Naïve Diversification bias happens a lot at the supermarket. For example, have you ever bought a variety of snack packs of chips only to realize that everyone wants the same kind? Maybe you purchased an assortment of yogurt flavors at the store and then threw them out after they expire because you never ate the key lime ones you were sure you wanted to try? I have too. We all do this stuff because of the natural bias we all have for overestimating our preference for variety—and your customers also have it.

It doesn’t only happen at the grocery store. As I look at my bookshelf, I see some books I bought because I thought I should read them. I call them aspirational books. However, I haven’t read them. I also subscribe to a list of podcasts. I listen to five or six of them, but I will never get to the fifteenth. Nonetheless, I continue to subscribe…because maybe I’ll listen to it next week.

(By the way, my podcast is The Intuitive Customer, and you can subscribe to it – I hope you listen to it, too)

In reality, we are not as interested in variety as we thought.

As we discussed in a recent podcast, there are many reasons in the Behavioral Sciences for why this stuff happens. However, Naïve Diversification Bias is a significant driver of these particular forecasting errors. Some of it aspirational, meaning we think we should try new things. Sometimes we do it because we anticipate a need for variety, like with the yogurt flavors. In reality, we are not as interested in variety as we thought.

Itamar Simonson, PhD, The Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at Stanford University, is one of the more influential researchers in this area of the behavioral sciences.  In a paper published in 1990, he demonstrated how we choose more variety for the future than when we choose for the moment. Professor Simonson brought snacks to the students every week for three weeks. He had them choose ahead of time what the students wanted as a snack from a list of options for one group. In another group, the students chose the snack each week. For both groups, everybody made three snack choices over three weeks and consumed them one per week. The only difference was when the students made their decisions about what to choose. Professor Simonson found that when people were deciding for the next three weeks combined, the students chose more variety, but when people were selecting each week, students would go for the same snack. It showed that “at the point of consumption,” students knew what they wanted—and it was their favorite snack.

I have seen this effect at work in a trip I take with friends. There are 12 of us that travel together (you know, back when that was something one did), and when we would book at restaurants, the establishment will sometimes ask us to order ahead of time. I was organizing one of these meals when it was my turn, and it nearly drove me round the bloody bend! Everyone would choose what they wanted and then, as the day approached, would change their orders.

Of course, I am no different. I use a service called Graze. It’s a mail-order subscription service where they send you little snacks each week, mostly healthy stuff. Although I chose my snacks ahead of time, I now have a cupboard full of dried fruit that I didn’t eat. Why? When I was ordering, I thought eating dried fruit would be good for me, but when push comes to shove, and it’s time to snack, I don’t eat it.

When you give customers choices that look into the future, they will do the same. Customers look into the future, anticipate a desire for variety, and then don’t want the variety once it comes.

So, does that mean people don’t want a variety of choices? The answer is complicated. People want options, yes, but having choices does not improve their experience as much as customers think it will. Moreover, too many choices can cause problems, including Naïve Diversification. Too much variety can also cause confusion, frustration, and loss of motivation. However, if you ask customers, they will tell you they want more choices. After customers find themselves in a situation where they have too many options, customers are surprised that it’s challenging for them.

I’m not too fond of too many choices. For example, when I go on Amazon and put in a search, I rarely go to the second page. However, there are multitudinous pages of products on Amazon to choose from, which is, in part, what drew me to Amazon in the first place. However, Amazon customers rarely scroll past the second page. One way Amazon shoppers respond is by using filters or sorting by different criteria. “Average customer reviews” is one I use a lot. The more the reviews there are, the better. Another one I use is “verified purchase.” With this strategy, it feels like there are many choices, but then I can narrow and prioritize the field of options by inputting specific criteria.

Another good strategy for avoiding the Naïve Diversification bias is to make choices as close to the moment of consumption as possible. For instance, I should re-examine my Graze order. At a certain point, I will realize how much money I am wasting on dried fruit I don’t eat, which will lead to my canceling my subscription. However, if Graze sent me a prompt to refresh my preferences, I could revise my list and pick the stuff I want and feel good about keeping my subscription. So, if organizations can decrease the time between choice and consumption, then people will make improved forecasting decisions.

