So, me, you know. You might remember how I came to this field of Customer Experience almost 20 years ago after years of working in the corporate world. Furthermore, you have likely read my schtick about how we should take these ideas “beyond the philosophy” and into the real world. However, I realize that you might not be as familiar with these other blokes. So, allow me to introduce my other colleagues.

Lewis Carbone is a Customer Experience expert and speaker, and founder of Experience Engineering™. If you haven’t already, I suggest you read his book,  Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again. In it, Carbone shares his methodology for designing clues into your Customer Experience that signal to customers that you have what they want, so they come back for more. We hosted him to discuss this on a podcast not long ago. As a pioneer in our field, Carbone was one of the first to point out that you have a Customer Experience no matter what; the difference is that some organizations are deliberate (or haphazard) about what that experience is. He was also one of the first proponents of having an “outside-in” approach regarding the experience that you deliver to customers, which, my regular readers know, is one of the principles of which I am keenly fond. Carbone thinks that right now during the COVID-19 Pandemic is probably the most exciting time for Customer Experience Management advancement that he has ever seen because people are more sensitive to the experiences they have in their lives. Furthermore, it has brought awareness that an organization can manage its experience to create an emotional bond with customers.

Joe Pine is the author of The Experience Economy that started it all. As another pioneer for Customer Experience, Pine works with his colleague Jim Gilmore at Strategic Horizons, LLP. Pine and Gilmore have been working with clients worldwide to stage experiences that provide value for customers longer than I have, which is saying something. Pine believes organizations should understand that experiences are a distinct economic offering, not just better service. An authentic, distinctive experience is more than providing good service or being “nice.” Pine says Customer Experiences should be memorable, personal, and emotionally engaging, so customers value the time they spend with your company. In other words, Pine says if customer service is time well-saved, Customer Experiences are time well spent.

What Are Some of the Mistakes of the Past for Customer Experience?

The three of us, along with moderator Chantel Botha of Brand love, discussed in the webinar and a recent podcast some of our past experiences working in this industry, where we are today, and where we are going. Botha began by asking us where we have failed and what we learned from it.

When it comes to failure, my most significant ones are assuming that people are in the same mindset as mine. For instance, when I presented to a German insurance company about how they should use emotions in their experience, the clients asked me for proof that it would work. Unfortunately, at that time, I didn’t have any; I just believed that it worked, with or without evidence. Everyone did not share that mindset, and they still don’t. You have to prove it works. From that moment on, and this occurred back around 2005, my company links our Customer Experience efforts to proof so that the champions of Customer Experience are not caught out as I was all those years ago in that German conference room.

When I shared my story, I learned that Pine was empathetic to my plight. He says he often didn’t understand why other people didn’t believe in the impact of providing an emotionally engaging Customer Experience the way he did. However, he didn’t go the data route to prove it. Instead, Pine would develop frameworks. He and Gilmore would develop frameworks that describe what’s happening and prescribe what the organization should do about it. These frameworks would feature shining examples of these concepts at work to help convert the non-believers.

Often, Pine would have clients acknowledge that their philosophy was innovative but then ask who else had tried it. Pine found this frustrating because if it’s creative, it means that not a lot of companies had tried it. The challenge he encountered was getting senior leaders in interested organizations to feel comfortable enough being the first ones to take Customer Experience as a value enhancement in the marketplace—even if it might lead to failure. Failure is an always-present possibility, Pine says, because you aren’t sure how it will land until you get a real, live human being in the experience. Pine says he tells companies to save some of the budget (around 20 percent) to fix things in the experience that didn’t produce the reaction you wanted.

Carbone says that he has failed in the past by confusing the issue for people, clouding the real meaning of what Customer Experience means. There is a lot of discussion and perhaps not the depth of understanding of how different an experience economy of today is versus the industrial age of the past. He thinks a new distinctive lexicon is essential to clear up these misconceptions in the world of Customer Experience.

Carbone’s primary philosophy works with constructs around Clue Consciousness, which describes how their unconscious processing of Customer Experience signals drives customer behavior. These clues affect our emotions, shape our attitudes, and guide our actions.

Many organizations confuse process improvement and defect elimination with what experience management is, per Carbone. He says we need to begin to understand customer emotions and what stimulates them. Managing that critical aspect creates real power in experience management. Building systems that align the clues and signals goes well beyond process improvement. Customer-driven organizations that are inside the mind and heart, and soul of the customer are the goal. These companies know what customers feel even when the customers don’t know themselves. Moreover, how they think of us as a company is not as crucial as how the company makes customers feel about themselves, which, in turn, is how customers ultimately think about the brand.

