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.

We had Claudia Townsend, associate professor of marketing at the University of Miami at the Miami Herbert Business School, as a recent podcast guest. Townsend researches visual processing and visual design’s effect on customer behavior. Townsend chose to study it because there was shockingly little academic research on it. Furthermore, in 2005 at the height of Apple’s existence, Townsend was clear that much of the brand’s popularity was due to its design, which was beautiful, intelligent, and simple—right down to the box it came in. 

Apple users often hang onto the box their iPhone came in. Why? Townsend decided that she wanted to study why. 

It will likely come as no surprise to you that I am one of the people that still have their iPhone box. What surprised me about the box was how tightly the lid fits. When I think about it, the tight-fitting lid represents precision to me at a subconscious level, making me feel good about the phone I bought. 

Before Apple, most of the aesthetic design in packaging or products was reserved for those offerings that had met every other function. In other words, luxury products focused on these elements to differentiate themselves from similar products that might have had all the same roles for a lower price. However, that mindset has trickled down into other areas besides luxury products, making it a “must-have” rather than a “nice-to-have.” As a result, the focus on aesthetics has become universal in marketing efforts today. 

Townsend focuses on the visual in her research, but only on those aesthetic elements that hold the functionality as constant. In other words, she looks at products that change the way something looks without changing its functionality. Moreover, Townsend chooses those products whose aesthetics and functionality are. In one of Townsend’s early papers, she analyzed the hyper-rational financial disclosures, i.e., annual reports to investors, to find evidence of esthetics’ effect on behavior. Research suggests that rationality should drive your financial trading behavior. However, she wanted to see if there was any irrationality that influenced this sector of customer behavior.  

Townsend says that we are aware of the effect aesthetics has on some purchasing categories, like clothing and cars. However, we aren’t as aware of how it affects us in other buying decisions. Based on Townsend’s research, the Annual Report’s look and feel influences investor behavior, too, even among those more experienced investors.

Annual reports summarize past performance for the year and (ostensibly) set performance expectations for the coming year. Moreover, annual reports often have statements from the CEO and other leadership about the company’s plans. From a rational perspective, what is important here is the numbers and the visions for the future—not the pretty colors on the cover. Townsend research indicated that the cover design did matter. 

In the study, Townsend and her team made design elements quantitative. The team looked at the number of colors and images used on the front cover and the first couple of pages, and then the report. The findings showed that because a financial statement tends to be bland and dull to read, meaning black text on a white page, the addition of any color or imagery helped encourage investors to buy more stock in the company. Therefore, while it might not be intuitive to those institutions to spend a lot on graphic design and more expensive printing of an Annual Report, investing in that imagery and an additional color has a benefit. Therefore, branding teams should ensure that the annual reports were on brand, and the images they used supported the brand promise. 

Much of the research we look at on consumer behavior shows that people want to feel good about themselves, and owning good-looking products is a quick and easy way to feel good about ourselves. It has an effect called self-affirmation, which is bolstering our sense of self and who we are. However, we also make assumptions based on esthetics about the rest of a company or an organization. When things are beautiful in design, it portrays competence. So, Townsend says these findings show that consumers are thinking about the extraneous, tangential signals that companies extend to them all the time. 

Townsend says there are two things organizations should remember about this. 

1. There is a universal appreciation of aesthetics. All of us have preferences for visuals. Even if a person doesn’t consider themselves “fashionable,” they know there are things they would rather look at than other things. 
2. This appreciation is innate and unconscious. We do not employ strategy in our preferences; we self-identify with things we like esthetically and automatically make it a part of ourselves. 

To go into full geeky detail about this, Townsend says the visual system works on different levels. She says you can think of it like a timeline:

• Your immediate reaction is automatic, which is to seek symmetry. We like balance because it’s easy to process and understand.
• The next level is categorization, which relates to prototypicality. So, if we can recognize what the image is, we like it more. 
• The third level, which is learned and culturally-influenced, is what we recognize as “fashionable.” For example, stainless steel appliances have been fashionable in kitchen appliances for years. However, the trend is moving toward white appliances again, which people associate with clean and nice. 

Much of the research we look at on consumer behavior shows that people want to feel good about themselves, and owning good-looking products is a quick and easy way to feel good about ourselves.

