#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.

To that end, here are ten things leaders need to do in times of turmoil and growth:

1. Be seen and seen often. Their teams need to see them as a constant even when everything else is changing. When the leader can’t be seen, there is no unifying element to help make people though the transition. Their constant presence will help the team digest the turmoil in the organization.
2. Embrace honesty.  It is best to acknowledge the issues and mistakes that led to this situation. When you are honest—even when honesty is difficult—you build a foundation of trust with your team. If they trust you are direct with them about the severity of the storm, they are more likely to weather it with you.
3. Set out the plan. As a leader, your job is to help your people understand how the organization is going to get through this tumultuous time. You must strategize and communicate your plan to the team, with a set framework and guiding principles that forge a path to success. However, it is never a bad thing to have an ear open for suggestion. I always say, “None of us is as clever as all of us.”
4. Roll up your sleeves. Leaders need to work hard and be seen working as hard (if not harder) than everyone else.
5. Situate yourself on the front lines. Leaders should be with the troops, not in their ivory towers issuing instructions from on high. This image of the leadership from afar reminds me of a line from a Pink Floyd song, “Forward they cried from the rear and the front ranks died.” While I love the lyric, the idea behind it is wrong.
6. Communicate regularly. If you have any doubt about how much communication is too much, err on the side of over-communicating.
7. Encourage, don’t discourage. I will refer to a nugget of wisdom from my mum, here: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
8. Put your feelings to one side. This time is about your people, not about you. A true leader puts his people first and him or herself second.
9. Stick to your principles. Principles are easy to keep until they are tested. At times like these, you must have the courage of your convictions.
10. Find your patience. Haste makes waste and in times of growth or turmoil, you can’t afford waste.

Leading in times of turmoil or growth is not for the faint of heart. It takes a leader to keep it together when the going gets tough. Show your team you are the leader they need to get to the other side of this time, and they will reward you with an organization that will follow you to greatness.

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.

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 10 Things to Do When Leading in Turmoil 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.

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.

While the good news is 20% of executive teams fully support the CX agenda, that also means 80% don’t. The second group either doesn’t believe in the value of CX or is undecided.

The problem is the second group can be hard to discern from the first. Why? It’s political. Everyone feels like they should say they support a CX Agenda. So they nod. They hold their tongue in meetings. But they don’t support the agenda.

Unfortunately for you, you don’t know whether you are lucky and have the 20% or fighting an uphill battle with the 80% (which is more likely, statistically anyway).

Unless you know what to look for in their day-to-day actions.

To that end, here’s how to tell if your leadership is not REALLY on board with your CX Agenda:

• Their schedule rarely (if ever) accommodates a discussion regarding Customer Experience Implications. If your meeting requests have remained unanswered or “get pushed,” then it indicates that other things are more important to your leadership team than improving CX.

• Time devoted to your agenda in meetings is short and sweet.  If you spend the majority of a meeting talking about sales reports and operations, and just a little bit at the end about CX, it’s clear what the leadership team values.

• They send their representative to your meetings. To be fair, there can be a lot of meetings for senior leadership. But if they always send their “representative” to your meeting, then it says yours was a meeting they didn’t feel it was necessary to attend.

• You hear nothing about your CX measurement reports—even when they are bad. There is a lack of understanding (or concern) about the implications of a poor Customer Experience. When you report the Net Promoter Scores® dropped for the third consecutive quarter, you hear nothing about it. Ever.

• Their talking points focus on operations. If you hear a lot about margins, fixed-costs, and overhead allowances from leadership, then their focus is on the company, not on Customers.

• They don’t talk about Customers. If they don’t tell Customer stories, it could be because they don’t have any. If you lose touch with Customers, it’s easy to see how they might lose touch with the importance of providing an excellent CX.

I sincerely hope you work for the 20% who really do support the CX improvement agenda. If you recognize these behaviors from your leadership, however, chances are you aren’t quite that lucky.

You need a new approach:

• Identify who is blocking your agenda. It’s time to recognize  those who don’t support CX and put in place a program that will convince them. It’s time to convince them to get on board.

• Figure out what is most important to him or her. You have to make what you are doing attractive to them. Discover what they value most and frame your CX strategy as the catalyst for change in favor of that value.