Finally, understanding how these feelings of dissatisfaction affect customer behavior is essential. We know that many organizations have customer journey maps prepared, which is excellent for showing you a process. However, it does not show you customer behavior. Moreover, COVID-19 has changed your customers’ journeys. People are buying differently, which means that Customers will now have a new process. It is essential to know what these are and to understand their behavior along the way. Behavioral Journey Mapping takes this exercise a step further by charting customer behavior throughout the process. In essence, it is showing you how your experience affects what your customers do.

So, what should you do with this information?

1. Recognize Naïve Diversification Bias. First, I recommend recognizing the Naïve Diversification Bias when people make choices for future consumption. These choices will be different than what people choose for immediate consumption. If you are in a situation where the bias can come into play, acknowledge that it is a potential source of customer dissatisfaction.
2. Understand that people change their minds. Know that customers will have dissatisfied feelings regarding their forecasting errors, i.e., my cupboard full of dried fruit. It is essential to identify these moments and find ways to mitigate these by customer communication and opportunities to make changes. We recommend discovering this by mapping behavior rather than only the customer process.
3. Develop strategies around the negatives of the bias.  Offer customers opportunities to send stuff back or re-evaluate their subscribed choices periodically.
4. Compress the time between choice and consumption as much as possible. People make much better choices for what they want at the moment than they do in a projected time frame. Whenever possible, give them a shorter interval or allow for individual decisions rather than a “set” to decrease the opportunity to forecast errors on behalf of their future selves.
5. Build filtered-diversification into your offer.  When the choice is for future consumption, it would be best to have a variety of options, but also a way to narrow down choices based on customer-driven criteria. So, as I said about Amazon, it’s great to have several pages of options but help customers by allowing them to filter by criteria, so the best recommendations are on pages one or two. Having various options presented satisfies the psychological need for choice, but the filter helps to prevent overwhelming customers with options and lose them in the process.

Naïve Diversification bias is a common trait we share. We aren’t always great about knowing what we will want in the future, and neither are your customers. It can lead to less than optimal outcomes with experiences, and customer feelings about your experience that are less than optimal, too, and the kind that does not lead to customer-driven growth.

However, suppose we recognize our tendency to overestimate our preference for variety in the future and minimize the opportunity to make forecasting errors for our customers. In that case, you can mitigate the consequences of customers’ actions that can lead to their choosing a variety of providers for your product and service in the future.

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 How Well Do You Know What You Really Want? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Francis Bacon said that knowledge is power. Nowhere is that saying more true than in compiling and applying customer information. An effective, strategic use of customer information can help make a company highly loyalty-driven and defection resistant.

Customer data collection, data warehousing, and data mining have become almost commonplace words in the sales, marketing, and customer service lexicon today, thanks in large part to the dramatically lower costs associated with obtaining and storing data and the power, and applicability, of predictive analytics and data graphics. The greater availability of current customer data information, in turn, spurred the rapid development of sophisticated and flexible software to apply this information to customer loyalty and customer win-back programs.

Trying to manage customer retention or recovery without such data, and the system to route and apply it, is a lot like trying to find something on the floor of your garage, at night, without a flashlight. A well planned customer information system (CIS) can take much of the peril out of customer loyalty program planning and evaluation. A company-wide CIS enables your firm to integrate sometimes scattered and inconsistent customer databases, and transparently tie together geographically and organizationally dispersed customer operations.

Widely dispersed databases are a common problem, for example, in most insurance companies. And so are the resulting problems. For example, every potential customer who asks an agent for a quote on a policy triggers a complex underwriting process that involves collecting and matching data on the applicant’s driving record, auto registration, demographics and even family risk (the presence of a teenage driver).

