The Intuitive Customer - Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth

Getting your new program initiatives accepted requires overcoming a lot. So, to help you get that done—and impress your boss doing it—you need to have a winning strategy. 

The corporate budget is a funny thing. Getting approval on a budget in the corporate world doesn’t mean you get to spend it. Quite the contrary. You often have to get the budget approved for what you might spend and then when you want to spend it, you get approval again. 

When you read it written out like that, it sounds super inefficient and completely silly. However, my guess is that many of you that are responsible for a budget know exactly what we mean.  

Plus, change is hard for people. As a champion of a business program that would result in significant change, you are already going to have a challenging time getting that approved.

This episode helps you get through this inefficient and silly process successfully, and impressing your boss while you do it.  We share our tips and tricks for handling this process with clarity, influence, political awareness, realism, credibility, and professionalism. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 1:32 Colin shares a personal story about getting permission to spend his corporate budget, what he did to get it, and how it led to this podcast.
• 05:43  We share the first one about being clear about the goal and how numbers are essential to these discussions. 
• 13:44 Now we explore how the good clear ideas you have that are supported by numbers need this critical spin so people can hear what you mean, followed by a foray into managing company politics.
• 21:52  We get into credibility, which is essential to convincing people to follow your way of thinking.
• 26:40  To round out the discussion, we get to the most important one, the one you have the most control over, professionalism. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Organizations often fail to consider the context in which customers enter the experience, assuming that every customer is the same. However, recognizing the context of a customer's experience is crucial to developing an effective customer strategy.

Context is an omnipresent factor in customer experience. Depending on a customer's context, we must create a customized experience. 

For instance, while working on a project for one of the cellular phone companies in the United States, we discovered that they treated customers who had lost their phone or had it stolen in the same manner. This oversight neglected the importance of context.

Consider how you would feel if you had lost your phone in the back of a taxi. Most likely, you would feel foolish, right? Now, consider how you would feel if your phone was stolen. You might feel outraged, or scared, or both, which are different emotional responses than how you might feel after leaving your phone in a cab.

Despite this, the mobile company treated both types of customers in the same way. They immediately requested the account number from both. However, we convinced them to determine what happened first, followed by ensuring the customer's safety if their phone was stolen. This simple change had an enormous impact on their experience design and outcomes.

Thus, segmentation is a vital aspect of anticipating context. People bring unique perspectives and expectations to their experience. While segmentation is only one factor that can determine context, it is an excellent starting point.

In this episode, we explore why context is crucial to customer experience design and how you can improve your understanding of your customer’s context.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• • 03:10.  We discuss how Kenneth Cukier’s TED talk about “Big Data is Better Data” and how having data isn’t enough to predict how people will interpret it. 
  • 07:12 Colin tests his theories with Ryan, who has his own context, which is always a fun activity.
  • 10:20 Ryan shares an interesting demonstration of different contexts clashing in a researchers work with an isolated tribe in the Pacific.
  • 14:20  Colin shares his recent insight about diversity, which he describes as a “blinding flash of the bloody obvious.”
  • 18:09  We get into a discussion about changing a person’s context gracefully and the skills needed here. 
  • 27:48 We share our advice for helping organizations improve their experience understanding and using context in experience design.

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Journey Maps can be useless exercises. That’s right…we said it. However, these often-used tools don’t have to be as useless as they usually are. Journey Maps are only useless if you don’t include the customer’s emotional journey in them. 

Emotional journeys are the “squishy stuff” associated with why customers buy from you. Since customer’s feelings are challenging to itemize, many organizations tend to leave them off. However, the result is a customer process, not a journey map. 

After all, without this information, how can you expect to predict and anticipate customer behavior? Moreover, how can you design an experience that is so well positioned for customers’ needs that they come back for more (and more)?

