podcast

What is the Secret of Airbnb?

I would never be an Airbnb host. Having a stranger staying in my house doesn’t fit with my personality. 

That said, there are a lot of people that would do it. Airbnb has over seven million listings in 100,000 cities worldwide and reported revenues of $1 Billion (with a b) in the second quarter of this year. They are so successful; they have plans to become publicly traded in 2020.  

That’s saying quite a bit considering that the entire home-sharing platform developed from people’s willingness to allow strangers to stay in their house. But it works. 

I might not host for Airbnb, but I do use them. One of the things I enjoy about the experience is that you stay in a place you wouldn’t usually visit. 

Having spent my fair share of time in hotels, I am a bit of an expert in that experience. My Airbnb experience is different in a refreshing way. 

I began to wonder what the secret to their success was. To find out, we spoke with Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., C.P.S., about his experience with Airbnb when writing his latest book, The Airbnb Way. Dr. Michelli is considered a global guru for Customer Service. He works with organizations and leadership to change their experience to be better for both their customers and their employees. He consulted Airbnb and wrote his book to share the insights he gained from their success. 

Dr. Michelli says that there are many things that Airbnb gets right. One of them is that they understand what makes them unique and how they can differentiate themselves from the competition. They also recognize that the emotional connection they can create with guests is what brings their users back again and again. They also see that the Airbnb user and host is a type of community and belonging to it is one of the things that both sides of the equation value. 

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores what Dr. Michelli saw in Airbnb’s business model and approach to employee and customer experience that makes them so successful and disruptive to the hospitality industry. He also explains how technology played a role in changing customer behavior, which paved the way for their success. Also, he shares how they accomplish their branded and elevated Customer Experience across properties, host styles, and cultures around the world. We also discuss how you can apply these concepts to elevate and brand your experience to your business as well. 

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. 

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here. 

A practical guide to Customer Decision Making Podcast

When the Nobel-prize winning economist professor Daniel Kahneman wrote his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he introduced the concept that we had two ways of thinking about things. He named them System 1 and System 2. The two systems work together to help us make decisions about things.

When we applied these concepts to decision-making in Customer Experience for our book, The Intuitive Customer, we renamed them. The Intuitive System is System 1, and the Rational System is System 2. The Intuitive System makes instant judgments on things and is always running. You aren’t aware you are using the Intuitive System. The Rational System concentrates on thinking about something and is called into service when needed. You are always aware you are using your Rational System.

We discuss the differences between the two ways our brains think about things to make decisions a lot. Often, they don’t agree and come to different conclusions.

However, the two systems do not always conflict. Sometimes they run in tandem, serving different functions and complementing one another with their strengths.

Sometimes only one of them is working at any given time. Flying solo, the system in play will make the final decision, and the other one won’t interfere.

In other words, the two systems are not exclusive. It is complicated how the two systems work together. Understanding the two as well as you can helps you see patterns in customer behavior. Moreover, knowing how the two systems work can help you design a Customer Experience strategy that works with these patterns to make it as easy as possible for customers to decide to go with you.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses what the two systems of thinking are and how they interact in our minds when making decisions. We discuss which system is better for what and why the two systems tradeoff tasks. We also give pointers on what you should do with your Customer Experience strategy to take advantage of these tradeoffs, as well as what pitfalls you should avoid when working with this crucial customer behavior concept.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

Case Study: RICOH Printers (Canada) 

I spend a remarkable amount of time complaining about how organizations get things wrong with Customer Experience. However, not every cause is lost. Some companies get their Customer Experience right, and we can all learn a lot from their journey.

In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have the honor of working with fantastic organizations that are committed to doing the difficult work of improving their Customer Experience from the inside out. One of these companies is RICOH Canada.

Years ago, they were facing enormous changes in what can only be described as a declining industry. Moreover, there were few differentiations between the product from the top tier firms from a hardware standpoint. As a result, the printer business was heavily commoditized and highly cutthroat.

RICOH Canada decided the only way forward in an aggressive industry with little competitive differentiation was in the Customer Experience. They embarked on a Customer Experience Journey that they are still on today—and with great success. They increased their Net Promoter Score®[i] (NPS) by 34 points over 30 months. Furthermore, in a declining market, they enjoyed a ten percent increase in sales. Since that time, they have climbed another 15 points to an all-time high.

A question I always get in my global Customer Experience consultancy is whether business-to-business customers are subject to the same emotional decisions that we have as consumers. The answer is a resounding yes. One thing RICOH Canada understood early was that by enhancing that emotional connection with their business customers, they not only improved their relationship, but they also improved their customer retention and loyalty. 

This episode of The Intuitive Customer is the story of how RICOH Canada did it. We spoke with the President and CEO of RICOH Canada, Glenn Laverty to hear how and why they did it. Plus, we will hear about the new challenges they face and what they are doing to address them.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers. 