Framing effects come into play here, as well. You will recall that Framing Effects refer to how the way you present choices affects people’s perception of them. Townsend did another study with Julio Sevilla about the amount of space between items in a retail setting and how that affected customer behavior. She describes the study as a simple manipulation. They displayed many products on a 4′ x 4′ square and an 8′ x 8′ square, both in-person and on-screen. Townsend and Sevilla discovered two effects. 

The first effect was when people see products spaced out, people perceive them as more expensive than when they are close together. Townsend says this is a learned response from the culture. Fancy stores tend to have fewer products and higher markups, so we associate higher prices with more space between merchandise. However, Townsend says one can change this effect by telling people whether the brand is expensive or not, and then the distance between them didn’t matter. 

The second effect was that when the products had a lot of space between them, people perceived them as more esthetically pleasing than when they were close together. Townsend says that when the entire arrangement looks better (i.e., more spaced out), people assign more beauty to each additional product, and, consequently, we assign more value to them. Townsend said this was true for products that range from food to tools and so on. Moreover, this effect was harder to change by suggestion. 

Back in 2002, I spoke with Ian McAllister, former Chairman and Managing Director of Ford Motor Company, Ltd., in the UK for my book, Building Great Customer Experiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). He explained to me that the more space you have in a car, the more luxurious it feels. I have to agree with that. I have purchased several large vehicles, some of them Fords, and I admit that the size was part of the appeal. 

Townsend has a few suggestions when it comes to practical tips about the effects of esthetics on customer behavior.

1. Realize that aesthetics matter when customers look at things. Customers care what things look like more than you think and for all types of purchases. For example, we want a more attractive apple because we believe it is healthier or staying fresh longer. However, we also have these same standards when choosing power tools or air fresheners, too, which are purchase categories we might not think esthetics are as important. 
2. Design your offering to appeal to our bias for attractive aesthetics. Managing customer perception of your aesthetics is essential. Look for ways to present your products in a way that looks better to appeal to the customer’s sense that it will “be better.” In other words, hire a designer; it will be worth the money. 
3. Don’t skip this exercise because your offer is intangible. Townsend says that people who provide services don’t think aesthetics have the same effect on their experiences. However, they do, and often it matters more than when the experience is product-based. Many times, when there is no product to judge, tangential cues—like whether the office appears organized, if the website was easy to use, or if the office floor shows damage—matter more than they would otherwise because it is all customers have to evaluate the experience. 
4. If you don’t know what is essential to customers visually, then find out. As I often say, you need to understand what drives your organization’s value in all areas of your customer experience, and the visual element is no different. Our Emotional Signature® research can help determine what makes a difference to people and helps drive value for your bottom line. 

I would add that it reinforces how important the details are in a customer’s perception of your experience. They have a much more dramatic effect than you might think. After all, who would have thought that the number of colors and images you use on an Annual Report to report a company’s financial details matters one wit? But it does. 

When it comes to visuals and design, you need to be deliberate about the signal you send to customers. They notice them all whether you do or not—and it could lead to them keeping the box of your competitor’s product in the closet instead of yours.

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 Aesthetics: Why This is A Vital Part of Your Experience appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Consumers for the luxury brand can look forward to a change in their experience. According to Business Insider, the new experience is called a “guest journey” and the sales associate is now their “muse.”

However, the names are just the start of the changes. The associates (muses) are tasked with not just “making the sale,” but first and foremost to engage with the Customer. In other words, the muses must determine how the Customer wants the experience to go that day, and then deliver that version of it. Muses will now also greet the guest only, but they won’t show product unless asked specifically to do so.

I’ll be honest, today we are exploring the experience of an industry I know NOTHING about, women’s fashion. But I do know enough to see that there is a great benefit to making the Customer feel like they are on a journey—particularly when they are spending the kind of money they are at one of these shops.

Setting the Expectations As High As Possible

Luxury brands, more than most, have set an expectation in the minds of their Customers, and it’s as high as the prices on the merchandise. By revamping the Customer Experience to reflect the brand value of luxury, Kate Spade is joining the ranks of Apple and Lululemon.

