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If you have customer segments that read like the drink sizes on a fast-food menu, then this podcast is one you really need. The fact is many organizations get customer segmentation wrong. So, we came up with some critical questions that can get it back on track.  One of our listeners is in a pickle and it has to do with their firm’s segmentation. Vijay Patel’s sales haven’t been what he hoped, and he wondered if the problem might be targeting the wrong customers. We think they might be, too, but probably not for the reasons Patel thinks.  Many organizations use databases to segment their customers based on easy-to-collect data, like demographics, industry vertical, or total annual sales. While this information is useful, it is incomplete. We discuss what needs to be included to make these numbers mean anything for targeting.  In this episode, we explore what are critical questions an organization should be using to create customer segments that lead to effective targeting. And to be clear, they don’t use the words “small,” “medium,” or “large.”  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience I have had a terrible time with UPS recently. I sent a package 2-day priority international and ten days later, I still don’t have it. Plus, I have had no luck getting answers about what happened to it. In part, I am to blame because I don’t have a lot of experience with shipping things via UPS. However, part of the problem is UPS because they don’t have a targeted experience for inexperienced shippers like me.  Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 05:12  We share a pickle from Vijay Patel who asks us how to ensure that their customer segmentation is correct. 07:27  Colin talks about one of the best segmentations he has ever experienced in Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, where they separate leisure and business travelers. 11:42  We lead into the first question about segmentation and how it should serve your organization. 14:25  Colin poses the next question about the data used to segment customers and whether it is meaningful for this exercise (spoiler alert: if it involves small, medium, and large, then it isn’t). 18:18  Ryan explains selection bias and how it can doom your efforts by missing an enormous opportunity for your business. 21:04  We explain how using databases can lead to stereotyping and how that is sloppy marketing.  25:18 We discuss psychographics and how it applies to segmentation, and why it might not work either and what we know will work better. Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE. Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

It’s a new year so we decided we needed an update.  A few years ago, we gave you some rules for gaining growth. But times have changed, and so the rules need to change, too. Therefore, we took another pass at the questions that can help your organization gain growth in 2023.  In some ways, these are more like provocations than questions. However, we aren’t picking a fight. We are, however, trying to be provocative. In fact, we usually ask them because we know that people can’t answer them. We want them to realize that they don’t know these answers and get them thinking about it so we can help them move forward.  The first two questions you are probably familiar with already. They set the stage for what we are trying to uncover. Then, we move into specifics about what customers want from your experience. Next come the future questions that explore areas about where you should be trying to go and the tools you can use to get there. Finally, we get into a question about my absolute favorite part of experiences, memory.  In this episode, we explore what we ask and why. We also talk about what they need to realize from their answers and how it can help them gain growth in the new year.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One company we helped move forward was Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping company. We hosted one of the successful leaders of this organization on another episode to share the five rules for a highly successful implementation. One of the things Maersk shared is that these questions made a difference in their improvement program—which is saying something since they improved their scores by 40 points over 30 months.  Here are some other key moments in the discussion: 07:36  After we discuss Maersk line, we get into our second strategic question that explores how customer-centric your organization is, and how that affects your growth. 10:21  We get into an area that we are devoting a whole episode to soon, which is about how people describe their experience with you, as well as what they really want and what drives value for them, all crucial areas to answer for your experience.  18:34 This kicks off the future part of the strategic questions, where we talk about predicting customer behavior and using Customer Science to be successful at it.   20:42 Ryan takes a 2,000-word detour to express how he agrees with Colin, much to his chagrin and Colin’s supreme delight.  28:19 We talk about Colin’s favorite subject memory, and why it matters so much to make them deliberately in your experience. 29:31  We summarize the seven strategic questions and how you can actually work on them on top of everything else you have to do—and why you should make time for them.  Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

In sales, it can be tough to know when a customer is no longer deciding but already decided—unless, of course, they tell you that out loud. So, it is incumbent upon you to read the signs that a customer has decided to buy.  For example, I like to make drawings with pen and paper during my sales presentations with a contact. Then, I position the pen toward them during the discussion as an invitation for them to pick up and draw a little bit, too.  If they do, it’s a good sign. Scribbling away on my pad of already scribbled paper, I know that the contact is engaged and interested in how my services will help them achieve their goals.  However, there are several signals that a person sends when they are ready to buy. One of our listeners, Jason Bradley wrote in with a business pickle wanting to know what some of these signs are. In this episode we tell you and explain the psychology behind it. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:19 We present Jason’s business problem, how other listeners can send in their questions for us to answer on the podcast, and how Colin can tell a person has made a buying decision. 