What do I mean by this? I’ll explain by using some examples from a hotel room. The nature of my job means I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms. So while it might seem I am picking on them, the truth is I just have a lot of experience dealing with hotels and the “little things” that make an experience what it is there.

Convicted without a trial.

When I first get to a hotel, I get settled. I kick off my shoes. I set my computer up on the desk. I put my bag down on the bed and unzip it to put my hanging clothes in the cupboard. However, when I open the door, I almost always encounter this:

To me, this says, “Hello, thief!”

When the hotel decided to reduce the theft of their hanger by installing these, they send the subconscious signal that every hotel guest can’t be trusted to resist the idea of picking up a few new hangers on their trip. In my case, this is justified, because whenever I see the regular kind of hangers, I fill up my suitcase. It seems about right considering the expectations set for my moral character.

Location, location, location.

What I lack in trustworthiness, I make up for in cleanliness. I nearly always exercise good grooming when I travel. But I am often surprised by the location of my supplies. It’s not uncommon to have this type of bathroom counter encounter:

Maybe I’m doing it wrong…

When you stay in a hotel, where do you wash your hair? In the sink? I’ll wager not. Maybe I’m strange, but I wash my hair in the shower. However, hotels nearly always put the shampoo next to the sink. Why don’t they put it the shower where the majority of people are going to use it? The answer is because they didn’t think about that; they didn’t deliberately look at where they put the shampoo and how that plays out in the Customer’s experience. And in most cases, it’s not a big deal, either. But having the shampoo in the shower is handy—especially if you are already showering and are ready to wash your hair, and didn’t necessarily remember to grab it off the counter next to the bloody sink.

For MY convenience…I think not!

Next to airlines, few places on Earth take greater advantage of Customer’s poor planning and laziness than the hotel mini bar. Stocked with alcohol and carbohydrates in their many forms, the hotel mini bar is a lesson in supply and demand (and by supply, I mean right-there-without-going-to-find-a-convenience-store supply), as anyone who has paid $7.50 for a mini-bag of cookies can attest. However, it is also a lesson in subconscious messages, particularly the sign that read, “For your convenience, items that are removed will automatically be charged.” However, I don’t think that is for my convenience but for the hotel’s.

Am I just hacked off at hotels? No! Well, okay…maybe a little. However, I reserve my ire for hotels that don’t think about the Customer first and the organization second.

If you asked the managers of the hotels where these instances occurred if it was their intention to send these signals, that hotel guests were hanger-thieving, sink-bathing, cookie munchers, they would likely deny it. They would also probably wonder why you asked. Because the truth is, many hotels don’t realize the messages their experience moments are sending. The hotels are who they are and that is what comes across in their Customer Experience, making their experience, in many little ways, an accident.

Many chains do the right things for the Customer that make he or she feel like valued guests instead of derelicts. The Mandarin Oriental Hotels are an example of a hotel that puts much thought into how to put the Customer at the center of what they do. How do they do this? They do it by looking at thing as if they were a Customer, or what we call and outside-in approach.  They make sure there is nothing accidental about their experience, but instead deliver a deliberate experience that appeals to the conscious and subconscious emotions of their guests.

Listen, accidents happen; it’s part of business. But how you treat your Customer should never be one of them. Each detail of your Customer Experience should be designed to evoke the right emotions from your Customers—and not be left to chance.

Is your Customer Experience an accident?

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

• Are You Deliberate with Your Customer Strategy or Just Taking a Chance
• Are You Inside-Out or Outside-In? Designing A Customer-Focused Process
• Why Most Customer Experience Programs Fail

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 Is Your Customer Experience Accidental? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Maybe you believe me already, which is great. Maybe you are ready to do something about it, but you might have questions, such as:

• How do you create a deliberate emotional experience for your Customers that keeps them coming back?
• What emotions should we be trying to evoke?
• When it comes to forecasting, how do you use emotional data to predict the future?

And probably most importantly,

• How do you know if it’s working?

Let’s touch on a general answer for each question for now to get you started on your path to a better Customer Experience.

How to Create a Deliberate Customer Experience?

Many organizations think they have no control over how a Customer feels. They instead choose to create an experience that is rationally sound and efficient–although typically only efficient for the company, not the Customer. They look at their experience from the inside facing out. To create a deliberate Customer experience, it is essential is to take the Outside-In Approach, which means to look at the experience as if you were a Customer. You must see it as if for the first time, and note how you feel throughout each moment. This awareness helps you understand how emotions drive a Customer’s behavior. Additionally, you get the opportunity to change how these moments make Customers feel moving forward.

Here is a short video that explains in more detail how this worked for the Norwich Group in the UK.

What Emotions Should the Customer Experience Evoke?

Emotions play an important role in the motivations behind people’s behavior. When it comes to Customer Loyalty and Retention, some of these emotions drive value while others do not. We undertook years of research with the London Business School to determine what emotions are best for driving the behavior we want. After 50,000 participants answered 1.25 million questions about what they want and 1 million questions about how they felt, we learned there are 20 emotions that drive and destroy value in a Customer Experience:

The emotional engagement one feels with an organization is what we call an Emotional Signature.  First, you must determine what Emotional Signature you want for the business and then design an experience that evokes those emotions at the moments you determined in your earlier outside-in approach.

How Do You Use Emotional Data to Predict the Future?

