get nostalgic about the happy stuff—they also get nostalgic about the hard stuff, because it becomes part of identity ("I survived," "it made me," "we were close," "look how far we've come").

And for Customer Experience? Nostalgia isn't retro wallpaper. It's an emotional lever tied to belonging, meaning, and identity—exactly the things that shape customer decisions.

What you'll hear in this episode

Why nostalgia is pleasant and painful at the same time

Why people compete over who had it worse

How nostalgia acts like an emotional "anchor" during uncertainty

How brands "clone" nostalgia in advertising—and why it works when it's authentic

Quote of the episode

"Nostalgia isn't about reliving the pain—it's about reliving the meaning." — Colin Shaw

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Everyone's racing to be "AI-first." The problem? Customers didn't vote for it. In this episode, we unpack a practical decision framework for when AI should lead, when humans must lead, and how to avoid automating the very moments that drive loyalty (or churn). We also get into a surprising twist: why AI can sometimes sound more empathetic than people—and what that says about how most service teams are set up today.

What you'll learn in this episode

Why "AI-first" is usually a cost initiative pretending to be a strategy

A simple way to decide human vs AI based on the emotional and situational stakes

Where automation genuinely improves CX (and where it quietly wrecks trust)

Why AI can come across as more patient and empathetic—and why that's a warning sign

Best Quote from the Episode:

"AI-first' is not a strategy. It's a cost program wearing a strategy's suit." - Colin Shaw

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Customer Experience isn't short of activity—it's short of new ideas that actually land. In this episode, Colin and Ryan dig into why genuinely fresh thinking in CX struggles to break through, how industries get stuck in "normal science," and why it feels like we're doing more measurement… without more progress. They explore what a real disruption looks like, the warning signs that a paradigm is reaching diminishing returns, and how leaders can break out of the loop.

Best Quote

"When a paradigm hits its limits, the next move isn't 'do more.' It's think differently—and be willing to ruffle a few feathers." Colin Shaw:

Key Takeaways

Are we measuring more because we're improving—or because we don't know what else to do?

If satisfaction is stagnating, what "accepted" CX beliefs might be holding us back?

What would a real CX disruption look like—and are we brave enough to recognize it when it shows up?

Why You Should Listen

If you've felt like CX is turning into an echo chamber—same language, same frameworks, same playbook—this episode gives you a sharper lens on why that happens and what to do next. You'll hear how paradigm shifts actually work, the signals that the current model is running out of runway, and practical ways to find (and foster) ideas that can genuinely move the industry forward.

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

ACSI National Customer Satisfaction (Q3 2025 press release): https://theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/2025/11/13/press-release-national-acsi-q3-2025/

PwC Global Workforce Hopes and Fears (psychological safety): https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/workforce/hopes-and-fears.html

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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In this episode, Ryan Hamilton and I dig into the invisible "scripts" that hold everyday customer experiences together—those unwritten psychological expectations about what happens next, what signals mean, and how both customers and employees coordinate without even thinking about it. The trouble is: when technology (like mobile payments, kiosks, or automation) changes the steps, it can quietly break the script—creating uncertainty, awkwardness, and friction that wasn't there before. We explore why these scripts matter, how they differ by culture, and what leaders can do to help customers adopt new scripts without creating "prairie dog" moments.

Best Quote from the Episode

"A lot of customer experiences work because both sides know the script—until something changes and nobody knows what to do next." Professor Ryan Hamilton

Key Takeaways

What "scripts" are you unknowingly relying on in your customer journey—and what happens when they break?

If you introduce new tech, what clear "signal" replaces the old customer behavior that used to communicate intent?

How are you designing for different adoption speeds—early adopters and customers who want the old way back?

Why You Should Listen

If you're rolling out AI, automation, self-service, kiosks, or new payment methods, this episode will help you spot the hidden expectations that make experiences feel effortless—and show you how to redesign the cues and signals so customers don't feel confused, awkward, or abandoned.

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

Monty Python "haggling" clip (Life of Brian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2iZjxSGca8

Our Workshops: https://beyondphilosophy.com/motivational-workshops/

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Why do we actively seek out content that makes us angry? In this episode, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton explore the idea of consuming anger as an emotional experience. From doomscrolling and rage-bait headlines to viral customer complaints and outrage-driven media, they unpack why anger is such a powerful, bonding, and profitable emotion — and what this means for Customer Experience.

"Sometimes people don't just experience anger — they actively consume it, because it makes them feel alive."

Professor Ryan Hamilton

Anger is not just a reaction — it's often a deliberate emotional choice

People consume negative emotions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness) because emotion beats boredom

Rage-bait content works because it delivers safe emotional arousal with no personal risk

Brands can unintentionally create rage bait, losing control of the narrative

There may be no emotion that can't be monetized — but that raises ethical questions

Resources Mentioned

Overton's window - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMU0w4MP8Dc&t=5s

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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How will customers decide which decisions to hand over to AI?

As AI agents move to the front of the customer journey, brands are no longer competing for attention. They're competing for selection. And in many cases, they don't even realize they're being bypassed.

This conversation goes beyond tools and technology to examine the psychology of decision-making, trust, empathy, and what happens when AI becomes the primary decision-maker on behalf of customers.

🔑 What We Explore in This Episode

Why AI isn't replacing people—it's replacing decision effort

How customers decide which decisions they're willing to give up

The difference between commodity, complex, and high-risk decisions

Why behavioral segmentation matters more than demographics

How AI can demonstrate empathy—and why that challenges long-held CX beliefs

What it means for organizations when AI mediates the experience instead of them

💬 Best Quote from the Episode

"Once AI becomes the primary interface, organizations stop competing for attention and start competing for selection."

— Colin Shaw

Key Questions Discussed

Which customer decisions in your business are already being outsourced to AI—whether you like it or not?

As customers trust AI with simple decisions, how far up the decision ladder will that trust extend?

If AI becomes the most trusted voice in the journey, what role does your brand actually play?

Why You Should Listen

If you're still thinking about AI as a tool your organization uses—rather than a force your customers are using—you're already behind.

This episode will help you rethink:

Where AI fits in the customer decision process

Why "human touch" alone is no longer a defensible strategy

What leaders must do now to avoid being sleepwalked into commoditization

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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What does customer experience look like when AI starts acting on behalf of the customer?

As AI agents increasingly understand customer context, remember past behavior, and reduce friction, they begin to insert themselves between companies and customers.

That shift has major implications for CX, branding, differentiation, and how organizations stay relevant when customers stop visiting websites, apps, and even stores.

This conversation focuses entirely on the customer's perspective, not internal AI efficiency. It's about what happens when customers trust AI agents to search, filter, recommend — and sometimes even buy for them.

Best Quote from the Episode

"When your customer experience isn't good enough, you get replaced by something that is."

— Colin Shaw

Key Questions Discussed

What happens to customer experience when AI starts making decisions for customers instead of customers interacting directly with companies?

If AI becomes the primary filter of choice, how do brands stay visible — and avoid becoming invisible?

Which parts of today's customer journey are most at risk of disappearing altogether?

Why You Should Listen

If you're responsible for customer experience, strategy, marketing, or growth, this episode challenges some deeply held assumptions about how customers discover, evaluate, and choose brands.

Rather than focusing on internal AI use cases, this conversation looks outward — at how customer behavior is shifting and what that means for organizations that want to remain visible, relevant, and chosen in an AI-first world.

This episode doesn't give you a checklist. It gives you something more valuable:

a new way of thinking about where CX is heading — and why waiting is risky.

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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How are you really using AI — and how does that compare to others?

In this episode, Colin Shaw introduces a simple behavioural framework for understanding how people are actually using AI today — not in theory, but in practice — and why this matters enormously for the future of Customer Experience.

Rather than treating AI as a technology maturity model, Colin reframes it as a behavioural curve, shaped by confidence, trust, intent, and the consequences of being wrong.

Drawing on real usage examples, ChatGPT analytics, and current research, Colin outlines four AI usage patterns that people tend to move through over time. Most people touch more than one. Very few stay in just one forever.

The episode challenges listeners to ask:

Where am I on this curve?

Where are my customers today?

And where will they be in 3–5 years?

This is Part One of a new AI series exploring the implications of changing customer behaviour — and what organisations should be doing now to prepare.

"This isn't a technology maturity model. It's a behavioural one. People don't adopt AI in a single way — they move through patterns depending on trust, confidence, and what's at stake."

Colin Shaw, Founder & CEO, Beyond Philosophy

If you're:

wondering how AI will really change Customer Experience

unsure whether your organisation is preparing for the right future

or trying to understand how customer decision-making is evolving

…this episode gives you a clear, practical way to think about AI adoption — grounded in behaviour, not hype.

Resources Mentioned

Colin Shaw - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinrjshaw/

Professor Ryan Hamilton - http://linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 284,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 2% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience, Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Customer satisfaction has barely moved in over 30 years — despite enormous investment in Customer Experience.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton and Morgan Ward speak with Forrest Morgeson from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

ACSI has tracked customer satisfaction continuously since 1994 using the same questions and methodology across the entire US economy. And the long-term data tells a story that challenges many comfortable CX assumptions.

Rather than steadily improving as CX practices mature, customer satisfaction rises and falls in cycles — heavily influenced by pricing, profitability, cost-cutting, and broader economic forces.

This episode explores why satisfaction scores stagnate, why record profits often coincide with declining customer satisfaction, and why CX leaders need to think beyond journey maps and empathy training.

Best Quote from the Episode

"Customer satisfaction isn't a straight line. It moves in cycles — and when companies start squeezing for profit, customers feel it."

Forrest Morgeson, American Custoimer Satisfaction Index

Why You Should Listen?

If you work in customer experience, marketing, or leadership, this episode will challenge some of the most widely held beliefs in CX.

You'll gain:

A data-led perspective grounded in 30 years of evidence

A clearer understanding of why satisfaction scores fall despite CX investment

Practical insight into the economic forces shaping customer experience

A more realistic way to think about CX performance and ROI

Resources Mentioned

American Customer Satisfaction Index: https://theacsi.org/the-acsi-difference/us-overall-customer-satisfaction/

Forrest Morgeson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/forrestmorgeson/

About the Hosts:

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book launch in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

Morgan Ward is an adjunct marketing professor, weekly expert guest on The Take—11Alive's in-depth news program that explores timely stories through expert insight—With over 20 years of experience advising clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500s and publishing in top academic journals, she's passionate about decoding the symbolic and cultural forces that shape consumer behavior. Her work focuses on status, identity, and decision-making across sectors like luxury, retail, and tech. Beyond consulting, Morgan serves as an expert witness in branding and advertising litigation, bringing academic rigor to questions of perception, distinctiveness, and influence.

Follow Morgan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgankward-phd/)

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In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by Ben Shaw, seasoned brand strategist, to unpack the promises and pitfalls of synthetic audiences - AI-driven research used for faster, cheaper market research.

Synthetic audiences, powered by large language models (LLMs), can replicate customer segments and respond to creative concepts or product questions at scale cutting the time and cost of traditional surveys. But does it come with trade-offs?

Expect lively debate on the AI vs. LLM naming debate, the enduring value of ethnography and nuance, and practical tips for blending synthetic and traditional research to make smarter, more human-centred decisions. From democratising access to consumer insight to questioning the believability of robot-approved ad copy, this candid discussion highlights how to use these tools wisely.

Synthetic ≠ Real: Synthetic audiences use LLMs to predict human responses—they're powerful, but they're still not replacements for real people.

Direction not Proof: Treat synthetic audiences as a first-cut hypothesis tool i.e.great for inspiration, not yet reliable as stand-alone evidence.

Nuance & Minority Voices Matter: AI often defaults to the average response, risking loss of critical insights from edge cases or minority behaviours.

Democratisation of Insight: With the right data, teams from product to shop-floor staff can ask customer-centred questions directly.

Best Practice: Use synthetic audiences for speed and hypothesis testing, then validate with real humans—especially for high-stakes decisions.

HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar "Better, faster, AND cheaper isn't a trade-off anymore"

Harvard Business School study 'Using LLMs for Market Research'

Sales and Customer Experience—two critical functions that should work together, but too often operate at odds. This week, Colin and Ryan explore how traditional sales tactics can undermine long-term loyalty and create organisational silos. They share personal stories (including Colin's car-buying nightmare) and practical advice for aligning sales with your desired customer experience. If you want to sell AND build trust, this episode is for you.

Best Quote of the Episode: "If you can't proudly stand behind the experience you're creating, you've got a problem." — Colin Shaw

Key Takeaways:

✅ Traditional closing techniques can damage trust, even when they maybe effective ✅ Sales incentives often conflict with customer experience goals ✅ Leadership must deliberately define the experience they want to deliver ✅ Culture matters: a sales-first mentality breeds silos and resentment ✅ Aligning sales and CX is essential for long-term success, not just short-term gains

👉 Got a business challenge you'd like us to tackle? Visit www.BeyondPhilosophy.com/pickle and tell us about it!

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 284,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience, Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press 2025

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Trust in traditional institutions is eroding. As customers lose faith in advertising, government and even online reviews, they're turning to voices that feel most relatable: peers and communities. Edelman's latest Trust Barometer shows the most credible spokesperson for a company is now "people like me."

Ben Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton explore the decline of influencer credibility, the rise of community-driven word-of-mouth, the tension between authenticity and control, and why attention + trust will be the "coins of the realm" for brands in the decade ahead.

Trust > control – brands that over-engineer influencer content or product placement erode the very authenticity that made those channels effective.

Attention + trust are today's scarce currencies – in an AI-shaped customer journey where deep-fakes, fake reviews and scam sites abound, both are harder to win.

Community is the new battleground – brands should put the "social" back into social media: support micro-communities, forums and peer-to-peer validation rather than chase mass reach alone.

Influencers ≠ "people like me" anymore – audiences are starting to view most creators as a separate, commercial class.

Virtual influencers may be a short-lived novelty – unless treated as fictional characters with entertainment value and transparent intent.

Edelman Trust Barometer

G2 crowd / peer-review sites – cited B2B tactic to harness "people like me."

Case notes: Super Bowl celebrity ads vs brand recall, Vodafone Germany's virtual influencer, Colonel Sanders' virtual persona.

Episode Overview

When everything is one-click easy, do we lose something meaningful? Guest host Dr. Morgan Ward joins Dr. Ryan Hamilton to explore how the right amount of friction in the consumption experience can boost connection, meaning, and long-term use of the product—while the wrong kind just gets in the way.

Quote of the Episode

"Consumption, in some ways, has just gotten too easy." — Dr. Morgan Ward

🔑 Key Takeaways

Easier isn't always better. Ultra-frictionless buying can strip away the identity, discovery, and accomplishment that make buying feel meaningful. Effort signals value. From "chicken-juice coupons" to the IKEA effect, a little work can increase attachment and repeat use. Design friction by segment. Introverts may love self-checkout; extroverts crave chatty lanes—know which experience your customers wants Guide them but don't overwhelm. Keep choice in the journey (it's part of self-expression) but make it manageable and well-scaffolded. Use friction where it adds meaning. Experiential or identity-laden consumption experiences benefit from challenge and discovery; utilitarian tasks should stay smooth. Let search be satisfying. Curated discovery, small hurdles, or "surprise" moments can deliver the joy of the hunt without wasting time.

📚 Resources Mentioned / Referenced

· Research example on difficult vs. easy coupons and subsequent purchase

· The classic Better Crocker Effect based on the pancake-mix story (adding an egg restored pride and perceived contribution)

· Discovery mechanics (blind-box/surprise products) and guided choice in retail

· When should there be friction in the consumption experience and when should there not be?

About the Hosts

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press 2025

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321/)

Morgan Ward is an adjunct marketing professor, weekly expert guest on The Take—11Alive's in-depth news program that explores timely stories through expert insight—With over 20 years of experience advising clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500s and publishing in top academic journals, she's passionate about decoding the symbolic and cultural forces that shape consumer behavior. Her work focuses on status, identity, and decision-making across sectors like luxury, retail, and tech. Beyond consulting, Morgan serves as an expert witness in branding and advertising litigation, bringing academic rigor to questions of perception, distinctiveness, and influence.

Follow Morgan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgankward-phd/)

In this episode, Colin Shaw shares a recent personal experience with a major brand that imposed a 'gag order' (NDA) after a poor service experience — and how this reflects a deeper organizational issue: silos. Together with Professor Ryan Hamilton, Colin explores why siloed thinking leads to incoherent customer experiences, how internal motivations can conflict with CX goals, and what leaders must do to ensure learning, trust, and advocacy remain priorities. A must-listen for CX professionals and senior leaders alike.

Best Quote:

"Who decides? That is the question every leadership team should ask — and answer wisely."

Key Takeaways:

Organizational silos often lead to decisions that prioritise risk management over customer experience.

Legal and PR functions may act rationally within their remit, but this can result in poor CX outcomes without CX leadership involvement.

Service recovery is a powerful opportunity to build trust and advocacy — if handled thoughtfully.

The presence of gag orders may indicate systemic issues that need urgent attention.

CX leaders must break silos, promote organisational learning, and ensure customer trust is considered in every critical decision.

Register for the 'Unleash AI. Reimagine CX launch event' by NiCE Cognigy

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About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 284,000 followers and 87,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience, Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press 2025

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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Episode Overview

Ever buy something you couldn't wait to get—and then let it sit in the box for days (or weeks)? You're not alone. Guest host Morgan Ward joins Ryan Hamilton to explore why we often love the pursuit of products more than the possession of them.

From unopened tools and "someday" sweaters to the viral Stanley Cup craze, they unpack the psychology of anticipation, dopamine, and why the thrill fades once the package arrives.

This episode reveals what's really driving that "add to cart" impulse—and how brands can design experiences that move customers from wanting to using.

"Apparently, the most appealing part of consumption for me is the buying—not the using." — Dr. Morgan Ward

Anticipation feels better than ownership. Dopamine spikes during the chase, making the search itself deeply rewarding. "Maybe later" kills momentum. Adding something to a wish list or cart often satisfies the craving—so we never come back to buy. Trends have expiration dates. When products are tied to social signaling (like the Stanley Cup craze), they must be used now or lose their power. Experience is the new product. Pop-ups, fittings, and even unboxing rituals add emotional value that can't be postponed. Design for immediacy. Products that promise instant results or gratification inspire customers to open—and love—them right away.

Discussion of anticipatory utility and the hedonic treadmill in consumer behavior

Norton, Michael I., Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely. "The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love." Journal of consumer psychology 22, no. 3 (2012): 453-460.

About the Hosts

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of 'The Intuitive Customer' book. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press 2025

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-hamilton-49b3321/)

Morgan Ward is an adjunct marketing professor, weekly expert guest on The Take—11Alive's in-depth news program that explores timely stories through expert insight—With over 20 years of experience advising clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500s and publishing in top academic journals, she's passionate about decoding the symbolic and cultural forces that shape consumer behavior. Her work focuses on status, identity, and decision-making across sectors like luxury, retail, and tech. Beyond consulting, Morgan serves as an expert witness in branding and advertising litigation, bringing academic rigor to questions of perception, distinctiveness, and influence.

Follow Morgan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgankward-phd/)

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by guest host Ben Shaw to explore the high-stakes world of rebranding.

From Cracker Barrel's logo backlash to Jaguar's radical design overhaul, they unpack what happens when brands chase new audiences at the expense of their loyal customers. The conversation dives into the tension between rebranding vs. repositioning, why heritage brands face special challenges, how politics and culture can hijack brand decisions, and practical lessons for leaders trying to grow without alienating their core base.

Rebrand ≠ Reposition: A visual refresh is not the same as shifting your audience or your value proposition, conflate the two at their peril.

Respect the Core Customer: Growth shouldn't mean neglecting the customers who got you here; woo them as deliberately as you pursue new ones.

Brand Stretch Matters: Broad idea-driven brands (e.g., Virgin, Crocs) can pivot more easily than heritage or status-driven brands (e.g., Jaguar, Burberry).

Change Carries Political Luggage: In today's climate, even aesthetic changes can be interpreted as taking sides so plan for backlash and communication.

Experience vs. Marketing: Quietly improving the customer experience often triggers less resistance than highly visible logo or messaging changes.

Segment Conflicts Are Real: Pursuing one segment often pushes you away from another.

Sub-brands Can Create Safe Space: When segments clash, consider sub-brands or status tiers to reduce friction (e.g., Nike's sport verticals, Burberry's London/Brit/Brit Prorsum).

Heritage is an Asset and a Trap: Brands built on nostalgia or legacy often risk losing their most valuable equity if they modernise too aggressively.

Ryan Hamilton & Annie's book: The Growth Dilemma – on managing relationships between customer segments.

Brand case studies: Cracker Barrel, Jaguar, Burberry, Kohl's, Nike, Crocs, Virgin, Michael Kors.

Does Giving Gifts Mean More Business?

It is the season of giving. No doubt, many of you sent out your gifts to your clients, suppliers, and other business associates already. But will your gifts result in more business? They might, and they might not. Like most things about interpersonal relationships, it depends on a lot of different variables.

Researchers study gift giving and have for many years. In the beginning, it was considered a Sociology area, which suggested that gift-giving was primarily an exercise in reciprocity. The idea behind gift-giving was that recipients should return the favor. Because of this fundamental concept, gift-giving became a way to move a relationship forward with someone.

Today, research has changed regarding gift-giving. While there is still the fundamental idea of reciprocity at work, there are also new agendas observed in the gift-giving area.

One of the essential variables in gift-giving success is the alignment between the giver and receiver. Both parties must be in sync as far as relationship status, agendas, reciprocity, and value.

Ironically, this variable is often the one that isn't, forgive the pun, present. Research on gift-giving shows that misalignment is the norm for when gift-giving goes wrong, and usually, it has to do with agendas.

Now, many of you might think, agendas? Besides being nice, is there any other agenda behind gift-giving? It turns out that there is more going on with gifts than you might have thought. Many different agendas exist with gift-giving, and they may or may not help you win more business.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores all the agendas and misfires on gift-giving and what you can do to optimize them. Guest host Marketing, Professor Morgan Ward from Emory University, shares her insight on gift-giving and what makes it go wrong. Moreover, we talk about what kinds of gifts are best for deepening a relationship and what you can do to become a better gift-giver for business and beyond.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Psychology has a lot of influence on customer behavior. When it comes to making decisions, we like to find ways to make them more manageable. Anchoring and Adjustment is a mental short cut or heuristic. We use to help evaluate numbers.

Anchoring and Adjustment help us generate numbers. It works like this: First, there is a base number established either by the individual or an outside influence. Then, you adjust up or down from there. It helps simplify decision making.

For example, if you needed to estimate the height of a tree, it can be hard to come up with an estimate just by looking at it. But if there is a building next to it, and you know how many stories the building has, you can use the approximate building height to determine the baseline. Then, adjust the height of the tree up or down from the baseline as appropriate.

Retailers you Anchoring and Adjustment, too. Neiman Marcus, the luxury retailer, does it in its annual holiday catalog. The "Fantasy Gifts" featured in the opening spread and their sky-high prices make the rest of their high-priced items look like a relative bargain.

However, it isn't just the upscale retailers who use this psychological phenomenon. Warehouse stores do it, too, by putting their most expensive items right at the entrance of their retail locations. If you see a $3,000 TV upon arrival, won't the 30-pound jar of pickles seem to be a steal at $50?

This episode of the Intuitive Customer explores Anchoring and Adjustment and the influence it exerts on customer behavior. We also reveal how you can follow the lead of retailers of all types to benefit your Customer Experience strategy, as well as your bottom line.

Anchoring and Adjustment is a specific heuristic used to generate numbers;

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The 7 Telltale Signs of a Company NOT Committed to Customers

I discovered many years ago that I could determine whether a company was committed to customers pretty quickly. When I thought about how I recognized it, I found that organizations that did not commit to customers had some shared company culture cues that indicated where their focus was.

The ideas behind this discovery later became my second book, Revolutionize Your Customer Experience. I developed for the book my Native to Natural™ model, which measures how customer-centric a company culture is.