• Present your CX agenda again in their language. I have found that if you focus on the cost savings that will be made, many people will be interested.  

CX agendas can be difficult to get senior leadership to support. They are time and resource consuming, and challenge business as usual. However, to be successful you need support from the top. You need the commitment from everyone in the organization, from the C-Suite to the mailroom.

The key to getting your leadership on board is speaking their language. When you speak in terms they can understand—increased margins, fixed cost savings and reduced overhead allowances—your CX agenda will REALLY get the support from leadership that it deserves.  

This post is part of the Customer Experience Professionals Association’s Blog Carnival “Celebrating Customer Experience.” It is part of a broader celebration of Customer Experience Day. Check out posts from other bloggers at http://community.cxpa.org/blogs/lesley-lykins/2015/10/02/cx-day-blog-carnival. – See more at: http://cxday.org

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 best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker & also recognized as one of the original top 150 Business Influencers by LinkedIn. Beyond Philosophy provides consulting, specialized research & training from their headquarters in Tampa, Florida, USA.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter and Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post Is Leadership REALLY On Board with Your CX Agenda? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

When the stock market tanks like it did recently, most CEOs would be worried about their revenue also falling (not to mention falling figures from those CEO bonuses we all hear so much about).  Most are likely to suggest people need to work harder to weather the storm.

Not Schultz.

In a memo early September, Schultz decided to address the emotions both his employees and Customers feel in a falling market like the one we bore witness to earlier in the month.

To his employees, he said, “…although we are not immune from the global stock market selloff that has now made its way to Wall Street, my confidence in our company and in all of you has never been greater.”

About how we wanted his partners (retail employees) to treat Customers he said:

“Today’s financial market volatility, combined with great political uncertainty both at home and abroad, will undoubtedly have an effect on consumer confidence and perhaps even our customers’ attitudes and behavior. Our customers are likely to experience an increased level of anxiety and concern. Please recognize this and – as you always have – remember that our success is not an entitlement, but something we need to earn, every day. Let’s be very sensitive to the pressures our customers may be feeling, and do everything we can to individually and collectively exceed their expectations.”

I talk a lot about Customer-centricity of organizations. We use a model called Naïve to Natural that measures how an organization is oriented toward Customers, with the Naïve not having a Customer focus and the Natural having the most Customer focus. This communication to employees shows me a customer centric company that is lead by the top down on this principle.

I love the line that says, “success is not an entitlement, but something we need to earn, every day.” Never truer words were spoken, particularly when you are addressing Customer Experience.

Customer Experiences happen in the moment, and these moments happen every day, every hour of operation, in every channel. In all of these moments, an employee can make or break a Customer Experience. This is why training and employee engagement are so key to its success. They need the tools and tactics at their disposal when these moments occur.

It is also why it so important to have the buy-in of your senior management and leadership teams for your Customer Experience agenda. This important training takes time and money, two things on which most leaders have a lot of opinions, especially about how they will be spent. Without this commitment, you could end up with a great plan that everyone ignores because it isn’t the priority at the moment.

I also like how his retail employees are considered partners. How employees feel about their job shows in the Customer Experiences they provide. When they feel they are a valued member of the team, it shows. Schultz understands this in the way he refers to them and also with key phrases like “my confidence in all of you.”

Schultz understands that Employees and Customers feel emotions caused by the world around them and these emotions affect their behavior. He values his Customers enough to care how they feel coming into his experience and takes steps to help his employees have the appropriate tools to react. He also leads his Customer-centric culture by example. He works to ensure employees felt valued and cared for so they will continue to deliver the experience that makes Customer feel valued and cared for. When it comes to Customer-centricity, there is no question that he gets it.

Does your CEO get it, too?

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

• 5 Reasons Your KPIs Are Hurting Your Customer Experience

• Starbucks: Real Concern or Just Good Marketing?

• 7 Signs That Your Executive Team is Not on Board With Your Customer Experience Agenda

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 Starbucks CEO Gets It, Does Yours? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

“There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

I believe if I share my knowledge I will get paid back (in being talked about…or argued with in many cases!). I have devoted many late nights, long transatlantic flights, train rides, and evenings spent in nondescript hotel rooms to my belief. I have been at it for years; maybe longer than content marketing has even been a thing. With all this time and energy invested in writing books, writing posts came naturally to me.