Precious time can be lost in getting risk-related data from multiple external sources, converting it for use in an expert underwriting system, and delivering the final determination to the agent. But that’s not all — if the individual’s self-reported risk factors don’t match what the external data shows about that individual, the policy coming back may well bear a different price than what the agent quoted.

That’s why Allstate Insurance’s successful push, beginning over 20 years ago, to create a comprehensive CIS for its army of agents, has had a profound impact on the company’s ability to better serve its customers. The payoff has been substantial. Underwriting time has been cut in half, enabling Allstate agents to provide quotes within 24 to 48 hours. Policies can now be issued within three to five business days. And the behind-the-scenes data streamlining has eliminated $3 to $4 million dollars per year in unnecessary data costs. Data quality is so much improved that Allstate now guarantees that the rate an agent quotes is the rate by which the policy will be written. It’s a far cry from Allstate’s redundant data days in the early 90s when each of its regional offices was purchasing state motor vehicle and auto registration data from six to eight sources. Through its CIS system, Allstate now gets one cost from each data provider and sets up the necessary conversion, deduplication (eliminating customer record duplication) and data processing procedures to ensure that incoming data is fed to Allstate’s expert underwriting system and from there to the agent’s desktop system.

But the CIS quickly proved its worth beyond underwriting. Allstate has been generating leads for its agents for years, but with the data warehouse capabilities in place, the company has been able to prequalify leads using ideal customer profiles and personas it developed from transaction history and enhancement data. By matching incoming leads against that profile, Allstate can determine the customers most likely to be profitable or to buy a life, auto, or homeowner product.

A company-wide CIS can eliminate the problem of incomplete and dated product and service information. Instead of relying on paper records or isolated computer profiles in customer transactions, the information can be put on-line and updated on a continuous, real time basis.

In the world of database technology, there are almost as many ways to capture customer information as there are ways to use the information that has been gathered. The end goal, always, is to have an information system sensitive enough to understand the needs of every customer. Here are four widely used ways to capture customer data.

• Building the database one sale at a time. When a consumer purchases batteries from his local Radio Shack store, and the clerk logs the customer’s name and address into the computer, they’re building a database to help determine if you receive a follow-up catalog and which products are emphasized. When customers swipe their frequent shopper cards at the supermarket, they’re helping the chain identify products and promotions of possible future interest. This detailed customer information is very valuable because of the insights into future cross-sell/upsell opportunities it provides.
• Customer surveys. Surveys are an effective, though sometimes misused, way of gathering customer information. Some of them — the self-completion type often seen in hotel rooms, on rental car counters, in retail stores, on planes, or in supermarkets — provide potentially misleading data due to their low representation of customers. Surveys mailed to customers or e-mailed are also subject to potential bias due to sometimes low response and the lack of detailed information given by respondents. When using surveys for data collection be sure you use data collection methods that are representative of customers or customer segments you want to learn about.
• Personal, in-depth interviewing. One of the best, and most accurate, methods of collecting customer opinions and perceptions, as well as demographics and lifestyle information, are via telephone, Intranet or personal interviewing. Trained interviewers can generate detailed information by probing customers’ specific reasons for answering in certain ways. It is also the most expensive method, but companies can get more relevancy and objectivity from this type of data than almost any other. Again, given the worth of the information collected, it may well justify the level of expense. For example, a pharmaceutical company which released a new drug may contact a cross-section of doctors who have recently prescribed the product to gain valuable insights about prescription habits.
• Front line dialogue. When employees collect customer data as a consequence of their routine contact, the cost is extremely low. In addition, this dialogue helps nurture relationships with the customers, showing them that the company takes a genuine interest in their welfare. Since we know that one of the barriers to customer registration of complaints is belief that the company isn’t interested, this direct collaboration of information helps to demonstrate value in their contact.

Discount brokerage firm, Charles Schwab’s goal is to get customers to consolidate their assets — with Charles Schwab. The difficulty comes in learning how much those assets are since new investors routinely test the waters by investing only a portion of the amount they have available to invest. To accomplish that goal, Schwab adopted some basic principles for conducting dialogue with clients.