There are four types of companies arranged on a spectrum. It starts with Naïve, which are the least customer-focused companies and are unaware of it. Next come the Transactional and Enlightened stages, which are firms that now recognize the problem and are consciously working to change their behavior to have a customer-focus. Finally, there are Natural organizations, which are the most customer-focused companies that put the customer at the center of everything they do without thinking about it.

In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we use the Naïve to Natural model to help organizations realize where they are with their present Customer Experience regarding Customer Centricity. It also helps them see areas where they need to improve to get where they want to go. This exercise requires self-analysis and answering critical questions about the priority placed on Customer Experience.

Few companies, if any, would want to be known for not committing to customers. If you asked most senior management a question like, "True or False: The customer should be at the center of everything you do?", few of them would say false. Therefore, our questions ask about day to day operations and decisions, which are where the rubber meets the road concerning customer focus.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast shares the seven questions that get an organization started at determining whether they have the customer focus that they want to compete in today's crowded and cutthroat business landscape. The answers to these questions reveal the telltale signs of a company that is or, perhaps more importantly, isn't committed to the customer.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

What is Really Happening on Black Friday?

It's that time of year again: Black Friday sales are next week. A US tradition, Black Friday was named for the idea that it is the day retailers finally move out of the red for the year and into the black of profits. It is also the official kickoff of the holiday shopping season.

However, what is really going on here? Why do people trample through the doors of a retailer they likely frequent three times a week most months mere hours after polishing off far too much food than is healthy for them? How to marketers compel people to stand in the dark and cold for hours to shop in their stores?

Black Friday is the way it is because of the psychological concept called Scarcity. Scarcity is a motivator like none other for customer behavior—specifically their buying behavior.

Scarcity stems from the idea that resources we think are harder to come by are more valuable. In the distant past, our ancestors did not have access to the jumbo pack of Cheetos at their friendly big-box retailer. Instead, they had to compete for food, water, and shelter with other humans. For them, overcoming Scarcity was a matter of survival.

No one could argue that buying a discounted giant flat-screen TV for pennies on the dollar one Friday morning in November is a survival instinct. However, the motivations behind our behavior have the same origins. We try harder when something is hard to get. What's an elbow in the face of your fellow shopper when you are talking about 4k Ultra HD

Now, Black Friday is next week in the US, but it is not the only time we see this behavior or even the only country where it happens. The idea of a day of big sales that bring out the animal in us is global. Similar events occur in the UK (the January Sales), and China (Single's Day). Even other sales in the US can create a frenzy, like Presidents' Day sales or Labor Day "Events."

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore the concept of Scarcity and how it affects customer behavior, both good and bad. We also talk about how marketers create the idea of scarcity in the minds of consumers, and the effect it can have on Customer Experience and their bottom line.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Marketing Yourself

We usually talk about how you should use the principles of brand management to deliver excellent Customer Experience. However, brand management is an essential part of your job search, as well.

In other words, marketing your Customer Experience has given you everything you need to know about selling yourself. Moreover, it has taught you all you need to know about improving your experience as a person.

For example, one of the first things you do in a job search is to determine what position you want. In brand management, we call this a positioning statement. In a job search, we call it, well, a positioning statement. You need a firm positioning statement to ensure that you get a job you want as the next step of your career.

Positioning statements are usually followed by building your brand. In brand management, it means that you begin a process that delivers a consistent experience, which creates a reputation for your product or service. In a job search, you have similar needs for a steady reputation. Your reputation becomes your brand, and hiring managers need to choose yours over the competitions'.

It turns out, each of the steps and their related support work as you continue along the process of brand management align with what each of us needs to do with our career and current job search. It could be that everything you need to know about marketing yourself you already know from your experience marketing Customer Experiences.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we delve into all the things you should do to manage your personal brand in a job search. From marketing yourself to managing the needs of the hiring manager to making strategic moves that serve your long-term goals, you will discover that getting the job you want is a lot like what you want to do at the job once you get it.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Tribalism: Are You In with The In-Crowd?

As humans, the need to belong is essential to us. Most of us have a deep need to feel we are part of a broader community that shares our values and interests. In other words, we need to find our tribe.

Tribes are connections between people that form communities, which can be formal or informal. Sometimes tribes are associated with where you were born and from whom, which are the formal types of tribes. However, they can also be the result of where you shop, what you drive, or which device you prefer to watch your cat videos on. The latter is the informal type—and a significant asset to your marketing strategy.

Some brands have been very successful in fostering tribes. As you may know, I love Apple products. I was in Apple the other day, and I had a sense that it was more like a club than a store. As I surveyed the group, I felt like I was with "my people."

Now, I didn't know the other people there. It could be that the only thing I had in common with every other person in that store was that I like Apple products. However, that is enough for me to feel like I am part of the group, the In-Crowd, as it were.

Also, that feeling of belonging ramps up the Customer Loyalty. The emotional bond you have with your Tribe that is associated with your sense of self makes you feel emotional toward the brand. The connections that form as a result of these feelings form a foundation on which you can build a strong sense of Customer Loyalty with your product or service.

When your brand forms a community amongst your customers, you are also creating a tribe. However, it is almost as essential to have people that are not in your tribe to help your tribe thrive. In some ways, having outsiders makes you feel closer as a group.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we discuss what a tribe is, how they can form, and how you can foster one with your brand. You may discover that the community your customers share does a lot of the hard work for marketing your brand and Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

People know an expensive brand when they see one. They also can spot a discount retailer at fifteen paces.

So, why do they get it wrong so often?

They get it wrong because of a concept called Price Image.

Price Image is a concept that describes how people form impressions about whether your brand is high- or low-priced based on many non-price indicators. These ideas have a lot of influence on customer behavior. However, the Price Image is different from actual prices. Instead, Price Image is more like your reputation for prices; it would be how your customers describe your prices when you are not around. Another way to look at it is Price Image is where your price and brand intersect.

To demonstrate what we mean consider the following:

As you can see, each brand has a reputation, and none of these questions agrees with it. It is their Price Image, which these brands have carefully cultivated through their Customer Experience choices.

However, you don't have to be careful about it. The Price Image is a product of the details included in your Customer Experience, and they tell customers everything about your prices long before they ever see a price tag. In other words, every brand has a Price Image, whether you were deliberate about what it is or not.

So, how is it that people form these impressions? Price Image is the result of two things, the prices themselves and lots of what we call "non-price" information. If you focus on your pricing, you can manage at least part of your Price Image. However, the significant influence is non-price influences. Appearance, atmosphere, employee type, and other environmental factors create these customer perceptions.

Unfortunately, a brand's Price Image is not always correct. Also, it can be challenging to change an established Price Image and tricky to navigate when you try to make the transition.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deep dive into the idea of Price Image and how customers form them about your brand. We discuss what signals you send through your Customer Experience that affect your customers' perception of price and what you should consider if you want to change that impression one way or the other.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Are We Talking Ourselves Into a Recession

You hear it all the time on financial media. "Consumer Confidence is low." It describes how people think that something terrible is going to happen to the economy, and it affects their spending behavior.

Confidence is a feeling, not a fact or a physical item. However, this emotional reaction has serious implications on the economy, as well as your bottom line.

Not only is consumer confidence an emotional concept, but it is also contagious. Sometimes having it makes other people have it, too. Other times not having it makes people lose theirs also.

So, does that mean when we hear things like, "consumer confidence is low," and the "stock market was down XX points today," that we are talking ourselves into a recession?

Recessions are an economic reality. They occur when the economy is out of balance in some way or operating inefficiently with its resources. In many ways, recessions get an economy back on track. So, in some ways, we should be grateful for a downturn. However, if you are one of the people caught in an economic correction and lose your job or your livelihood, you likely have a different opinion of it.

There are objective or physical forces that can affect whether a recession occurs. For example, natural disasters can disrupt the flow of goods, whether it's a Hurricane that stops logistics or a drought that kills crops. Also, human-made disasters like wars can affect the economy, too.

However, there are also subjective forces that affect the likelihood of a recession. Studies have shown that things like the weather or the win or loss of the British National Soccer Team in the playoffs can affect how the stock market performs. And, yes, things like consumer confidence.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how much influence our emotions have on things like the stock market or the economy. We also talk about how confidence—or the loss of it—can be contagious and wreak havoc on both our business and personal bottom line. Finally, we use what we have learned through past recessions to strategize for you to come out ahead of the competition on the other side if we do have a recession.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Unless you serve robots exclusively, your customers are humans. Human feelings influence our actions and drive customer behavior. Therefore, you must design a Customer Experience that makes your customers feel a way that drives value for your organization.

In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have said for nearly 20 years that customer's emotions account for over half of the outcome in any Customer Experience. At first, people thought we were crazy, but now, many organizations understand the significance of emotions in their Customer Experiences.

However, too many organizations do not get specific enough about customer emotions. They are content with determining whether the customers feel positive or negative about their experience or whether the customer's assessment was good or bad. In our Customer Experience consultancy, we feel like this general approach is not taking customer emotions far enough.

We recommend choosing an emotional outcome that is specific and then designing a Customer Experience that has actions built into it to evoke those emotions. In other words, we don't want the customer to feel "satisfied" with their experience; we want them to feel "cared for" and "valued."

Some organizations have embraced this concept, too. They have designed experiences that evoke feeling cared for and valued from their customers. However, they don't measure success in this area. Instead, they continue to monitor their operational efficiencies, margin percentages, and sales growth in their measurements.

It is a mistake not to measure your success in evoking the proper customer emotions. After all, you wouldn't tell one of your managers to design a program to achieve a goal and then never keep track of whether it works. That is ridiculous. Only a fool wouldn't measure their results.

However, this emotional perspective to measurement can be challenging for many organizations. Measuring success in a psychological strategy can seem strange and unachievable. Many firms do not know where to begin. That's where we can help.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores The Secrets of Measuring Customer Emotions. We review the four essential steps to emphasizing customer emotions as an outcome in your Customer Experience design strategy. Then, we determine how you can measure your success afterward with practical, real-world tactics.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Understanding Customer Habits: A Practical Guide

Habits can be excellent or terrible for your Customer Experience. When it is the customer's habit to buy from you, then there is not a problem. However, when it goes the other way, well, let's just say some habits are meant to be broken.

Understanding what habits are and how they work is vital to your Customer Experience. When you understand customers' habits, how they form and how they are governed by the mind, you have a much better chance of making those crucial changes in customer behavior to become their habitual brand.

So, what are habits? Habits are automatic behavior for a repetitive action that is triggered by a cue. Maybe the cue is a time of day or an activity. Perhaps it is the aisle at the grocery store where customers do most of their shopping. The important thing about triggers or cues is that you must disrupt them somehow to interrupt the automatic response that will follow.

When discussing habits, we talk a lot about the two systems of thinking that we all share. Originally conceived of by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, there are two systems we use in our thinking. Kahneman called them System One and System Two. System One is fast and emotional thinking and it is always running in the background ready to jump in when needed for making decisions. System Two is slow and deliberate thinking that is used for logic and reasoning. It is not always running, however. Instead, System Two is resting a lot of the time.

We used the two systems of thinking in our own book The Intuitive Customer. We called System One the Intuitive System and System Two the Rational System. As it turns out, System One or the Intuitive System is the part of our thinking that handles habits. That means if you want to change behavior you need to appeal to the quick and automatic thinking of the Intuitive System.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer takes a deeper dive into habits and how they work in our brains. We also share a practical guide on how we can use the way habits work—and the system of thinking that governs them—to change them for the better.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

What is the Secret of Airbnb?

I would never be an Airbnb host. Having a stranger staying in my house doesn't fit with my personality.

That said, there are a lot of people that would do it. Airbnb has over seven million listings in 100,000 cities worldwide and reported revenues of $1 Billion (with a b) in the second quarter of this year. They are so successful; they have plans to become publicly traded in 2020.

That's saying quite a bit considering that the entire home-sharing platform developed from people's willingness to allow strangers to stay in their house. But it works.

I might not host for Airbnb, but I do use them. One of the things I enjoy about the experience is that you stay in a place you wouldn't usually visit.

Having spent my fair share of time in hotels, I am a bit of an expert in that experience. My Airbnb experience is different in a refreshing way.

