Why Customers Don\u2019t Always Say What They Mean<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately, customers don\u2019t always say what they mean. Sometimes they don\u2019t say what they mean because they don\u2019t want to be rude in a focus group, which may or may not be paying them or feeding them cookies. Sometimes they don\u2019t because they don\u2019t want to sound greedy\/entitled\/racist\/dumb. Sometimes they don\u2019t say what they mean because they aren\u2019t sure themselves, meaning that the reason they feel a certain way is subconscious and they aren\u2019t even aware of it themselves.<\/p>\n But sometimes it\u2019s because they are British and as a Brit I can tell you that we make it a habit to never say exactly what we mean. Consider this handy list from Buzzfeed.com.<\/p>\n Source: Luke Lewis, Buzzfeed.com Staff<\/b><\/p>\n Link: http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/lukelewis\/what-british-people-say-versus-what-they-mean<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n As you can see, this demonstrates what can happen when you aren\u2019t \u201cin the know\u201d as to what a certain phrase can mean. This chart also explains why I would consider this post not bad instead of quite good.<\/p>\n But British deception doesn\u2019t stop there. What\u2019s worse is that it\u2019s not only what we say that\u2019s confusing, it\u2019s also how we say it. I love this short video about the different dialects of Her Majesty\u2019s Kingdom:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p01slnp5<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Hearing What They Say Even When They Aren\u2019t Saying it<\/strong><\/p>\n When you are doing a customer experience design project, you need to start with a robust assessment of your current customer experience. For that reason, every one of Beyond Philosophy\u2019s consultancies for customer experience design begins with an organizational assessment.<\/a> Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, an organization can look closely at what your customers really think about your experience both from a functional and emotional standpoint. During this process, an organization gets a much better vision of what their current strong points are as well as areas that could use some improvement.<\/p>\n One important part of an assessment is to understand what emotions are being evoked throughout the customer experience. These emotions may come out directly from survey questions or they may need to be analyzed by walking the experience as if you were a customer yourself, a process we refer to as Customer Mirrors<\/a>. This helps uncover the emotions that your experience can evoke at each moment of interaction, giving you valuable insight into how that interaction makes customers feel.<\/p>\n It can also show an organization that outsourcing a call center to another part of the world, one that isn\u2019t necessarily familiar with the nuances of a particular\u2019s culture way of communicating, it can create unintended consequences and emotions that destroy value. For instance, an employee in Hungary may not know that when a customer from the UK is telling them that they \u201care sure it is their fault, but\u2026\u201d that the customer is really saying that the company is at fault. It can be very detrimental to the exchange if the call center employee does not react appropriately to the statement.<\/p>\n After years of consulting in customer experience, I have learned that customers are a lot like British people. They definitely mean some of the things they say but they don\u2019t always say so in so many words. It\u2019s important to understand that when you are dealing with customers, particularly British ones, that they aren\u2019t always going to tell you exactly what they mean. It\u2019s up to you to interpret what they say and how they think to come up with what they mean\u2014and more importantly feel–about your customer experience.<\/p>\n Do you have a favorite phrase that you use when you say one thing and mean another? Or is there one that people have used on you that you weren\u2019t sure what they meant? I\u2019d love to hear them in the comments below. Maybe I can use them in the future!<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n If you enjoyed this post, you may be interested in the following blogs:<\/b><\/p>\n\n
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