You must focus on your employees if you want a great experience that delivers service excellence. Unfortunately, that isn’t my concept. I got it from a book I read twenty-five years ago called The Service Profit Chain: How Leading Companies Link Profit and Growth to Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Value by James L. Heskett, Earl Sasser, Jr., and Leonard Schlesinger. However, today, this concept is essential and might be what saves your experience at a time when experiences need saving.

I was thinking about this because one of our listeners, Praveen Kumar, is in a pickle about his employee experience. He wants to know if employee experience is a fad and, if not, how one should build a great employee experience. I guess many of you have the same problem, so I decided to share what we told him on a recent podcast here, too.

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Now, to answer Kumar’s first question, the answer is no. Employee Experience is not a fad. However, the term might be. We call it Employee Experience because it is alliterative and goes with Customer Experience. Still, it was probably called something else before that and may change to something else later. 

The concept that you will be more successful in caring about your employees is not a fad. Unless, of course, we are replacing our teams with robots. Sans that singularity, chances are you are employing humans, and ensuring they have a pleasant experience is essential.

The key word here is “experience.” As experiential animals, we have experiences constantly. Of course, there are Employee and Customer Experiences, but there are also vacation experiences, family experiences, sport team experiences, etc. We experience things all the time. Ignoring any one of those doesn’t have good consequences for the experience.

Moreover, trends don’t always get the buy-in they should from senior management. If experience management is a trend, it could mean that organizations hire people to mind theirs but give them no budget and no authority to do anything. Eventually, when the experience manager can’t get anything accomplished, they will quit or get fired, and that will be that. So, for all of our sakes, I don’t want Employee Experience to be a fad.

Employee Experience Management is a Leadership Choice

An essential thing to remember is that minding how your employees feel during their time working for you is a leadership issue. Managers and senior teams need to decide how they will treat their teams. For example, will they appreciate their employees’ outside responsibilities, career goals, and personal well-being needs? Or will they pay them to work and stay out of all that?

Employee Experience management, like Customer Experience Management, needs to be diffused throughout an organization. Moreover, caring about these things not only makes it a better place to work, but it also has reciprocal effects. Feeling cared about as an individual inspires most people to give more at their jobs and try a little harder on behalf of their employer. 

So, just like it is everyone’s responsibility to provide a great Customer Experience, it is also everyone’s job in management to manage the Employee Experience. In many ways, all I say about Customer Experience apply to the Employee Experience. For example, Reference Points might apply here as they do in Customer Experience Management. 

What is Their Reference Point?

Let’s start with Reference Points. You might remember that the Reference Point is what people use to compare you to something. To understand people, you should determine their Reference Points in any given category. Those comparisons are how we evaluate things and drive much of our actions.

One example of changing Reference Points that will make HR managers cringe is when employees start talking about salary. In some places, employees are not allowed to talk about that (although a request like that isn’t legal everywhere, so be careful if that is your organization’s policy). If employee A is happy with their salary but finds out that employee B does the same job and makes more money, they will be unhappy. So their Reference Point changed, and not in a good way. 

However, salary isn’t the only Reference Point that can change. Work experience is another area that has a Reference Point. Unless this job is the employee’s first, they are likely comparing you to other places they have worked, hopefully favorably. 

One example that has played out regarding changed Reference Points is remote working. Before COVID, many people had no expectations about getting to work from home. However, after being sent home to work, a lot of people realized it was kind of nice to be able to skip the commute, the parking fees, the noisy/distracting environment they had to work in at the office, and any number of other annoying things about working in-person. They also liked having access to their kitchens, completing small home tasks during the day, and wearing sweatpants all day. Now, firms are asking people to return to the office, and many employees view this return to what used to be expected as a loss. 

Reference Points are also an expectation. Therefore, managing an Employee Experience might require discovering the Reference Point your experience is judged by and providing new Reference Points if you are losing out in the comparison. Changing these Reference Points and expectations is essential in a highly competitive employment market. Otherwise, you might not only lose in the comparison but lose the employee, too. 

So, How Do You Build a Great Employee Experience? 

If I consider the second part of Kumar’s pickle problem, there are a few things to manage when improving your Employee Experience. First, like Reference Points, another essential consideration when building a great Employee Experience is looking at what each kind of employee group wants. In other words, you should segment your employees. 

Twitter just went through this. You might have heard that when Elon Musk bought Twitter, he laid off many people. Then, those that were left received a threatening email that said, “If you aren’t ready to be hardcore, show yourself the door.”

Not surprisingly, many people left, 50 to 80 percent by some estimates. But, interestingly, many people stayed. To me, the people who stayed are an excellent demonstration of how different people have different goals and things they want out of work. These people read that email and thought, “Hardcore? No problem. I want to be a part of it.”

Whenever possible, you should accommodate your different employees and recruit accordingly. For example, management consulting firms often recruit MBA students. These positions are like Twitter these days, hardcore. They require an enormous amount of time and loads of travel. However, some MBA grads want to do it, at least in the short term (not surprisingly, another group wants to do it long-term, too). So, the job accommodates that. The MBA student takes the position, does it for a few years, and then moves on to a new post. When the employee leaves, the company understands, and everyone parts as friends. 

It also goes back to the questions I always pose my clients about their Customer Experiences:

• What’s the Employee Experience that you’re trying to deliver? 
• Which emotions are you trying to evoke in your employees? How are you going to go and evoke those emotions? 
• How do you design that into the employee journey?
  

The answers to these questions will drive your culture, which is critical to the Employee Experience. Understanding your culture is essential if you want to hire the right people who will be happy in this culture. Otherwise, you will suffer the consequences of a bad fit. 

For example, suppose your answer to the first question is an experience that fosters productivity. In that case, the answers to the second and third questions should relate to how to get that productivity. Moreover, productivity is the culture at your company, so you should own it. By contrast, if the answer to the first question is providing an experience that reduces employee churn/turnover, then the answer to the following two questions should work up to that goal. In other words, what emotion would make an employee want to stay for a long time at your company? How can you work that emotion into their working experience? And so on.