What Are We Going to See Next in Customer Experience?

As the discussion moved on to the future of Customer Experience, I brought up the idea of Customer Science. You might recall that I recently discussed Customer Science on a podcast. It appeals to me because it uses a data-driven approach. Customer Science is a product of a perfect storm of artificial intelligence, the information provided by Big Data, and the interpretation of that data through Behavioral Science. This combination of technology and psychology, or understanding what people really do, makes it possible to anticipate and predict what the customer will do through data use.

These psychometric profiles have outstanding value for your Customer Segmentation efforts, an area where most organizations could use some work. Moreover, it enables you to anticipate customer needs and provide them automatically, particularly in digital experiences. Amazon does this, and they do it well, especially with me. Between my activities with the platform and associated products to their brand I use, Amazon knows everything about me from what I buy and eat to when I go to bed and even how many people ring my doorbell. These data points enable them to have a profile of me and provide me with helpful suggestions that I appreciate.

Pine sees that the COVID-19 Pandemic accelerated the shift from physical to digital experiences. However, he believes that the future of Customer Experience is the fusion of the two. An example of what he means is the platform Twitch, where people play video games while recording it and then show it to other people. The critical experience of Twitch is the social interactions that people have watching somebody play a video game. With all the possibilities of what Twitch and other platforms provide, Pine says we will see fewer people going to live events, whether it’s a conference or a festival or a concert, and many more people attending it “live” online. Those watching the live event online will also interact and have a different (and potentially better) overall experience with the amplification of that live event.

Pine says that the current crisis is accelerating is the recognition among people that what we really value are those shared experiences we have with our loved ones, friends, and colleagues. We want more of those and less stuff that sucks up our time, which we don’t want to waste. We spend that time on the meaningful experiences that we value.

Carbone thinks that the future holds an understanding that experience management is a way of doing business embedded in its values. He feels that business is operating on an “industrial age” platform but living in the “fusion economics” age. Fusion economics refers to a time in business when we have a greater depth of knowledge of the science and art of experience, what Carbone refers to as experience management 2.0. Carbone says that experiences are no longer linear but more like a pinball machine, presenting challenges in creating consistency with an emotional bond. Moreover, it is not a siloed responsibility but instead runs throughout the organization and across departmental lines. For instance, a restaurant client of Carbone’s combines the HR and Marketing departments because they realized that their people were their single greatest asset. Carbone says fusion economics enter into an era of virtuality, which understands the elements and role of technology and how to humanize it. This age requires understanding the delicate balance needed for human nature and needs and how the technology works well with these (and how it doesn’t). Perhaps most importantly, this age requires the realization that product attributes, features, and benefits have less influence on consumer decision making than what customers process unconsciously, emotionally, and from the perspective of the total experience.

What Should People Focus on Right Now?

Next, the discussion turned to what people can do or focus on right now to prepare for this future. For my part, I reiterated how I think a focus on how your efforts to create an emotionally engaging experience for customers leads to results. After all, why would anyone support all this if you cannot prove an ROI? In addition to results, I would also encourage people to consider things like the customer’s lifetime value vs. the costs involved with implementing the changes to the experience you propose. Often, by comparison, the value of keeping that customer for the long-term far outweighs the expense in the short-term.

Moreover, we’ve never implemented a Customer Experience program that doesn’t save money because it reduces the costs caused by failures, overlaps, and gaps in current experience. Furthermore, organizations often spend too many resources fixing what’s wrong rather than investing in the best opportunities to have a higher return. In other words, if you can start to identify the real ROI for your Customer Experience program, you will not only find more significant opportunities, but you will also get a hell of a lot more support.

Carbone urges businesses to consider the William Arthur Ward quote that said, “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” Carbone says it is time to adjust the sails of Customer Experience. He urges businesses to deepen their understanding of the new order and let go of industrial-age thinking that looks at the experience as a service and instead becomes customer-driven and going beyond customer-centricity. Carbone also thinks it would be wise to understand how customers think versus what they think by delving into unconscious thoughts and emotions. Finally, he recommends adopting a vision of a return on strategy and creating experiential value that will result in ROI. It is crucial to become champions of Customer Experience and convince people that building a culture that understands that the ultimate value the organization creates is in the experiences they provide.

Pine agrees that you should have the right mindset like Carbone suggests. If you have that, Pine says, then everything else can follow. The first thing that people can do is recognize that you’re in the experience business, not services. The second thing is to determine what you would change if you were to charge an admission fee for your experience. Pine says this is crucial is because when you “charge admission,” it inspires you to create an experience worth having. Pine also encourages people to understand that because experiences happen inside of us, it’s a reaction. Pine says there is not enough focus on customizing to the individual customer, the target of that customer-centricity. If you customize your goods or services and your experiences, you’ll thoroughly engage people.