I began to wonder what the secret to their success was. To find out, we spoke with Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., C.P.S., about his experience with Airbnb when writing his latest book, The Airbnb Way. Dr. Michelli is considered a global guru for Customer Service. He works with organizations and leadership to change their experience to be better for both their customers and their employees. He consulted Airbnb and wrote his book to share the insights he gained from their success.

Dr. Michelli says that there are many things that Airbnb gets right. One of them is that they understand what makes them unique and how they can differentiate themselves from the competition. They also recognize that the emotional connection they can create with guests is what brings their users back again and again. They also see that the Airbnb user and host is a type of community and belonging to it is one of the things that both sides of the equation value.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores what Dr. Michelli saw in Airbnb's business model and approach to employee and customer experience that makes them so successful and disruptive to the hospitality industry. He also explains how technology played a role in changing customer behavior, which paved the way for their success. Also, he shares how they accomplish their branded and elevated Customer Experience across properties, host styles, and cultures around the world. We also discuss how you can apply these concepts to elevate and brand your experience to your business as well.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us atwww.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast,please click here.

A practical guide to Customer decision making

When the Nobel-prize winning economist professor Daniel Kahneman wrote his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he introduced the concept that we had two ways of thinking about things. He named them System 1 and System 2. The two systems work together to help us make decisions about things.

When we applied these concepts to decision-making in Customer Experience for our book, The Intuitive Customer, we renamed them. The Intuitive System is System 1, and the Rational System is System 2. The Intuitive System makes instant judgments on things and is always running. You aren't aware you are using the Intuitive System. The Rational System concentrates on thinking about something and is called into service when needed. You are always aware you are using your Rational System.

We discuss the differences between the two ways our brains think about things to make decisions a lot. Often, they don't agree and come to different conclusions.

However, the two systems do not always conflict. Sometimes they run in tandem, serving different functions and complementing one another with their strengths.

Sometimes only one of them is working at any given time. Flying solo, the system in play will make the final decision, and the other one won't interfere.

In other words, the two systems are not exclusive. It is complicated how the two systems work together. Understanding the two as well as you can helps you see patterns in customer behavior. Moreover, knowing how the two systems work can help you design a Customer Experience strategy that works with these patterns to make it as easy as possible for customers to decide to go with you.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses what the two systems of thinking are and how they interact in our minds when making decisions. We discuss which system is better for what and why the two systems tradeoff tasks. We also give pointers on what you should do with your Customer Experience strategy to take advantage of these tradeoffs, as well as what pitfalls you should avoid when working with this crucial customer behavior concept.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Case Study: RICOH Printers (Canada)

I spend a remarkable amount of time complaining about how organizations get things wrong with Customer Experience. However, not every cause is lost. Some companies get their Customer Experience right, and we can all learn a lot from their journey.

In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have the honor of working with fantastic organizations that are committed to doing the difficult work of improving their Customer Experience from the inside out. One of these companies is RICOH Canada.

Years ago, they were facing enormous changes in what can only be described as a declining industry. Moreover, there were few differentiations between the product from the top tier firms from a hardware standpoint. As a result, the printer business was heavily commoditized and highly cutthroat.

RICOH Canada decided the only way forward in an aggressive industry with little competitive differentiation was in the Customer Experience. They embarked on a Customer Experience Journey that they are still on today—and with great success. They increased their Net Promoter Score®[i] (NPS) by 34 points over 30 months. Furthermore, in a declining market, they enjoyed a ten percent increase in sales. Since that time, they have climbed another 15 points to an all-time high.

A question I always get in my global Customer Experience consultancy is whether business-to-business customers are subject to the same emotional decisions that we have as consumers. The answer is a resounding yes. One thing RICOH Canada understood early was that by enhancing that emotional connection with their business customers, they not only improved their relationship, but they also improved their customer retention and loyalty.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer is the story of how RICOH Canada did it. We spoke with the President and CEO of RICOH Canada, Glenn Laverty to hear how and why they did it. Plus, we will hear about the new challenges they face and what they are doing to address them.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

[1] Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

The Key to Successful Marketing Communications

There are a lot of people that do not know the difference between Marketing and Advertising. Many people assume they are the same thing, but they are not. Marketing is deciding what you are going to say; Advertising is saying it.

In my corporate life, I worked in Marketing for a long time. One of the things I learned was that Marketing should know the marketplace and understand their customers. Marketing communication should reflect this understanding. Moreover, every campaign, script, web page, and tweet should have a purpose, something that you are hoping the communication will cause people to do.

In other words, the marketing communications in your advertising should show that you know who you are saying it to—and why.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the fundamentals of Marketing communications through advertising and how it affects the Customer Experience. More importantly, we share the three general goals of marketing and how to do them right, as well as how it looks when you get it wrong.

One of the reasons these things are essential is because when you advertise, you communicate what a customer can expect. It is your brand promise, your value proposition. If you get it wrong, the Customer Experience will fall short of the expectations you set, which does not do your Customer Experience Strategy any favors.

When crafting your Customer Marketing Strategy, you need to have an idea of who you want to talk to and why. You should know what those people want and what they value. You also have to understand the obstacles keeping them from being a customer right now.

Then, when you advertise, you address all of these issues. Moreover, you tie it to the overall Customer Marketing Strategy so that you stay on brand and set the proper customer expectations. Furthermore, advertising should have a specific action you want to evoke, as well.

All of these things are fundamentals of Marketing, or what I sometimes call, "a blinding flash of the bloody obvious." That said, you might be surprised how often you learn that an organization does not have a clue about any of that when they choose, launch, and execute a marketing campaign.

In this episode, we review the basics of marketing communications. We also discuss how you can avoid having a brilliant campaign that is wildly successful at getting attention but fails to move the needle for your bottom line.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How To Overcome Organizational Silo's To Make Progress

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf the wizard calls all the creatures of Middle Earth—the elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits— to a council. Their goal is to determine what to do with the Ring that threatened to end life as they knew it. Gandalf reasoned that since the Ring was a problem for all of Middle Earth, everyone should be involved.

A Customer Experience Council (CX Council) follows Gandalf's lead. Although, to be sure, the stakes are a little lower. Your goal with the CX Council is to gain alignment of actions toward a common goal, improving Customer Experience, a vital but not (middle) Earth-shattering purpose.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the CX Council and how to create one for your organization. We also take a look at what their objectives should be and how to set up your meetings. The CX Council is designed to help you get everyone on board with your Customer Experience goals.

A CX Council is a team of people that represent all the different departments of your organization, from Marketing to Sales to Customer Service to Operations. Each member of the team determines how to adapt their actions to align the other departments and improve the Customer Experience. Best of all, it is inexpensive from a balance sheet perspective, so senior management is usually on board with your plan.

It was in my role at British Telecom as Customer Experience Manager that I first saw the importance of a CX Council. My program affected all the departments, but none of them were doing the same things to get to where we needed to go. Moreover, they operated so independently, like silos, that they often stepped on each other's toes.

I realized that if I wanted to improve the Customer Experience, I needed everyone marching in the same direction toward the same goal. I also knew to do that effectively, I needed all of their buy-ins. I was from these epiphanies that the idea for a CX council was born.

Over the years in our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have learned a thing or two about CX councils, what works, and, perhaps most importantly, what doesn't. This podcast explores the details and shares critical information about how to make them useful in your organization.

Plus, it doesn't involve anyone fighting an Orc or walking up the side of an active volcano, so, how can you afford not to listen to it?

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Is Any Attention Good Attention?

I like Oscar Wilde. His best quote is, "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Of course, there are times when people are talking so bad, one might wonder if it is worse than being ignored.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores if there are times when the bad press can be good news for your brand. In other words, are there times when bad news is good? Is any attention good attention?

The answer, for my part, is it depends. It turns out scientific research says the same thing. There are no absolute answers to this question. The circumstances of the attention, the bad press, and the goals for your organization all play a part in how you answer the question.

In the early days of our global Customer Experience consultancy, Wilde's statement sums up the marketing efforts for my brand. We started back in 2002, when nobody knew who we were, or, frankly, what a Customer Experience was. To get attention, I published my thoughts on customer behavior and emotional experience anywhere I could.

Back then, the idea that customers had an emotional experience in business or consumer situations instead of rational ones was not widely accepted. (You might argue that we are still working on that one.) It was controversial, and many people in the industry thought I was mad and, well, wrong. The result was I debated a lot of people.

These disagreements were fantastic for us. Why? People knew who we were and what I did.

Now, in this case, the negative attention I generated from my views was positive for my brand. I needed people to know who we were and, based on my beliefs that few people agreed with at the time, they discovered us. However, this result is not always the case.

There are times when the bad press is good news for your brand. There are also times when it isn't — knowing which is which and whether it's suitable for your current marketing goals is essential to your brand message.

Do you and your marketing team know the answer? In this podcast we help you figure out how to get there and get the results you need.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the "hidden" aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Customer Satisfaction is Declining in the UK!

A new report by the Institute of Customer Service indicates that Customer Satisfaction is declining in the UK. Earlier this year reports from both Nunwood and Forrester, two firms entrenched in the Customer Experience movement, presented similar sentiments. All of this disappointing news about the state of Customer Experience makes one wonder what is going on in business today?

We decided to ask the expert Joanne Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service what she thought the problem was with Customer Satisfaction. Moreover, we asked her why we are seeing the results we are and what we can do about it moving forward.

It is important to note that the ratings are not plummeting. The downward tick is from 78.2 to 77.1. It is not a significant drop. The concern is the direction of the numbers and how long they have been moving in the wrong direction. Two years, it seems, is indicative of a trend.

The Institute of Customer Service is an independent membership body that undertakes research designed to help businesses up their customer service games. Their survey, the UK Customer Satisfaction Index Report, is one of the most robust in the industry. They run their research twice a year and have done so for the past ten years. For all of these reasons, the Institute is considered a barometer for Customer Satisfaction. Furthermore, it addresses 13 different industry verticals and receives over 45,000 responses.

The areas the survey covers include the following five:

This year, the Institute also explored some of the emotional indicators that predict customer satisfaction. For example, they asked if customers felt the organization was doing the right thing? Also, they asked respondents to judge whether organizations were transparent in their business dealings.

To summarize the report, overall Customer Satisfaction is declining in the UK. Fixing it is complicated because there are several factors at work that are dragging the number down.

One of the most significant problems, however, is that many organizations focus on the wrong things in Customer Experience. In my view, too many organizations do not concentrate their efforts on areas that create value for the customer. What's worse, they don't know what those areas are.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about why Customer Satisfaction is Declining in the UK and what that means for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to help you improve your Customer Experience by unlock the 'hidden' aspects of your experience and what drives value for you to enable you to take your experience to the next level

If you would like to find out more in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How and Why We Stereotype People and Things

Stereotyping is not considered a good thing, certainly not in politically correct circles. However, our ability to do it is hard-wired into our brains, and it doesn't only apply to people. We can stereotype an organization, too.

Let's say you need to name a type of business that is frustrating across the board. My first thought is internet service providers, aka, the cable company. No matter which carrier you have, you probably have a beef with your service (or lack thereof) or with at least some part of your Customer Experience.

However, stereotypes work the other way, too. If you were to name a business where the representatives were universally excellent, you could do that, also, like a spa. Another example could be candy stores that hand out free samples.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores how and why we create these stereotypes and what purpose they serve in making decisions. We also take a close look at what happens in an experience that can put you into a stereotyped group—and what to do about it if that stereotype is hurting your bottom line.

Stereotypes are the product of a shortcut in thinking, or heuristic, called Representativeness. The Representative Heuristic is how our brains look for ways to group separate entities and associate them with characteristics so we can make quick and straightforward decisions.

For example, when I ask you on a scale from one to ten of how likely it is that I am a male model, what is the first thing you do? You probably think of how male models look and then compare that mental image to my profile pic to determine what number you would give me. The "male model" entity you compare me to is an example of Representativeness.

(For the record, I don't need to know what number you gave me. It was only a way to demonstrate the process for the heuristic.)