Leadership is crucial, too. We had another podcast on leadership recently called “5 Rules Guaranteed to Make You a Good Leader.” It’s a topic we return to on the podcast, and I cover a lot here because everything about your organization comes from leadership. So therefore, if you want to build an effective Employee Experience, you must have leaders who can get you there. 

Richard Branson has two quotes I love related to this concept that reflect his leadership style:

• “Look after your staff, and they’ll look after your customers.”
• “Train people well enough so they can leave, then treat them well enough, so they don’t want to go.”

The first one is reflective of what I have been talking about here. The second one is an excellent one to add to the first because not enough organizations take seriously that employees care about their career progression. Therefore, they don’t provide a path for someone to advance in the organization, which means they will leave. For some companies, that’s great; they designed that Employee Experience to end that way. However, other companies do not want their employees, whom they have poured their time and energy into, to leave. 

As I often say, making things easy is essential, too. However, in this case, the easy I am referring to is making employees’ lives easier. 

An example of a company that gets this concept is Coca-Cola. My podcast partner’s students work there. Some benefits of employment at Coca-Cola are the in-house daycare, the on-site dry cleaner, and a pharmacy. These three things make it easier for employees to handle parts of their personal lives at work. For working parents, it’s a huge benefit to have your kids on site, reducing the stress and strain of the morning rush with one stop for all of you. Plus, getting some of those errands taken care of during the work week frees up weekend time for employees, which is a benefit.

So, maybe these aren’t practical benefits for Kumar’s company or yours. But are there things you could do to make employees’ lives a little easier and boost their enjoyment of the employee experience? Again, the return on investment for your efforts in this area is employees who appreciate the benefit and are a little less distracted and more focused on work.

Hopefully, that advice can help Kumar with his pickle. If you want to know more, my last advice might be to go back over the past five years we have recorded the podcast and listen to them all. Just substitute the word “employee” for “customer,” and you will have many more tips to consider in your efforts.

Colin has spoken at hundreds of conferences, including some of the world’s largest brands. Talk to Colin about how he can speak ‘in person’ or ‘virtually’ at your conference. Click here.

The post Is Employee Experience just a Fad or is it really the Future of Work? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Back when I was working in corporate life, I went to a presentation in London. Sitting there amongst 1,000 people, I had an epiphany about what I wanted to do with the rest of my career. Soon after that, I founded my global Customer Experience consultancy, Beyond Philosophy. The Speaker was New York Times Best-Selling Author Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score® (NPS). We had him on the podcast recently to talk about his new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers.

Reichheld’s inspiration for the book was his frustration about the misuse of the NPS system. Fortune reported over two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 used NPS, but in Reichheld’s experience, most organizations were not taking advantage of its core purpose. (I couldn’t agree more with him on this point.) Reichheld’s book is an attempt to get users back on track.

Reichheld says the fundamental idea behind an NPS system is for organizations to love their customers and treat customers in a way that enriches their lives. Doing so has business implications because when you do, people come back and bring their friends. 

Also, treating customers well is good for employees. Employees often feel enriched when they serve others, especially when customers appreciate it. Reichheld says NPS collects those recognitions so employees can hear them. Furthermore, when employees don’t earn that praise, NPS will show what they should change.

So, What Went Wrong with NPS?

Unfortunately, Reichheld says too many organizations use NPS as a stick or a metric for earning bonuses. He says that any time you link a survey-based score to someone’s career or compensation, bad things happen. Employees will do everything in their power to change the score, and the score becomes an obsession rather than earning the score. Reichheld says most companies have mangled the original NPS concept with leaderboards that compare scores between employees or withholding compensation related to it. Others would use the score to report to investors with no standards for score collection or disclosing response rates; some even withheld low scores to make their overall look better. All of these actions destroy the credibility of the scoring process, Reichheld says. 

The book lays out some of the best practices for maintaining credibility for the Net Promoter System. For example, Bain and Company, where Reichheld worked when inventing the concept, was the first to adopt it. One of the outcomes was Bain now measures NPS in a scientifically rigorous way called NPS PRISM®.

Moreover, with Net Promoter’s robust feedback, you know better what companies will succeed in the market. He says that the financial metrics most companies use for valuations point you toward the wrong investments. Instead, what drives financials long term is customers coming back for more and bringing their friends. 

Reichheld started investing in the companies that consistently scored well. As a result, his stock portfolio tripled the market over the last decade. Want to know more about how to do the same? Buy his book!

Reichheld says the title reflects how the book is about living a purpose-driven life as an individual, team, and company. The organizations that enrich customers’ lives, solve their problems and put smiles on customers’ faces succeed. Those that try something else fail. 

The Role of Leadership in NPS

Leadership is another integral part of the NPS success. People need compensation to do a job. Therefore, salary and benefits have to be fair and reasonable. However, pay and benefits are not what inspire people. Reichheld says what motivates employees is being a valued team member winning with its customers and making customers’ lives better.

Reichheld says great leaders understand that they have to take care of their employees, inspire them, and embrace the proper mission to enrich the lives of the customers that they touch. Then, once the teams are on that mission, their job is to watch out for employee safety, health, and well-being and ensure employees have the right tools to accomplish that mission. Net Promoter gives them a system to let employees know when they have succeeded and when they haven’t.

Moreover, Reichheld says until you can measure something, you can’t learn and make progress. You can’t develop a common language where people agree on what constitutes successes and failures. So, the need to measure is crucial. 

Of course, things like “enrichment” are hard to measure. Reichheld says NPS Prism helps. 

The Earned Growth Rate

Instead of complaining that people don’t use Net Promoter appropriately, Reichheld decided to present an alternative that’s an appropriate metric to hold people accountable. Reichheld also wanted it to be accounting-based because it is well regulated, and there are rules for measurement. In other words, people in accounting go to jail if they cheat. 

His new metric concept is called Earned Growth Rate. The Earned Growth Rate measures the revenue growth from return customers who bring in their friends. Also, the Earned Growth Rate separates that development from the other efforts that drive growth, like marketing, store acquisition, and other measures along these lines.

There are two parts to the Earned Growth Rate. First, part of Earned Growth is revenue from existing customers coming back for more and expanding their purchases. Several industries use this metric already. For example, Software as a Service (SaaS) companies have a net revenue retention rate, a well-defined component that links to SaaS companies’ market valuations. Furthermore, investors already understand it. 