One key for a luxury brand is called “aspiration.” When retailers of luxury brands talk about aspiration, they refer to the value the brand name implies in the mind of the consumer. Aspiration is what drives a woman that sees a Kate Spade bag in the window of the shop to figure out if she can stand to eat noodles for the next month to pay for it. Aspiration means that consumers pay a premium to be a part of the brand, and are thrilled about it.

However, to remain aspirational, a brand can’t be too popular—or too accessible. Michael Kors, an equivalent brand for women’s fashion (or so I’m told…) is suffering from too much of both, and it shows in their sales numbers. To maintain their aspirational status, Kate Spade is pulling back from discounting and flash sales this year, a gutsy move in an economy that is still in recovery mode for many.

They also want a younger vibe. Their millennial-focused Kate Spade Saturday Stores closed last winter, but the line will continue in the Kate Spade New York Stores. They have a great new campaign with actress Anna Kendrick, called #missadventure:

The Warm Glow of Meeting Expectations

All of these measures, from calling sales associates muses to hiring a spokeswoman that personifies their target Customer, Kate Spade New York is sending a subconscious signal to consumers. Eventually these manifest into a brand message that sets an expectation for the quality of the experience. And this brand promise will convince a young twenty-something woman to spend her rent money on a great bag. Buying it from her muse, who delivers the experience, I mean “guest journey” she went to the store to have will give her a warm glow—which is great, because she’ll need it when she has to sleep in the park next month!

All joking aside, the idea that your retail experience should reflect your brand values is a tenet essential to creating a great Customer Experience for a Luxury brand. And that’s something that Kate Spade New York is designing their experience to do—in spades.

What other luxury retail experiences deliver their brand promise in spades? I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments below.

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

Discounting a Luxury Brand: The Power of the Attention Cluster of Emotions

Bergdorf and the Subconscious

Apple: Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

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

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post Kate Spade Revamps Retail Experiences to Deliver Brand Values appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Neil had a reputation of being a tough boss. He set high standards and expected people to achieve them. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. I was nervous. The meeting went well. I told Neil what I thought about the organization both good and bad. And it seemed to hit the right chord–Neil offered me the role of running Marketing then and there.

To say I felt surprised would be an understatement.

After working for him for a while, I realized Neil spotted hidden talent in people, talent they didn’t see themselves. I was no exception; he saw something in me I didn’t see myself. He gave me the confidence to express myself and encouraged me to take risks. It turned out to be the break and the environment I needed to find my stride as a leader.

Neil wasn’t an easy boss as he was demanding, and rightly so.  He was tough, but in a good way. He removed me from my comfort zone. He set high standards and expected me to deliver. He forced me to do my best work, and never accepted anything less than my best effort. His style of management was inclusive, but also you knew who was boss. He had an ethos of debate and then decision. His phrase (which I often use today) was, “Once we agree, we do.”

But let me be clear: to the outside world he was a tough businessman. To his team, on the other hand, he was protective, understanding, and loyal. He would put his neck on the line for you.

I remember on one occasion I had taken a risk and things had gone wrong. He didn’t chastise me but instead applauded me for trying. Then, he went out of his way to protect me, putting himself in harm’s way politically as he did so. As a result, I would have walked over hot coals for Neil.

He took great pleasure in seeing the people he spotted moved on to bigger and better things. He moved me from Marketing to Customer Service, which was quite a surprise for people. This position, incidentally, set me on the path to Customer Experience.

Despite his tough exterior, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for one of his team. He was exceptionally loyal and protective of everyone. These traits inspired loyalty from his team. In some ways, you could say he established a cult. Now I realize the word cult normally has a negative connotation, but it can be good. In other words, if you were a square peg, Neil made sure you were in a square hole.

Key things I learned from Neil:

• Take a risk on people; it can pay huge dividends.
• Be fanatically loyal to your team.
• Be approachable.
• Be demanding and push people to do their best work.
• Build a ‘cult’ in your team.
• Think outside the square.

To this day, I believe a great part of what success I have, is down to Neil for which I thank him. I hear him in the back of my head when I am managing my team or presenting to an audience or listening to a client. I ask myself what Neil would do when faced with a tough decision. I hear him questioning my reasoning when I argue a point with myself. His wisdom, fierce loyalty, and demanding demeanor shaped me into the leader I am today. I can only hope to live up to his estimations of my ability and be the leader he always believed I could be.