We have come a long way with the concept of Customer Experience from its beginnings back in the late 80s and early 90s. Even since I joined the movement back in 2002, the ideas of what a Customer Experience is, how it works, and what you can do to optimize it have changed a lot. What has not changed through all of these transformations is the need to be deliberate about what you are trying to deliver and the emotional connection with customers you want to create. That is a foundational element that all of us “pioneers” of Customer Experience believe. That can set up your organizations for success to elicit the customer behavior you want that provides the customer-driven growth you need.

To hear more about this idea in more detail, listen to the complete podcast here.

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 What Do The Pioneers of Customer Experience See for the Future: And What Should You Do About It? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

On a recent podcast about these 5 rules, I shared a recent digital experience that was definitely on the “could use some work” side of the spectrum. It was Glasses Direct, which is where you order the frames you want with your prescription, and then they send you the glasses. The experience started to trigger some uneasy feelings when they asked me to put a credit card on my forehead and take a picture of it to send to them. They needed the photo since my prescription didn’t have my measurements on it. Ostensibly, they could figure out how to size the glasses based on the credit card’s image between my eyes.

The glasses were not cheap, so I was feeling uneasy about this credit-card directive. Moreover, the glasses were taking a long time; weeks it seemed to me. Meanwhile, while I was waiting, I had no email about my glasses’ progress but at least ten promotional emails from them hoping to sell me something else before I received my first order. (Later, I learned that they did send an email about my order, but I missed it.) To summarize my experience, Glasses Direct was a great idea for a business model, but the digital experience fell short of my expectations.

Since the pandemic, everyone’s doing a lot more of their customer business online, making digital transformation mission-critical these days. I used Glasses Direct for the first time during the pandemic, as I didn’t fancy contracting COVID-19 at the opticians. It is critical to remember that people are still people even when they’re interacting with a computer. These five new rules can help bring your digital experience in focus rather than ending up with a blurry vision.

The Five Rules for Designing a Great Digital Experience

1. Design in a digital “nudge.”
2. Analyze how customers really behave.
3. Design your experience to anticipate your customers’ needs.
4. Plan to evoke emotions and measure them.
5. Humanize technology.

Rule #1: Design a digital “nudge.”

Nobel-prize winning economist Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein wrote a book called “Nudge” a few years back. They suggested that small changes we make in choices shift people in one direction or another. However, you don’t force people in a direction; instead, the way you present the options with subtle clues affects what they choose. So, to take this idea into the digital space, consider how you can influence your customers to behave the way you want them to act with the way you present your online interaction choices.

There are a few different ways to do this. For example, scarcity works to get customers to act fast. If you make an offer, always put a time limit on it. Giving an “expiration date” to the deal makes it scarce, which helps customers prioritize their buying decision. Disney used to do this with their movies. They would bring classic Disney cartoons from the 60s and 70s, like The Jungle Book or Dumbo, “out of the vault” so you could buy them—but only for the next six months. Then, they go back in the vault! Parents felt compelled to snap up these old cartoons for their newborn children, who wouldn’t watch them yet, just so that in a few years, the movies would be in their collection.

Scarcity is just one of the principles of the behavioral sciences you could use. You could also employ the effects of Social Proofing, which uses the reviews and comments to attract attention to your product. You could utilize the impact of Extremeness Aversion, which means that people usually like the middle option. By presenting your desired purchase as the moderate choice between a more expensive and elaborate offer and a pared-down, more affordable one, you can nudge people to do what you want. Also, don’t forget the whole area of first impressions and the esthetics of your experience. The way your site looks and how the product is featured can also nudge people in the right direction.

Rule #2: Analyze how customers really behave.

One thing I love about the digital space is you can measure everything. You have a better capacity to analyze what people are doing. You can measure where people have come from, where people are going, and even the hotspots on the screen. Having all that data enables you to make predictions.

Also, I like to test the tactics I use in a safe environment. You can test if you use this icon in one position how customers behave and then move it somewhere else and see what happens. Moreover, you can do these types of tests quickly.

Customer Science uses this blend of data, which you get in abundance with a digital experience, to see what people are doing. As you might recall, there’s a significant difference between what customers say and what customers do. The great thing in the digital environment is you can see what they do. You can also make (and test) one of these digital nudges and see the effect.