The other part is the trickier one to follow, which is keeping track of those happy existing customers’ referrals. The one Reichheld and the team at Bain have been using is asking customers, “What’s the primary reason you decided to do business with us?” When they check the box for recommendations or referrals, it’s Earned Growth, and you can keep track of it. If you want extra credit, find out the customers who had the most significant influence on deciding to do business. Then, you can learn who is generating referrals and why and what you could do better to make those customers feel the love and want to share it with all their friends and colleagues.

He likes this system better than using profits. Profit is how much money you pull out of your customer’s pocket, not how much enrichment you put into it. Moreover, Reichheld maintains there are good profits and bad profits. 

Bad profits are any profits that you earn from a customer that’s a detractor. In other words, bad profits do not make customers feel satisfied. An excellent example of bad profits is when they charge you three- or four-hundred percent markups when you return the rental car without a full gas tank. Bad profits are also when an airline charges you $200 to change a ticket for a flight six months out. The airline has no cost except the administrative effort, but they’ll charge anyway. These profits make accountants happy because they look like profits, but they make customers angry. These profits not only destroy the firm’s reputation and the future of the business, but he says they also suck the soul out of employees that have to implement those aggressive policies.  

I have seen this in my career, too. When I used to be in corporate life, it used to bug me that the guys who sold the most would be stitching up a customer or overpromising somehow. I always felt that was wrong. Moreover, making bad profits like these was not sustainable for the organization going forward.

A story in the book explains good profits. Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit, the software firm at $150+ Billion in market capital, started at Bain with Reichheld. Cook used to say, “Fred, we don’t deserve a dollar of profit from a customer until we’ve made that customer happy.” 

Adding to Cook’s sentiment, Reichheld says good profits also create promoters. Therefore, if you make customers happy and customers tell their friends, then any profits from that customer and their friends are good profits. 

So, What Should You Do with This Information?

This information is all interesting and whatnot, but is it practical? As you know, I believe that theory is grand, but if you can’t use it, it isn’t constructive. So, if you know that you need to apply it in your experience, what advice does Reichheld have for you?

His first advice is to read the book, followed by implementing the concepts he explains inside. However, people can do other practical things based on what you know so far, too.

First, Reichheld says, Customer Experience professionals in a leadership role should determine what everyone in the organization thinks is the primary purpose of the business. So the first question will be multiple choice for the question, What’s the primary purpose for our company? The answers would be:

1. To become a great place to work for employees.
2. To maximize shareholder value.
3. To enrich the lives of our customers.
4. A balance to all shareholders.

Reichheld says that it’s likely surprising how few people will answer c. It’s usually around 10 percent. That means 90 percent of the respondents do not think their company’s primary purpose is to enrich customers’ lives, which represents an enormous opportunity for most organizational leadership. 

The next question would be open-ended. Reichheld recommends it should be, “What’s the one change the company should make to live up to our purpose?” He says leadership will see how far you need to go to change people’s thinking on whether the customer is first or not. In the happy situation where you see that customers are first, the open-ended answers will give you a better idea of improving your efforts to enrich customer lives.

Reichheld also recommends measuring Earned Growth and making that the accounting metric. Sure, some people might want to cheat at it, just like they do with booking revenues inappropriately or lying about costs. However, accounting is a process for finding the cheaters, fixing them, and making it harder to cheat. 

Like many things with experiences and customer strategy, culture is at the center. Reichheld’s Chapter 8 talks about how to build systems that reinforce cultural values in rigorous ways. He also thinks there is too little effort put into companies. He charges the CEO to make the culture and determine how to measure success in that community.

Leaders should build persistent systems that work not only once a quarter or for the annual employee survey but twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365. When no one’s looking, organizations just keep doing it. The purpose is to make people proud to be part of your team. 

Reichheld and the team have the employees evaluate their leaders anonymously. Then, Reichheld’s group asks employees how likely they were to want to work with this person again and if they would recommend this person as a good leader. Reichheld believes these scores should drive promotions rather than sales figures. With that as the metric, managing partners and office heads should exemplify the core values that provide enriching experiences for employees. 

There is a lot of change in the experience industry right now. As a result, any organization’s customer strategy will need new ideas about measuring and improving experiences for customers moving forward. Identifying opportunities with NPS and the Net Promoter System for economics could help the next level of experience economics. 

There you have it. No promotions, no gimmicks, just good information. 

Think reading is for chumps? Try my podcast, The Intuitive Customer instead. We explore the many reasons why customers do what they do—and what you should do about it. Subscribe today right here.

The post Are You Winning on Purpose?—The Creator of the “Net Promoter” Tells Us How! appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

On the podcast, we do something called “I’m in a Pickle.” The pickle is a business problem our listeners have that we try to address with the behavioral sciences. For example, we had one recently from a listener Janet, who said that despite getting good comments from customers, they do not give us the top Net Promoter Score (NPS)®. Since I am aware this is a common problem, I thought I would share our advice to Janet with you lot, too.

Janet’s organization has an overall NPS of 68, but its goal is 70. Now, a 68 is an excellent score. However, I understand Janet’s frustration. She explained in her email that they rank from one to five, and many of the customers give them a four, which is still passive, meaning customers like the company but aren’t likely to promote it to their friends and family. 

In a recent newsletter, I covered my discussion with the inventor of Net Promoter, Fred Reichheld, about his new book Winning on Purpose. We discovered in our conversation that Reichheld feels the same way. While NPS is beneficial in many ways, people focus too hard on the metric and lose sight of the big picture. NPS is valuable because of its universality, but it shouldn’t be the only thing you measure.

Before we get into that, let’s clear up a practical problem. Using a scale of 1-5 for NPS is incorrect. The correct scale for NPS is 0-10. So, we recommended making that adjustment. Having a larger scale for respondents to choose from is also essential to help you get more detailed about what is happening in your Customer Experience and producing the passive score. Also, it will mean you are measuring the same thing as all the other organizations using NPS, making it easier to compare your organization to others, including competitors. 