Who in your career has made the greatest impact? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

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

• Cracking Employee Engagement Through Leadership
• Virgin Shows Links Between Employee Experience and Customer Experience
• Employee Culture: Why Amazon is on Top and Bank of America Isn’t

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 What My Boss Taught Me about Leadership appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

September 1st, the high-end yoga-wear maker introduced their new Pant Wall. The new fits are arranged according to how they feel when worn, rather than the silhouette as it was in the past. The new pants range from Tight fit to Relaxed and include other fits such as Held in, Hugged or Naked.

I realize of course that I am not the target of Lululemon, since I would never wear yoga pants (you’re welcome!). They certainly wouldn’t have my size. And if they did, the sight of me wearing this is enough to put everyone off their food for a week! However, the last fit description sounds interesting, to say the least!

The new fit descriptions are designed to help Customers know which fit is appropriate for what activity. The new wall is in response to Customer Feedback that they were confused about how the pants should fit and sometimes bought them too big. The Pant Wall was designed to help Customers feel less confused in the store more satisfied with their purchase after they leave.

The Customer response to the change seems to be positive, according to analysts. They are upgrading the stock and forecasting a positive turning point the brand by the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley upgraded LULU, predicting that the stock will continue its success in earnings for 2016.

The VOC is the Key

So what does this story show us? It shows us two things. First, that listening to the Voice of the Customer (VOC) is an important part of your brand strategy. Second, that incorporating what you hear in the VOC to your Customer Experience pays off for your bottom line, a.k.a. stock price value rising.

An important part of your success (a.k.a. stock price value rising), is having a few ways to keep in touch with the VOC. Lululemon has a few channels in place to listen to the VOC:

• There is the Ambassador program, designed to give local athletes and brand ambassadors a way to weigh in on the product lines.
• Then there is the heylululemon.com site (also called their feedback page) where they invite their Customers to make suggestions and submit ideas.
• There is the Guest Education Centre, where they answer all questions and concerns via email, live chat, or call center.

They also do roundtable research at the store level. One of my work associates emailed me recently regarding a recent experience she had with Lululemon. When she was invited to an event at the store, she thought it was a party with drinks and snacks and would feature an exclusive preview for new products. However, it turned out to be something much more rewarding. Here’s what she described:

“…Don’t get me wrong, there were drinks and snacks. However, I, along with about 10 other people, had the opportunity to not only network a bit, but also sit at a round table where we were asked about our lives and what inspires us, as well as our thoughts, likes, and reasons for shopping with Lulu.  Then, they offered us a chance to give feedback on our concerns and what they could change and improve (whilst notes were taken by the store and Regional managers of the brand). They also had new products we were given the opportunity to try on and give feedback as well. At the end of the evening, it was also a nice surprise to be given a gift card to shop with them again.”

All of these listening channels are paying off—and according to stock pundits, by next year or even the fourth quarter this year, quite literally.

It’s nice to see a brand remember what makes Customer Loyalty and Retention work. Lululemon had begun to lose their balance with their Customers coming out of their pose as the top Yoga-wear brand.  But by realigning their strategy with a Customer focus and listening to the VOC, they are once again finding their Customer Center, and positioned to take the top spot once more.

How are you listening to the VOC with your brand?

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

5 Ways to Make a Great Impression on Your New Customer

When It Comes to Customer Experience, You Have to Keep Rolling the Dice

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in Customer Experience Lately

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 five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post Yoga Pants Can Realign Customer Experience appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

In my view, there is a great lack of training on soft skills with Customers and when there is training available it is too basic and not frequent enough. There are, however, three major things your training must address to be successful. Fail to do these three and your training will be incomplete, and your experience will be uneven at best.

When you ask any successful company how they train their employees they will undoubtedly tell you some variation of the following three items:

#1: You must understand what really makes up an experience.

