Back in 1994, Steve Jobs introduced a concept at an Apple conference: that the design of their products should begin at the desired Customer Experience and work backward from there. 

Not long after that, Joe Pine co-authored a book called The Experience Economy, that changed the way at looked at the future of business. 

In 2002, I began my global Customer Experience consultancy, Beyond Philosophy, a term a bandied about long before anyone even knew what it was. By 2005, I had undertaken research to determine the 20 emotions that drive or destroy value, to prove that incorporating customer emotions into experiences provides an ROI. 

Meanwhile, Lewis Carbone was championing Customer Experience and founding his consultancy and philosophy in ExpereinceEngineering™.

Now, 2021, Customer Experience as we know it is dying. 

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the concepts behind it live on and are developing into a new variant: Customer Science. 

In this episode, Pine, Carbone, and I discuss whether Customer Experience is dying and the future of experiences from our point of view. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

It is essential to explain that none of us think that putting the customer at the center of your experience at an organization is an idea that will never die. However, we all think that the original concept of Customer Experience from over 25 years ago has changed and morphed into new areas. What differentiated you at the turn of the 21^st century and what does it today are two very different things. Perhaps, more importantly, we discuss what Customer Experience needs to be in the future and what Customer Experience champions can do to ensure that it happens. 

Here are a few key moments in our LinkedIn live discussion:

• 05:34   Colin explains why he thinks CX is dying as we know it and Pine weighs in, too.
• 13:56     Carbone explains why he thinks it is impossible for CX to die.    
• 25:05     Colin explains what he thinks the future of CX will be, Customer Science.   
• 40:47.    Pine shares what he thinks the future of CX will be, which is focusing on providing value to customers.    
• 42:42     Carbone explains what happened with Capital One as they moved from fixing what was broken to transformative experience that changed the way they do business.
• 46:29.   Pine explains how he thinks experiences can contribute to happiness, and how it isn’t about having more things to buy. 
• 49:18    Carbone explains how CX of the future can augment the voice of the customer with the mind of the customer.

Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the ‘World’s Top 150 Business Influencers.’ As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers’ hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official “Influencer” on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren’t deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy’s Suite of Services.

Total agreement is overrated. Disagreements are good for us. They challenge the status quo and push the standards for improvement. After all, if you only talk to people who agree with you, how would you know when you are wrong?

In this episode, I debate with Customer Experience critic Alex Mead, Chief Customer Service Experience Officer, about how we Customer Experience influencers are doing everything wrong. Mead says that our training is outdated, impractical, and worthless and needs an overhaul for practicality. 

I disagree. Mostly. Surprisingly, I feel like he makes good points. However, I do not think such an extreme measure is necessary or even a good idea. 

Tune in to hear what Mead has to say about training, accreditation, Customer Experience Influencers, and even the term “Customer Experience” itself. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

We set this episode up as a debate and attempted to follow that format. Then, with Ryan as the presiding judge, Mead and I present our arguments, counterarguments, and suggestions for improvement. 

Here are some critical moments in the discussion.

• 02:12  Mead shares his work experience and how he ended up as a self-described Customer Service Experience advocate.    
• 04:56  Mead says that while a mass statement, he believes that Customer Experience is not appropriately defined by all that teach it and how we would explain it instead.    
• 10:03  Colin explains his approach and that while he thinks Mead’s arguments have validity, Colin does not agree with his sweeping statement.
• 14:43  Mead explains that accreditation earned in two days does not prepare anyone to work in Customer Experience alone; practical experience is necessary.    
• 17:54  Mead explains that a second problem is that today’s Customer Experience experts want to implement technology that is not what customers want.   
• 23:44  We discuss why rebranded marketing people are not the best for heading up a customer-centered contact center experience.
• 26:05  We both present what we would do to improve Customer Experience training and accreditation moving forward.   

To contact Mead directly, follow him on LinkedIn, Alex Mead, or email him at alexMead@sky.com.

Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the ‘World’s Top 150 Business Influencers.’ As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers’ hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official “Influencer” on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren’t deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy’s Suite of Services.

Great business insights with a touch of humor, all put over in a clear, easy-to-understand way. 

Each week we discuss how you can gain and retain more customers and solve business problems. We look at the theory of how and why Customers make decisions and then break this down into practical actions you can take.

Here is one review which we think sums up the show.

“The dynamics between the hosts of this show absolutely makes this podcast. Each brings a unique take on a topic, their own perspective, and play off each other’s sense of humor. I come away after each episode with a feeling joy and feeling a bit smarter. Win-win”. 

You are in great hands as the hosts have vast experience and are respected across business. Colin Shaw, who LinkedIn calls one of the top 150 business influencers and has 390,000 followers; and Professor Ryan Hamilton, teaches marketing and psychology at Emory University; he also used to be a stand-up comedian. 

If you want to learn and laugh, give us a try! 

Check us out at BeyondPhilosophy.com.

Do you remember Blockbuster, Circuit City, or Kodak? I ask because these brands are not around anymore. They were once the leaders in their field, the only game in town in some cases, but now they are gone. They disappeared because they didn’t respond to changes in the marketplace with new ideas.