It is also important to remember that NPS is not the answer to life, the universe, and everything. NPS is an excellent tool, but other things should supplement it, like the Customer Experience Design. We recommended that Janet’s organization answer the following questions about their experience and how it plays into their customer strategy:

• What’s the experience that you’re trying to deliver as an organization? 
• Which emotions do you want to evoke to get your score up to 70+?
• How do you know those emotions drive value for your organization?
• How do you intend to measure your success with evoking these emotions?

We used these tactics with Maersk Lines, the world’s largest global shipping firm, a few years ago. First, we had them determine what type of experience they wanted to deliver, what emotions it should evoke, and then how we would check our work. In their case, they wanted customers to feel they could trust Maersk, feel as though Maersk cared for them, and be pleased with their service. Then, after that, we found ways to evoke those emotions by changing how their customer process worked. Afterward, we measured their success by asking customers if they felt cared for or pleased. Using this strategy, we were able to move their NPS by 40 points over 30 months. 

Therefore, it is essential to get into the details to move the needle on NPS. It would be best for anyone struggling to get the NPS they want to get a lot more granular in your experience assessment. Relying on NPS to tell you what is failing you will only frustrate you. NPS is not a diagnostic designed to show you why you got the score. NPS only scores you based on what you already did.

Another area to consider is the intricacies of customer behavior. There is a significant difference between what customers say and what they mean. There is an even more substantial difference between what customers say and what they ultimately do. Many of you might remember how I always say that when Disney asked what people wanted to eat at the theme park, customers said, “a salad,” but people don’t eat salads at theme parks. So, the point of that story is not to disparage salad eating behavior at theme parks or shame people for wanting to eat junk and later lie about why they did on a survey. The point is customers can’t always tell you what they want when you ask. 

In Janet’s case, the company listens to what the customers comments say and likes what they hear. However, the company does not see those comments carry through to the customer behavior they want, which is for customers to recommend them to friends and family. Therefore, the words must not be revealing enough to provide actions for Janet’s organization. Instead, they need to find out what customers mean—or what motivates them to say the good stuff in the first place.

Customer behavior is complicated, particularly regarding providing positive feedback. People leave positive comments for many reasons. First, they might be pleased, which is ideal. However, they might also not be happy, but feel it is impolite to tell you so. As a Brit, I can attest that being polite is a strong motivator for people, even when fuming underneath. 

With these types of motivations working against you, it is essential to up your interpretation game. In other words, you’ve got to get under the skin of what customers say in the comments and discover the real drivers of Net Promoter behavior. For example, our Emotional Signature® Research  process revealed what motivated their customers to work with a construction equipment manufacturing company. Now, the world’s biggest construction equipment manufacturer’s perceived wisdom was that customers wanted a reasonable price for reliable machinery with plenty of parts available for replacement and a high resale value. That would be enough for them to recommend the company to others. While those things did provide value, we discovered through our research that what drove NPS behavior was that the construction equipment manufacturer listened to customers and cared for customers as a person. Not exactly what you would expect from a construction market customer, but there it was. 

In Janet’s case, we advised her to discover what emotions drive value and improve her customers’ NPS. Then, Janet’s company should execute its experience against those goals. In other words, read the comments and read between the comments’ lines to ascertain intent. Look for hidden customer messages they might have missed the first time around. Also, if they have the budget, do actual research on what drives value for your organization. 

Another essential part of your Customer Strategy is to be specific about what feedback you want. For example, if you ask, “What do you think of our company?” or “How likely are you to recommend our company?” and that’s it, you don’t have any specific area feedback. So, when those answers reflect a downward trend about your company and a decrease in NPS, then you won’t know why. Instead, I recommend that you get more tactical with your questions rather than broad. Then, you have area-specific feedback that can help you determine where your opportunities lie. You might also break down the customer journey into different sections to see if there is an opportunity in any of the separate parts of the overall journey. 

Measuring your performance in parts will help you fix the whole experience. Otherwise, you don’t know where you need to fix things. For example, when working with a home improvement company, we used this section approach. We had the pre-sales section, the sales, the installation, and the post-installation. Using this strategy, we could see that some parts, like pre-sales and sales, were getting high NPS scores, but installation wasn’t. Using this tactical approach, our client could see that the opportunity to improve their overall NPS was in the installation part of the customer journey. Without this insight, they might have decided to fix the wrong things. 

So, to summarize our listener Janet’s problem with her NPS performance, there are a few things to remember:

• Using the 1-5 scale instead of the 0-10 scale required for NPS could be creating a lower performance in NPS than the company has. Changing to the proper scale is essential.
• Asking broad questions allows customers to avoid getting specific in their feedback. Janet’s company should get more granular with their customer strategy and ask many questions about how customers feel in particular moments to determine their experience opportunities. 
• Taking what customers say as gospel could be misleading. Discover what drives value by undertaking research (like Emotional Signature) and don’t rely on customer comments to determine it.
• Having only NPS as a metric is excellent, but having more measurements in place is better. Janet’s company should think about assessing things from both a strategic and tactical perspective.

Another thing I would leave you with is the idea that some people always give the top ranking, and some people never do. It is an individual difference between the personalities of individuals. In some cases, positive people never give low marks below the mid-point, even when they are very dissatisfied. Therefore, getting more feedback is better than less because it allows you to see a complete picture of your performance. The smaller the response, the more influence these individual preferences for ranking things have on the outcome.  

Also, remember me when you send out a survey. I get a request for a survey response every time I fly with Delta, which is a lot. However, the only time I fill it out is when I have a problem. Could the same be true with your survey frequency strategy?

Overall, when it comes to NPS, you should use it to see if it’s going up or going down. Suppose it’s going up. Then, great. Keep doing what you are doing. However, if it’s going down, you need more information. Get clever about it by digging into what drives value and how your customers feel during their experience. The greatest thing about NPS is it is simple to understand and easy to compare across companies. However, its simplicity means that it isn’t the answer to everything—and you shouldn’t expect it to be. Instead, focus on the bigger picture that the NPS is reporting. Then, like Janet, the only pickle on your life will be the one on your burger when you are eating at Disneyland.

Do you have a business problem pickle that you would like us to solve? We’d love to hear it. Please tell us about it by clicking here.