Predictive analytics explains how some organizations hypothesize a future outcome based on existing patterns from data sets in the past. The concept here is that the data exists that can help all of us improve our operations and make better decisions for our Customers.

The predictions are only as good as your data. To use Emotional Data to predict future behavior for your Customers, you must have detailed emotional data to analyze. If you do have detailed data regarding the emotional state of your Customers related to your Experience, you would have a better chance of making sound predictions. If you don’t, you are just taking a lot of time to come up with your best guess.

If you want to learn more about Predictive Analytics, this article in the Harvard Business Review is a great start.

How Do You Know If It’s Working?

When it comes to measurement of your Emotional Signature work for your Customer Experience, a great place to start is with the Net Promoter Score® (NPS®). The NPS® is a tool designed to measure the loyalty of your Customers. Research shows Customers with a High NPS® are less price-sensitive, spend more than Customer with lower scores and create higher margins for an organization. They are also responsible for the coveted “word of mouth” referrals of which every organization dreams of increasing.

Measuring an increase in your Customers with a high Net Promoter Score® is for the time being the best way to determine if your efforts to evoke the proper emotions during your Customer Experience are working. One of our great success stories was with Maersk Shipping Lines, the largest shipping container company in the world with revenues in the billions (with a b). Using our systems, they improved their NPS® from a -10 to a +30 in 30 months—a 40-point improvement.

To learn more about this particular case, please watch the webinar here.

Are You Ready to Get the Answers to Your Questions?

I realize this is tricky, that emotions aren’t very “Business-like.” However, the emotions you evoke in your Experience have a significant influence on your ability to retain a Customer. It is essential to recognize this and also to measure the ability of your Customer Experience to deliver the right emotions to generate the best results.

The answers to your questions are available if you are ready to know them. But be aware, it will require in some cases difficult change and for many organizations a different approach to business as usual.

What do you think? Are you ready to get answers to your questions about the emotions in your Customer Experience?

RICOH Canada had a vision: to be the most trusted brand with irresistible appeal in their market. Join us at our webinar , “Ricoh Case Study: How We Moved Our Loyalty Score by 34 Points in 30 months” to learn from CEO Glenn Laverty how their focus on a customer-centric approach improved their Net Promoter Score® by 34-points and grew their business 115%. Reserve your spot today!

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

• Apple’s Customer Experience Geniuses: Finding New Ways to Facilitate Empathy?
• You are Getting Customer Innovation All Wrong
• 5 Ways to make a Great Impression on Your New Customer

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 bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Driving Value by Driving Emotions appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Other improved stats for Ryanair attributed to the AGB program include:

•      Passenger traffic increased 11% (90.6m)
•      Revenue Rose 12% to $8.59bn
•      Ryanair invested in 283 new planes to handle the increases in business

O’Leary and others said the AGB program is transforming their Customer Experience, service and the way they treat Customers. The Chief financial Officer, Neil Sorahan agrees, saying they improved and listened to their Customers. But I am skeptical—not that I would know personally. It will be a cold day in Hades before I step foot on a Ryanair plane to  “experience” it myself. My worry for them is like me they have built up a group of people that passionately dislike them.

My point here is that while the results are good and the increases are real, the reasons behind them aren’t what they think. Ryanair executive team says they have changed their ways, and are “transforming” their Customer Experience, but they haven’t really. They still approach their airline with an internal focus. Their words have changed; their actions haven’t. For example, earlier this month on a flight from Spain to London, the airplane took off without any toilet paper!

Here are some other examples:

• They still have fees, for everything.  A recent article on the independent.iepraised the company for its reduction of “controversial airport fees.” Yes, they lowered them somewhat, but they are still there. Including everyone’s favorite, the airport check-in fee. This is a fee to get a boarding pass at the airport. Now it’s only $69, down from $107.

• Their app is still confusing, hard to use, and leaves all the work to the Customer. In a survey published by UK branding company Siegel+Gale, the airline’s app (where you can download your boarding pass and save $69 in “airport check in fee) was singled out as a “major headache.” Interestingly enough, respondents also said they were willing to pay more for a simpler experience.

• Some fees were reduced, but other prices are set to rise. Ryanair is raising its “core fees” starting next Monday (which, to be fair, is what other airlines do, too. But as my mum used to say, “If everyone was going to jump off a bridge, does that mean you have to jump, too?”). This means the checked bag fee, another favorite of Customers, jumps from $23 to $38.

• The senior management isn’t listening to the voice of the Customer.When last October, Siegel+Gale’s 2014 simplicity index showed them as one of the worst-performing brands overall. O’Leary’s reaction to the results was that if their profits and revenue were increasing, then this survey was an attempt for the firm to get publicity. He said also that 87 million people (presumably the estimated number of passengers that flew Ryanair) said the survey was wrong. So maybe he heard what they said, but I think we can all agree he isn’t listening. Passenger inertia is not Customer loyalty.

These examples are classic moves of an organization being forced up the Naive to Natural curve by competition. Naïve to Natural is our model developed to help an organization assess their orientation toward Customers. Ryanair is the typical Naïve company. From their AGB slogan, it appears they were heading up to transactional. However, it is important to note that these moves were only precipitated by a poor performance one quarter—and when stockholders and stakeholders put their foot down and forced the issue.