Amazon uses Customer Science because they have a great deal of data. Moreover, they know a great deal about me. I buy virtually everything on Amazon, from food to books and everything else. They know what I read on my Kindle and when I wake up because I use the Amazon Echo. They even know who’s come to my front door. Some people think it’s Big Brother-ish, and it is, but I think how they use it is ingenious, which leads me to the next rule…

Rule #3: Design your experience to anticipate your customers’ needs.

Given all that data you acquire for rule #2, here, in working with rule #3, you can use it to anticipate what customers will do next. Then, you can design your experience to play into that behavior. You are, in effect, beating customers to the punch and offering them an easier way to do what you want in your experience while at the same time improving the process for them.

For example, time is a significant resource for all of us. To conserve it, we want things to be easy, so we spend the least amount of time (and cognitive resources) on something that we can. If you can make things easier on your customer by understanding how they navigate a website and what needs they have that accompany a purchase, you are more likely to get customers to behave the way you want.

Don’t make your customer anticipate. Figure out what they would want and give it to them. Whatever you do, please don’t make them burn up their precious attention, trying to find the necessary information to make a decision. Make it easy for them to see what they need.

Moreover, you can use that information from Rule #2 to segment customers by behavior, which allows you to get even more specific about what they need for the experience to be easy. If you know that this type of customer usually behaves in a particular way, you can provide the information they need to improve the experience and get them to do what you want. Everyone wins in this scenario.

Rule #4: Plan to evoke emotions and measure them.

Around 18 months ago, I had a podcast about analyzing customers’ facial expressions during experiences. To summarize how the technology works, there is a camera positioned to record customers’ facial expressions during experiences, which you can later analyze to understand how customers feel at the moment. The types of signals that reveal the customer’s emotional state include micro-expressions, like eyebrows raising, lip pursing, or pupil dilation. The advantage is that you get a real-time report on how your experience makes people feel. So, for example, if glasses direct had been recording my face when I read the email about putting the credit card between my eyes, they would have known by my microexpression that I was surprised they asked (by my raised eyebrow) and doubtful that this would work (by my pursed lips).

In a digital experience, however, you usually can’t see anyone. You can hear somebody yelling at you in a store or see them stamping their feet, but online, not so much. The best way you can determine if someone is unhappy is if they leave the page just before check out or something. Or, maybe they get on the chatbot next, so you have that data to consider. In other words, it isn’t easy with digital experiences to know at the moment how customers feel.

However, that is even more why I think it is vital to get on board with Rule #4. If you make a deliberate plan to evoke a specific emotion—which can be feeling cared for or prepared or surprised and delighted—in your digital experience, then you have a better chance that those moments will have positive feelings rather than negative, even if you can’t record the microexpressions as they occur…yet.

Rule #5: Humanize technology.

The best way to introduce this rule is to give you an example. So, as I mentioned, I buy everything on Amazon, including a chef’s knife recently. Unfortunately, we dropped it on the floor, and the blade broke. I went online and saw there was a manufacturer’s warranty, so I began a chat. It was clear that I was dealing with an automated chatbot, which isn’t bad in itself, but it was noticeable. Then, when I reached a real human, the human asked me the same questions in the chat, which annoyed me.

My advice here is two-fold. First, mind the experience enough that you don’t ask people the same bloody questions twice. Second, it would be best to make that interaction with technology feel more “human” if possible.

We know from a former guest on our podcast, Shiri Melumad, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania that she has data that shows people respond differently on mobile phones than they do on their computers, albeit subtle differences. For example, people are more emotional on their phones because mobiles are more difficult to type into, so people get to the point rather quickly. However, these subtle differences might also be present in how people react when they think they’re talking to another human being versus thinking that they’re talking to a robot. Those differences and reactions would be essential to anticipate and manage in your digital experience.

We are not saying that you should use a bot or that people don’t like communicating with a bot. However, it is different, and it would be wise to determine if it’s the right kind of difference for the interaction. In other words, you should ask yourself at various points in the digital experience, would this interaction have a better emotional outcome for the customer if a human handled it?

Humanizing technology also means that you should not make customers feel that you are trying to avoid the human touch. I had that lousy type of avoidance experience with my cable company last week. (What a surprise!) I couldn’t get a human to talk to me. It felt like a nightmare, which is not the digital experience anyone is trying to design for customers.

These five rules will help you build an excellent digital experience. Try putting a digital nudge in the design to take advantage of all the concepts we have discussed in the behavioral sciences, and then see what your customers do. Moreover, use this data about customer behavior to understand what customers want or what they are trying to get and test to see what happens if you change it. Once you know these needs, try and design a digital experience that anticipates customers’ needs to make it easier for them to get what they want when they want it. Doing so will help your plan evoke the emotions you want customers to feel during your digital experience to tie to results that you measure. Finally, consider how your digital interaction comes across to customers and whether the human touch is in all the right places. All of these rules can help govern your digital experience, which, as we all know in 2020, is one of the only places your customers can have an experience at all.