There you have it. No promotions, no gimmicks, just good information. 

Think reading is for chumps? Try my podcast, The Intuitive Customer instead. We explore the many reasons why customers do what they do—and what you should do about it. Subscribe today right here.

The post I am so Frustrated! Customers’ Comments Don’t Reflect the Score They Give Me. Why? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

But many others look to technology. If customers just had a gadget that could do more or electronic kiosks they could play with in the store, or a virtual reality app – well, then the customer experience would be great. But technology alone is never the answer.

To explain why, I’ll use comments about customer experience that the presidents of Royal Caribbean Cruises and Build-A-Bear Workshop and the former CEO of Sprint offered in a recent roundtable discussion.

Royal Caribbean: Dream Vacations

Adam Goldstein of Royal Caribbean said the changing role of customer experience involves digital enablement that benefits customers without being intrusive. As I’ve written before, cruise lines and theme parks are working hard at developing digital devices to make things easy for guests and even anticipate their needs.

Goldstein said his company strives to give every guest a dream vacation. Management is committed to this and it’s carried through to the staff that interact with passengers directly.

Goldstein has hit on a key point about customer experience. It’s about human interactions, and to get those right, you must create a company culture that prioritizes customer service and satisfaction. Employees who deal with the public must have support from management, and the training, ability and incentives to go above and beyond. Digital technology can enhance the customer experience. But it’s only part of the equation.

Build-A-Bear: Emotional Touchpoints and Memories

Sharon John of Build-A-Bear talked about weaving content and storytelling into the customer experience, possibly through virtual or augmented reality in their stores. Then she said that the goal is to engage customers so they build an emotional bond with the brand. For example, there’s a ceremony where customers place a heart inside their new stuffed animal. It’s these kinds of moments that create memorable emotional touchpoints that enhance a customer’s experience.

From the sound of it, Build-A-Bear is doing some things right. First, it recognizes what our research has consistently shown: that a customer’s experience is based largely on emotional factors, not on rational elements like price. At Beyond Philosophy we use a metric called Emotional Signature to measure a company’s level of engagement with its customers. Build-A-Bear knows you can buy a stuffed animal anywhere, but people go to their stores (and pay more) because of the emotional experience. John’s comments also touch on one of the central points in the book I recently co-authored with Prof. Ryan Hamilton: customer memories are one of the most important components of long-term value for a brand.

Sprint: Emphasis on Profits

At the other end of the spectrum, Dan Hesse, former CEO of Sprint, tied customer experience to mobility and connectivity and profitability. At Sprint, they tied their employee compensation system to reducing churn and the number of calls people made to customer care. They spent time showing customers how to use their phones in the store so they wouldn’t have to call with issues.

Hesse didn’t talk about customer emotions. Rather, it sounds to me like Sprint wanted to save money by reducing the number of interactions it had with its customers. This is pretty much par for the course for telecoms, which I’m sorry to say have consistently pursued a “customer experience” philosophy of improving their technology while cutting customer service costs.

This only helps a company in the short run because it completely ignores the fact that customer experience hinges on the emotions created by a human interaction. When emotions are positive, you build loyalty and long-term value. When emotions are negative (as they so often are when dealing with our cable and cell phone providers), you destroy value and do nothing to make your customers loyal to you or your brand.

In the end, the companies that win with customer experience are the ones that embrace customer experience as a core company value and give their employees motivation and incentives to provide great service. Technology can help, but it’s no substitute for truly caring about your customers.

What about your company? What’s your customer experience philosophy? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.

Take note of Goldstein’s point and ensure your company culture and employee engagement is all it could be. Register now for our FREE webinar on Employee Ambassadorship: Realizing and optimizing stakeholder value. The Author, Michael Lowenstein, and I will demonstrate how companies can keep a consistent customer focus and optimize economic performance.

If you liked this blog, you might also enjoy these:

New Technology Dramatically Helps CX

Case Study: Enhance Your CX with This Technology

Are Telecoms the World’s Worst at Customer Experience?

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of six bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Be Warned! Technology Isn’t Everything appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

My friends at Keller Fay Group (Ed Keller and Brad Fay) have conducted research which once again demonstrates that everyday people, i.e. consumers, customers, suppliers and employees, can have a significant on the product and service vendor decisions individuals make in the marketplace. Ed Keller should know: he’s a world expert on peer-to-peer influence. He is co-author of a very informative book called The Influentials, identifying how, and why, certain people in society can leverage the behavior of others.

Keller Fay defines an influencer (as distinct from someone who makes, or is likely to make, a recommendation) as “a person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word-of-mouth in a relevant marketplace”. These are ordinary people, not celebrity actors or pro athletes, government bigwigs, or corporate executives.

Influencers are individuals who have the means to interact with others through their social network, who actively use multiple channels to seek information, and who are frequently sought out for their opinions. In ham radio terms, they actively send and receive brand-related messages. For marketers, understanding why influencers do what they do is a key consideration in communication planning and stakeholder strategy.

Over the years, we’ve seen decision-making influence almost completely shift from outbound, managed corporate print and editorial advertising to informal peer-to-peer communication, through digital contact, social media, and face-to-face. There is lots of current research evidence to support the roles, and power, of an influencer. A recent Keller Fay blog, for example, reported results from the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual survey which measures the public’s trust in business, government, and institutions. These latest results show that 78% trust family and friends communicating on social media, compared to 49% for company executives.

Ambassador, a word-of-mouth marketing company in Detroit, has identified other key b2c consumer trust and informal communication statistics:

– 68% of consumers trust online opinions from other consumers (Nielsen)

– 88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts (BrightLocal)

– 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions. 32% feel this way if there are multiple customer reviews

– 72% say reading a positive customer review increases their trust in a business. It takes, on average, 2 to 6 reviews to get 56% of them to this point (BrightLocal)

– 77% of brand conversations on social media are people looking for advice, information, or assistance (Mention)

– Millennials and Baby Boomers ranked word-of-mouth as the #1 influence in their purchase decisions about big ticket items (travel and electronics) and financial products (Radius Global)

And, as also reported by Ambassador, word-of-mouth influence is perhaps even more impactful among b2b consumers:

– 91% of b2b purchasers are influenced by word-of-mouth when making their buying decisions (USM)

– 61% of IT buyers say that informal colleague communication is the most important factor in their purchasing decisions (B to B Magazine)

– 56% of b2b buyers use offline word-of-mouth as a source of purchase information and advice, which increases to 88% when online word-of-mouth sources are included (BaseOne)

Keller Fay has stated that, based on their evaluations, brands can generate up to four times more sales through campaigns which encourage ordinary individuals – you and me – to talk about preferred brands. And, brands that inspire more emotional response receive three times the word-of-mouth activity compared to less emotionally engaging brands.