Unfortunately, since the move is forced, it isn’t likely to be effective. Ryanair has a natural tendency to be internally focused–with a culture so off Customer centricity I call it Customer animosity. Cute slogans for PR and minor changes to annoying, internally focused fees do not make a great Customer Experience. A real Customer Experience transformation requires an outside-in approach to designing the experience and infusing the culture with the Customer at the heart of everything you do. Hiking fees and ignoring feedback are not an excellent start for this journey.

I don’t think a leopard can change its spots…but I could be wrong (it’s been known to happen.). It comes down to the Customers and whether they can forgive Ryanair for some of the worse attitudes to Customers I have ever seen. Have they built up so much resentment with Customers that it will result in their downfall or will the profitability continue to improve? The question for me remains, can they make real change in their Customer Experience as long as the leadership they have are in charge or will they just revert to type as soon as they can get away with it?

What do you think of Ryanair’s new Customer program? Have you seen a difference? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

New Webinar: How to Design & Build an Effective Loyalty Program

Don’t miss Michael Lowenstein, thought leadership principal at Beyond Philosophy, as he provides valuable perspectives on B2B and B2C loyalty programs and offers practical and proven methods for developing consistent loyalty programs. Reserve your spot at this informative webinar presented Thursday, June 17th, 2015.  

Special early-bird registration offer: Free Whitepaper Download, “Loyalty Programs vs. Loyalty Behavior: Do Marketers Get What They Intend?”

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

• Ryanair: The Start of the Decline?

• Southwest Employees Know How to Add Fun to The Customer Flight Experience—For Free!

• The Customer Flight Experience

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 bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Ryanair: Profits Do Not Equal Loyalty appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Just look at the following example. From phone call recordings that went viral of the poor behavior of their Customer Service Representatives to “inappropriate” name changes, their missteps as an organization have reached a legendary status. So legendary, in fact, that they have a Wikipedia page called, “Criticism of Comcast.”

Comcast’s improvement plan involves investing in three new Customer support centers, training, and technology, as well as hiring thousands of new Customer service reps. They want to redesign their billing for “more transparency.” Also, they revealed plans to release a Tech Tracker tool that will allow people to predict better when the tech will arrive. Finally, they had a pledge they will aim always to be on time for Customer appointments.

I have a number of concerns when I read about their plans. First of all, Comcast plans to hire more than 5,500 people for customer-service jobs. On the face of it, this idea sounds good. However, if you simply employ people and put them into a poor environment, what you get is just a lot more people who do a poor job.

Secondly, a couple of the items in their laundry list of improvements strike me as startlingly elementary. What is a bill if it isn’t transparent? No Customer should be wondering what they are paying for from their cable company. And please don’t get me started on “aiming always to be on time for Customer appointments.” It boggles my mind as I wonder, “What have they been aiming for up to this point?”

Just Another Naïve Company

The culture at Comcast is clearly poor. They don’t have the Customer at the heart of everything they do. In fact, it’s not even on the same planet! This type of culture problem comes from the top. When leadership makes it clear what is important, the rank and file reflects those values.

Customer Centricity is a concept we look at when we consult our clients. We developed the Naïve to Natural model as a tool to assess where an organization is as it pertains to Customer-Centric culture.

Here is a helpful graphic that describes our Naïve to Natural Model.

The least Customer-Centric organizations are what we call Naïve. When we train on this tool, we describe the naïve organization with the example of a proprietor of a shop with his back to the Customers as he goes about his work. A naïve organization does not consider the Customer’s needs. Most times, they don’t care that they don’t either. In Comcast’s case, the proprietor has his or her back turned while changing a Customer’s name to something inappropriate like the story above.

Comcast is in Serious Need of a Culture Change

Year after year, Comcast finds itself in the number one spot on one of our surveys—for the Top 10 Worst Customer Experiences! The American Consumer Satisfaction Index  (ACSI), an organization that measures Customer Satisfaction in the U.S., shows Comcast declining in satisfaction for all service areas over the previous year. They find their name on many “Most Hated” lists, including one from January of this year on 247wallst.com (they are #10 of 10). But their Customer Service doesn’t change.

Culture drives the behavior of your employees. For Comcast to change their Customer service levels, they have to change their culture. The leadership needs to recognize their role in broken, not Customer-centric culture and set a better example with their actions for their employees. Furthermore, they need to motivate the team to do the difficult work needed to fix their problems, i.e., change key performance indicators to reflect improvements in Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Score® and tie incentives to this performance. And for goodness sake, they need their technicians to turn up to their appointments on time!

Hiring more people to do the same bad things isn’t going to help change the Customer service problems at Comcast. Nor will creating new Customer Support centers or adding “training” and technology. Putting Customers first and their needs at the center of everything Comcast does is the way to effect change; and that only happens in the culture from the leadership on down. If they don’t bother with this, then this claim to rethink their Customer service issues is sure to happen–between the hours of 8a.m. and 6p.m. on the 12th of Never.

Do you think Comcast has a prayer of fixing their Customer Service? Why or why not? Please share your insight in the comments below.

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

• Ryanair: The Start of the Decline?

• Employee Culture: Why Amazon is On Top and Bank of America Isn’t

• How Hubris Killed Nokia

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 bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Comcast Needs a Culture Shock Not More People appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

The makers of the heart-healthy brand Cheerios General Mills, had a lot of heartache over the introduction of their new legal policy on their website earlier this month. They learned the hard way that consumers really don’t like to lose anything, even if it was something that they would probably never use. 