To hear more about this idea in more detail, listen to the complete podcast here.

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 The 5 Rules for Designing a Great Digital Experience appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Ad blocking isn’t a new concept. Ad blocking has been available for desktop web browsers for years. However, it hasn’t been available for mobile devices.

With the new iOS 9 for Apple devices, you now can. According to the NY Times on Friday, 45 Million Apple Users installed it on their mobile devices. Apple says this is about providing its Users with an improved mobile browsing experience.

In the short term, this move raises many questions about the future of online ad dollars. Web publishers don’t want their ads, what fuels the quality content they offer their audience for free, blocked. Digital advertisers don’t want to pour large percentages of their budgets into a medium that won’t reach eyeballs. This article from PCmag.com (which ironically I had to close out TWO obnoxious Pop-Up Ads to read), explains the controversy. The conundrum Ad Blocking on mobile devices creates for the future of online advertising is complex and uncertain right now, to be sure.

But there’s another important message here, straight from the consumers’ thumbs, and it’s important for digital marketers to hear it: You are ruining your online CX with obnoxious ads.

You know the ones I’m talking about. Obnoxious ads slow down your loading speed (a crime punishable by 100 lashes with a wet noodle, as far as I’m concerned). They track your activities and/or spring up right in the middle of the content you were hoping to see (and link to…). To make it even more maddening, these interlopers then take five minutes to load, and even longer to load the x so you can “skip ad.” Moreover, if you aren’t on a wireless router, they are burning your data (that you had budgeted for streaming important cat videos).

Have you paid a data overage lately? Let’s just say loan sharks have been impressed with their racket! In other words, these obnoxious ads are ruining your UX. And that reflects poorly on the brand that bought the ad and the site running it. At the risk of stating the obvious, forcing your message down a user’s throat is not the way to build brand loyalty.

The UX is quickly becoming the most important part of the CX. The two aren’t that different, after all. The UX refers to the overall experience a person has using an App or website. A CX is the overall experience a Customer has with an organization as perceived across all the moments of contact. These moments of contact include the Customer’s interaction with the app, the site–or the obnoxious ad hogging the bandwidth on the train.

Mobile continues to rise as the most often accessed portal of an organization’s digital presence. Ofcom, the UK’s communication regulator, released their Communications Market Report for 2015, which proclaimed that the “UK is now a mobile society.” Among the many interesting revelations from the report is the statistic that 42% of Smartphone Users in the UK said the handset was their most important device. And the smartphone market penetration just continues to increase. How long before that 42% grows to 100%? According to the jumps in percentage the last couple of years, not nearly as long as you think.

The UX and the CX have different letters, but they represent the same thing when mobile browsing. When your audience blocks your ads, they are telling you something: your obnoxious ads are ruining their UX, reflecting poorly on your CX and your brand reputation. Smart digital marketers will recognize this to be true.

Will you be one of them?

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

• How to Make a Great First Impression with Your Website
• Mobile Experience: Harnessing The Power of Your Mobile Channel to Increase Traffic in Retail Stores
• The Rise of Mobile Customers and How to Reach Them

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 Ad-Blocking Sends Clear CX Message: Get Obnoxious Ads out of my UX appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

There are three things that great companies that have excellent Customer Experiences do in common to make Customers feel the love.  They are:

1. They always do more for Customers.
2. They know these two words: Customer Convenience
3. They know accessibility is an investment, not an expense.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these with specific examples from companies with great experiences:

Always Do More for Customers

A company that understands this is Amazon. They are always improving their services with the Customers in mind. Amazon never is content to keep their experience stagnate. In late May this year, they announced they will begin same-day delivery services for many of the Prime Customers for no additional charge.

But you don’t have to be as big as Amazon to do more for your Customers. The Airport Fast Park at the Baltimore Washington International Airport also thinks of ways to do things for Customers. From helpful advice on arrival regarding the best possible space at that moment to a shuttle picking you up at your car instead of a shelter, they look for ways to do more for the Customer. They even take your right back to your car when you get back—with a complimentary bottle of water. Now, they offer complimentary electric vehicle charging as well.

These companies know the value of doing more. They don’t ask more of their Customers, but they give more service all the time.

Know these two words: Customer Convenience

The words hassle and confusing are never good when associated with your Customer Experience. A famous story from a few years back tells the tale of a young woman concerned about her dad not having any food when he was snowed in during a Pennsylvania snowstorm around the holidays. After calling several stores, Trader Joe’s agreed to deliver the food to the man and refused payment from his daughter. The Trader Joe’s team told her to “Have a Merry Christmas!”