To move your training to the next level you need to understand the conscious and subconscious and how the emotional reactions to the experience you provide influence most experiences.  We know that over 50% of a Customer experience is emotional so this is important. This concept is a key part of Apple’s training strategy. Witness their leaked training guide:

Apple Case Study
https://beyondphilosophy.com/secret-great-customer-experience-apple-case-study/

So there are things one notices and pays attention to (the rational and conscious elements of an experience, like the price or the shipping time, etc.) and then there are the things one notices but doesn’t know how to describe (the emotional and subconscious, e.g., feeling frustrated or hassled, surprised and delighted, or safe or unsafe.) You have to understand how these things work together to create an impression for the Customer on how they “feel” about your experience.

#2: You must provide the right elements to evoke the correct emotion.

When it comes to providing the right elements in your experience to create an emotional response that feels right for Customers, you must first understand what the moments in your experience are. To facilitate this understanding, we always recommend pretending you are a Customer and walking the experience with an Outside-In Perspective. Once you see it as a Customer sees it, you will know what you need to change to get where you want to go. Usually during an exercise like the one I just described, you will see where you are hassling people, frustrating them or possibly even how you are doing things right. Either way, identifying what you have now is the key to where to start fixing the experience to “feel right” to Customers.

#3: You must communicate these moments and train teams how to recognize the signs of how a Customer is feeling.

Theory, understanding, and design are great, foundational elements of any experience. However, if you fail to communicate what you discovered to the people who provide the experience, then you are wasting your time with the first three parts. Regardless of what your understanding and research reveal, it is of utmost importance you take the time to train the people interacting with Customers in your organization on what you have learned. Start by explaining how feelings influence how a Customer behaves, follow up with an example of how your present experience creates these feelings, then propose a way to change those parts of your experience to be better. Many times this means training in empathetic listening, better communication, and specific actions (and phrases) to apply in the most common Customer interaction experiences.

So there you have it, the three elements essential to the success of your training program. First, understanding how experiences work and influence how your Customers behave. Secondly, understand how your experience evokes emotions at present. Finally, help your team reach that same level of understanding so that when you give them the tools to create the right experience, they are willing and able to deliver. Fail to include these three elements and you might as well not have had training for Customer-facing employees at all.

What do you think? What do training programs miss for Customer-facing teams? I’d be interested to hear what you think in the comments below.

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

• Training Employees on Nonverbal Clues

• Training Your Employees On Sympathy or Empathy? Apple Show the Way to Success

• Improving Your CX One Employee at a Time
  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

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Frost and Sullivan, the growth consulting firm, predicted that by the year 2025, global traffic would be measured in 100 Zettabytes. After I had googled what a Zettabyte was (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), I realized that ignoring the big impact of not having all the big data is a big problem for organizations—Zettabyte big!

I have written before about the big hole in big data, which is the lack of emotional data collected in all these bytes of information. We are getting a picture, but it isn’t complete. Because unlike the computers that collect this data, the people are humans. Therefore, they are irrationally driven to make a decision based on emotions. So yes, the data might show a pattern, but it doesn’t show the emotional state that created the pattern. In other words, it shows what they did, but not why they did it.

It is important to consider this information from a Behavioral Economics viewpoint. For those of you who have heard this phrase but do not really understand what this means, the Oxford Dictionary defines Behavioral Economics as:

A method of economic analysis that applies psychological insights into human behaviour to explain economic decision-making.

In my view this is fundamental. Despite this fact, Big Data continues to gain steam as the “next Internet-sized” evolution of business. In their Big Data roundup this past June, Cloud Tech’s blog showed the results of a study. In it, 89% of business leaders believe big data is the new Internet, meaning it will revolutionize business they way the Internet did. And they also believe it will revolutionize their operations (85% said), and the biggest way it would revolutionize them (37% said) is in Customer Relationships.

Blimey!

Don’t get me wrong; I think big data is helpful to Customer Relationships.  However, as it is now the data you get is like watching a bunch of people from a distance. You can see what they are doing, but you can’t hear what they are saying. Actions, I suppose, speak louder than words (or at least that’s what my mum told me), but frankly, hearing the words and experiencing the action is a faster route to understanding. Their words and actions can give you the insight that Big Data currently lacks.

For example, why do people bounce off a website? Big data will tell you that at some point, your Customer visited your website and then left x.x seconds later.  The reasons why this occurred are not addressed in the “data.” Instead, you have to guess. Was the page uninviting? Was the link they came in from misleading? Was the Call to Action on the page unclear? You don’t know. You just know they came and then they left x.x seconds later. Without the why, you can redesign the website, clean up who you link with, or fix the call to action, but you have no idea if what you fixed will work to fix the bounce rate.