In an unprecedented move for the food industry, Cheerios introduced a new legal policy on their website that bound consumers to arbitration if they downloaded coupons or joined their social media sites. This type of “forced arbitration” is common with credit card companies and mobile phones, but not for food manufacturers. Consumer reaction was so negative after an article on NYTimes.com reported the change, that Cheerios pulled the controversial policy just a few days later.

The crux of the reaction was that consumers felt that Cheerios was treating them badly with the new policy. This shows me there is a poor customer culture. They informed the company on their Facebook page that they had plenty of other choices on the food aisle, so why wouldn’t they choose a company that treats them well.

The phrase “treats them well” is a telling one as it implies that consumers felt that the change in policy was the company “treating them badly”.

I would argue that very, very few of the consumers that were offended by this change would have ever considered suing anyone in their life, let alone a giant food manufacturer. But their reaction is a common human one because the policy is morally wrong. According to Professor Daniel Kanheman, from Princeton University and Nobel Memorial Prize Winner for economics, this is all part of prospect theory.

What Kaneheman tells us here is that we think of things in gains and losses. Our attitudes to each are very different. His conclusion was that, “People hate losing even more than they like winning…. It’s a fundamental fact about people.” Kanheman explains why most of these consumers that would never see the inside of courtroom facing the giant food manufacturer were mad that they wouldn’t’ t have the chance.

In my post, “Why We Hate Losing,” I talked about how customer dissatisfaction is associated with a perceived loss of value. This is a classic example of exactly that.

But the General Mills example is also an example of the damage that can occur with a company-focused move like this to the emotional relationship with the brand for consumers. As an important part of decision-making process for consumers, emotional relationships are what cause them to reach for one brand over another when they are shopping.

Take for instance cereal. Most consumers feel they can trust Cheerios. It is well known for being one of the first finger foods you give to a baby when they are transitioning into solids. If you can feed it to a baby who doesn’t even really know how to eat anything solid, it must be pretty trustworthy. So using this as a basis for my logic, I would argue that consumers feel that Cheerios is a brand they can trust.

When their parent company decided that consumers could no longer sue them in a court of law, it makes one suspicious almost immediately, raising questions like, “Who sued Cheerios and why?”

Part of the emotional response they got from their customers no doubt is based on this subconscious interpretation of the new legal policy. General Mills was surprised by the reaction. This shows what the company is really like; more worried about themselves than customers. It shouts, “we can’t trust you!” to consumers.

Everyone knows that no one reads terms and conditions. Consider the prank a couple of years ago where online shoppers sold Gamestation their immortal souls.  But just because this is the case it doesn’t mean that companies should try and ‘get away’ with things. While it adheres to the legal law, it’s a clear violation of a moral law.

General Mills listened and reacted, which is the best any organization can do in this situation, after they have upset customers with a policy that makes them angry. And they gave it all back.

What I love about this story is that this is a great example of how these deceptive and sneaky practices by companies can now be exposed by social media and they are shamed into changing things by consumers. Excellent customer experience with an exceptional emotional signature is a great differentiator in a time when your every move can be tracked, commented on and publicized by the public at large.

Do you remember a time when one of your favorite brands ticked you off with a sweeping policy change? How did you react?

The post General Mills New Legal Policy appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

I had the pleasure of sharing the same stage as Charles Handy when I have been delivering some previous key note speeches. Handy has written some great management books including the Empty Raincoat, which is still a good read. When we are called into help an organization to improve their Customer Experience I always want to find out the motivation for this change and to establish where they are today. Handy’s ‘sigmoid curve’ is perfect for this and it can also be used to determine other changes that you may wish to make in your life.

Let me explain….

If you think of what happens to a business, or with politicians, people’s careers or sports teams, they all go through a period of doing well and then after a while things start to go wrong and performance declines. For politicians they may be elected with a landslide and the world looks rosy but two years into the job their ratings are dire. In the business context, the organization develops a great new product or service and they grow rapidly. Then the growth stops…

Nothing ever remains the same. I am old enough to recognize that everything goes through cycles. The heroes of today become the ‘has beens’ of tomorrow. So how do you know where you are?

Handy produced this classic Sigmoid curve. At point ‘a’ the company is growing, they are on the acquisition trail for new customers. Everything is good, lots of clients, lots of money, lots of profit. Think of the cellular companies. All they are worried about in the early days is getting new customers…. it doesn’t matter that they are also losing lots of customers because of their poor Customer Experience, as the new ones outweigh the ones they are losing.

At point ‘b’ the company has reached the top of their growth but the reality is that they don’t know that they are just about to go over the edge. Typically, they carry on doing the same things oblivious of their imploding plight.

Point ‘c’ is where the company has gone over the edge, they have started the decline. The first tell-tale signs are starting to show. Maybe their products don’t look as innovative as previous ones? They start making mistakes. Hubris is very common, as I wrote in my blog; ‘Why hubris killed Nokia’. Also read my blog, ‘Ryanair:The Start of the Decline?’

Point ‘d’ is where they are definitely on the way down. It is obvious they are over the peak. People start to leave and profits are down. They lay people off. They put in place strict cost cutting measures. The CEO typically gets sacked and the new CEO puts in place a plan of change, and ideally they start back up the other side.