7:20 Ryan presents the Rubicon Model and how it applies to our psychology around decision making.  14:35  Ryan talks about the differences in our mindsets before and after decision-making, and how it applies to political discussions. 20:41 We discuss how people have a preference for action and feel invulnerable after making a decision as part of their psychological need to be right about it. 26:19 Colin shares a story about a sales training that taught them how to get through Death Valley, and, no, it wasn’t a desert survival tip. Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Every so often, I get a chance to chit-chat with colleagues of mine about the future of customer experience. This time, my colleagues were pioneers in customer experience, Lou Carbone (Experience Engineering.com) author of Clued In, and Joe Pine (StratgicHorizons.com), author of The Experience Economy. We discussed what we see changing in CX.    We all think we are at a turning point in the movement. There are a lot of things that the recent pandemic has broken. However, organizations haven’t fixed all of them. Add in the inflation rates that are crippling the economy and affecting customer behavior, and you have a good idea of the state of things these days.    However, my colleagues and I agree there are also exciting things on the horizon. Customer experience enjoyed its first academic nod. We also see CEOs taking a new interest in creative thinking and open-mindedness. Customer science looms on the horizon.    In this episode, we explore the potential for the new year in the customer experience movement and combine the powers of decades of experience to guess what will happen in 2023. We see significant changes coming and share what we see and what you should do about it.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   The state of affairs today in customer strategy is dire. The American Customer Satisfaction Index is at its lowest level in 17 years. From 2010 to 2019, two-thirds of organizations still needed to improve customer satisfaction. Forrester predicted that one out of every five people in Customer Experience would lose their job in the next twelve months.    Here are some other critical moments in the discussion:   02:53  Carbone discusses how too much business thinking is still stuck in the industrial age and how we should change that. 08:31   Pine describes how experiences are about people’s time, not wasting it but making it well-spent. 12:51 Colin threatens to sing Abba’s “Knowing me Knowing You.” 20:00  Carbone announces a milestone for customer experience management, getting a nod from academia.  27:36 Pine shares ideas about developing new measurements for success in CX beyond the traditional that might track customer sentiment more than today’s measures. 36:11 We share our predictions for the new year and what organizations should focus on.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   Bad leadership leads to bad Customer Experience. To have a great Customer Experience, you have to have great leadership.    It reminds me of rabbits.    When my kids were little, we kept rabbits in a hutch. One day, I let the rabbits out to enjoy a little freedom in the garden. But, when I put them down, they hopped right back in the hutch.    I had taken over a call center team at the time. The rabbits’ behavior resembled my team’s. The hutch represented all the constraints built up in the call center culture. The team were much more comfortable hanging out in these constraints than finding a way to do more for customers.    It fell to me to change the culture. Over time, my call center team were hopping throughout the garden of customer centricity, but it required focus and effort on both our parts.    In this episode, we explore the role of leadership in Customer Experience and the 5 Rules guaranteed to increase your effectiveness as a leader.     Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   07:18  We start off the rules with an essential one about self-awareness; how you project yourself in your head does not always translate to the perception of your leadership by your team.  11:26  Colin introduces rule number two, which explains that you have to understand that you do not need to be the cleverest to be the leader. 16:54  We discuss The One Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard, which emphasizes where your followers are and how ready they are to follow your lead. 20:49   Colin refers to one of his favorite leadership aphorisms, “None of us is as clever as all of us,” which speaks to leveraging the strengths of the team to create a better output rather than serving in despotic rule. 26:10  Colin emphasizes ensuring you maintain the critical individual relationships with team members that are necessary to your team’s culture, a critical concept in Ken Blanchard’s follow up book, The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. 28:36 We round out the rules with a crucial part of leadership, loyalty, which goes both ways but starts with the leader.      Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

The end of a year is always a nice reminder to reflect on time passed. It’s a regular milestone where you can check in on your experiences and remember the lessons gained from another trip around our sun.    This year has been an interesting one. With a foot half-in, half-out of the pandemic, continuing supply chain issues, rising inflation rates all over the world, and a war in Ukraine, one might even say awful.    However, like any year, everything isn’t awful. There have been moments, professionally and personally that have been exceedingly positive and have changed us for the better, even if it was just a little bit.    In this episode, we each share a professional and personal lesson learnt from this year. From a description of the world’s ugliest knife (which you can see for yourself at minute 19:26 on our YouTube Channel of the podcast) to the significant realization I had that AI is just our bias written in code shared by our guest Broderick Turner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Marketing at Virginia Tech., and founder of TRAP LAB, a few months ago, there is sure to be something for everyone—or at least some thing to entertain you.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   04:37  Ryan explains how this year taught him that businesses should quit waiting for things to get back to normal; the future is the next normal. 