It isn’t unusual for an organization to be set in its ways. Human beings are also reluctant to change their ways or even opinions. Psychologically, we tend to cling to what we believe and look for resources that support our views. It is only with effort that we see a different perspective. 

In this episode, we explore why it is that we tend to stick to our opinions rather than seeing the other side of an issue. We also talk about how diversity in opinions can help create a culture at an organization that is collaborative without being combative. Finally, we discuss ways that an organization can use diversity in opinion and viewpoints as the basis for creating new ideas that ensure their brand won’t disappear like a national brick-and-mortar video store in the 2000s. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

The inspiration for this episode was book by Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari does an excellent job showing different viewpoints for long held and widespread beliefs that cause the reader to stop and reconsider their views on the topic. This open and balanced view of opposing opinions is what we advocate when trying to come up with new ideas that foster customer-driven growth in your organization. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 

• 03:15  We talk about Sapiens and how the author asserts that becoming farmers probably didn’t make humans any happier than they would have been by remaining hunter gatherers.   
• 06:06  Ryan explains the psychological reasons that people have a hard time seeing multiple viewpoints on an issue or alternative solutions to the one they favor.    
• 09:49  We share one of the reasons we don’t want to accept other viewpoints, which involves conserving cognitive resources and other emotional reasons.  
• 13:22 Ryan shares how scientific progress leads to shifting paradigms, and these changes are good for everyone in the community.
• 16:35  We explain how a complex world needs complex solutions to resolve it, and anything less will not serve you to make the changes you need.  
• 19:37 We take turns sharing the four actionable ways you can incorporate this style of problem-solving and creative thinking in your organization, starting with gathering a diverse group of people together to collaborate.

Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the ‘World’s Top 150 Business Influencers.’ As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers’ hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official “Influencer” on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren’t deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy’s Suite of Services.

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.

If I had a more efficient family and less expensive friends than you have now, would you like to trade? I can guarantee they will save you time and money. 

My guess is probably not. We don’t measure the worth of our families and friends with metrics like time and money savings. We have an emotional bond with them that we cannot replace with a better model or an updated version. 

Loyal customers are the same way. They have an emotional bond with the companies they do business with and those feelings are why they come back over and over again. Not surprisingly, loyal customers are the most profitable and have a direct effect on your bottom line. 

In this episode we explore the five rules that absolutely build customer loyalty. These rules help you design an experience that creates those emotional bonds and the loyal customers that come with them. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

When it comes to building experiences that produce the emotional relationships that promote customer loyalty, there are no shortcuts. It requires thinking long-term and in detail about how you interact with your customers. Our five rules help organize that process into actionable steps. 

Here are some highlights of our discussion:

• 03:37  We talk about how many organizations think too much about the short-term goals and not enough about long-term goals. 
• 07:59 We talk about how loyalty requires both parties to give and take, compromise, and understand each other, so organizations should remember that it goes both ways. 
• 14:48  Ryan explains the difference between inertia and real loyalty, and why mistaking one for the other can be a real problem for organizations. 
• 20:47   Colin talks about one of his favorite topics, customer memories and their relationship to forming emotional and loyal connections with organizations.
• 23:12  We bring it back to the emotional part of an experience that many times organizations overlook in their pursuit of business. 
• 25:42  Colin explains the importance of having an Emotional Bank Account with people and to keep up with putting deposits in it. 

Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the ‘World’s Top 150 Business Influencers.’ As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers’ hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official “Influencer” on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren’t deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy’s Suite of Services.

We all love to keep what is ours. As soon as we have possession of something, it becomes part of our “endowment,” a fancy word for “our stuff.” Psychologists call this the Endowment Effect, and it explains how we value things that we have, even if we got them for free.

However, we also hate losing our stuff, even more that we enjoy getting new stuff. Psychologists call this Loss Aversion, and it is the overall concept that explains why your free trial might help increase your sales. Some people would rather pay for something they used to get for free than lose access to it. 

In this episode, we answer a question from one of our listeners, Mohammed, who wanted to know how to convince his team to implement a free trial to increase sales. We shared our theories about why it might work and what we recommend. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

There are practical considerations that accompany implementation of a free trial to optimize your success. We discuss a few of them in the podcast:

• 02:41  We share the problem, which is part of our “In a Pickle” feature of the podcast where we address listeners problems with practical applications of the behavioral sciences.    
• 04:48  We explain the Endowment Effect and how it relates to Loss Aversion.    
• 08:10  Colin shares an example of how a return policy can make or break a “free-trial” experience.    
• 14:01. We talk about how you can use the successes with a free trial to outweigh some of the costs of having one.    
• 15:10  We talk about the concept of follow-on sales where bringing on new customers presents an opportunity to sell them additional goods and services.  
• 18:41  Ryan talks about Reference Points and how it can be difficult to get some people to pay for something they used to get for free unless you make it clear that is the arrangement from the start.
• 22:01  We summarize our suggestions for Mohammed to convince his team to implement a free trial in his company to increase sales.   

Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the ‘World’s Top 150 Business Influencers.’ As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers’ hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official “Influencer” on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren’t deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy’s Suite of Services.