In 80% of cases we (consultants) are employed when the organization is at point ‘d’. They then realise they need someone to look at their organization in a different way. The challenge becomes doing this when money is tighter but the reality is that they don’t have a choice. People are also ready for the change, as those that are left remember the old days with fond affection and want to get back to those days. The issue is that they are also in denial. They don’t want to recognize the mistakes they have made and blame the market, the economy, the government, competition, the fact that it’s a Thursday afternoon and raining outside, rather than anything to do with them!

Some don’t, some continue the decline as they behave like rabbits in head lights and don’t change, for example Circuit City, Howard Johnson, Kodak and Comet (UK).

Handy says the time to change is when you are at point ‘b’. If you do this then you move onto the next level and accelerate into making more profits. To make this change you need to look at the world in a different way.

The problem with this point is that everyone around you thinks the world is great and they think you are mad to want to change things. Also change is difficult. It takes a visionary leader to spot this point and make the change and when they do it’s tough as the rest of the organization is not motivated to change. The irony is this is also the right time to change as you have the most money to help you through the changes.

The best example of a company that has been at point ‘b’ and made the change is a client of ours called Morgan Sindall. Steve Elliott, their CEO, recognized they had reached point ‘b’ and employed us to work with his senior management team to get them to recognize the need for change.

Whenever we work with a client we are evaluating where they are against this model as the approach we take can be very different.

We have found one of the best ways of getting the senior team to understand this is by discussing it with them at one of our ‘Philosopher’s Days’.

Here we point out what each of these stages look like and we discuss with the senior team where they think they are. It is quite surprising that after the debate most people agree where they are and buy into the inevitable next stage of where they will head if they don’t do something differently. I have seen many faces drop as they have this realization! But as we all know the first stage of change is knowing and accepting where you are.

The next stage is to look at where you want to be and what will get you onto this next level. For me, the subject of the Customer Experience means not just looking at the Customer Experience from the traditional rational perspective but also from an emotional and subconscious perspective.

Whilst I have used business as a prime example of this thinking, you can also apply the same model to your career. A good question to ask yourself is “where are you in your current role”? Are you at point ‘a’ with lots of opportunity and growth left? Or at point ‘b’, where the reality is that you have reached the zenith of your current role, or have you started on the way down when the best days are behind you? It is at point ‘b’ that you need to be changing jobs when your value is at its height, not when you are in decline.

Colin Shaw is founder & CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin has been recognized by LinkedIn as one of the top 150 Business Influencers in the world.  He is an international author of four best-selling books on Customer Experience. Colin’s company, Beyond Philosophy provide consulting, specialized research & training from our Global Headquarters in Tampa, Florida, USA.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter: @ColinShaw_CX

The post Are You Ready For Change? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

• Product – manufactured item or service
• Place – making the product or service accessible to customers
• Price – charging at a point above break-even to make a profit
• Promotion – communicating to customers, prospects and others about the product or service

Over the past fifty years, these 4 P’s have held up pretty well.  After all, the product has to be right, be functionally sound, be durable, and work well.  The price has to be right; and, even in the case of expensive durables or services, it has to be financially sound.  The place, reflective of distribution channel, must be in customers’ hands at the right time.  And, through promotion, the right target group or groups must receive needed communication about both the existence and availability of the product or service.

As sound as the 4 P’s have been, changes in communication and the move to greater customer focus within the enterprise have found customer behavior, and their loyalty, at growing risk.  Companies have to be current with rising consumer expectations and need for personalized value.  Digitization has made organizations both transparent and accessible, and has also increased the requirement that they become omnichannel.  The traditional emphasis on functional touch points and transactional relationships has given way to a focus on overall customer experience that goes well beyond price-based commodity to greater innovation and relevance.

Today, we’re dealing with a different customer experience and value proposition landscape.  The contemporary customer is more mobile, content-seeking, impatient, and independent than at any time in history.  Even with all of these new decision dynamics, the fundamentals of trust and perceived value have become increasingly powerful drivers of customer loyalty and bonding.

As organizations become more customer-centric, moving from naïve to natural, or from simple customer awareness, through greater sensitivity and focus, finally arriving at customer obsession, they will be well-advised to add four new P’s to their toolbox:

• Permeation – Dedication to providing optimize value must be absorbed into every nook and cranny of the organization.  Further, it must core to shared enterprise values/superordinate goals and be an essential element of its DNA.

• Proaction – Organizations can no longer be content to passively, tactically, and functionally react to customer needs and concerns.  They must take the initiative in understanding what customers require as value delivery.

• Partnering – James Unruh, former chairman and CEO of Unisys Corporation, said: “…partnering with customers promotes a deeper understanding of customer concerns and of areas for improvement. Partnering relationships can create a seamless interface between an organization and its customers.”  Smart and evolved companies create value in partnership with customers, and value is as likely to come from people and information/content as it is from products and services. If companies practice ideas such as ‘creating interdependence’ and ‘building equity’ with their customers, they are strategically differentiating themselves from competitors and making it more difficult for their customers to leave and begin a relationship with a new supplier.
• Paradigm – There are, to be sure, many ways in which an exemplary, world-class organization can be defined.  From my perspective, it is an enterprise which creates trust, especially in stakeholder (customer, employee, and supplier) experiences, and in reputation and image.  These are critical to optimizing customer value delivery; and inherent in such cultures is the ambassadorial, trust-building behavior of employees (with customers and each other) and customer-forward processes.