Convenience takes many forms, however, and lately that form is mobile.  In a recent article, “3 Ways to Use Mobile To Your Advantage,”  I discuss how Macy’s, Dick’s, and Taco Bell have embraced mobile Omni-channel approaches in unique ways to take their relationships with their Customers on-the-go to a new level. It is essential to consider convenience for your Customers and mobile technology and access is upping the ante in that game all the time.

Accessibility is not an expense; it’s an investment.

Chik Fil A staffs their incoming Customer calls in such a way that the average hold time is always better than five minutes. Anyone who has worked in call centers knows that this amount of time is exceptionally low. Why do they staff this way? They want accessibility to be part of their experience. This stat is just one part of their strategy to raise the standard for keeping Customers happy. They also created a survey on their website that allows Customers to submit feedback any time of day—without even the five-minute wait of the Call Center.

It isn’t just Chik Fil A that understands this concept. Hilton is a fan of accessibility and a multi-channel approach. In addition to the traditional email and toll-free number options for Customer Service, they added a “click to call” feature to their website that connects them to Customer Service (quickly). They also present the option to leave your number for a Customer Service agent to call you back.

From sufficient staffing to good training to creating new ways to communicate with Customers, accessibility is an investment that is sure to pay off in the long run with happy Customers. Why? It’s formulaic:  Happy Customer = Loyal Customers.

By always doing more, minding the Customer Convenience, and investing in accessibility, you make Customers feel valued and important, two key feelings associated with love. These days it’s important to make sure the Customers feel the love.

Are your Customers feeling the love from you?

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

• Philosophies To Improve Your Customer Experience in 2015

• Why Most Customer Experience Programs Fail

• Examples of Great Customer Experience: American Girl Place

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.

The post 3 Things Great Companies Do for Customers appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Another benefit to social media is cost. Actually it’s the lack of cost. You don’t need to pay for advertising in newspapers or billboards. You don’t need to hire a media company to buy airtime on radio and television. No, you just need to exploit the free or low cost opportunities that social media provides. And, of course you have to create the content and information that you post.

Here are just a few powerful ways that any company can use social media to engage with their customers:

• If customer service is important to you, and it should be, then have someone (or a team) be part of your social service strategy. Monitor the different social channels like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp. You’re not only looking to react to customers who are posting negative reviews or complaints, you are looking to engage and thank the customers who post positive comments.

• One of the strongest social media strategies is content marketing. You will become a valuable resource to your customers when you post information about your products and your industry. The key is to not be self-promoting. Give value and you will develop a following that looks forward to your insights. Post blogs, articles and create white papers that share information on the latest and greatest happening, not just with you and your company, but in your industry.

• Repurpose content from your blogs and articles. Extract a sentence or two from your content and turn them into Tweets. Take short pithy quotes from your articles and “pin” them to Pinterest. Create a slide show of your articles with cool graphics you can purchase from royalty-free photography sites such as BigStock Photo and post them on SlideShare. There are many places you can place repurposed content.

• An offshoot of content marketing is article consolidation. Create daily Google Alerts for any articles, blog posts, or news related to your products and industry.  Read through the alerts for news that your customers may be interested in. Share these articles on Twitter, Facebook and other social channels. Once a week take the top five or ten articles that you’ve read and create a blog post. For example, on Mondays I post an article titled Top Five Customer Service Articles of the Week (and I include the date).  My clients have felt this to be one of the most powerful strategies and tactics they use.

• Are you confident enough to feature your competitors on your website? If so, consider having a semi-regular guest post from one of your friendly competitors or colleagues in your industry. This shows that you really are interested in sharing relevant content, even if it is not yours, with your community.

• Participate on LinkedIn. Don’t just have a personal or company profile. Get involved with the LinkedIn groups. It’s a powerful way to engage with your community. And, now you can publish your articles and blog posts to LinkedIn.

• Have a YouTube strategy. Next to Google, the biggest search engine is YouTube. Posting valuable and informative videos is powerful. If you want to get recognized quickly, then start posting videos. Again, I’ll emphasize that you shouldn’t be promotional. Deliver value. However, it is fine to include a promotional line or two at the end of the video or in the description underneath the video. Just don’t go overboard with the promotion. It should be subtle. Some tips that will help you. First, you don’t have to have a professional studio. Believe it or not, an iPhone has a great camera that is more than adequate for a YouTube video. I would recommend buying an inexpensive microphone to plug into the camera or iPhone, as the audio needs to be good. People will forgive you for not having top-notch video, but they will leave you in a moment if the audio is poor. Creating content for your videos is easy. Just go to your articles and blog posts and repurpose them for your videos.  If you want to get fancy, get an inexpensive software program to edit your videos. If you have a Mac, you already have the software on your computer.