1. Ask detailed questions — A new customer is asked several straightforward questions when they become customers. Included in those questions are “how much do you have to invest?” “do you use a computer?” “are you on the internet?” The answers to the questions are used to build a customer profile.
2. Track behavior — Each time a salesperson talks to a customer, information gleaned from the talk is added to the customer profile.
3. Incorporate surveys and demographic information — Schwab certainly doesn’t reject statistical information on customers. But rather than making the data the centerpiece of its marketing strategy, Schwab uses it to supplement the more personal, dialogue-based data it develops on each customer.
4. Translate correspondence into usable information — Schwab records all correspondence, including email, using software that reads and categorizes each message. For example, the software will understand that a customer wants to change an account or has a complaint about a trade. According to Schwab, the text program can successfully categorize 60 percent of correspondence into customer profile data. Humans must read the remaining 40 percent.
5. Make analytical deductions — Customers may not be forthcoming about their assets, so the company has to deduce the potential value of the customer based on the information it has gathered.
6. Connect the data points — Schwab is able to measure the true extent of a relationship by mining data. For instance, it recognizes multiple accounts owned by one customer — say, the person with a $200,000 IRA who manages $3 million in retirement funds at her privately held company.

Some database experts are predicting that knowledge discovery will start to eclipse data mining techniques in the next five years or so. A knowledge discovery database (KDD) works like this. Instead of mining layers upon layers of customer transactional and lifestyle data for knowledge nuggets, a set of flexible knowledge-required algorithms is established and the available data is searched to find exceptions to this rule. Of course, the success of KDD within an organization is dependent on the firm’s ability to provide clear direction for the goal statements which in turn can be formed into specific goal-searching algorithms. This cannot happen without the right level of campaign knowledge and customer experience data that has been successfully captured, categorized and monitored. Like all CIS successes, the power of KDD is only as good as the knowledge transfer and the commitment of staff to using and improving the system.

Bottom-line, a major key to making your business customer-centric loyalty-based and defection-proof is information that leads to insight — information about your customers, information about their needs and preferences, information about your own business and its strengths and weaknesses. If you can get the information superhighway running past your door, you’ll find that keeping and creating loyal customers is easier than ever before.

The post The Loyalty Power of A Well-Designed, Well-Maintained Customer Information System appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

#1: Allocate quality time for contemplation and concentration.

I don’t consider myself a creative type. So when I need to be creative, I have to focus on it. So, I lock myself away to think. Bill Gates talks about having a “think week.” I am like that. It’s how I come up with ideas, it’s how I write, and it’s how I decide what to speak about at my next conference. When writing a book I need to have a sustained period where I am not thinking of anything else, free from distractions and removed from the hustle and bustle of my regular life and ideally in a place with an inspiring view. The final trick is turn off email and social media and don’t get distracted. Focus, focus, focus.

#2: Create the backbone of the book.

I often don’t have a clue what I am going to write until I start. I know my publisher would cringe to read that, but it’s true. However, once I start, it is cathartic. I come up with ideas and then more ideas. The problem can be, however, that I get too many ideas! Because of this fact, it becomes essential to create a backbone for the book. In my first book, Building Great Customer Experiences, it was the seven philosophies; the next one I used our Naïve to Natural model for establishing Customer Centricity of organizations, and so on. These “backbones” help you organize your ideas and drill down to the main message you want to deliver in your pages.

#3: Get lots of input and feedback along the way.

When you have a new idea, it’s like coming out of a fog. Everything becomes clear and you realize that you have made a significant breakthrough. This happened with our book, DNA of Customer Experience: How emotions drive value  in discovering the hierarchy of emotions. However, you have to test things along the way. I have had many great ideas that end up not being great ideas! When you explain your idea to people and find yourself struggling, it’s not great. I have a team I have cultivated to challenge me, to say, “Colin, that isn’t a good idea because of XYZ.” I place great value on their input. I always say, “None of us is as clever as all of us.” I am also a proponent of the group brainstorm where there are no silly ideas. We all know some of them are silly, but all of us can also admit some of the ridiculous ideas either become our best or inspire the best idea. In this way, nearly all of my books end up becoming collaborations.