11:24  Colin shares what the revolving door on 10 Downing Street experience this year in the UK reminded him about business and philosophy.    19:26  Ryan explains that learning something new can make you feel more ready to adapt to change, and then showed the knife he made himself, which he describes as the world’s ugliest knife. 23:32 Colin reminds us all that history repeats itself, which means that the skills we learned long ago might come in handy again; so, if you can manage it, don’t forget those lessons.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Ah, yes! It’s the most wonderful time of the year. When we reflect upon the passing year and make plans for the New Year: what we want to keep, where we want to be, and how we need to change. Then, we make them, our New Year’s Resolutions.    However, in just a few days’ time, we will have failed at keeping these resolutions (again) and forgotten all about it.    There are a number of psychological reasons why change is hard, and much of it has to do with habits. Habits are part of our Intuitive System, which is the fast automatic thinking we use to save energy instead of dragging out our Rational System, the slow, deliberate thinking we sometimes use. We get a cue, which triggers an automatic response, that gives us a reward.     However, habits can be broken once you understand where you need to intervene. With a few tricks and some real motivation, you can kick a bad habit or even start a good one.    In this episode, we explore why some people are successful with their New Year’s Resolutions and win, and why some people fail and lose out on the benefits of meeting the challenge for change in the New Year. (If you want to be a part of the first group, we suggest you listen. Want to be in the second group? Keep on rolling with your present strategy.)   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Habits are a giant part of New Year’s Resolutions. Usually, we want to stop having bad ones, i.e., start losing weight and exercising, quit biting nails, or to stop smoking or drinking so much. However, sometimes we want to start good new habits, i.e., floss more, take up a new hobby or learn a musical instrument, or subscribe to a fantastic newsletter on LinkedIn (hint, hint). Below are some moments in the podcast that can help with either direction you are going with this in the new year:   03:16  Colin shares a little bit about his personal weight loss journey and how what he learned there made it clear that psychology is a big part of success or failure with resolutions.  09:14 Ryan explains why using the Framing Effect on your project can be persuasive in these goals.  11:10   We get into change management and how habits are an integral part of that process. 15:00  Ryan explains how  the two-system of cognition, and more specifically, the Intuitive System play a role in habitual behavior and why that is. 20:01  Colin explains how similar failures often happen with Customer Experience programs, too, but that those failures say a lot more than many people think they do. 25:55   Ryan explains why goals and reaching them is one thing, staying there is another.  27:21  We close with an excellent suggestion on how to be successful, based on a story from the actor Terry Crews on how to build a good habit for going to the gym, and it’s not what you probably think.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Going viral is the goal of any passionate social media poster. Posting your content and watching as the views and shares grow exponentially is the dream for marketers trying to build a brand online.    Unless, of course, the viral post is about how you broke a guitar during a customer’s flight and then showed “indifference” to their complaint. (Looking at you, United Airlines.) That’s a nightmare.    The trick is actually doing it—and for the right reasons, not a customer service failure. In an environment where there is infinite amounts of content to compete with, getting a post to go viral is a victory few marketers have the pleasure of experiencing.    In this episode, we explore how to get people to collaborate with you in your efforts to create viral content on social media and the essential elements of the content that encourage people to share it.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   When you want a person to do something, you have probably heard that you should explain the benefits they will enjoy from doing so. It’s no different with social media. Your content should have a benefit that appeals to the sharer and collaborator, and a benefit to whom the person shares it. Therefore, a hearty laugh, a heartfelt “awe,” or an unrealized and epiphanic insight are never a bad way to go.   Here are some other key moments in the discussion:   04:38  Ryan explains how framing plays an essential role in getting people to share your content.  09:47  Colin shares an example of what not to do with your experience that encourage people to share content about you with the infamous (and hilarious), United Breaks Guitars video. 14:04  We share a key insight about how to make something go viral, and it’s not your awesome brand message. 18:34. Colin introduces the idea of internet trolls and everyone piling on as meeting an essential human need to be a part of something.  25:25  Ryan covers a past campaign with Dunkin’ Donuts and Charli D’melio that had all the elements that make a social media campaign go viral.  28:54 We summarize the secret formula ingredients for you and how you can use them in your customer strategy.    Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 70,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customers are fickle. Or at least they appear to be. What once may have exceeded your customer’s expectations one day becomes ordinary the next. That’s because People become less sensitive to change as things improve. It’s called  Diminishing Sensitivity, and it’s the reason that sometimes you have to work harder to “Wow!” your customers.     If you gave $100 to a poor person and a millionaire, it would have completely different effects on their daily lives. While the millionaire would be polite and appreciative of the extra cash, the poor person would feel the difference made by the money far more.    In some ways, your customers are the millionaire in this scenario. Your excellent Customer Experience has made them less sensitive to your improvements. However, if your experience is next to terrible, improvements feel a lot more like $100 to a poor person.    