Now, heuristics work pretty well most of the time, which is why we use them. However, heuristics are not foolproof. It is here where heuristics fail that decision scientists focus their interest. Usually, the Representative Heuristic fails when you reach the extremes, and you forget about how probability works.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How and Why We Stereotype People and Things for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Secret of Creating an Effective Customer Experience (CX) Strategy

What is the experience you are trying to deliver to your customers? This is one of our key questions we ask organizations when we consult with them. It seems a very simple question and yet in reality, the answer is very strategic and critical to moving your CX to the next level. What is surprising is most organizations do not know the answer to this question! Be clear, everyone thinks they know the answer, but in reality every part of the organization does what they think is the right thing. Marketing, Sales, Customer service, Finance, IT, etc. all do what they think is the right thing, but it is not aligned, it is different and as a result the Customer is confused, there are overlaps and gaps in the experience. This leads to re-work, overlaps, gaps and all this costs money. More importantly, the Customer looks at your organization as a whole and ends up being frustrated. This does not build Customer loyalty.

It is therefore vital to define the answer to this question. What is the experience you are trying to deliver to your customers? The answer to this is a strategic choice. The experience that you should be delivering should be one that drives value ($) for the organization. It should be decided strategically by the senior executive of the organization. It should be debated and argued about. Once agreed, it should set the direction of the whole organization and as a consequence it should outline all the things that you need to start and stop doing as a result of the strategy.

In this podcast we outline how to go about this. We give you an example of one organization who, by setting the strategy in this way, improved their Net Promoter Score® by 40 points in 30 months that lead to a 10% rise in volumes.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to help you improve your Customer Experience by unlock the 'hidden' aspects of your experience and what drives value for you to enable you to take your experience to the next level

If you would like to find out more in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

I have a few things that drive me crazy in the business world. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we are going to talk about how organizations often define loyalty, and why I think they have it all wrong.

It makes me upset when I think about it. Many, if not most, companies believe that when a customer gives you all their business, it means they are a loyal customer. After all, isn't that what we all want, all the business our customers have to give? If they are giving it to us, then they must be loyal right?

Not so fast.. A customer giving you all their business doesn't always mean they are loyal customers. It could be because they have a habit of buying from you, or it could mean they haven't bothered to seek out an alternative. It might also be that they have no other choice, but as soon as they do, they will leave and take all that business with them. (I'm talking to you, Internet Service Providers.)

Customer Loyalty is more than an automatic, indifferent, or begrudging action. It is an emotional connection with a brand. Customer Loyalty is hard to earn but also hard to lose.

However, it can be lost, so don't rest on your laurels.

When you think about who you are loyal to, you likely think of family and friends. That's because you have a relationship with them. Over time, you have had a consistent and positive interaction with these people, and you share an emotional bond because of it.

Sometimes friends and families disappoint you though, don't they? However, you don't cut ties over it. With time and communication, most families work it out. Many friendships endure despite quarrels or disagreements, too. Again, that is because of the history and the emotional tie that you share with these people.

When you have loyal customers, you have a relationship with them, too. It is built through your consistent positive actions. Also, when you make a mistake or do something they don't like, they don't cut ties with you over it. Why? Customer Loyalty is an emotional bond with your company, and it persists over time and troubles.

One thing is certain about Customer Loyalty; it is the result of what you do in your Customer Experience. We examine what Customer Loyalty is, why it works that way, and, perhaps most importantly, how it benefits your relationship with them and all that business of theirs you would like to have.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Secret of Creating Loyal Customers with your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Relationship Types and How to Use Them

We act differently in our various relationships. We have a way we operate at work or school; we act a certain way in public and another way with our friends and family. The difference is the type of relationship we have with the other people involved. This variance in behavior is also at work in our relationships as customers.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore how our relationship with customers affects how we interact with them. For this episode, we characterize relationships into two types, Relational and Transactional. You might think that one is better than the other, but it is not the case.

For example, let's say you want to sell an old car. You make the listing and wait for the responses. It turns out you get one, but it's from your brother. Would you change your approach to selling the car? My guess is you would—unless you and your brother are on the skids. For my part, my brother and I would enjoy the match up and would have a no-holds-barred approach.

The fact is, most of us wouldn't haggle the same way with a family member the way we would a stranger. In my case, I would not only skip the haggling, but I would probably back off the price. Moreover, I would worry every time that I saw them that they would tell me there was something wrong with the car.

Advantages and disadvantages exist for each of these relationships on both sides of the equation.

If we go back to the car example, the idea of selling a used car to your brother is one point in a much more extended relationship. As a result, you feel more responsibility to ensure that it is positive. You also feel more guilt if it is not great.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Relationship Types and How to Use Them for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Are You Using the Right Measures?

Measuring your progress for your Customer Experience strategy is an essential aspect to your program's success. Not only will it show if your program is working to provide an excellent experience for your customers, but it also shows what customers really value, which can be an elusive thing to discover.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we discuss the importance of measuring Customer Experience correctly. We invited Don Peppers, bestselling author, business strategist, and engaging keynote speaker to joins us to share his wisdom on the subject. With 11 books on marketing and Customer Experience, he had much to add to our discussion about the best way to handle Customer Experience measurement.

There are two types data marketers can user for measurement:

Voice of Customer (VOC) data, which involves an interaction with customers. Observational data, which involves analyzing numbers and operational reports, among other things.

Peppers says that VOC data is excellent for many things. It can provide you feedback on moments in your experience that are or are not working. It also gives you the opportunity to respond to problems immediately and repair damage to a relationship before it has repercussions on customer behavior. However, it has some drawbacks for Customer Experience measurement.

Let me give you an example. I fly on Delta a lot. Every time I fly back and forth to England, they send me a survey. They want to know more about my experience on the flight. However, I never fill out the survey unless I had either a very good or very poor flight.

This survey is an example of why VOC data measurement is flawed. Since I don't fill out the survey every time, they have a skewed view of how I feel about their airline. Sometimes I am delighted; other times I am disgusted.

Now, if Delta were to look at my flight purchases over the past six months, that would be observational data. If they were to see that I purchased fewer flights compared to the previous year, they would see that my customer behavior had changed. Then, they would know how their Customer Experience is performing and they could react.

To be fair, both types of measures are useful and have their place in Customer Experience Measurement. However, in many ways, marketers tend to favor VOC measurement over observational measurement. The reasons for this preference are understandable; VOC is easier and more popular, and who knows better than the customer how they felt about the experience, right?

However, it is in the observational data that you get a much clearer understanding of how your Customer Experience performs. Observational data shows customer behavior, and that is a far more accurate indicator of how customers feel about your experience.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Are You Using the Right Measures for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why Some Friction is Good

We owe you an apology. Even though the lawyers say we shouldn't say this, we feel we might have misled you on the subject of friction in your Customer Experience strategy. We have been telling you to make your experience as easy as possible, and you should. However, there is some merit to making things a little bit difficult in some cases.

In other words, it turns out that the discussion of friction is more nuanced than we at first led you to believe.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we dive a little deeper on the subject of friction in Customer Experience, what kind is detrimental and what kind is beneficial, and the qualities of the friction that can help you tell the difference.

We encourage you to make your Customer Experience as easy as possible, and we stand by that. Having an experience that is convenient and simple for people will be one of the reasons they form a bond of customer loyalty. However, we also think some friction in an experience can be a good idea based on customer behavior.

Do you remember the days when you first heard a complicated order of Starbuck's? You likely heard words like Venti, half-caff, and Frappuccino, as well as particular focus on the "number of pumps." Starbucks regulars have a language they speak, and they all understand each other.

The language at Starbucks is an example of good friction. The fact that regular customers took the time to learn the language of ordering indicates that they value that friction in their experience.

Ikea furniture is another example. The cheaply made (and likely lopsided) pressboard bookshelf with at least one piece turned the wrong way is a lot more valuable to you after you spent four hours assembling it on your living room floor. Plus, there is the fact that you saved a lot of money by assembling it yourself.

These are examples of good friction. However, there is bad friction, too.

Bad friction is the type of challenges that arise because the organization is focused on operations instead of customers, or worse no one cares enough to fix it for customers. Bad friction is long hold times on the phone, poor user experiences on the website, and adversarial return policies, to name a few.

It is imperative that you eliminate bad friction first and foremost. Then, when you have make it as smooth as possible for customers to do business with you, you then look for deliberate ways to add friction that increases the engagement of customers with your brand.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why Some Friction is good for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How Customer-Facing People Should Evoke Emotions in Customers

I have always thought that talking about how to do something was important, but not as important as actually doing something. I feel so strongly about this idea that I named my company after it. I want my clients to take their ideas "beyond the philosophy" and into action.

To that end, this episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses how organizations can take theories and use them in their everyday operations to improve the Customer Experience. We explore how you can help Customer-Facing teams evoke the proper emotions from customers during their interactions with people by training them to do it properly.

The word practical is significant here. Lofty ideas are wonderful inspirations, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of delivering a Customer Experience, you need a much more practical breakdown of what to do. More specifically, your frontline teams do.

Talking about psychological theories, research, and studies is a critical part of the process, of course. However, what comes next is even more vital because it crosses the line from a good idea to the "new way to do things around here."

It is not advisable to have a new Customer Experience program that you roll out without training. Imagine all the painstaking research and design that address all the vital customer emotions that drive value for your organization circling the drain before that program disappears forever. That's exactly what happens if you don't teach people how to deliver that new Customer Experience program.

Most of us know how to evaluate and manage the emotions of the significant others in our lives. You first listen to their responses, then determine how they feel, and finally choose how to respond.

It is not any different when dealing with customers. They feel a certain way when they arrive at your customer-facing team. You want the people that greet them from your organization to read the customer for their emotional state, decide how the customer is feeling, and then respond in a way that will create a good emotional outcome for the customer.

However, not everyone knows how to read the customer for their emotional state or even what the readings mean for how the customers feel. Moreover, some people have no idea how to manage other people's emotion to a better emotional state.

That is, they don't until you train them. Training your people on these emotional skills is critical to your success.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about training is crucial to How Customer Facing People Should Evoke Emotions in Customers for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Can We Trust Facebook?

Upon reflection of Facebook's latest privacy violation and $5 billion fine, one must wonder whether we can trust Facebook. After all, the social media platform hasn't exactly been keeping our private information under lock and key. On the contrary, it appears as if our likes and dislikes, networks and preferences are for sale to the highest bidder.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the implications for Facebook of this latest privacy violation. It reveals a lot about the focus of the culture at Facebook, and it isn't on protecting its user's privacy. Since there are no barriers to exit for Facebook and users are the product they have to sell, how long before the lack of trust between users and Facebook affects their bottom line?

I am a Facebook user, although, I am not as active as I once was. While I do have a business account, I mostly used it to interact with friends and family. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, however I found myself backing away from the newsfeed, so to speak. It is inconvenient in some ways, but worth it to me because I was uncomfortable with the amount of data Facebook was collecting and using.

Facebook has a series of scandals over the years, going all the way back to 2007. The social media platform has always had a fast and loose policy with sharing things their users did on the platform.

User Privacy concerns came to a head in 2011, when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused them of not upholding their privacy policy of sharing private information publicly. Facebook settled and agreed to an FTC review every other year for the next 20 to ensure it was keeping its promises to users. The latest violation shows that they aren't keeping their promises.

Facebook's entire value is predicated on its users' private information. The platform itself is not creating value, the users information does. So, it's no surprise that Facebook is always pushing the limits of what their customers can see and use for their business purposes.

However, if they continue to handle user's private information with little regard for discretion, a time will come when users leave, taking all that value with them. Then, where will the social media platform be?

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Can We Trust Facebook? for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

When I worked in the corporate world, people often asked me what I did all day. Facetiously, I would say that I played chess. While it was meant to be cheeky, the joke was not far from the truth. I spent my day navigating company politics.

You will not find training programs on company politics or how to deal with them. It is a bit shocking considering their significance in the corporate world. Our latest episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast addresses office politics and how to manage them effectively.

Company politics are ubiquitous and influential. Managing them is part and parcel of a career. As a senior vice president, at a large telecoms company, office politics surrounded me.

Every organization that I have worked at had office politics. They exist because it is human nature to crave power and influence.