#4: Challenge yourself to dig deeper and think again.

By my self-described style of starting with no end in mind, I’m sure you can imagine that not everything I produce is good literature or, frankly, even coherent. As such, I have a practice of looking at an idea from every angle. I advise all writers not to accept the first thing that comes to mind; challenge your ideas and dig deeper to make sure you are communicating something worthy of your reader’s time. I do this so much that it carries over into my real life—and drives my wife Lorraine around the bend!

#5: Keep it conversational.

When I write, I imagine I am having a conversation with someone. I like to keep my books simple and use everyday examples to demonstrate a principle I want to impart. By keeping it real and grounded in the everyday, you communicate better with a wider audience. And isn’t that the point of writing at all, to communicate?

So there you have it. Five books and thirteen years of writing summed up in fewer than 800 words. May it serve you well and help you harness your creativity to communicate your latest ideas to your wider audience.

What do you do when you write? I’d love to hear (and learn) from your examples, too.

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

• Science Proves What Really Makes People Happy
• Discovering What Customers Don’t Know Themselves
• Is Your Customer Experience Accidental

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.

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 @ColinShaw_CX

The post 5 Points: What it Takes to Write a Book appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

I have recently been included in Brand Quarterly’s ‘Top 50 Marketing Thought Leaders over 50’ and they asked me an interesting question: “What do I think the next industry trends would be for the year?” I thought I would expand on my thoughts here and give a better explanation.

For those of you that do not know about this,  behavioral economics embraces the fact that often Customers make irrational decisions and as a consequence this affects what they buy. In short, you need to embrace the fact that Customers are irrational.

In our bland world everything is the same to many marketers who still only focus on the 4P’s (Price, Place, Product and Promotion)  and use this as a crutch. Marketers need to recognize that human decision making is far more complex than this. They need to elevate their thinking to a new level of  understanding and embrace behavioral economics to break through the glass ceiling that is engaging them.

Let us start with three simple questions:

1. What emotions are you trying to evoke in your Customers?
2. Do they drive value for your organization ($)?
3. Have you designed these emotions to be evoked in your marketing?

Not sure? Well you should be. To do your job effectively you should understand how emotions are evoked and design this into your Customer Experience or campaign. You therefore need to understand behavioral economics  and how to make the most of Customer’s irrationality. When you have mastered this I then suggest  you look into the whole area of predictive analytics and define how you can predict customer’s true behavior.

The last piece of the jigsaw is making this ‘live’ in an experience. Imagine that you have just designed a campaign that drives the customer into a store and they then have an interaction with  store personnel. How are you going to ensure that the emotion you want to be evoked is actually evoked during the ‘in store experience’? The answer is that the store personnel need to be trained on recognizing how the Customer is feeling when entering the experience. This is achieved through advanced soft skills training. This covers  recognizing Customer’s verbal and non-verbal cues (facial expression, body language, tone of voice ,etc.) in order to identify how the Customer is feeling. Then the store personnel can  implement their training to convert how that Customer feels,  maybe from ‘confused’ to one of the specific emotions that drive value for their organization.

Sounds far fetched? It’s not. This is what our more advanced clients are doing today with great success. One client moved their Customers from:

• ‘Feeling out of control’ to ‘in control’ by 25%.
• ‘Feeling Anxious’ to ‘feeling at ease’ by 10%.
• When Customers were asked, “Would you hire this person?” , a reply of ‘yes’ increased by 25%.

So, understanding that Customers are irrational, embracing behavioral economics, using this to predict their behavior and finally designing your experience and training people on how to convert customers emotions is the new world. Welcome to the new world of practical behavioral economics!

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.

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

The post ‘Top 50 Marketing Thought Leader’ Reveals Latest Trend appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

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

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

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

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

I have never looked back.