Diminishing sensitivity can be seen across many different industries. For example, the difference in graphics between the video game Football for the Atari 2600 and Madden’s NFL 10 was astounding. However,  when you compare Madden 10 to Madden 12 and 14, the difference is noticeable, but not astounding. It ceases to be something that amazes and becomes something to be expected.   In this episode, we explore the concept of diminishing sensitivity and how it  can affect your customer experience and your customers’ perception of it. We also talk about what you can do to continue to improve.    How Can I Combat Diminishing Sensitivity?   While it would be easy to say you should constantly push the boundaries of your product or service, this is not necessarily realistic. As we have seen with the iPhone, constant improvement eventually bores consumers. Therefore, it’s essential to occasionally disrupt the market with more significant improvements to keep your customers hooked.     Here are some other key moments: 03:33   Ryan introduces the concept of diminishing sensitivity and the minds behind the concept. 09:07   Colin and Ryan discuss how the iPhone is an example of diminishing sensitivity. 15:09    Colin admits that he likes to find companies that need his help that haven’t gone as far into their experience journey because you can enjoy significant impact quickly.  19:14    Ryan and Colin explain how other large organizations have navigated the tricky bit of continuous improvement after enjoying those initial gains. 25:50    Ryan and Colin go over the “curse of improvement” and what you can do to avoid it.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Recession is a natural step in the economic cycle, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the bad news. When economic downturn occurs, we all feel it.    Corporations tend to cut back in a downturn, neglecting things like customer experience. To differentiate yourself from everyone else, you should double down on these services while others cut back.   Nobody looks forward to a recession, but being prepared and aggressive can help alleviate its effects. Don’t let yourself get left by the wayside while there is such a great opportunity to grow.   In this episode,  we do not minimize the downsides of economic recession, but rather show that not everything has to be terrible. We discuss what to do when things get bad, and how to focus on the upside of a recession.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   The most crucial part of dealing with a recession is preparing ahead of time. If you're caught blindly by the oncoming decline, you and your business could wipe out. While we may not officially be in a recession yet, planning as though we were will leave you far more prepared for the times ahead.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   02:50   We first discuss the effects of recession on the larger economy and its necessity to the business cycle. 10:09   Ryan explores the effects of breakdown on breakthroughs and innovations in corporate structure.  14:29   We look at how changing before change is forced upon you can help your business during recession. 17:36   Colin discusses how speeding up when others slow down can improve your success during downturn. 22:19   We give our personal advice to both companies and individuals concerned about the oncoming recession. 24:37   We explain why customer service is one of the most important aspects of succeeding businesses during times of recession.   Did you know we have a YouTube Channel, too? Check it out here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Claire Hillman, a loyal listener, a subscriber to our NL, Why Customers Buy,  and viewer of our podcast on our new YouTube Channel is in a pickle and needs our help. She asks, Should I move to where my customers are or move them to where I want to be?    Now, our first reaction was to tell Claire that she should absolutely meet customers where they are. After all, isn’t that the customer-centric thing to do?    However, it occurred to us that at one time, we waited in line at the airport to check in, wrote out our bills on paper checks to mail back through snail mail, and bought DVDs and CDs that we had to store on specially made racks in our homes.    We did these things because we hadn’t moved to digital check-in, automatic bill payment, and streaming. If organizations hadn’t moved us to these efficient and easy ways to simplify these tasks, we might still be making small talk with the airline employee or licking envelopes.   Since we see that many things that we do today are not the way we used to do things—and realize how much better the experiences are with the new way—it might not be the best things to meet customers where they are. Instead, it might be better to move them where you want them to be.    In this episode, we explore the finer points of moving customers to where they want to be and how to manage this process for your organization. You might be surprised to know that giving customers exactly what they want isn’t always the best way to handle your customer strategy.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Another area where some customers might have not realized was a benefit to them is Self-Service, particularly at the supermarket. However, other customers are never going to want to serve themselves there. What is happening here is the idea of customer segmentation. Some customers love taking matters into their own hands; others feel like it’s losing something from the experience to have to handle things themselves. How you move these groups to where you want them to be requires a careful look at the value you bring to the experience and framing the change in a way that appeals to each segment.      Here are a few other key moments in the discussion:   02:51  We learn about Claire’s pickle and how our first reaction was replaced with the idea that it depends on where your customers are and where you are trying to move them.   4:50  Colin shares a story about how self-service at a supermarket showed him how organizations train customers to try new services and having front-line employees there is a great way to do it.  07:58  We discuss how customer segmentation and understanding what customers value is an essential part of managing the process for moving customers, or you can move some of them right out the door. 13:57  Colin describes how he gets his wife Lorraine to update her iOS on the iPhone, a task she detests, by showing her a couple of new features she is sure to value, which is a great example of what to do with customers. 