Having said all of this, if I don’t write what people want then I don’t get people reading. So here are my tips and examples for those of you that want to increase your followership:

1. Be original – don’t copy people.
2. Don’t shy away from controversy – controversy can be good. It causes debate.
3. Be yourself – people can tell if you are not.
4. Be grounded – Don’t take yourself too seriously. I am not a rock star or even a Z-list celebrity, I am just a guy or as we would say in England, a bloke.
5. Be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them – When this happens in social media it can hurt! But don’t take it personally. Learn from it and move on.

Here are some of my examples of the tips:

My most viewed post:
15 Statistics That Should Change The Business World—But Haven’t

Views:         More Than 189,000

Tip:              Headlines that are a surprise draw more clicks; but you have to deliver the goods in the content, too. People like stats.

I am pleased this post performed well. Unlike some of my other posts that received lots of views, it is in my area of expertise, my industry. When a post like this reaches a lot of viewers, I feel like  I am helping progress the field. In this case, my headline promised what my content delivered so the views rolled in. This is the most important thing to know about content marketing: headlines matter. A lot.

My most well liked post:
Secrets of Being Promoted and Earning More Money

Views:             179,074

Likes:              1,784

Tip:              Secrets are good, but revealed secrets are even better.

This post had great views also, but it garnered more likes. Why? Titles are VERY important. People like to hear secrets! This particular post talked about different personality types at many organizations, too, which was of interest to many people that probably recognized themselves or some of their co-workers. While it isn’t necessarily in my field of expertise, this post was fun to write, and my hope is that it helped those readers that wanted to get promoted and earn more money do exactly that. I think it’s important that people see more than one dimension of you and that you are a real person.

My favorite post that flopped:
The Gender Experience-Math, Cars & Vanilla?

Views:         747

Likes:          8

Tip:              Headlines and images are important. Really important.

I am fascinated by the difference between men and women as it pertains to Customer Experience (as to all the other ways, I’m interested in that, too! Lol.) So I wrote a post about how little changes to the experience, i.e. adding vanilla scent to the documents they were working with changed the emotional reactions of women to a certain, anxiety-inducing situation. I published it, ready for the debate and engagement my posts typically enjoyed. The debate and engagement were nowhere to be found. Looking back at this post, I think the image and the headline weren’t as good as they could have been, nor did my story have the same kind of connections drawn to my field as I typically do these days. Maybe I’ll have to pursue a rewrite here…stay tuned!

My biggest mistake:
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in Customer Experience Recently

Views:         23, 969

Likes:              246

Tips:            Use humor wisely.

When I first started researching this post, I didn’t know who Lululemon was. I’m not what you might call a “Yogi.” But I like to chronicle the Customer Experience journey big brands make because even if I don’t know who the brand is, the readers do. I also like to use humor in my posts whenever possible. I learnt that sometime this can backfire if people don’t ‘get it’. However, in this particular post, I made an error in judgment that I regretted as soon as the first angry comments rolled in from my female readers. Originally, on the “Ugly” point, I made the joke, “It’s Never the Woman’s Fault.” I meant that as a dig at CEO Chip Wilson who blamed women’s bodies for the poor performance of their yoga pants, but my readers interpreted that as my opinion that women can’t accept the fact that they are ever wrong—which is not at all what I meant. I changed it and apologized. All this to say, be careful with your humor.

Content marketing is a great way to share ideas with your audience. I hope these insights help. If you are one of my followers, I sincerely thank you for continuing to read and engage.

I am grateful for the time and attention and only hope that my thoughts and words help my readers have the career and the Customer Experiences they want for themselves and their business. I also hope these tips help each of you in your Content Marketing journey.

What tips do you have for people?  We’d all love to hear your insight in the comments below.

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

• What I Have Learned as a LinkedIn Influencer

• If I Were 22: Being Qualified Doesn’t Entitle You to Success

• Driving Value By Driving Emotions

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.

The post How I got 200,000 LinkedIn Followers appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.