The last P, Paradigm, is especially important.  It speaks to making customer-centricity a paramount and lasting focus, of both a functional and an emotional relationship that exists between the enterprise and all of its stakeholders.  Customer-centricity, after all, is about more than structure, strategy and systems.  It’s about the differentiation and engagement that lead to bonding between the organization and its stakeholders.  It’s about giving stakeholders a personal investment in the organization and its ongoing success.  It’s about the enterprise becoming more transparent and open, connecting with customers through branded, emotional experiences and sustained value delivery, resulting in its operation as a “conscious capitalist”

Finally, Paradigm is about “being human” as an organization, not just as a buzzword to apply to customer experience optimization.  As Sisodia, Sheth, and Wolfe wrote in their classic customer-centricity book, Firms of Endearment:

“What we call a humanistic company is run in such a way that its stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, etc. – develop an emotional connection with it.  Humanistic companies seek to maximize their value to society as a whole, not just to their shareholders.  They are the ultimate value creators.  They create emotional value, experiential value, social value, and, of course, financial value.”

Customers have shown strong desire to affiliate, and bond with, companies that are paradigmatic in providing unique, consistent, and value-based experiences.

There’s actually a fifth new P – Personalization – that says more about the marketing mix as an extension of the customer-centric enterprise.  The most valuable customers appreciate and want more personalization, a relationship, and an emotional connection. It’s up to organizations to a) identify the strongest emotional drivers and b) effectively leverage them. Successful organizations have either morphed, or have begun, by placing customers’ interests ahead of the enterprise’s. They build a veritable bank account of trust; and high trust, and the positive reputation and image it breeds, is an enduring strategic advantage, a definite competitive differentiator.  And, personalization truly optimizes the customer experience, perhaps its most important benefit.

The post The New and Customer-Centric Customer Experience 4 P’s appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

The differences between men and women have always fascinated me. In fact when I read about this new study it came as little or no surprise. In fact, I believe the reaction of many married couples would be “you don’t say?” Let me explain.

I started ‘going out’ with my wife Lorraine when she was 16 and I was 17. (Courting or in a relationship, hanging out or whatever phrase I should be using today!) We married 6 years later and have now been married for 32 years.

Back in the day, I thought men and women were the same. After living together for a few years I realized I was wrong. I have to say Lorraine and I rarely argue, but when we do 50% of the time is because of the differences between men and women. Over the last few years it has really annoyed me that the ‘political correctness’ brigade suggest that there is no difference between the genders, when I think there is.

The big issue is they were confusing ‘difference’ with equality.

Now let me state unequivocally in case of any doubt – I believe 100% that men and women are and should be equal. I deliberately use the word ‘should’ as I also recognize that even in today’s day and age this is not the case, especially in developing countries. Women worldwide are still underpaid for the same job as men and certainly not enough women are in senior positions in companies.

Having said all of this, let’s not confuse equality with difference. Men and women are different in many ways. Different also doesn’t mean that is good different or bad different or right different or wrong different; it means different. I believe these differences should be recognized and celebrated and we should not put our head in the sand and pretend they are not there.

We also need to recognize these differences are not black and white. These differences are on more of a sliding scale.

Allan Peace has written a great book on this called Why Men don’t listen and women can’t read maps.

Take a look at this video when you have read this blog. It lasts 30 minutes but is informative and entertaining:

What is the difference?

The new study out of the University of Pennsylvania claims that men’s brains and women’s brains are hard wired to excel in different areas. That means that when they take in the same information, they will process it very differently.

The researchers looked at the brain activity of 949 females and males between the ages of 8 and 22 using a brain-scanning technique called diffusion tensor imaging. This imaging measures the flow of water along a nerve pathway, which shows the connectivity in each sexes brain. Men were more likely to be connected from the front to back on the same side of the brain, while women were more likely to connect between both sides of the brain.

This new study is the first time scientists have been able to show it physically with MRI imaging.

After they scanned the brains of 949 people scientists found women are better at multi-tasking but men are better at concentrating on a single task (men’s brains, top, and women’s brains, bottom).

Undated handout photo issued by National Academy of Sciences of brain networks showing significantly increased within hemispheres in males (upper) and between hemispheres in females (lower).

These differences simply mean that men and women are better at different things, naturally. Women’s brains are better at processing lots of varied information together, especially when it requires using both logic and intuitive thinking to come to a conclusion. This is because they use both sides of their brain. Men on the other hand are better at taking information and using it to complete complex tasks, almost immediately. But remember this is a sliding scale and not absolute.

How this affects your customer experience design

Men and women process information differently. That means when they have an experience with you it can be experienced differently. How many women love shopping and how many men talk about just going to get what they need a more targeted approach. Again this doesn’t mean that either one is right or wrong, just different. So how you approach each of the sexes is something that you need to consider in your customer experience design, particularly on the emotional side.

Our research shows that over half of the typical customer experience is emotional. The emotions of male or female customers will drive their decisions when it comes to which brands they choose. These emotional triggers contribute both to their rational mind and their subconscious. So in other words, they realize that their emotions are playing a part in some ways, but in others, even they have no idea why they did what they did!

