Customer Experience Podcast

How to Manage Uncertainty

My team is the Luton Town Football Club. I heard the manager say about the team that you have to control the controllable. I quite like that phrase and I believe it is the key to managing uncertainty in your business for your customers.

Now, he didn’t come up with the phrase. It’s a well-used epithet by many coaching organizations—and not just for football.

The reason the saying is so well-known is it helps us as human beings cope with uncertainty. It means that even as the world is changing, and in some cases going crazy, you can still keep some parts of your experience in check. These are “the controllable” parts.

In some ways, this is how you manage uncertainty. We talked about how to manage uncertainty for yourself, your organization, and your customers in this episode of The Intuitive Customer podcast. Like so many things involving human beings, managing uncertainty is not simple.

People don’t like to risk making a bad decision. When they have uncertainty, making decisions is difficult. This feeling falls under the umbrella of the psychological principle of Risk Aversion.

Human beings all have risk aversions, just not about everything and not all the time. Otherwise, no one would smoke or drive fast on a mountain road or invest in race horses.

However, as a general rule, uncertainty and risk are things we just don’t like. Managing risk aversion for ourselves and our customers is a vital part of what we need to address in our Customer Experience strategy.

I often ask the following question when I am speaking to groups:

Is business going to get easier than it is today or harder?

Obviously, the answer is harder. Part of what makes business hard is the uncertainty of it.

I once attended a conference for the CBI (Confederation of British Industries). Something one of the speakers said helped me understand how vital certainty is for businesses. It drives how much inventory they produce, how many people they hire, and how they plan for future products and services.

Making these decisions is difficult when you are uncertain about the future. Unless you have a special gift, a time machine or an awesome psychic friend, none of us do know the future. That means that uncertainty about the future is built-in to all decisions.

Learning how to avoid uncertainty is not an option. Instead, you have to learn how to manage uncertainty.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about How To Manage Uncertainty for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

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