Big Data is helpful. Before this “data,” you might not have known that your bounce rate was a problem. However, as my example explains, it doesn’t answer why this happens or provide a clear path for fixing the issue.

What organizations need to do is to track the emotional key moments in their experience and compare them with the Big Data they get back. We do this type of research all the time. We take an outside-in approach, walking the experience as if we were a Customer, noting how we felt in the experience at each moment based on the activities that take place then. These moments tell us what an actual Customer is likely to feel. Then we use this information to change that moment to evoke a different emotional response, one that we want the Customer to have. We call it an Emotional Signature, but you might also call it “The Why That Big Data Misses.”

So if you want to reap the benefits of Big Data’s Big Impact to revolutionize your Customer relationships, as the study we reference above indicates, then you need to do your emotional research, too. This research will explain what you see in the Big Data Charts, allowing you to understand what it means. Most importantly, this understanding will lead to better design to get different (and more pleasing) big data results in the future. No guesswork required.

Will you miss the big impact of big data?

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

• The Big Hole in Big Data

• 4 Ways to Gain Customer’s Trust in Data Security

• The Moral Dilemma: Collecting Data on Customer Behavior

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 five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post Big Data’s Big Problem appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

When it comes to brands and their related experience, it’s critical that you KISS it. In other words, Keep It Simple Stupid.

The truth is most Customers want things easy, too. According to Siegel and Gale, a branding firm specializing in simplicity, Customers like brands that have simplicity as a key value.

After talking to over 12,000 respondents in eight different countries, they discovered there are four main reasons that simplicity is important to your brand.

1. It’s more expensive to be complex.  When an experience is complex, people gravitate toward the high-cost channels, i.e., the call center.
2. Customers value simplicity enough to pay more for it. Of those surveyed, 38% of them said they would pay more for a simpler experience.
3. Customers are more likely to recommend you to someone else when you keep it simple. The vast majority, 70% of respondents said they were more likely to recommend a brand with a simple experience.
4. Simple works for your bottom line. Looking at data since 2009, the portfolio including the simplest brands outperformed the major indexes by 170%.

Their findings are clear: Simple is where it’s at as it pertains to brands. And I would argue, simple is where it’s at as it pertains to the experience you provide for your brand as well.

Getting Your Brand Experience Back to Simple

Ask yourself this question: What is the brand experience you want to deliver? Do you know? If you were to go and ask your colleagues would they?

We ask these questions a lot. The surprising bit is the vast majority of the people at the organizations we help do not know the answer. Although, to be fair, there are times when they do know the answer—it’s just that everyone knows a different answer.

Knowing ONE answer is key to building a brand with an excellent experience. We call this answer a Customer Experience Statement, (CES) or a specific articulation of the experience your brand wants to deliver. Furthermore, as we know over 50% of the Customer Experience pertains to how a Customer feels, this statement should include specific emotions the Customer will feel during and after the experience with your brand.

However, we also want a strategy that drives value and provides a return to the bottom line. It is a business after all!

Based on the research undertaken by Siegel and Gale, simplicity to the experience drives much value to the bottom line. So when setting the strategy, simple should be a part of all brand conversations. The fact is, Customers are demanding—getting more so all the time—and they are demanding simple experiences. However, if you meet their simple demands, they reward you with word of mouth advertising, the gold standard for Brands.

So adding simple to your CES is paramount for brands today. Also paramount is the acceptance of simple as a value by the senior team because simple has implications (read: costs).

You need to design your brand to give people a simple experience. At the end of any experience with you, people should say their experience was easy. To evoke this response, you need to research it with an outside-in approach, design it with the goal in mind, implement it with a mind for change, and reward those who embrace it. Fail to do so, or fail to KISS it—you might simply kiss some of your loyal people goodbye.  

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

•     Women Want Social Responsibility from Their Brands
•     7 Reasons Brand and CX Are Disconnected
•     Emotional Engagement and Brand Loyalty: Procter and Gamble Gets It…Do You?

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 Customer Experience: Keep it Simple Stupid 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

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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.

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