In almost all of the above strategies it is important to remember that it’s not a one-way street. You’re not posting content and moving on. You need to encourage engagement. That means you interact. You welcome and react to comments. You want to have conversations with your community of customers. It’s about engagement. It’s about connecting. It’s about creating relationships. Social Media is a gift. Embrace it and reap the rewards it will bring you.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert and New York Times bestselling author.
Find more information at www.Hyken.com.
Follow on Twitter @Hyken.

The post Seven Ways to Engage Your Customers Using Social Media appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

First Impressions Matter

Whether you are talking about new people in your life or new companies you are considering giving your business, the first impression is important. Some studies have revealed that even after first hand knowledge is obtained the first impression can still weigh more in a person’s opinion about the individual.

We judge all books by their covers. We judge people, too, except it isn’t the cover we judge but how they say, “hello.”According to a study by Phil McAleer, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, the first word you hear a person speak makes a first impression. He studied the reaction of 64 people to the word hello (that was part of a larger paragraph he recorded them reading). He then had 324 people listen to the recorded word, “Hello” and give their opinions. Most of them agreed on the personality traits of the individual based on their voices.

Key Elements that New Users View

So what makes a great first impression (the “Hello”) the User Experience on your website says? The answer, like many things, depends on who is looking. Subconsciously, different signals in the user interface send messages to be interpreted by the individual loading the site. For example, what a job applicant is looking for in a digital experience is a lot different than what the average Customer wants.  Furthermore, since so many visits are initiated on mobile devices today, your site needs to make that impression quickly and in fewer pixels.

But no matter who the person is or why they are loading the site, or even what device they use to load it, there are few things that are undeniably important to making a great first impression with your Customers on their digital experience.

According to Conversionxl.com, a recent eye tracking study research shows some key elements that are critical to viewers in their User experience. If they found these elements (and liked them) users spent more time on the page. These key elements included:

•      Your Logo:  The average time spent focuses here was 6.48 seconds
•      Navigation Menu: 6.44 seconds
•      Search Box: 6.0 seconds
•      Written Content: 5.59 seconds
•      Bottom Edge of Website: 5.25 seconds

Recently, I realized that my site needed an overhaul. It was time because I realized that the first impression I was sending with my old site was one that was going to be challenging to overcome. I am pleased with the end product.

If your Customers are using their digital experience to create their first impression with your organization, with what will they be greeted in the user interface? Will it be an easy to navigate, visually appealing site that seems to anticipate the needs of their user experience? Will it load quickly on their mobile device or web browser or show them the hourglass or spinning wheel of death? First impressions are the most important ones; so make sure yours is the one you want.

How did you design your digital experience to make a great first impression on Customers? We’d all be interested to hear your insight in the comments below.

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

• Apple’s Customer Experience Geniuses: Finding New Way to Facilitate Empathy
• Millennials Want it All: So Give it to Them
• Chipotle and Quiznos: The Headlines Giving Us Food for Thought

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 How to Make a Great First Impression with Your Website appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

The Economist’s recent article, “Planet of the phones” describes the smartphone as the defining technology of the 21st Century. With startling statistics, including an estimate that by 2020 80% of the adult population will own one, it is clear that people love their phones—using them more and more each day. The average American spends two hours a day on their phone.

With so many people on their mobile phones, it’s clear that an organization’s mobile experience is critical to making a great Customer Experience. Chances are, many people might not have any other interaction with your brand or service that isn’t mobile. It is more critical than ever before to make sure that your mobile channel is in line with the Experience your brand promise makes.

What Makes a Great Mobile Experience?

VIEW OUR MOBILE EXPERIENCE INFOGRAPHIC HERE

When designing your mobile experience, there are a lot of details to consider, both technically and practically. However, if you bear in mind the general principles of what makes any other channel great, it’s easier to focus your efforts, including:

1. A clear and definite purpose that delivers your intended Customer Experience. Your Customer Experience should be the same no matter what channel your Customer is using. Use the Customer Experience Statement as your basis for the development of your mobile channel.
2. An Experience evoking the deliberate emotions you want. Over 50% of any Customer’s perception of the Experience is tied into how they feel about your Experience, or what we call the Emotional Signature®. The Mobile Experience is no exception. You must start with the emotion you want your Customer to feel after your Experience, and build backward from that point to get there.
3. An outside-in approach to function. Like all your Customer Experience channels, your Mobile Experience needs a Customer-centric focus. It’s not what makes the mobile experience work for your organization, or what we would call operationally-focused, but what works for the Customer’s needs on the go, or customer-focused.
4. Deliberate use of cues that appeal to the subconscious needs and feelings of your Customers. Your Customers are using your Mobile Experience to satisfy a need or emotion they are feeling. Understanding what these are, and how it might be different when your Customer is mobile (as opposed to in a store or online), is an important way to make the Mobile Experience a great one for the Customer. Subconscious cues will help you create fill these needs and evoke these emotions the way you want.