In this episode— and at the behest of a very complimentary listener who says we actually taught them something (!!)—we explore how you can integrate customer behavior, and the emotions that drive that behavior, into your journey maps. We show you how all the things we talk about on this podcast apply in a practical way and can produce practical results, like an ROI. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 04:10  We explain how we will demonstrate the application of behavioral sciences concepts to a standard Journey Map that we made up about booking a hotel online.
• 12:15  We go through each of the ten concepts we agreed upon before the show, and then Colin adds a bonus one at the end, catching Ryan off guard. 
• 21:29  Using the checklist of (now) 11 concepts, we begin taking you through the process of applying each one to the booking a hotel online journey map, starting with Customer Segmentation, and so on through the list. 
• 27:05  Ryan points out that many times, changes in how organizations serve customers can have an inadvertent effect on how an experience ends, which is detrimental to the emotional journey. 
• 32:58  Colin shares a personal story of how a rental car company bamboozled him into getting a car he couldn’t afford after a long-haul flight across the pond, and it cost the company money as a result. 
• 37:00  We share our final tips and key takeaways from this exercise and how it should help you have a more complete picture of the customer journey. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Having a high IQ isn’t the most important thing for leadership. It helps, but intelligence isn’t enough to make a great leader. 

It turns out that IQ without EQ, or emotional intelligence, doesn’t inspire teams to meet or exceed their goals. This EQ concept, popularized by Daniel Goleman, has been a crucial component of the leadership conversation for several years.

Similarly, customer service representatives with high EQ are crucial for the emotional management of customers. The ability to understand and manage emotions is a crucial factor in ensuring customer satisfaction.

EQ involves the ability to identify and manage our own emotions and the emotions of others, as well as understanding your reactions to situations and how they may affect others. In other words, leaders and customer service representatives who can remain calm and objective in stressful situations are more effective in their roles.

In this episode, we will delve into the concept of EQ, what it entails, and its impact on leadership and customer service strategies. We will explore the five realms of EQ, starting with knowing your emotions.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 03:26  We introduce EQ and Goleman’s concept of the five realms of it, and how the first concept of it helped in Colin’s recent weight loss efforts. 
• 08:50  Colin shares a story about how 30 years ago as a middle manager he went to a 360-degree feedback event that fundamentally changed how he thought about himself. 
• 12:51 Ryan talks about how he likes that unlike intelligence, EQ is something you can work on and improve, no matter what you were given naturally. 
• 17:11 Colin talks about the most silent transaction he ever had at the grocery store, and why that employee might be in the wrong position in the store. 
• 20:30  We explain how well you deal with change is an essential part of EQ, particularly if you have some work to do.
• 28:55  We summarize what we learned and how developing EQ can help one’s leadership as well as improve the Customer Experience their organization delivers. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Vijay, one of our listeners, drew my attention to a deficit in my content regarding customer strategy. He asked if we had anything on customer engagement. After a search of both my hard drives (computer and memory), I realized that I didn’t. To remedy this giant hole in our content, we recorded this podcast. 

Now, part of not having any content on the subject means I didn’t have a definition ready for the term. However, like anyone would these days, I fixed that with an internet search. I found an excellent one at HubSpot, another great one at Salesforce, and third at Qualtrics. Each of these definitions was unique and oddly familiar. However, together they do a great job of defining the general outline of the concept. To summarize them, let’s say that customer engagement is about interacting with customers in a connected way through a variety of channels to build an emotional connection with them. 

In a recent podcast with Customer Experience pioneer Joe Pine, we explored the idea of time well spent. One addition I might make to the combination definition from my previous three sources is to deliver an experience that a customer thinks of as “time well-spent.” Often when customers feel this way about your product, service, or experience, they will recommend it to their friends and family—which is an excellent indication of engagement. 

In this episode, we explore the concept of customer engagement and how you can craft a winning strategy for it in your experiences. Plus, we fill a hole in our content to satisfy Vijay’s request and feel better about the job we are doing engaging you with our content. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 03:53  We share definitions regarding Customer Engagement and how we agree and disagree with part of them.
• 10:44  We discuss how finding a new idea in marketing is essential, so, reengaging old concepts under a new name is fine if it means solid strategy comes back into fashion. 
• 17:02  We revisit the idea first shared by Pine on an earlier podcast about how engagement is also about time, from giving it to you to thinking of what was spent with you as a good investment. 
• 20:52  Ryan offers his critique about the concept of customer engagement and a common mistake many organizations make when trying to improve it. 
• 22:43  Colin share his key takeaways about the concept and how you can apply a practical strategy for engagement moving forward. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

If you have been listening to us for a while now, you probably know about our “I’m in a Pickle” podcasts and the “5 Rules” series. If so, and you’re a fan, today is your lucky day because this podcast is a mash-up of both series. Not only that, but we also added in 5 more bonus rules for 100% more rules. 