The influential people exhibiting this connective and vocal communication behavior are amplifiers, what Keller Fay calls Conversation Catalysts, who can be highly persuasive when it comes to the behavior of others. In fact, they prove the economic value of word-of-mouth when, as amplifiers, they socially communicate with high volume, have authenticity and credibility, influence others who would purchase, and are actively involved in social media. This is supported by MarketShare, whose work has shown that word-of-mouth can improve marketing effectiveness by up to 54%. And the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has also weighted in on the value of influencers and advocates. Their recent “State of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” industry survey found that, among marketers:

– 64% agree that word-of-mouth marketing is more effective than traditional marketing

– 70% are planning to increase their online word-of-mouth marketing spend, and 29% are planning to increase their offline word-of-mouth marketing spend

– 82% use word-of-mouth marketing techniques to increase brand awareness, and 43% expect this form of marketing to directly increase sales

We’ve often discussed, and presented compelling research and analysis on, how customers can be vocal advocates for a brand if their experiences have been positive. And alienated customers can be ‘badvocates’, even saboteurs, if their experiences have been negative. Likewise, employees can significantly impact customer loyalty behavior toward their employer through a range of attitudes and actions on behalf of the brand, company and customer. These attitudes and actions, like customers, range from highly positive to highly negative; and it is evidenced whether employees have direct, indirect or minimal involvement with customers. Employees have real influence both inside and outside the company.

Among employees, we most typically concentrate on what drives active, positive, vocal commitment to the enterprise, the value proposition, and the customers, i.e. ambassadorship or advocacy; however, it is at least equally important to identify where employee indifference and negative attitudes and behaviors exist, why they exist, and how they can be mitigated or eliminated. If employee ambassadorship is the North Pole, then alienation is the South Pole.

To summarize, stakeholder influence and advocacy are functions of human emotions and memory of experience. And, influence and advocacy is typically positive or negative, rarely neutral. Each component of the customer and employee journey needs to be analyzed and contextualized for its brand-building impact. The important thing for marketers is that ordinary people, especially employees and customers, can be a pivotal component of a campaign or communication strategy, an opportunity to drive profitability and growth for a brand.

Republished with permission from CustomerThink.com

The post You Don’t Have To Be Famous, Just Motivated: Anyone Can Influence Brand Behavior appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

What I have done to good effect is to get different people from across the organization to interview the person as well. This method also helps the candidate, as they can speak to a cross-section of people and make sure the job is right for them.

We have a few traits we look for in candidates, traits we all agree are essential to success on our team here at Beyond Philosophy. The following five traits have served the members of my team well:

1. Emotional Intelligence. People with high emotional intelligence (EQ) can control their emotions and the emotions of others. Research indicates they are also good at getting people to do what they want. I hire candidates with high EQs knowing full well their ability to get people to do what they want includes me. However, I am okay with that because they are also the most likely to develop Employee Engagement, an essential ingredient to delivering on the Beyond Philosophy brand promise.
2. Positive Attitude. Do they have that positive, Can-do attitude? You can train a lot of things, but an attitude isn’t one of them.
3. Initiative. Initiative is critical to us when hiring. We like to see how the person uses their initiative to prepare for the interview—or doesn’t. I’ll be honest; too many people turn up for interviews without doing the preparation! The candidates that impress me most are the ones who are proactive, not reactive.
4. Sound Reasoning. I ask people to come in with a 100-day plan, which, as the name implies, is the plan of what they would do in their first hundred days. I judge the plan by how they present it and the thought behind it. I have people turn up with no thought put behind this plan and wing it. I also have those who spend a great deal of time and present a professional presentation. Guess which candidate I hire?
5. Independent Working Skills. In this virtual world, you must be able to delegate a task and trust the person to do it. I once had an assistant who used to work well in the office. However, when we converted to working from home, she couldn’t handle it. Whenever I spoke to her, she was always doing the washing or ironing or something else—she was an independent worker, just not on my stuff! If you’re going to run a virtual team based around the globe, you need to trust they will work. I say to my team, “I don’t care where you work in the world as long as you work.” Some people are going to do this some aren’t. The ones I hire, however, are the former not the latter.

Putting someone in a position for which they are not suited results in challenges for everyone from managers to clients to the employee him or herself. My job is to select the candidates with these skills and natural talents and then match them to appropriate job that allows them to thrive here (the rest of the team’s job is to make sure I didn’t get duped in the interview!). If I don’t do this, then they will fail. But also I will have failed them, too.

What do you think are important qualities in your team? I’d be interested to hear your desired talents and strengths for candidates in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• If I Were 22: Being Qualified Doesn’t Entitle You to Success
• Want Your Customer Facing Employees to Get Engaged at Work?
• Are You Working for the Right Company?

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Looking for These 5 Traits Served Me Well in Hiring appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

I was a senior executive with 3,500 people reporting to me globally. I had worked my way up and found my place in corporate life. I had it all: a big expense account, a big budget, and a big salary. So with all of these big things happening for me what did I do? I quit, of course!

No, I didn’t break down. No, I wasn’t sacked. It was simply because I had reached my goal, and I was now bored. I had just finished a big project on improving our Customer Experience (in the year 2000), before the words Customer Experience were even a term. I had the idea of a second career. A second journey to establish a consulting company based on Customer Experience. My new goal was to become the world’s foremost authority on the subject.

Five books later, many keynote speeches, and many radio and TV interviews behind me, I am on my way to that goal.

I have never looked back.

Since 2002, I have learned some truths about starting my own business. Truths every entrepreneur should consider before they strike out on their own, leaving those comfortable, secure positions behind them and being the boss once in for all.

