I just bought a new Mont Blanc pen. I like writing with it. I have a couple more, too; one is a pencil, and the other is a rollerball-type. However, the reality is, I sometimes look at my fancy pen and think, “It’s writing; I could write this stuff with a Bic or a regular pencil.”

It occurs to me that what I am really saying to people when writing with my swanky pen is that I am the type of bloke that can afford an expensive pen. It’s called Conspicuous Consumption, and we all do it all the time.

I went to Bahrain for the first time recently. I was a keynote speaker there for a Customer Experience conference. I was fascinated by the country. There is a lot of Customer Experience activity happening there.

Rami Sweis, the CEO of GolfCX invited me to speak at the conference. He explained on a recent podcast the reason improving Customer Experience is such a hot trend in the Middle East has been the liberalization of markets there.

Convenience has a significant influence on the outcome of your Customer Experience. It is crucial you ensure you are making it as easy as possible for your customers to do business with you. Today, we are going to discuss some areas you can look at to do just that.

I didn’t like shopping for years. I hated creating a bloody list and taking it up to the store because it wasn’t convenient.

Amazon changed shopping for me. It is so convenient to go order something on the app when you think about it. Now, I enjoy shopping. This system is so much easier. So, I use it—and all the time, apparently. My wife Lorraine complains that every five minutes there is an Amazon delivery on the stoop.

Most companies today know that putting the customer at the heart of everything they do is vital. Doing something about it, however, tends to fall into the unknown category.

The fact is, improving your Customer Experience means you must also become more customer-centric. But what is customer-centricity and how do you do it? What aspects of the experience should you focus your efforts to improve?

“If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?”

Who hasn’t heard that one before? We all know the evils of peer pressure from our parents, teachers or, in my case, the authorities.

We all want to sell more. So how do we do this? A powerful sales technique exists that can help.  The best sales organizations use it well; the worst, not so much. It is based on a psychological concept called reciprocity, and it might be what you need to get (or keep) your foot in the door.