It seems that quite a few people in our audience have a pickle. They want to start a consultancy but don’t know what to do. So, we are here to help.

In this episode, we explore the 10 rules for building a successful consultancy and how they apply to your success. While we can’t guarantee that you will be successful if you follow them, we know that you won’t be if you don’t. 

Here are some key moments in the discussion:

• 02:47  Colin kicks off the rules by encouraging to read an old book for some new thinking and to challenge yourself to be brave.
• 13:20  Ryan explains the critical mistake many entrepreneurs make when starting a new venture and how you can avoid making the same one. 
• 20:41  We discuss providing value to your customers and how you can tell if you are doing that. 
• 24:39  Colin gets practical about something that there is never enough of in a new business, money, and how to make sure you get what you are owed.
• 27:44  We wrap up the rules by explaining what you shouldn’t do, even if there is good money in it. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

One of our listeners has a pickle. They did research that told them a product was just what their customers wanted, so they developed and launched it. But now, there are no sales. They want to know what went wrong. We suspect we might know. 

Research is a double-edged sword. It has the power to give us answers we want but not always the answers we need. Many things we do, deliberately or otherwise, affect what we hear. 

In addition, sometimes our sources are unreliable. Customers have different mindsets when they answer a question on a survey and when they make a buying decision. So, what they tell you on a survey might be quite different than what they do as customers.

In this episode, we take a deeper dive into these ideas of what went wrong for our listener’s product launch. We also share some practical advice to avoid making these mistakes in the future. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 02:43  We discuss the pickle our listener, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote into us about. 
• 06:36  We talk about how survey questions can lead your respondents to an answer, called Push Polling, which is very well explained in this comedy program from the UK, Yes, Minister." 
• 11:28  Colin talks about where he thinks the real crux of the problem is for his listeners’ pickle, not understand the customers real underlying motivations. 
• 16:55   We discuss the concept of what we hire product and services to do for us, like a job, and how some buying decisions satisfy two different roles.
• 19:02  Colin shares a story about a major product launch that cause major headaches for his organization back in the day. 
• 25:30 We share the practical advice for our listener’s pickle and how you can avoid making these same mistakes in your product development. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

We will admit it. We have made mistakes in our lives. It’s only natural that some of the calls you make in your journey are going to be bad ones. Believe it or not, we are thankful for them. One learns a lot from one’s mistakes or at least that is the hope.

Some of the calls were good ones, though, and we are thankful for those, too. Perhaps, even we two, like the blind squirrel, can find a nut once in a while. 

One of the great things about having a podcast is that we can share information. In this episode, we share some stories about things that have gone wrong. Our hope is that you can learn vicariously through us without having to suffer through similar pains yourself.  Similarly, we share some of our triumphs, too, with the hope that these success stories might help some of you as well.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 02:50  Colin shares what he learned about choosing the right companies for his career goals by mucking it up in his 20s with one company worse than the next.
• 07:01 Ryan explains how he learned that loyalty isn’t always a two-way street when he experienced his first layoff at a startup. 
• 10:26  We learn how recruitment is a bit like a fairy tale in that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the proper prince or princess. 
• 14:00  We discuss the importance of having a plan rather than crossing one’s fingers and hoping for the best. 
• 17:08  Colin tells us what he would have done differently at the beginning of his consultancy rather than the decision he made that almost bankrupted it.
• 21:28  We both share out successful decisions, from continuing to pursue a degree to establishing a priority for work-life balance to adopting a mindset of continuously learning. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Did you know that FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a powerful motivator for customer behavior? Organizations today should find ways to leverage the power of FOMO  with their customers.  