To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

The Key to Successful Marketing Communications

There are a lot of people that do not know the difference between Marketing and Advertising. Many people assume they are the same thing, but they are not. Marketing is deciding what you are going to say; Advertising is saying it.

In my corporate life, I worked in Marketing for a long time. One of the things I learned was that Marketing should know the marketplace and understand their customers. Marketing communication should reflect this understanding. Moreover, every campaign, script, web page, and tweet should have a purpose, something that you are hoping the communication will cause people to do.

In other words, the marketing communications in your advertising should show that you know who you are saying it to—and why.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the fundamentals of Marketing communications through advertising and how it affects the Customer Experience. More importantly, we share the three general goals of marketing and how to do them right, as well as how it looks when you get it wrong.

One of the reasons these things are essential is because when you advertise, you communicate what a customer can expect. It is your brand promise, your value proposition. If you get it wrong, the Customer Experience will fall short of the expectations you set, which does not do your Customer Experience Strategy any favors.

When crafting your Customer Marketing Strategy, you need to have an idea of who you want to talk to and why. You should know what those people want and what they value. You also have to understand the obstacles keeping them from being a customer right now.

Then, when you advertise, you address all of these issues. Moreover, you tie it to the overall Customer Marketing Strategy so that you stay on brand and set the proper customer expectations. Furthermore, advertising should have a specific action you want to evoke, as well.

All of these things are fundamentals of Marketing, or what I sometimes call, “a blinding flash of the bloody obvious.” That said, you might be surprised how often you learn that an organization does not have a clue about any of that when they choose, launch, and execute a marketing campaign.

In this episode, we review the basics of marketing communications. We also discuss how you can avoid having a brilliant campaign that is wildly successful at getting attention but fails to move the needle for your bottom line.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

How To Overcome Organizational Silo’s To Make Progress

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf the wizard calls all the creatures of Middle Earth—the elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits— to a council. Their goal is to determine what to do with the Ring that threatened to end life as they knew it. Gandalf reasoned that since the Ring was a problem for all of Middle Earth, everyone should be involved.

A Customer Experience Council (CX Council) follows Gandalf’s lead. Although, to be sure, the stakes are a little lower. Your goal with the CX Council is to gain alignment of actions toward a common goal, improving Customer Experience, a vital but not (middle) Earth-shattering purpose.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer discusses the CX Council and how to create one for your organization. We also take a look at what their objectives should be and how to set up your meetings. The CX Council is designed to help you get everyone on board with your Customer Experience goals.

A CX Council is a team of people that represent all the different departments of your organization, from Marketing to Sales to Customer Service to Operations. Each member of the team determines how to adapt their actions to align the other departments and improve the Customer Experience. Best of all, it is inexpensive from a balance sheet perspective, so senior management is usually on board with your plan.

It was in my role at British Telecom as Customer Experience Manager that I first saw the importance of a CX Council. My program affected all the departments, but none of them were doing the same things to get to where we needed to go. Moreover, they operated so independently, like silos, that they often stepped on each other’s toes.

I realized that if I wanted to improve the Customer Experience, I needed everyone marching in the same direction toward the same goal. I also knew to do that effectively, I needed all of their buy-ins. I was from these epiphanies that the idea for a CX council was born.

Over the years in our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have learned a thing or two about CX councils, what works, and, perhaps most importantly, what doesn’t. This podcast explores the details and shares critical information about how to make them useful in your organization.

Plus, it doesn’t involve anyone fighting an Orc or walking up the side of an active volcano, so, how can you afford not to listen to it?

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.

I like Oscar Wilde. His best quote is, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Of course, there are times when people are talking so bad, one might wonder if it is worse than being ignored.

This episode of The Intuitive Customer explores if there are times when the bad press can be good news for your brand. In other words, are there times when bad news is good? Is any attention good attention?

The answer, for my part, is it depends. It turns out scientific research says the same thing. There are no absolute answers to this question. The circumstances of the attention, the bad press, and the goals for your organization all play a part in how you answer the question.

In the early days of our global Customer Experience consultancy, Wilde’s statement sums up the marketing efforts for my brand. We started back in 2002, when nobody knew who we were, or, frankly, what a Customer Experience was. To get attention, I published my thoughts on customer behavior and emotional experience anywhere I could.

Back then, the idea that customers had an emotional experience in business or consumer situations instead of rational ones was not widely accepted. (You might argue that we are still working on that one.) It was controversial, and many people in the industry thought I was mad and, well, wrong. The result was I debated a lot of people.

These disagreements were fantastic for us. Why? People knew who we were and what I did.

Now, in this case, the negative attention I generated from my views was positive for my brand. I needed people to know who we were and, based on my beliefs that few people agreed with at the time, they discovered us. However, this result is not always the case.

There are times when the bad press is good news for your brand. There are also times when it isn’t — knowing which is which and whether it’s suitable for your current marketing goals is essential to your brand message.

Do you and your marketing team know the answer? In this podcast we help you figure out how to get there and get the results you need.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.

To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.