Truth #1:

Fear Should Motivate You, Not Stop You

When I made the decision to leave corporate life. I was scared. I had three kids
just approaching college age and an expensive lifestyle. Was I really prepared to lose all of that?

I had a reputation. I was a success. Would I be in this new role?

There is one thing most people who are considering starting their own business worry about: What if I fail? Or a more specific version: What if I crash and burn, and we lose everything?

It’s a fair concern. It could happen. But it couldn’t happen, too.

For anyone considering leaving a job to start their own business, I would offer one important piece of advice: Being afraid is never the reason not to try. Fear could have stopped me from changing my career and my life for the better. If I had listened to my fears, I might still be in my former position — or even worse, NOT in my former position! But fear is also good. It motivates you to work hard and plan. It drives you.

When it comes to risk, there are sometimes legitimate reasons not to take one. However, fear of failure isn’t one of those reasons. It should motivate you to do your best and take it seriously, but it should never stop you.

Truth #2:

Negative Reinforcement Positively Won’t Work

One of your jobs leading a team is to inspire people to do what you want. Inexperienced bosses think you do this by being firm (and furious) with your
team. That’s one way to go, but in my experience, positive reinforcement works loads better. We all know that old saying, “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” It’s both old and well-known because it’s true. When you are talking about inspiring behavior you like, there is no faster path to it than emotional rewards and positive feelings.

Does that mean your whole team has to hold hands and skip through the meadow? Of course not!  Negative reinforcement has its uses. However, the most consistent inspiration tends to be positive.

Truth #3:

You Have Faults That Didn’t Go Away When You Became “The Boss.”

Everyone has faults (except my wife of course! 🙂 A joke, darling, in case you are reading this). No matter where you go, there they are. If you get defensive when you are stressed about earnings, you will continue to do that even when the stress concerns your own earnings.

For example, I am not great at interviewing new hires. I never have been because I am easily swayed by people. I want to believe they are as great for the job as they think they are. It’s a fault of mine that I recognize as a part of my entire career, and it didn’t go away like magic as soon as the people I was hiring were for my own company. So I work around it by having others in my organization interview people also. It helps. Fewer bad hires and also a chance for the candidate to get a few different people’s read on the company.

When you blow it, admit it. Honesty is the best policy (nearly always), and especially when you are to blame because of one of your faults. Acknowledge your mistake (or fault), apologize for the problem, and present a plan to fix the damage. This will not only fix the immediate problem, but it will also build a bridge of trust with your team and ironically makes you stronger as a leader.

Starting my own business has been great for me. It has opened doors and provided opportunities for my development and happiness that I might never have had in my corporate job.

When you are considering a big move like becoming your own boss, it’s important to consider these three truths — and crunch a lot of numbers! It’s normal to have the fear of failure, to have to find your stride as leader, and to manage your faults even as “the Boss.”

But another important truth is that I left my corporate job and never looked back in spite of them.

And the truth is you could, too.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Are You Working for the Right Company?
• My First 90 Days: The Secrets You Must Know about Your New Job
• Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Employees Today?

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Colin is proud to be recognized by Brand Quarterly’s as one of the ‘Top 50 Marketing Thought Leaders over 50’.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post The Truths All Bosses Know About Being the Boss appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Many of the things that make personal relationships fail make your relationship with Customers one-sided. I wrote a blog a while back about some friends who only called me when they wanted something. Over time, I learned they aren’t really friends. If one side has to make all the effort, it’s not a productive, equal, or fruitful relationship. Many organizations are guilty of this behavior whether they realize it or not. The first step for change, however, requires awareness.

To that end, here are three ways you can identify how you are making your relationship with Customers one-sided:

#1:  You don’t take no for an answer.

If your technique is to keep trying to overcome objections until you get to “Yes,” you are not asking for the business; you are demanding it. This method is not the way to set up a relationship that is open and honest with your current and future customers. Instead, you encourage them to find a new relationship, a competitor who listens to what they have to say.

#2:  Your Customer retention plan includes penalties or fines if they want to end the relationship.

Locking someone in an agreement by threats of penalties is not a great way to start a relationship. Is this a relationship or an indentured servitude? It virtually guarantees they will want to get out of this arrangement once they become a “client.” But since you have the handy fine in place, they will have no choice but to bear it out until the contract ends. Fines and penalties are in place to protect you from losses. If you find that the Customer is always winning, and you are not, this is not good for business. From an operational standpoint you can’t always be the one that loses. Of course, Customers can’t always feel like they lose either. That’s terrible from a retention standpoint. A relationship is a two-way street. It should build on a win/win foundation.

#3:  Your policy is to renew this cycle, over and over again.

Maybe these two sound familiar, Maybe you think I am naïve or that my label of one-sided is code for “how it’s done.” However, Customer Centricity puts the Customer first, not the organization. Those that don’t put the Customer first are more likely to have these types of policies, creating relationships that exhibit classic signs of one-sidedness. If you support either of these concepts, maybe it’s time for you to take another look at the relationship you set up with your Customers.

Is Your Relationship with Your Customers All about You?

So how do you know you are in a One-Sided relationship, and on the wrong side of it? That’s easy: the relationship leaves you feeling emotionally spent instead of recharged. If you feel drained by it, threatened into it or afraid to find out what would happen if you were to change it, then you have a classic one-sided relationship.

Relationships are everywhere in your life, good and bad. Mostly we keep the good relationships close and find a way to kick the bad ones to the curb. It is easy to imagine this relationship playing out in a romantic sense. It can sometimes be harder to see in “other” relationships–especially if you are the one making it that way.

What are some other signs of a one-sided relationship? I would love to hear what you think some other signs show an organization is only thinking of themselves and not the Customer.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Are You Working for the Right Company?
• Hiring Customer Ready Employees
• Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Employees Today

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post 3 Ways to Tell if Your Customer Relationship is All About You appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

The reality is, both of them are.

The Distributor Dynamic

Distributors (or Dealers) introduce an interesting dynamic to a business model. They are essentially an outside entity that controls the results for the suppliers. Distributors provide a wider audience of prospects for a supplier’s product or service, giving suppliers the chance for more sales. The challenge is how does the supplier ‘control’ the experience the distributor gives to their Customer?