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

Truth #1:

Fear Should Motivate You, Not Stop You

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth #2:

Negative Reinforcement Positively Won’t Work

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

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

Truth #3:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the truth is you could, too.

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

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

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

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

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

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

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

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Consistent productivity doesn’t happen by chance. Productive people have a secret to their productivity: Eliminate distractions.

Were you hoping for something more complicated?

It isn’t complicated. Being productive requires the elimination of things that keep you from getting things done. Distraction is the enemy of productivity.

Productivity is Not an Accident; It’s a Formula

The Formula for Productivity:

Productivity = Discipline = Completed Project

Completed project = (work time – connectivity – Toxic Influences) engaged team support

No one just happens to be productive and get everything important done on time and budget. It takes Discipline to eliminate distractions. And Discipline results in a Completed Project. In other words, productive people use discipline to complete projects by eliminating distractions.

Eliminating distractions requires each of the three Ds:

• Disconnect. They reduce interruptions to facilitate focus on the task at hand.

• Detox. They eradicate factors that create challenges or obstructions to progress.

• Develop. They invest in the right resources to facilitate a more productive environment.

Let me share a few examples in some different contexts to help illustrate what I mean.

Disconnecting Connects You to Your Work

When you need to focus, you need to disconnect from your “connectedness.” Several years ago, entrepreneur Sethi Maneesh hired people off Craigslist for $8 an hour to slap him whenever he got off task. It worked; he increased his productivity to 98%. He credits this having someone keep him on track during the dull bits and bounce ideas off while working. Harvard Business Review’s blog published a post comparing the effects of our global connectivity to the delayed gratification marshmallow test from the ’60s. In that famous test, researchers presented a marshmallow to kids and asked them to wait 15 minutes to eat it. If they waited, researchers told them they would get a second marshmallow. The author compared waiting for the second marshmallow to resisting the urge to take in “blips of information” during your work.

You and I know that these blips can take the form of calls, texts, emails, meetings, status updates, pics, or tweets. When I need to get work done, I disconnect doing the bare minimum of correspondence or browsing feeds to focus.

Detox or Derail

If distractions are the enemy of productivity, motivation is its best mate. When you feel motivated, you get projects done. Recently, I powered through the final stages of my next book, which has been lagging a bit over the past few months. Why all of sudden the productivity? Simple: I was motivated to get the bloody thing done!

However, motivation is a fragile thing at times. The slightest things can sometimes derail it, derailing productivity at the same time. Sometimes it is derailed by unavoidable problems, personal emergencies or health issues. Other times it is derailed by a toxic influence. I wrote a while ago about toxic employeesand how they poison the culture at work with their demotivating banter disguised as “being realistic” or “playing devil’s advocate.” While there is nothing you can do some derailing influences, ridding your work zone of toxicity isn’t one of them. So if you sense that there is a toxic influence derailing your productivity, create distance as soon as possible.

Develop Your Team

Another important factor for productivity is having the resources available you need. Having a team that helps pick up the ball and contribute to the project is a major part of success in productivity. My team provides support and insight that help keep us on track for our goals. I always say, none of us is as clever as all of us. We use the intelligence we have a group to make better decisions.

However, your team needs to be developed, invested in if you will.Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini invested in his team to help them be more focused at work by raising everyone’s pay to $16/hr. He did it to “make sure they brought their best selves to work every day.” The idea was if his lowest paid employees felt more financially secure, they would be able to handle their job better than if they were worried about money. For your team, it might not be money that you need to invest to develop them; it could be freedom to make decisions or own a part of the project.

When it comes to getting things done on a consistent basis, it’s safe to assume that this is no accident. The people that do this on a regular basis have a secret—and it’s time the rest of us knew it, too.

What would you add to the list? I’d love to hear your insight in the comments below.

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

The High Cost of Emotional Labor

Do You Have a Secretly Toxic Employee Problem?

Change Your Mindset for Greater Productivity

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 Distraction is the Enemy of Productivity 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

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