16:48  Colin explains how the Focus feature that came out on Apple’s last iOS for the iPhone demonstrated how different people care about different things (customer segments), so getting them to change using the same strategy can be difficult. 23:22  Ryan explains how meeting customer might also mean taking into consideration their cognitive state, and what resources they have for deciding to move forward when you position the change. 26:15  We both share our practical advice for what you can do with this information to move customers where you need them to be.    Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.   As if the world isn’t crazy enough—with the war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis, the looming threat of recession, and the ostensible beginnings of catastrophic climate change— we learned a flesh-eating bacterium (Vibrio vulnificus) is running rampant in Florida, infecting people as it thrives in the brackish floodwaters left in the wake of Hurricane Ian.     It’s bloody stressful these days.    With so many things we can’t control, feeling uncertain about the future economy is normal. However, uncertainty is a difficult environment in which to move forward with business.    Colin thought maybe he was feeling so pessimistic about everything because he is getting old. So, he polled his followers on LinkedIn a few days ago to see what they thought. He asked them,"What are you expecting the business environment will be over the next year?" The results might surprise you.    However, no matter how we all feel about the future, into it we go anyway. So, in an effort to help us all cope with the road ahead, we present the 5 Rules for Managing Uncertainty in this episode, which you can also watch on our YouTube Channel.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Uncertainty is a difficult environment for decision making. Often, we look for ways to mitigate these feelings using short-cuts in decision making to move forward. It’s also why we like to say a decision was a no-brainer. If the best way forward was so obvious that we didn’t have to think about it much, we have much more certainty about it. Certainty is definitely our preferred state when we decide things.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   01:49   We start off by explaining the situation behind the poll and what Colin and Ryan think about the future. Spoiler alert: they don’t agree. 05:35  We share some participant insights, first from René Bomholt and then from Andrew Safnauer, who tell us that it will be different in various parts of the world and that thinking about having a recession is the surest way to ensure there is one. 08:57  We share the first rule, to recognize that uncertainty will happen, and it will be uncomfortable.  15:07  We talk about the positives of uncertainty in rule number two, which is to remember that the upside of uncertainty is it provide opportunity, especially to disrupt things. 17:57  Colin shares why he likes to wear his Luton Town Football Club shirt—even though the team isn’t as good as he wishes it was—and how an ex-manager was the inspiration for Rule #3, control the controllables.  22:27  We get into Rule #4, which is to be alert and prepared; because being flat footed and unprepared is never a winning response to uncertainty while having more information and a plan is.  24:25  We explain why the last rule, hoping for the best while planning for the worst, is an excellent way to cope with uncertainty, and why it can pay off for you no matter which way things go.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

What if we told you that we know how you could develop a superpower? You can. We know you can because the method for it it was developed by a Yale’s assistant professor of marketing that was once a door-to-door salesperson and someone who has performed open-heart surgery on a pig.   The superpower you can develop is influence and it is essential if you want to make changes in your organization. As champions of Customer Experience, we don’t need to tell you how crucial it is to get people to change. Influence and consensus building can help you get there, and our guest will tell you how.    In this episode, we talk with climate philanthropist Zoe Chance (zoechance.com) Ph.D., author of Influence is your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. Chance shares with us why she wrote the book, some constructive criticism for the Customer Experience movement, suggestions for a winning strategy, and step-by-step instructions for how to gain support for your ideas.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience One of the reasons Chance wrote the book was because she felt like other tactics written by thought leaders for influence were too transactional. Her methods are softer and built upon a foundation of mutual benefit. In fact, she jokes that her agent wanted to call the book Influence for Nice People. While she rejected the title, she doesn’t reject the premise and hopes that she can do some good with her strategies. Climate change is a topic so important to Chance that she is donating half of the profits from her book to go to 350.org, a global network of climate activists seeking change through the power of ordinary people.    Here are a few other key moments in the discussion:   02:19  We introduce Chance and some of her accomplishments, including the aforementioned open-heart surgery performed on a pig. 05:52  Ryan asks Chance why she chose such a well-written about topic like influence for her book, and Chance explains why she had more to say on the topic. 13:05  Chance explains that the psychology behind influence is the same whether you are convincing people to go to a restaurant or resolving a multi-million-dollar purchase. 17:17 Chance explains to Colin the two big ideas she has for why some organizations do not address the improvement they need in their experiences the way he would like.  21:43  We discuss the intention-behavior gap and how it plays a significant role in influence and getting people to change. 23:46  Chance shares her secret to influencing group decision, including the step-by-step strategy for “working around the roots,” as the Japanese say. 29:36  Ryan asks Chance about the chapter she has on saying no, and what she says about it might surprise you—it has a lot more about getting people to say yes than you might think.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here.   Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Neither of us is much of a runner. In fact, to get us to run with any kind of speed would require some motivation—like a tiger chasing us. That’s because fear is a powerful motivator. Fear is also a powerful tool for marketers to get customers or potential customers to care about something.    So, why does fear motivate us so much? Safety is an important value for all of us. When it is threatened, we notice. In other words, fear is a strong emotion, which makes it hard to ignore or control. In some cases, you might even have an involuntary response as the fear you feel taps into something primal. Michael McIntyre provides an engaging and comedic perspective on this topic here.    When you have something to sell, it can be challenging to cut through the clutter to get people to care about what you have. In fact, getting people to care about anything can be challenging, whether there is a potential sale involved or not. That’s one of the reasons that marketers find themselves using it; fear can get people to care.    Political ads are big fans of this type of marketing. Campaigns use the opponent’s platform and voting record to scare voters about what the opponent might do if elected. Of course, the candidate campaign ad creators want voters to choose would never do those things. So, fear motivates the voters to give their vote to the political campaign’s candidate. It’s genius, and very common.    In this episode, we discuss why fear motivates humans, how marketers can use it effectively and what marketers should avoid. Plus, we decide which mask Colin should wear for Halloween. Don’t miss out on the exciting debate.       Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Among other ways, Loss Aversion, which is part of the larger behavioral science concept of  Prospect Theory, is part of the equation in using fear as a marketing tool. You might remember that Loss Aversion describes that in our minds, losses loom larger than gains. To put it another way, we hate losing things more than we enjoy winning things. Loss Aversion is why we are sometimes motivated to respond to a marketing offer. We don’t want to risk losing something.    Here are a few other key moments in the discussion:   03:46  We talk about our newest part of the podcast, video; click here to subscribe to the Intuitive Customer video feed for the podcast.  05:36  We talk about how fear is a tool used by marketers because it is a powerful emotion that causes people to care about things they might not have before.    08:45  We review the concept of fear aversion, FOMO, and how these can feed into these marketing messages.  15:43  Colin recalls the work of British comedian Michael McIntyre and his bit about wasps and bees, which demonstrates how we sometimes try to control our very real fear. 18:36  We explore why fear is so motivating to us and why we seek it out in “safe” spaces.  20:56 We explain how fear appeals are motivating, but you should do these things if you want them to work and avoid some other things to keep it from backfiring.  31:05 We share our practical suggestions for what you should do with this information.    Subscribe to our YouTube channel here for more content.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

This week on our podcast and Intuitive Customer YouTube channel, we address a listener’s “Pickle” with our “I’m in a Pickle” feature. You might remember that a Pickle is our term for a business problem that might be addressed with customer strategy and/or the behavioral sciences. We hadn’t featured one for a while, so we thought it was time to dig into a new one.    This week, we hear from a frustrated and disappointed insurance professional named Tonya Dunn who wants to know why, after all their Customer Experience improvements, they still aren’t seeing the results they expected. She wants to know what we think the problem is and what we think they should do.    Customers are complicated and so are the reasons they do what they do—or don’t do— in an experience. In our listener’s case, the thing they are not doing is recommending them to their friends and family.    This problem is not unusual, nor is it insurmountable. However, it usually requires taking a hard look at what an organization is doing to improve and where they might have veered off course from a successful customer strategy to manage customer behavior.    In this episode, we take that hard look at what might be going on with their improvement program and how the organization might change what they are doing to get back on course and start getting those referrals rolling in the door.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   First of all, it’s important to note that there is rarely one reason something like this happens. Like many things, there are several reasons that this can happen with a Customer Experience program. There are theoretical reasons that could influence the results our listener is getting and tactical ones, too. We discuss them all in the podcast.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   03:02  We hear about the pickle and why Colin chose this one to feature on the podcast. 04:07  We talk about the theoretical reasons that our listener isn’t getting the results she wanted, starting with a favorite topic, Reference Points. 13:26  Ryan talks a little about the Evaluative Heuristic, which is something we use when comparing complicated or hard to understand things in a decision.   17:23  Colin talks about some tactical problems that could be happening, starting with how organizations sometimes focus on the wrong parts of the experience.  23:04  We discuss why it is essential to identify what customers value the most when choosing what to invest your time and resources into improvement. 27:21   We wind down the discussion and share our recommendations for our listener (and anyone else out there with a similar problem) about what to do about this pickle.   Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Organizations need to embrace that emotional side of their experiences. Not only to design an experience that surprises and delights their customers, but also so their Artificial Intelligence works to provide useable insight. Combining the emotional data into the formula with concepts from the behavioral science side will make it so organizations can understand what and why their customers do what they do.    However, I worry that they don’t.    You’ll remember that Customer Science is the fusion of data, the behavioral sciences, and artificial intelligence (AI). Today, we will discuss what role AI plays in predicting customer emotions and how they affect customer behavior.    