On one hand, the answer is simple. If you don’t like what they are doing, go direct to the Customer and cut out the distributor, not normally a favored path. The second answer is to tie the Customer Experience (CX) and the Customer Experience Metrics into the distributor agreement. For example, BMW dictates to their dealers the color of the carpet and many other details. Consider McDonald’s or any other franchise. They state what the experience should look like and then they measure it through mystery shoppers.

However, most distributor deals were struck years ago before the CX became a business imperative. As such, they now need to change.

How to Manage Your Dealer Relationships Better

So how does a supplier manage the business when they have a distributor? Gallup Business Journal published an article last month discussing whether suppliers should treat their distributors like employees or Customers. Gallup explains distributors might appear to be because they sell your products, but distributors also have expectations just like Customers do that need to be met to keep the relationship strong.

The article explains suppliers would be wise to treat them like both Customers and employees, with the strongest relationships deriving from perceived partnerships between supplier and distributor.

While I agree with Gallup’s assessment with the problem of distributors, I disagree on the semantics a little in the conclusion. You would be better served to treat EVERYONE like a Customer, distributor, end user and employees.

Treating Everyone Like a Customer

The implication by Gallup’s summary is the relationship between a supplier and a Customer is different than a relationship between a supplier and their employees. In my opinion, this scenario should not be the case. Treating everyone the same way you would a Customer, meaning a regard for how they feel about the experience, creates a culture facilitating success for the delivery of the Customer Experience to the actual Customers.

I would add this issue isn’t isolated to businesses using a distributor or dealer network. If any organization, regardless of whether they are Business to Business, Business to Customer or some combination of both, they should treat everyone as their Customer.

Taking it even further, I would argue the internal operation philosophy benefits from treating their team members as they would Customer. What I mean by that is a department, say Human Resources, treats the employees as they would a Customer, etc., with the same mindfulness to how the employee feels about the experience or interaction.

Why? If you treated everyone as your Customer, it gives you the best opportunity for success. If everyone used the concepts in their daily interactions outlined in theCustomer Experience Statement that defines the Experience the organization wants to deliver, it would create the right culture. Everyone would head in the same direction toward improving and delivering the Customer Experience consistently.

When this standard is the natural default for everyone, it embeds in the culture. For those of you that have implemented a Customer Experience program, you know how critical this cultural perception is for affecting real change.

What do you think? Should we treat everyone like Customers? I’d be interested to hear your opinion in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Are You Working for the Right Company?
• Hiring Customer Ready Employees
• Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Employees Today

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Why Distributors Should Be Treated Like Customers appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

So with all of these great things going in my career, why did I want to leave? It’s simple, really. I wasn’t happy. After reading a great book called “Who moved my Cheese?”, I realized the fun was getting there, not being there. The fun was in the journey and the struggle to achieve.

Wanting to Leave Was Easy, Going Was Tougher

Yes, I had achieved what I set out to achieve at the beginning of my career. It was a real climb, especially when you consider my first job out of school was filling freezer food cabinets in a frozen food retailer. However, once I had achieved my goal, I realized I wasn’t challenged anymore. I had all the trappings of success but had lost my drive. I was turning the handle on the machine, as it were. Despite all the great perks, my job was just a job, in many ways just like the ones I had before it.

I’ll be honest. It was a little bit of a crisis for me. I had worked hard to get to this point, sacrificed much to “get on” in the corporate world. Now that I was here, I was disappointed. Had everything that I worked for been a waste of my time?

I had seen firsthand what could happen when a company decided to put the Customer first and listen to what they wanted when it came to doing business. At the time, no one was talking about Customer Experience as a thing and wouldn’t for a couple of years at least. Nevertheless, it intrigued me. When I was honest with myself, I knew what I wanted: To start my own business consulting on how to put the Customer at the center of everything you do.

The only problem was I was terrified to do it.

Deciding to Do It Anyway

Corporate life has positives and negatives like anything. One thing solidly in the positive column is that it felt safer than starting my own business. I knew the corporate ways of doing things. I was comfortable with the corporate perks I enjoyed. I felt more secure financially knowing that my salary would be there every month, which as we all know is no small thing.

I didn’t know how to run a small business. I didn’t even have the first idea of how to start one. Furthermore, my kids were about to go to university, meaning I was facing some serious financial responsibilities—not the best time to risk your steady income!

The sensible side of me said to “Keep Calm and Carry on” in my role. But the dreamer, the one who got me there in the first place wouldn’t stop needling me about starting my consultancy. This led to sleepless nights and some frank concerns about my state of mind.

However, the needling side of me knew that I had a good idea. I had the right experience at the right time to spread an important new idea. I knew deep down, that while it was terrifying, it was time. So I talked to my wife about it and we decided I would leave my corporate life and start my company.

I Never Looked Back

I am happy to report that it worked out for me, and, in fact, it’s been one of the best decisions I have ever made. I left corporate life, and founded Beyond Philosophy, a global Customer Experience consultancy. My passion for how human emotions affect the Customer relationship and the fascinating factors in the human brain that contribute to it have enriched my professional life in ways that I didn’t expect. Over the past fifteen years, I learned how important it is to do what you love because you believe in it. I am not turning a handle anymore, and it has made a huge difference for me.

I am sure more than one of you reading this is considering a big career move. Maybe you are going to change companies or maybe considering changing industries. Maybe, like me, you are considering striking out on your own. Like me then, you might also be struggling with the fear of failure and the unknown. I can sympathize and wish you the best. I believe that every person must make decisions about risk with which they are comfortable.

However, if I could offer you one piece of advice it would be this: Never let your fear be the reason you don’t try. If I had allowed it, fear would have stopped me from making a move that changed my life and career for the better. There are sometimes great reasons not to take a risk, but fear is never one of them.

I never missed my corporate job. Being your own boss is great. I quit corporate life to start my own business. I am happy to report I never looked back.

Is it time for you make a change in your career path?

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Are You Working for the Right Company?
• My First 90 Days: The Secrets You Must Know about Your New Job
• Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Employees Today?

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Time to Leave Corporate Life appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.