You must be able to manage office politics for many reasons. First, it will help you advance your career. When you can get on with management, you can get on with your promotions after all. Also, if you can't manage company politics, you won't make it at many organizations. There was a phrase that used to entertain me along these lines that said, "When somebody pats you on the back, they are looking for the place to stick the knife."

However, company politics are worth managing because it can help you move your Customer Experience program forward. Without support from others at the peer level and above, your plan is doomed.

Managing office politics requires different finesse for the various types you will encounter. Typically, office politics have two levels. The first level tends to come from above, meaning those with their names above yours in the organization chart. The second level tends to come at you from your peers, which has a different dynamic entirely. Developing skills for managing up and managing laterally are essential to the success of your Customer Experience program.

The first skill you should develop comes from the advice I received from my dad early in my career. He said to me, "Colin if you focus on doing a good job, everyone will want you."

He is correct. Who doesn't want people on the team that do a good job?

Having a reputation for successful work behind you is an excellent strategy for managing company politics also. Not only will everyone want to be on your team or have you reporting to them, but it also allows you access to the influencers at the top.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Manage Company Politics for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Choice architecture is a significant factor in buying decisions you make every day. From how they stock the buffet line to how likely you are to donate your organs after you die, the psychology of choice is influencing your decisions every day.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, we explore the concept of Choice Architecture and how it affects our daily lives. We also discuss the different variables that you need to consider in the way you present your choices to customers as part of your CX Strategy.

It all started with a new public bench. You see, I live in Sarasota, Florida. and recently, there have been some interesting changes to the public benches. Halfway along the seat, there are armrests.

At first I thought, "Well, that will be more comfortable to sit in for sure." Then, I realized that the armrests were not there for my comfort, but instead to convince the homeless who sleep on the benches sometimes to find a more comfortable spot for their repose.

The armrests on the public benches are a type of Choice Architecture design. Choice Architecture is the way you present options to people who are making a decision to influence the outcome. By changing the way Sarasota presents their benches, they influence the decisions of their citizens.

Obviously, this situation is different than how you would use Choice Architecture in your Customer Experience. That said, the way you present your options can either draw people in and build a relationship with customers, or it can repel them and send them looking for a more comfortable spot.

Choice Architecture manifests in many different ways. It can be something physical like the armrest in the bench or it can be wording that is used on the packaging. It can be the way you price items or even the sizes you package and what you name them.

Choice Architecture is part of many of the decisions you make each day. Consider the following:

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How Choice Architecture Can Revolutionize Your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Vital Art of Creating Memorable Messaging

When we make buying decisions, we usually are choosing from a short list of options. Our memory assembles these options. So, from a Customer Experience perspective, it is vital that your product or service is one of these options recalled at the moment of the buying decision.

In this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast, we explore how our memories generate these choice sets for buying decisions. We also take a look at how you can ensure that your product or service is one of the options your customers' memories retrieve. (Spoiler alert: it has to do with customers' emotions.)

Let's say that you were out with friends and the dinner hour arrives. You all decide to go out to eat together and begin discussing where to go. You will likely:

From a restaurant owner's point of view, if you and your group don't think of their restaurant when you are making this list and narrowing down your options, it's like the restaurant does not exist. In other words, if you can't remember the restaurant at this moment when you are deciding where to eat, the restaurant's marketing message wasn't memorable.

We often say that customer loyalty is a function of customer memory. What we mean by that is that customers return to you not for the Customer Experience you provide, but for the Customer Experience they remember you provide. Making a memory that brings customers back has been a topic we frequently discuss, as a result.

However, you must also ensure that the customers retrieve your memory at the right moment. For example, if you remember that Italian place that serves family-style homemade pasta just after you paid the bill at the restaurant you chose with your friends, that Italian restaurant was memorable, just a little bit too late to fill their tables.

Memorable messaging is an essential part of this process, too. Your marketing makes a promise to customers, but it also builds a memory of your brand. Putting a cue in the message that triggers the mind to retrieve your message at the moment of the buying decision is an Customer Experience strategy that could make the difference for your bottom line.

So how are these memories retrieved, and why are they associated? What can you do to ensure that your customers remember you at the right time? The answers, it shouldn't surprise you to hear, have a lot to do with emotions.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Vital Art of Creating Memorable Messaging for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How Can We Measure Customer Emotions in Our Digital World

When you think about the Olympic medalists on the podium during the awards ceremony, who do you think is happier, the silver medalist or the bronze?

Objectively, you might say the silver medalists because, after all, they came in second and the other competitor was third. Objectively, the silver medalists had a better outcome and should be happier.

However, the happier medal winner is the bronze medalist, and the reason we know this is the subject of this episode of The Intuitive Customer. With guest Dr. Bill Hedgecock, professor at the University of Minnesota in the Carlson School of Management, we explore the power of facial recognition with facial expression analysis software and what it can do to help you improve your Customer Experience.

Hedgecock is a leader in academic circles on facial recognition technology and facial expression analysis. He also studies neuromarketing, which is how the brain works when we make decisions.

His psychology-based research shows us the wealth of knowledge available to us when we measure customer emotions in real time. So much is revealed from our facial expression in the moment, and it can be essential to your Customer Experience design strategy.

He and his team used the technology to prove that bronze medalists were happier than silver medalists, and it was all in the eyes. It turns out that in a genuine smile the muscles contract around our eyes. This involuntary reaction is difficult (but not impossible) to fake. When studying the photos of the past five years of summer Olympic medalists, it was clear that gold was happiest, naturally, followed by bronze, and silver, ironically and yet understandably, coming in last on the happiness meter.

Like Olympic medalists' mix of triumph and disappointment, customer behavior is complicated. At any given moment, you might have two or three different psychological theories that explain why customers do what they do. However, Hedgecock says when you combine those theories with the data about how the customer felt at different moments in your experience, it can help point you in the right direction of which theory is correct.

What's more, once you know how a moment makes them feel and why people are doing what they are doing, you can respond. Responding can lead to many excellent outcomes, including an improved experience for your customer, the better impact for your marketing campaigns, and more emotional engagement with your customers—the foundational element of customer retention and loyalty.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How We Can Measure Customer Emotions in Our Digital World for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Customer Journey Mapping Using Behavioral Science

Journey mapping is how organizations look at the customer journey, or the steps a customer would take from the beginning to the end in their experience. However, we would say regarding journey mapping that it is not only vital to consider the customer journey from beginning to end but also to view it from the customers' perspective. Journey Mapping employing this approach is what we call Behavioral Journey Mapping.

We discuss how to undertake customer Journey Mapping using Behavioral Science in this episode of The Intuitive Customer Podcast. We take a deeper dive on practical applications around our type of Journey Mapping, as well as advice for how to go about it.

Organizations often think a customer journey begins with the process, or when they first interact with a customer. However, when you look at an experience from a customer perspective, customers don't see it that way. Instead, it begins for them long before that, usually when they first realized they had a problem and your product or service might help them fix it. The interesting bit here is how the experience starts is effectively outside of your control.

This example is just one way that how you think your experience is from the inside differs from how customers see it from the outside. Furthermore, it illustrates how events beyond your control can affect how they feel upon arriving at your experience.

When designing a Customer Experience Strategy, you must consider not only the rational parts of your experience but also emotional. Therefore, from a Journey Mapping perspective, understanding how customers feel when they arrive at your experience is an essential starting point for your design.

In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we use customer Journey Mapping using Behavioral Science to try to correct where organizations get off track by including these emotional elements and getting specific about them.

When we do Behavioral Journey Mapping, we try to correct what organizations get wrong by including the rational, emotional, subconscious, and psychological moments of a Customer Experience—and getting specific about them.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Customer Journey Mapping Using Behavioral Science for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How to Understand Customers Preference

Have you ever noticed how some people put a lot of letters after their names in their signatures and bylines? Some of them go on for quite a while, like a second surname. It annoys me sometimes.

Then, I remember that when I introduce myself, I often refer to my status on LinkedIn as one of the top 150 Business Influencers. I do it because I am proud of it. I presume that people with the degrees are feeling proud of their hard work and accomplishment earning that degree and qualification, too.

However, there is another reason people list their degrees and qualifications with their signatures, and I let everyone know about my LinkedIn achievement. We talk about it in this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast.

We all maintain a self-perception of ourselves. We use the items around us to serve as evidence that we are whom we think (hope) we are. What surrounds us becomes symbolic of who we are, where we are in life, and what we have accomplished or hope to achieve.

Sometimes, we use the things around us to help reassure ourselves that we are whom we think we are. This concept is called symbolic self-completion.

Symbolic self-completion describes how we surround ourselves with evidence that we are what we hope we are. The evidence serves to help us overcome our insecurities. Our external collection offsets our internal doubts.

Both of these concepts surrounding the self can affect customers behavior in your experience. Not all the time, of course, because with psychology, there are always a few things at work at once. However, on the margins and with certain groups for specific items, self-perception and self-completion could work in your favor, if you understand your customers, of course.

Take a closer look at your customers' behavior. Whether it is to satisfy a self-perception or to help facilitate self-completion, understanding your customers' preferences can help you provide an experience that helps your customers feel the way they need to come back to you again.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How to Understand Your Customers Preference for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Happy Employees Make Happy Customers

When your employees are happy, they are more likely to make your customers happy. Common sense dictates that this is logical. However, despite the rationality of this statement, too many organizations do not spend enough of their resources ensuring their employees are happy—and their Customer Experience suffers for it.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer dives into Colin's new book on the subject 'Happy People Make Happy Customers' and we explain why the experience you provide your employees is just as critical as the one you want to deliver to customers. With special guest, Michael Lowenstein, author of Employee Ambassadorship and Beyond Philosophy's employee engagement expert, we explore how your Employee Experience contributes to how customers feel about your company and why you should design one that is complementary with your Customer Experience strategy.

The question is, how do you get happy employees? The answer is harder to do than it is to answer: To get happy employees, you must design an experience that makes them feel emotion toward your organization that drives value for you. In other words, your Employee Experience strategy is to create one that makes it possible to deliver the Customer Experience you want.

Lowenstein, who instructs on this concept, explains that with the Employee Experience, you have to understand the emotional bits of it the same way you do a Customer Experience. Then, you can determine how they link with the emotional components of the Customer Experience you have designed. When you get these parts aligned, your employees feel an emotional bond with your company, a commitment to the value proposition of your organization, and a strong sense of duty to deliver on it for customers.

In our global Customer Experience Consultancy, we see the most opportunity in this alignment of the emotional components. Many companies do an excellent job of this. However, the majority do not, and many have a long, long way to go in this effort to provide an exceptional Employee Experience.

For most companies, the issues stem from the following problems:

Lack of commitment: It is difficult to put the customer first and improve the employee experience at the same time. It takes time, energy, and resources, which can be in short supply for most companies. Management oblivion: Sometimes, the people in charge are too far removed from the day-to-day to recognize the issues with their teams' experience.

Incentivizing the wrong things: That which gets incented gets done. When you reward other initiatives, you do not emphasize the proper actions that support improving the experiences for employees or customers.

It is all about human behavior. The same principles apply with employees as they do with customers. You must treat them with the same eye for detail and with a focus on evoking the proper emotions.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how you can create an Employee Experience that promotes the environment necessary to deliver the Customer Experience you want.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why Are We Scared of New Technology?

We have some exciting new technology for CX. Facial recognition technology and facial expression analysis yield some new and exciting data about how customers feel during a Customer Experience. The only problem is that many people find it creepy.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer asks the question Why Are We Scared of New Technology? It turns out, we have been here before with new technology. Of course, that time, it was something far more crazy than recording facial expressions and using software to determine how a person feels.

What was this crazy technology? It was trains.

According to mentalfloss.com, some people believed back when the first trains were running that if women traveled over 50 mph, their uteruses would fly out of their bodies. Other people thought humans would just melt.

Luckily, neither prediction came to pass. Now we travel at hundreds of miles an hour with no concern for melting or reproductive organs flying out of anyone.

In other words, we got used to the idea of riding trains and other transport at high rates of speed, and we don't worry anymore.

I believe the same pattern of fearing technology and then getting used to it will be valid for facial recognition and facial expression analysis technology also. However, before we get into it any deeper, we should clarify the difference between the two technologies.