AI isn’t perfect. Yet. We did an interview with Broderick Turner, Ph.D., from Virginia Tech about AI recently. Turner explains his skepticism about AI since he views AI as opinions written in code.    However, imperfect or not, AI technology gives us some options we didn’t have before.  Applied intelligently and with a deliberate approach, AI has the potential to solve problems, and help us achieve goals.    This episode is the second of a series of podcasts we did with Beyond Philosophy’s own Zhecho Dobrev (@ZhechoDobrev), author of The Big Miss: How Organizations Overlook the Value of Emotions. We talked with him before on our podcast a month ago about how emotions drive customer behavior. This week, we dive a little deeper on this concept, and explore how emotions affect the insights we get from Customer Science. If you’d like to read a bit more from Zhecho on emotional attachment being a key factor in customer-drive growth check out this article here.       Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   In the book, Dobrev shares research about AI. It looks at the typical customer journey touchpoints and how much value do each of those drive. Also, Dobrev examines where emotions and customer relationships affect the outcome, and how much value those provide. Now, he is analyzing how AI uses each of those customer journey mapping touchpoints, meaning the customer infinity lifecycle thinking about the brand, learning about the product, purchasing experience, and all the other points until we get to customer retention.      Here are a few more key moments in the discussion:   03:36  We talk about the recent podcasts that led to this one, including the first one with Zhecho a little while ago, the podcast we did on Customer Science, and an episode we had with a guest, Broderick Turner, about how opinions make their way into AI code.  08:30  Dobrev explains that regarding AI in the Customer Science mix, it should include customer emotional data, as they are the main drivers of customer behavior; otherwise, the insights it has gleaned may not be authentic drivers of behavior. 10:43  Dobrev shares three organizations that have done a great job using AI to understand how emotions affect and drive customer behavior and why it helped.  20:26  Colin shares how a previous podcast, one about the book, The Myth of Experience, demonstrates one of the problems with AI, which is that organizations don’t have the data they think they do and how that leads to problems with their application of it. 29:09 Dobrev shares his plans about what is next for AI and experience, and his effort to piece together a strategy that can improve all experiences moving    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

This podcast was created in partnership with Streem   Delta thinks I am a liar.  Or at least it felt like they did on this phone call with me. If we had a video option, the entire experience would be better for both sides, and I would have the flight I wanted. Video can be the untapped jewel of your experience design, and we will explain why.    The problem was a schedule change that put me out of Boston instead of Atlanta. I wanted to switch the flight back to Atlanta on a different one that was the same price but was unable to do so on my own online. So, I called the contact center. Unfortunately, they had a different fare on their system than I did, so I felt they didn’t think I was telling the truth. During that phone call with Delta, I wished I could show them what I had on my screen so they could trust me.    I had a similar experience with my doctor. I had pain in my chest and wanted to indicate to the doctor where it was without seeing him or giving him a 400-word description. The video was not an option, so it was a wordy description in stops and starts.    In this episode, we talk with special guest Jóhann Hannesson, Lead Product Manager and the head of Web Development at Streem, about using video in a Customer Experience. Hannesson says that video could be the missing link between your customer who has a problem and the expert they are talking to in the contact center who, through video, can help them faster.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   So, why do humans prefer video in these situations? There are two answers. First, there is a level of information exchange that words do not always have. You are not always depending on a customer that is not necessarily an expert in communicating the problem with terms concisely and accurately with the contact center. Second, it facilitates communication by allowing people to talk and look at the problem together.  Video allows the customers and contact centers to work together on the situation.    Here are a few other critical moments in the discussion:   01:55  We introduce our guest host, Jóhann Hannesson, Lead Product Manager and the head of Web Development at Streem. 05:55  Hannesson explains how interactions with a contact center have friction when they rely on non-expert customers to communicate with expert contact center employees and how video can help resolve them in practical ways.  15:21  We learn that not only does video make calls easier for the customers, but they also improve the employee experience, too. 22:00  Hannesson explains how video has improved customer contacts and helped resolve issues more efficiently.   25:07  Hannesson shares a specific case study that used video to reduce repeat home visits.   29:22  We all share our practical advice about how to use video to improve the metrics that matter most to your organization (and that none of us are footballers, in case you were wondering).        Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as a 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' He has 290,000 followers for his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected it as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