In a perfect world, with limitless budget and time, you could create two separate experiences that are triggered into action as soon as you identify the sex of your customer. You could virtually have an experience that is designed for each of them labeled with a picture on the door, like the men’s or ladies’ rooms in a restaurant.

Since we don’t live in that perfect world or have those kinds of resources at our disposal, that isn’t realistic. Most organizations cannot design two different experiences. In fact, some companies have hardly designed one at all. With these facts in mind, perhaps it’s better to build an experience that covers both sexes.

Here are two things to consider that will help cover the emotional needs of both the sexes:

1. Consider the differences: In your interactions with customers make sure that you consider the fact that there are differences.
2. Use empathy in your conversations. When you acknowledge a customer’s concerns, you are subconsciously letting them know that you care what they said and that you are listening. Apple does a great job of this. Doing this before you answer/recommend/sell them on a concept naturally makes the customer more receptive. This is important when you are building a customer experience as no one, male or female, wants to do business with a company that doesn’t listen to what they have to say.

NPS®ychology has long shown that men and women think differently (as have many marriages).  Now science has proven what all of us married couples have known for a long time that men and women are wired differently – physically. Designing customer experiences that take into account the differences and addressing these different needs is more likely to result in a better emotional experience for all your customers.

The post Men vs. Women: Why Difference Doesn’t Mean Inequality appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

I think to myself, “Back in the day I could sit here in silence until Amazon invented those damned drones and now everyone is doing it!

Over the top? Maybe but this may not be as far fetched as you think. UPS is already working on their own fleet of drones, and has even tested several different methods for using drones for their deliveries. Like Amazon.com, UPS continually invests in technology and is always looking for the next, best thing. Clearly, drones are the future of where logistics are headed.

The Drone Plan

Last Sunday on the CBS program “60 Minutes”, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com announced that they are developing a fleet of Octocopters, small drone delivery copters that can deliver packages in under 30 minutes to areas within a 10-mile radius of a fulfilment center (Amazon.com has 96 of these worldwide at this time). They will be able to carry packages of up to 5 pounds, which is about 86% of all deliveries that Amazon makes. Their plans are preliminarily set to “launch” for 2015, depending on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) changing rules about these types of flights.

See one of these octocopter drones in action:

Amazon is Customer Centric Organization

Firstly, I applaud the fact Amazon is doing this and joking scenario aside, support the exploration of this new delivery method 100%. It’s great that an organization so customer centric as Amazon is leading the way in shipping innovation. They really practice what they preach on their ‘about’ page; that they are “driven by the spirit of innovation that is part of the company’s DNA.” It shows leadership and a willingness to test the boundaries of what’s possible in their pursuit of striving to be, as they put it,  “the Earth’s most customer-centric company.”

Drone shipping is also a nod to their customers’ wants and needs. It recognizes people want things NOW! Possibly the biggest reason many people don’t shop on Amazon.com is that they want to have the item they purchased right then. The idea of these drones will help them compete with the retail store where you can get things now.

But filling up the sky with these things? In this litigious society what happens if a box falls on someone’s head? Furthermore, the propellers on these things are fearsome. If you turn the drone upside down, can you cut the grass at the same time (Amazon Lawn Service perhaps)?

I am sure I am not pointing out things that Amazon hasn’t already thought of or they wouldn’t have gone public with their plans. Safety is clearly going to be a concern of Amazon and the FAA before this plan is approved. But just in case the Amazon Lawn Service isn’t already in the works, I call dibs and want 20%.

How will retailers respond?

So what does Amazon’s move mean for retailers? Clearly, this just drives further commoditization of pricing on goods. Commoditization on this scale puts more pressure on retailers. As I said in my second book, Revolutionize Your Customer Experience, commoditization is forcing more and more organization to take a look at how they can differentiate themselves from their competitors. The answer is increasingly on improving the customer experience.

One of the biggest differences and advantages that retailers have is the personal customer experience. When you are face-to-face, it’s easier to build a relationship with the customer. Yes, the prices have to be good but it’s also about retail entertainment. Retailer would be wise to continue to develop their experience more, to continue to develop more of a reason to go shopping.

A retailer that really understands this concept is Hamley’s, a giant toy store in London. The store, which first opened its doors in 1760, knows a thing or two about retail and creating a lasting retail experience. In fact, they describe their store as “retail theatre.” From magicians in the store to bubble guns on the sidewalk brandished around by a character called “Crazy Chris” to staging Elvis lookalike competition, Hamley’s deliberately incorporates fun into their retail experience to create “memories and nostalgia.” Their retail theatre is so successful that they have branched out into corporate events, staging parities for companies that help employees remember their youth and “let their hair down.”

So Amazon.com is looking for ways to increase their share of consumer’s shopping dollars and rewarding their customers with an experience that keeps them coming back for more. The Drones of the future are just another example of their ability to see the future and incorporate it in a way that is even more customer-centric. Retailers have the advantage in that they give people more of a shopping experience with immediate rewards. There are definite advantages to both business models. But I wonder in the end who will come out on top?

How do you feel about the prospect of drone deliveries in the next couple of years? How do you think retailers should respond to compete with Amazon’s latest innovation that could reduce the need to visit a retail outlet?