In both technologies, the software records the spatial relationships of your features and compares them to a database. However, with facial recognition, it's a database of people's identities. With facial expression analysis, it's a database of unconscious reactions our face makes in response to how we feel, e.g., dilation of the pupils or a widening of the eyes, tightness around the mouth, etc.

There are excellent applications for this technology for Customer Experience strategy and design. As global customer loyalty consultants, we believe knowing how your customers feel at the different moments of their interaction with your organization is invaluable when you are seeking to foster customer retention. Best of all, you don't have to ask them about it, which can introduce some other influences that may or may not skew the data.

However, we have also learned that many don't like the idea that cameras are recording their reactions and analyzing their unconscious reactions to how something makes them feel.

Facial recognition and facial expression analysis is the future of research for Customer Experience. I think we can get over this creepy factor and embrace the technology for our industry. Also, before too long, I believe we will wonder how we ever lived without it.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Why We Are Scared of New Technology for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Massive Importance of Memory in a Customer's Experience

Customer loyalty is a function of customers' memories. That is to say, customers don't choose your experience over another; customers choose the memory of your experience over another. Therefore, we feel it is vital that you ensure your customers have an excellent memory of your Customer Experience.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores the massive importance of memory for a Customer Experience and how our brain influences what we remember about them.

The human memory is imperfect. Our brains hold onto specific types of information when forming memories and let other information go. So, good experiences might not always turn into equally good memories, and vice versa. We could remember things better or worse than they were.

Understanding how memories work is essential to building customer loyalty. If you don't understand how the brain forms memories, you could end up creating the wrong memories about your Customer Experience.

To understand how memories work, you must first know the Peak-End Rule. The Peak-End Rule says that what people remember about an experience is how they felt at the moment when emotion was the strongest and how they felt when the experience was over.

When it comes to Customer Experience design, an organization must be clear where the peak emotion occurs during the customer interaction, as well as how the customer feels at the end. These emotions can make or break your chances for customers to form Customer Loyalty.

To create the memories you want, you need to evoke the customer emotions that you want. To do that, we suggest you start with these three key questions:

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about The Massive Importance of Memory on Your Customer's 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.

Creating a Frictionless Experience

As a global customer experience consultant for nearly two decades, I have never heard a customer say, "Gee! I wish that buying process was just a little more complicated!"

Why? All customers want their experiences to be easy. When things aren't easy in a given moment, we describe that as friction. Every organization needs to find their moments of resistance in a Customer Experience and fix them—before the competition beats them to it.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores friction in Customer Experience with special guest Roger Dooley, international speaker, blogger, and author of Friction: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage. Dooley explains why friction happens, how to find out where it is happening, and how to fix it for your organization's Customer Experience.

People don't like when a Customer Experience is convoluted. We don't want to exert too much time and energy making decisions unless it is absolutely necessary. Moreover, when we are tired or distracted, we have even less patience for tricky Customer Experiences. Many times, when there is too much friction in a Customer Experience design, we give up and walk away—a result that is not doing your Customer Loyalty any favors, not to mention your bottom line.

Organizations already know friction is a problem. Whenever we talk to clients in our global Customer Experience consultancy, they always tell us that they want to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with them.

However, few organizations understand what it takes to determine where the friction is in their experience. Often, it takes an outside perspective—usually ours—to point it out to them.

So why do companies have problems spotting friction on their own? Dooley says it is because organizations got used to the "way things have always been done." Also, organizations often neglect to observe customer behavior that will typically reveal a friction-filled moment in an experience.

In addition, companies often think that what they have designed in their Customer Experience strategy puts the customer first. However, in our experience, they rarely do this; instead, they are putting the needs of their business first to the detriment of the frictionless experience they want to deliver.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about Creating Frictionless Experiences 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.

We don't like uncertainty. It affects our lives in many ways, and especially as customers. Consider the fact that we buy insurance. We purchase peace of mind that we are covered if something unlikely (and terrible) happens. Likewise, we buy Powerball tickets in the improbable event that we will win.

In other words, we are terrible at estimating the probability of unlikely events, for good or ill. This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores why that is at a psychological level and what you can do about it in your Customer Experience Design.

The governing theory that presides over our collective inability to predict the likelihood of unlikely events is Prospect Theory. The brain-child of the Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Professor Daniel Kahneman and his research partner and collaborator Amos Tversky, Prospect Theory explains how we make decisions that involve risk and uncertainty.

Two areas of concepts fall under Prospect Theory. The first is the Value Curve and the second is Probability Estimation.

The Value Curve explains evaluating the subjective. Loss Aversion is part of the Value Curve and addresses how we hate losing more than we are happy to gain. Also, the Value Curve covers the ideas of Diminishing Marginal Returns, which is why we are sensitive to changes in the status quo, and Reference Points, which are how we usually have a standard that we use to compare two things.

Probability Estimation is our ability to think the most unlikely events are imminent. We overestimate the likelihood of good and bad things happening. For example, we might be sure we are going to be eaten by a shark or convinced we picked the winning numbers in Powerball. Probability Estimation proves that when it comes to human behavior, we are pretty terrible at predicting the future as it pertains to the extraordinary.

This particular part of Prospect Theory is inextricably linked to our behavior as customers—and probably more than we think. We all worry about weird things. There is a phrase I love that applies to this concept: I have had many crises in my life, but few of them actually happened.

Managing uncertain moments in your Customer Experience design is essential. People need to know what is coming next and predict the future. It makes them feel comfortable and cared for, critical emotions for forming Customer Loyalty.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about managing customers' uncertainty for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Why 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:

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:

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:

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.

There is a big challenge when measuring customer emotions as you are asking customers how they felt in an experience, as this is done retrospectively, a while after they had the experience. Many times, Customers don't remember how they felt or, for several reasons, they don't want to tell you. Using technology, you can now measure customer's emotions in real time! Critically you can measure their AUTHENTIC emotions, i.e: The REAL emotions they are feeling, through the use of micro expressions. These are involuntary, automatic movements the customer makes without even realizing what they are doing.

Measuring customer emotions is vitally important as over 50% of a customer experience is about how a customer feels. The key is the authentic emotions. This appears to be a significant challenge for researcher's in today's world, as well as getting Customers to answer surveys in the first place.

One key area this Authentic Emotion Measurement is being used by more progressive organizations is in digital transformation. They are using this to understand how the customer feels prior to the transformation and then by testing various ways of undertaking the transformation they can determine which has the most benefit before implementation.

Another application is measuring a face-to-face interaction, where the Customer and the employee are both being measured for their emotions. This means you can now understand the emotional interaction between the two parties. Furthermore, this means you can measure the effect of employee training. For example, if an employee is trained on soft skills, what was their customer's emotions before and after this new training?

This is an exciting new development in measuring customer emotions and in this podcast we delve into this in much greater detail.

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.

We often discuss the Intuitive and Rational System and how they work together to help customers make decisions. The Intuitive System is automatic and emotional, and the Rational System is deliberate and logical.

What we don't usually share is that by academic standards, this concept is relatively new. An older theory also explains why we act the way we do as customers, and you need to know about it to promote customer success.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer Podcast explores the concept of bounded rationality first introduced by Nobel-Prize winning professor Herbert Simon in the 1960s. We also discuss how this concept applies to your customers' behavior and your CX strategy.

People Make Decisions within Constraints

Herbert Simon was a polymath, which means he was a genius in several fields.

He contributed a lot to a lot of different areas. Simon was a city planner, a professor, a psychologist and one of the first computer science professors. In fact, many of the theories that we use today in computer programming are the brain-child of Simon.

Simon's concept of bounded rationality is an essential concept in modern behavioral science. It means that people are rational, but they do not have infinite amounts of rationality. They are logical within constraints.

The constraints that Simon refers to are common to all people. We have a limit to our attention span and memory capacity. We only have so much energy to devote to thinking. Often, we don't have all the information and cannot forecast future events with a ton of accuracy. However, if we were rational all the time, none of these limits or shortcomings would matter.

To put it another way, people are not computers. They don't make rational decisions all the time, but they also don't make random decisions based on emotional whims either. We use rationality but within the boundaries of the circumstances of the decision-making environment.

An example of bounded rationality influencing customer behavior could be opening an email from a retailer you like and seeing a special sale that is going to end in a short amount of time. When you are sorting through the details of the offer, which leave a little to be desired regarding clarity, your work calls to ask if you can come back to the office for an emergency. The decision-making environment you are experiencing, which includes a limited-time offer with murky details and a big crisis at the office that needs your immediate attention, will affect how you make a decision.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how customers make decisions using bounded rationality.

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.

Organizations do not have the luxury of focusing solely on operations these days. Over the past decade, retail as an industry has changed. To survive, retailers must put the customer at the center of everything they do.

That said, not everyone believes it yet.

Not so long ago, I was having a conversation in the C-Suite of a company about Customer Experience. Unfortunately, this company was not into the idea of putting the customer at the center of everything they do. Now, I won't tell you the name of the company, but I will tell you that when I read the room, I had an image of what it must have been like in the room when Blockbuster decided not to buy Netflix because "streaming is never going to catch on."

Don't just take my word for it. Take Professor Barbara Kahn's from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. As a guest on our recent podcast, she spoke about how retailers are winning in today's hypercompetitive retail market. (Spoiler alert: their strategy is built around the Customer Experience.)

Professor Kahn co-hosts a weekly program on Sirius XM Channel 132 called "Marketing Matters," and her new book, The Shopping Revolution: How successful retailers win customers in an era of endless disruption, discusses the chaotic world of retail. She shares the details of what worked and what didn't when she had a front-row seat to witness it unfold as the director of the Patty and Jay H. Baker Retailing Center.

When she was the director of the center, she spoke with a lot of retailers. She asked them to describe their idea of the perfect retailer. They mentioned a lot of operational details from products to managing inventory to optimizing the supply chain. While their definition included understanding products and building an attractive mix of wares that a customer wants, it didn't mention the Customer Experience.

Kahn decided to research her marketing library to see if there were any frameworks that were about customers, but to no avail. The frameworks she found were product and logistics-focused.

She wasn't satisfied with these. So, she decided to write her own. The result was the Kahn Retailing Success Matrix, which she included in her book. http://whartonmagazine.com/issues/spring-2018/the-4-best-retail-business-strategies/#sthash.hob4hi4Z.ji6jXm2z.dpbs

This episode of our podcast explores how the Kahn Retailing Success Matrix can help you with your Customer Experience.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how The Kahn Retailing Success Matrix could work 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.

Beyond Philosophy won an award named one of the Best Management Consultancy Firms in the UK, by the Financial Times (FT). This was voted on by clients and peers, we couldn't be more honored or proud.

This bonus episode podcast explores how you can take your idea and turn it into an Financial Times Award-Winning consultancy, too. We share our 10-Step Plan for Success and ask our listeners, what would you do if you weren't afraid?

The 10-Step Plan for Creating Your Award-Winning Business:

Recognize that you are an expert in something, and then tell everyone you are. When I started my Global Customer Experience consultancy, no one knew me or even what Customer Experience was. So, I told them, starting my marketing efforts with my first book, Building Great Customer Experiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Then I began conference speaking. Eventually, other people began to recognize I was an expert in customer experience training, which was much better than me saying it. Have an original idea. If you aren't original, then you aren't really adding anything of value to the greater business community, or the reputation of marketing consultants in general. Be unique and useful. Be brave. It's okay to be afraid, better than okay, actually. Fear is an excellent motivator. Focus on your skills. Determine what you are excellent at and what you aren't. Then, build on those strong skills and focus on using them. Otherwise, you can get out of your area of expertise and lose your way. Give an opinion. Your opinion is why people come to you. You should always have one, even if it isn't popular. Just be careful how you deliver that unpopular opinion; too much opinion can be as bad as not enough. Know what drives value for your customers. Produce or perish, as they say (do they say that?). If you aren't getting your customers an outstanding return on investment (ROI), then why should they hire you? Accept when you make a mistake, fix it, and move on. Everyone blows it from time to time. Learn from it and move on. Whatever you do, don't quit. Success is just around the corner. Appreciate the support you get from friends and family. You need it, so be sure to recognize and reward it as often as you can. Prepare for long hours. Starting your own company is hard work. Period. Remember that consultants are the first to go in a recession. Prepare for the inevitable so you can bounce back when it's over.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about my ten-step plan and how it can help you do what you would do if you weren't afraid.