When it comes to the behavioral sciences, I love their take on memory. I love it so much, that we did a podcast mini-series on it in three parts.    In the first part, we talked about why memories are essential to experiences, when we use them to decide sometimes, and how memories form.    The second part covered how memories are connected and the different types of memories we have.    In this final episode of the memory mini-series, we explore how we store, retrieve, and forget memories.   Why all this hullabaloo about memory? Simply put, I think too many organizations underestimate the significance of the effects customers’ memories have on their bottom line. Memories are essential to experiences. They connect us to our past and drive our behavior in the present. In many ways, memories define us.   Memory is also essential to customer loyalty and retention. Nobel-Prize-Winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman explained it all to me ten years ago and I never forgot: customers don’t choose between experiences; they choose between the memories of an experience.   In this episode, we discuss how we retrieve, store, and forget memories. However, we also talk about what you can do with this information to ensure that when customers are sorting through their memories of your experience, they come back for more every time.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   In our Memory Maker Training, we cover the importance of memories to your experience and how to train your employees to create excellent and lasting ones of your experience. This training builds upon your choice of the experience you want to deliver customers, whether that’s making them feel valued or cared for or something else in that moment. These memories are reinforced by the words, phrases, body language and tone used by your team.    Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   04:01  Ryan gets the discussion started by going over how our minds store memories and the influences on that process. 12:12  We learn how SOHCAHTOA from trigonometry is an excellent example of mnemonic devices that help us remember things and why.  13:57  Colin explains how an app called  What Three Words uses an easier to remember way to pinpoint your location than coordinate numbers.  16:05  We discuss the Zeigarnik Effect and how it helps us retrieve memories, along with some other interesting tools.    26:41  We discuss how we sometimes misremember things, as studied by Elizabeth Loftus and presented on her TED Talk.   31:24  Ryan and I get into the “So what?” of memory and how you can apply what you have learned practically in your customer strategy.         Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Memories do not exist alone. They are networked…and this network isn’t a bunch of the same kind of information arranged in neat order and categorized by type. It’s a network of different memory types intermingling facts and feelings, procedures, and judgements, all influencing each other in interesting ways.    Memory is what creates customer loyalty. It doesn’t matter what parts of your customer strategy you design. If customers don’t remember that you did it, it won’t matter later.    It’s for this reason that we love the subject of memory. So, we did a mini-series about it.    In this episode, the second part of a three-part mini-series on Memory, we build on the concepts we shared in the first episode. We talk about the memory network and how it works. We also discuss the different types of memories. Plus, we get into one of my favorite concepts from the “father of the behavioral sciences,” Nobel-Prize-winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman, the Peak-End Rule.    It's sure to be  an episode you will never forget.    Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   There are a lot of things that memories are. They are facts, procedures, feelings, and evaluations. One thing they are not is a sole existence. We kick off this episode with an explanation of the network of memories that makes it clear what we mean.   Here are a few key moments in the discussion:   02:53  Ryan explains his metaphor of a fishing net to describe how memories connect to each other in our minds. 11:06  We discuss the different types of memories and how they form.     15:39  Colin explains how sometimes organizations can design experiences that train customers to use them, like the site where he buys his sheet music for the guitar. 19:04  We get into how habits are a type of memory, albeit and automatic and subconscious one.    22:13  Colin tells a story that is sure to mean that his daughter will never let him babysit his grandchild again.   23:55  Ryan explains Episodic memory, which is the one that is most like what experienced champions should do for their customer strategy.       You can listen to part 1 of our mini-series on memory here.   Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.      How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Memory is crucial to customer strategy. Understanding customer behavior requires a fundamental understanding of how we access and use memories in our daily life and how it drives decision making in our actions and even who we decide to trust.   In other words, understanding people requires understanding their memories. Further, it requires knowing what they remember and why, and also, what they don’t remember at all.    This week, the Intuitive Customer is going Netflix. We present the first of our three-part series on Memory. It’s the Memory Mini-Series, Part 1. In it, we explore how our behavior is motivated by our memories. We also take a closer look at how memories form, and where it lives in your mind, or whether it ends up in the memory wastebasket instead.   Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience   Memory is a giant subject as it relates to Customer Experience. It affects what customers remember about your brand, what they order or buy from you, and whether they ever come back. In essence, managing customer behavior requires managing their memories.    6:43  Ryan explains why memories are not all, but almost all of human psychology. 9:36  Colin asks Ryan to explain whether memory has anything to do with the decision-making shortcuts people use to make decisions, and Ryan explains that some do, and some don’t. 17:37 Ryan explains how brands are a memory-based structure in the minds of your customers, their thoughts, and feelings that they associated with your offering and why that is. 21:21 We explore how memories form, and how the different types of memory formations differ from each other, starting with how memories exist in our minds. 26:46  We explain why Ryan can still order a pizza from Pizza Hut in Cleveland, even though he hasn’t lived there in decades, and what to expect in the next installment of our three-part series on memory.    Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources   LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.    Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.    How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.