Mobile Experience Might be the Most Important Channel

Part of what an organization must also consider is how a mobile device can facilitate their experience. Phones can do so much more than play cat videos or score a triple word score with “qintar” on Words With Friends.

Phones know a lot about the user and can help streamline an experience by mining that data effectively. In a doctor’s office, it can take vital signs and communicate information about physical activity. As I mentioned in a previous post, local SEO can help a potential coffee customer find your shop “within walking distance” or an errand-running parent on their lunch hour find your children’s shoe shop in “midtown.”

Your Mobile Experience matters. Today, over half of adults have a smartphone and by 2020, 80% of adults will. It is critical your Mobile Experience delivers your intended Customer Experience. Because apparently, that’s where most people are going to have any Experience with your brand at all.

Since over 50% of a Customer’s impression of your Experience is how they feel about it, what will they think of your mobile experience?

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

• Mobile Experience: Harness the Power of Your Mobile Channel
• Subconscious Clues That Call People to Action
• Why I Suffered Through a Website Redesign (and You Should, Too!)

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 Mobility Infographic Confirms Mobility is the Future appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

If you have ever suffered through this process, then you know that having this many balls in the air and taking on a website redesign is bordering on mad. The truth, however, was I couldn’t afford to put it off any longer. The time had come to improve my digital experience for the company.

In one of my quiet(er) moments, I contemplated why I felt the urgency to redesign the site, even though the timing was less than ideal. Not surprisingly, I discovered the reasons were related to my Customer’s Experience. While there are many specific goals for my user experience, they tended to fall under three main areas:

1. The old site was no longer easy to use. I’d had my site for a long time. Too long in fact. We had updated sections and added to it over the years, like you would renovate an old farmhouse. The problem was that like an old farmhouse, it wasn’t optimized to today’s standards. It became a clumsy, lumbering version of the original. Most of the convoluted natures of the site stayed behind the scenes, but over time, navigation suffered on the User Experience side. It was getting harder to find information easily, with too many clicks to get where you wanted. That sealed it. The time had come to for a full teardown  of the “old farmhouse” user interface to rebuild.
2. The old site was not sending the right message in the first three to five-seconds. Most experts say that you make an impression on your User (Customer) in three to five-seconds. I tried to take an outside-in look at my website, to see it through the Customer’s eyes. When I did that, it was clear to me the message I sent was not the message I intended, unless outdated and hard to navigate were my intentions (they weren’t).
3. My site needed to adapt to the new standard for websites that Customer’s demand. When I originally built my website, mobile interface was not a concern. Today, however, it’s critical. Today’s User (Customer) spends most of their time looking at sites on their mobile device. More specifically, their phone. While screens on smartphones are getting bigger, they still aren’t the sprawling screens of a desktop or a laptop computer. Any site today needs to be optimized for use with mobile to meet the user interface expectations of today’s Customers.

We always tell our client that having a great Customer Experience is a journey, not a destination. That’s because the standard for what makes a great Customer Experience is always changing along with the expectations of your Customers. The same idea applies for the other parts of your Customer Experience, like your website. My old User experience was great when it was first launched, but the demands and standards for what makes a great user interface have changed. It was time to meet those changing demands for my Digital Customer Experience.

Please share any thoughts below on what you like or dislike about our new website will be gratefully received. We are always looking to improve…

“Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience: Short Stories of Remarkable Practices that Ensure Success” is designed to help organizations take their Customer Experience to the next level. Celebrating the launch of this new eBook, I am hosting a LIVE webinar focusing on what it takes to evoke the best emotions from your Customer Experience and the vital role of the conscious and subconscious experience with real-world examples. Read more about the book and register for the webinar, here.

All attendees will receive a discount code for 50% off the eBook.

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

• Apple’s Customer Experience Geniuses: Finding New Way to Facilitate Empathy

• Millennials Want it All: So Give it to Them

• Chipotle and Quiznos: The Headlines Giving Us Food for Thought

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 Why I Suffered Through A Website Redesign (and You Should, too!) appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.