We recommend you spend 5 minutes now and take a short CX Healthcheck self assessment to see how your organization is performing. https://beyondphilosophy.com/cx-assessment/survey/. It's free and will benchmark how you against hundreds of other companies. By answering a few multiple choice questions, you will understand what you need to do to take your Customer Experience (CX) to the next level.

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.

Psychological theories help explain why people do what they do. As customer experience consultants we believe when you are working on a Customer Experience strategy psychological theory is crucial to understanding the behavior of your customers.

However, psychology is unlike other sciences; it isn't exact. In fact, you might have to consider much of what psychology tells us is provisional, an impermanent hypothesis that explains what many people do most of the time. Just not all the time.

This conditional nature of human behavior theory can be problematic when analyzing customer behavior or attempting to address your customers' psychology in a meaningful way in the Customer Experience.

This episode of our podcast explores how people make a common mistake when applying psychological theory to their Customer Experience strategy. We also share how to fix it.

It comes down to two significant issues with psychological theory:

#1: Theory needs context to be exact.

Unlike some of its scientific colleagues in the so-called "hard" sciences, most of the psychological theory is contingent. What is valid for human behavior at one time and in one environment is entirely different at another time and in an alternate setting. The variables matter to the outcome of human behavior. A lot.

#2: Psychological theory is complicated.

The complexity of human behavior makes the analysis of it equally knotty. Also, a psychological influence is not usually acting alone; multiple influences are affecting the outcome of human behavior. In addition, the boundaries of the theories can muddle matters, too. All of this to say, psychology is not an exact science with consistently predictable outcomes.

Because of this gray area inherent in human behavior theories, it can be challenging to convince people to change their business-as-usual practices to incorporate the "soft stuff." Most organizations prefer to stick to their knitting and address concrete principles like price, product, and placement, instead of emotional stuff like human decision-making.

Despite these issues, there is hope for using psychology to optimize your CX strategy. Many organizations are able to apply the theories of psychology to great effect regarding customer behavior and behavioral segmentation, and you can, too.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about how to properly apply psychological theories about customer behavior to your Customer Experience strategy.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization's marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Customer Experience Industry is suffering from a lack of results. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say, it is suffering from a lack of proof about the results Customer Experience strategy is getting. It is time for all Customer Experience professionals to champion the ROI of their Customer Experience.

The problem is many of our champions do not know how.

We spoke with speaker, author, and CEO of Customer Think, Corporation, Bob Thompson about his recent research and what he thinks the Customer Experience strategy needs to build the business case for its success. He narrowed down the issues to the following:

An opportunity exists and in a significant way. Moreover, the Customer Experience internal marketing needs to include ROI for Customer Experience. If we don't, it could mean the resources we have today could be reallocated to another program—one that can produce results.

To be fair, if I were a CEO that had given over a budget for a Customer Experience program that was not able to show me that it had any results, I would not throw good money after bad. We need to make the business case for Customer Experience or suffer the (deserved) consequences.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast explores how Customer Experience consultants and Customer Experience marketers can address these issues and resolve them for their individual Customer Experience strategies. We also share recommendations about what all Customer Experience champions should focus on to solve the problems of the industry in 2019.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what Thompson and the Intuitive Podcast team thinks can fix the problems with the Customer Experience Industry.

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.

Stay Ahead of Your Competition with New Advances in CX Marketing

This podcast discusses the five areas you can address that will change the results you get with your Customer Experience. With a focus on these five key actions, you will not only improve your Customer Experience, but you can also get a jump on the competition in the new year.

5 CX Concepts to Keep You Ahead of the Competition

Focus on the ROI of CX improvement.

Having a record of your return on investment (ROI) for Customer Experience programs is vital. An increase in sales is excellent. But not all ROI is sales-based. You can have an increase in your NPS (Net Promoter Score, which indicates your customers will recommend you to family and friends). You could also see improved Customer Satisfaction ratings, which are great for building a foundation for loyalty. Another area where ROI is apparent is in the costs you save by providing an improved Customer Experience.

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Segment your customers into personas.

People are driven to act by different things, which vary based on life stage, demographic, and personal attributes. Grouping or segmenting your customers based on their behavior is an excellent way to segment your customer base. Then, creating personas that represent these groups help your team understand the concept. With the persona's characteristics to guide them, your team delivers an experience that appeals to each persona at an emotional level, which is the basis for creating customer loyalty.

Use Digital Transformation as an enhancement, not a replacement.

Digital channels provide a new opportunity for your Customer Experience. However, too many companies approach digital transformation with an aim to cut costs and often cut away programs that are currently working in their experience.

Working toward a digital transformation should only lighten the load on other channels, not replace them.

Embrace but manage your use of AI to enhance the experience.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an up and coming enhancement to Customer Experience that can allow you to anticipate your customers wants and needs. Combined with the power of customer personas, you can target customers right when they are considering a buying decision. However, exercise caution wielding this powerful new tool. When used too efficiently, it can damage customer relationships and cross over to the creepy side faster than you think.

Measure customer emotions, but in real time with facial recognition.

The success of any Customer Experience program rests on how the experience makes the customer feel. Facial recognition technology provides insight into how customers feel at the moment of the experience. New applications of it in Customer Experience can provide data that was previously unavailable at a large scale about how your moments in the experience make a customer feel.

To hear more about how to apply these five concepts to your Customer Experience, listen to the episode.

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.

Are You a Risk Taker?

We all have varying levels of risk tolerance. When we shy away from risk, we call that risk-aversion. This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the concept of risk aversion and how it affects customers' behavior in your Customer Experience.

People like sure bets better that come with less significant gains over risky ventures, even when the risky venture proposes a substantial benefit. We hate losing things. Losing things makes us much more upset than gaining things makes us happy.

So, if we are risk-averse by nature then we must always be risk-averse, right? Not so fast. Human behavior is rarely predictable, and our behavior regarding risk is no different. There are exceptions and variables that can change our risk preferences. We discussed the four influences on our tolerance for risk in this episode.

Four Influences on Our Tolerance for Risk:

The presence of testosterone correlates with risk-taking. Research shows that when more testosterone is present in the body, people are more likely to engage in risky behavior. This correlation occurs in men and women alike. The way choices are presented changes our risk tolerance. We would rather hold on to what we have than commit to a sure loss. When decisions are framed in the context of gains, we choose the conservative options more often than the risky ones. However, when alternatives are framed in the context of losses, we will take more significant risks to avoid losses than when the options are framed as gains. This phenomenon is why bets get riskier at the horse track as the day wears on—and the losses pile up! The domain where the risk occurs affects our decisions. We might be willing to risk some of our hard-earned dollars at the track, but we are less likely to endanger things that are essential to our well-being, like our house or financial stability. The life stage we are at will affect our risk aversion. Depending on where you are in your life, and the related responsibilities that accompany that life stage will change how much risk you can tolerate. The chances you take as a young single person might be different than ones you take as a parent with a mortgage. People who are late in their career might be less willing to take on new areas than those who are just getting started. People who are close to retirement might not make the same investments as a kid opening their first retirement account, and so on.

To find out how you can apply these concepts in you Customer Experience, please listen to this episode.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior. As customer experience consultants, we see risk aversion show up in Customer Experience all the time. Listen in to hear how you can recognize risk aversion in your customers' behavior and address it in your Customer Experience. 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.

Follow Colin on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX.

There is an abundance of theory in behavioral economics which can seem overwhelming. How can Marketing and Customer experience teams start using it today. In this podcast we give you an overview of the big ideas. To do this, Ryan has developed a framework of the four key principles - a summary of the four principles of human behavior. Ryan calls this the 4R's.

1: Reference points.

Reference points is the idea that people evaluate almost anything by comparing it to something else. If you want to figure out how people are going to evaluate something you need to figure out where they're starting from.

2: Reason

What are the reasons that people have for choosing or not choosing to use your service? What are the reasons people use to for justify their choice? How does Behavioral economics affect this?

3: Resources

All businesses want their experience to be easy. Customer crave this. But why? The reason is because people have a limited amount of cognitive resources to devote to things, a limited amount of attention, a limited amount of patience. Try to consider that when you are trying to anticipate how people are going to make decisions and how they're going to evaluate an experience.

4: Replacement

This is the idea that people like to get 'stuff' done and that includes making decisions. If people need to make some certain evaluation with regards to your experience, your product or service. In fact, evaluating the offering on its merits or are they using some heuristic or some substitution to answer your question?

If you would like to find out how you can implement these in your organization, please listen to the podcast to hear Colin & Ryan explain this further. Or please contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com .

Follow Colin on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX.

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There is a great deal of information in academia that can help your business, but how do you access it? How do you read it? How can you apply this to your customer experience? Colin will reveal how you can benchmark your performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioral economics and customer experience. Just complete a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

It seems from two recent surveys that despite all the money and resources that have been ploughed into improving Customers Experience, this is not having any effect? What will happen next is that CEO's and the C-Suite will start to remove their support for these changes. What is the problem and what can be done about it? Who better to answer that than Colin Shaw with 17 years experience in the industry and many successful implementations that have driven a great return on investment.

There are two key ways people make decisions: intuitvely or rationally. We discuss why this is important to designing your customer experience and how this can have a key effect on customer loyalty. We reveal how you can benchmark your organization's performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioural economics and customer experience. Just complete a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

Customers tend to partition money and resources into different categories and this affects their spending patterns. What are the implications of this for you? How can you use this to take your customer experience to the next level? Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

There is a big difference between what customers say they want and what they buy. For example, Disney know that when they ask their customers what they would like to eat at their theme park that people will say they would like to have an option of a salad. Disney also knows that people don't eat salads at theme parks! They eat hot dogs and burgers. It is therefore vital that you discover what your customers REALLY want, not what they say they want, and what drives most value for you. This will help you prioritize what you focus on. In this podcast we go through a methodology of how to discover this and how you can use this to improve your customer experience and marketing.

What are the best statistics to help you prove ROI for your customer experience program? These are the best statistics that will help you create ROI. Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

We all know the retail landscape is changing. But what should it be changing to? What are the opportunities and problems? Colin and Ryan interview Amit Sharma, CEO of Narvar, about how retailers can create emotional connections with shoppers in a technology-driven world. Colin will reveal how you can benchmark your organization performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioral economics and customer experience. Just complete a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

Customers make rules for themselves that help them in their buying decisions. Some of these rules are common to many people. Some are specific to individual customers. Do you know what your customer's rules are? How do you find out how to move your customer experience to the next level. Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

Some people spend a great deal on money on expensive products just so they can be seen using them. Other people buy very cheap items. Both of these groups could be 'consuming conspicuously'. What does this mean and how can you use this to move your customer experience to the next level? Colin will reveal how you can benchmark your organizational performance against other companies to determine how you are doing in the new world of behavioural economics and customer experience. Just fill out a short questionnaire and we will then send you a free personalized report!

To improve your customer experience it is vital you address these seven key strategic questions. Colin reveals these questions at a keynote conference speech in Bahrain. Do you know the answers to these questions? Colin also interviews Rami Sweis, CEO of GolfCX on how customer experience is becoming a key area in the Middle East region. Finally, Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience for free!

What are the six strategies for making your experience convenient? Colin and Ryan interview Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience expert about his latest book "The Convenience Revolution'. Shep reveals these strategies.

To improve your customer experience you must also become much more customer centric. How do you do this? What should we focus on? Colin and Ryan discuss what you need to do and how this impacts building a great customer experience. Colin reveals how you can download his ebook 'Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience' for free!

How can other people make you sell a product? How do reviews influence customer behavior? How should you design your experience? Colin and Ryan discuss the psychological theories and how they can be practically implemented in your customer experience.

We all want to sell more, so how do we do this? Are you using this powerful sales technique? The best organizations are, the worse, not so much. Learn what you should be doing.

Does the time of the day that you sell or deal with your customers affect how much they buy or how they see your customer experience. The answer is yes, but why is this the case and what should you do about this?