The post Drone Shipping: Is This The Greatest Or Craziest Idea? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Generation Y

The 80s gave us a lot of things: Personal computers, BMW obsessions, the music of U2, and a new generation of consumers and workers identified as Generation Y, or the Millennials. This generation is very different than any other that came before it.

As they begin to take the reins of our consumer economy, it is important to understand how these differences translate into how they want to do business. The business world will have to adjust its business as usual approach to accommodate their specific demands for their customer experience.

A Different Kind of Consumer

Journalist Joel Stein described Millennials as the ME ME ME generation in his TIME magazine article where he characterizes them as people with their smartphones raised constantly to photograph themselves to post online. His article raised quite a stir in online communities. Whether Stein is right or wrong in his description of them remains to be seen, but he raises some interesting points about this new consumer generation. In order to do business with this generation, you definitely need to understand them.

Millennials are different than their predecessors because in many ways they grew up in a different world. Many of them have never known a world without the Internet, and shudder at the thought of that dark, slow and unconnected time. They believe in the power of technology and they are not afraid to use it to its full extent.

The millennials have a very specific list of demands as it pertains to their consumer interactions. They grew up online in a email world of immediacy. They are very savvy consumers and price-conscious. They are far more likely to search for products and services they want and need online first, and will use a variety of different devices to do so. They expect to have access to answers 24 hours a day and like to be able to solve their own problems as much as possible, rather than wait 30 minutes for a call to be answered by a help line. Most of all, they believe it is their right to have what they want, the way they want it NOW!

I know all this as my kids are Millennials. I love technology and therefore immersed them in this from an early age. They are never off the web. In fact at a barbeque this past weekend, they told that they feel a need to be connected and are ‘naked’ without it. But when they say connected, they don’t mean by phone call. They mean by any other digitial means. Nobody their age calls anyone anymore.

Honestly, this was not news to me. The only reason they were present at the barbeque is because I texted them to tell them to be there. I send my son appoints over outlook, we converse on Twitter and facebook. When in Rome, do as the Romans do…

This behaviour is typical of generation Y. They want to be in touch, but they want to control the interaction and respond in their own time. They want to be connected, but they don’t want to be too engaged. This transfers over into their Customer Experience. They expect to be able to interact digitally with companies through integrated multi-channels (live web chat, SMS text, email, etc.) and they believe that someone should get back to them within 12 hours, if not sooner. But not live – unless it’s by chat.

Millennials have high standards and high expectations and a good Customer Experience, but when it comes to pricing they expect it to be low. As a result they are savvy shoppers who use aggregator sites to get the best price. Millennials love brands and live on social media, so they take recommendations from friends seriously into account when they make their buying decisions.

A New Customer Experience for a New Kind of Customer

With all of these changes to the habits and lives of our consumers, businesses would be wise to adapt to the changing demands of the consumer. I have a few suggestions for how to adapt your experience to accommodate these demanding new customers:

• Make sure you have several channels for interaction for your customer experience. I recommend many self-service options for Millennials to solve their problems on their own or with minimal direct interaction, which include: Live Chat, Social Media Outlets, SMS Text service, and Video Instruction. Call Centers are likely to be their last resort for answers.
• Your digital presence should adapt to the devices Millennials use. More than ever, a digital presence that takes advantage of all technology that is used to access it is critical to your perceived value. You need both a great regular website and a mobile version. Plus, the mobile version must be quick to load and easy to navigate from the multiple devices your Millennials will be using to see your site. Remember too that as technology changes, this group will be the first to change with it. So staying up-to-date with the latest and greatest advances in technology is critical to maintaining your digital image and reputation with Millennials.
• Ensure that your social media platform is personal, responsive and empathetic. Millennials live their lives on social media and that includes their business transactions. I did a webinar on this topic, What Drives Value in the Social Media Experience?, that fully explains the value of social media interactions as part of the customer experience for your organization. This is critical to master when you interact with the Millennial generation.
• Be sure to promote your value proposition digitally. The value you that you provide along with your goods or services needs to be included in any digital interaction you have with your potential or current Millennial customers. This generation negotiates everything and will go with the lowest price unless they see the value of paying more for what you offer. Be sure they know what that is.
• Continue to build your brand and give your customers outlets to promote it. Millennials are more likely to take the recommendation of their friends. Because Millennials are brand-loyal and live socially, do your best to provide outlets for your fans to promote your product to their sphere of social influence to find your new customers and future promoters. Kalina Janevska outlines the importance of this strategy on our blog with her post, Online Reviews and The Customer Experience.
• Exploit their willingness to give you information. This generation understands business better than ever before so are more willing to play the game. Millennials know that in order to get things for free they must be willing to give up valuable information about their habits and preferences. Use this willingness to learn how to attract and retain this generation. Give them free services in exchange for access to this wealth of information.

Millennials may be the ME ME ME generation that Stein suggests. But they are also the future consumers of your goods and services. Understanding how they operate and making sure that you are available to them where and when they want you to be can insure that you attract and retain this important source of customers.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

http://www.forbes.com/sites/prospernow/2012/06/27/portrait-of-a-millennial-2/

http://www.businessinsider.com/gen-ys-impact-on-the-future-of-work-2013-5?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider%2Fwarroom+(War+Room)

The post Millennials Want It All: So Give It To Them appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.