I was surprised to learn how much of an addiction social media was for some people and how it linked up with feelings of FOMO. You might be as surprised by these statistics from 2021 as I was: 

• 51% of people visit or log into their social media more now than two years before 
• 27% of people wake up and check their social media accounts 
• 45% of users said they couldn't wait for more than 12 hours to check their social media accounts 
• 20% of users can't waste time for more than an hour without checking their feeds 
• 69% of people think if they don’t check Facebook and other platforms that they will miss important events 

In this episode, we explore what FOMO is and how it affects what we do and why. We also talk about a couple of practical (and ethical) ways you can leverage its power to increase the profits for your bottom line. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

Regret, even the anticipation of regret, is a huge part of FOMO. These feelings are associated with Loss Aversion, which describes how we hate losing things more than we enjoy gaining things. If we feel like we missed out, we are losing out on the chance to be a part of something—and we really don’t like that feeling. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 03:58  Ryan defines FOMO and explains how social media and FOMO go hand in hand these days. 
• 10:56 We connect FOMO with other emotions, like regret, and feeling included, or excluded as the case may be, and explain how avoiding these emotions can be powerful motivator.
• 14:33  We connect the idea that FOMO is part of some marketing team’s goal for an experience; they want FOMO to occur with their followers for things like celebrity
• 21:02  Colin shares some more stats about the emotions tied to FOMO and how they are on the destructive side. 
• 24:40  We share three practical things you can do for your customers that use the power of FOMO (in a good way) for your experiences and to the benefit of your customers. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

This Podcast produced in partnership with Zuper™.

You are probably underestimating the importance of a vital part of your Customer experience. Most organizations do. However, neglecting to address it can have negative impact on your customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer advocacy. 

Dying to know what it could be? Well, the area that is often underestimated in importance is the impact of your field service engineers. Often the face of your company, these team members deliver a critical part of your customer interaction. Underestimating the significance of this part of your experience is a critical mistake. 

Field service is a term not everyone is familiar with. However, you are familiar with them even if you don’t know what they are called. Field service describes the people that install, repair, and upgrade your equipment. Their ubiquity is such that they are a part of everyday life. In fact, you probably saw a few at work in some capacity today; you just didn’t know what they were called. 

In this episode, we host an expert in Field Service on our recent podcast, Michael Israel (MichaelIsrael@Zuper.co), Head of Field Service Evangelism at Zuper. Israel has worked in customer and field service for over 50 years. He has managed domestic and international field service operations, including 12 years at IBM. He's also been in management and executive roles with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) providers and field service software applications with Oracle and SAP. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 02:05 Colin introduce Israel, and Israel shares some of his related experience that led him to becoming an expert in Field Service, as well as what the area entails. 
• 10:11  We get into a discussion of the changing attitude for the service side of a customer experience, from viewing it as a cost to seeing it as profit center.
• 20:38  Colin asks why more organizations don’t embrace adopting software to manage this part of the experience; Israel’s response might surprise you.  
• 24:23 We discuss the opportunity for a lot of companies regarding training and who does a good job with leveraging performance in this area.
• 27:29  Israel gives us a glimpse into the future of field service and what technology will do to enhance this critical area. 
• 30:37  We all share our key takeaways and practical applications for organizations that want to address field service in their experiences.

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

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.

This podcast is full of bad advice. If you do follow the five rules we present, we guarantee you will fail. We realize this might be different than our usual Five Rules episode content. However, we think that presenting the way to fail might be the way to help you succeed.

(How’s that for a different kettle of fish?)

For example, if you want to fail, we have the rules that will help you do it. They include doing any or all of the following:

1. Not understanding the marketplace. 
2. Ignoring customer feedback. 
3. Failing to adapt to change. 
4. Not being authentic. 
5. Overlooking diversity and inclusion. 

In this episode, we explore why our five rules, otherwise known as what not to do in business, lead to failure for many brands you know, and in some cases, remember from before they crashed and burned. We share what we have learned by watching brands make silly mistakes (and hope none of you will make the same ones.)

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

The critical thing to remember here is that we don’t want you to do these things. Instead, we encourage you to learn from these mistakes. So, if anything, we are telling you to break these five rules instead of following them. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 04:07  We kick it off by explaining how if you don’t understand the marketplace, you are sure to blow it with them, hastening your descent into failure. 
• 10:53  We abandon all pretense of being organized, and share all five rules at once and then fit our examples under the various rules. 
• 12:08   We discuss business guru Charles Handy’s S-curve from The Empty Raincoat about how things ebb and flow in performance, and when is the best time to change. 
• 19:50  Colin relates the five rules back to an article he read, “15 Famous Brands Who Failed to Innovate,” and how hubris plays a role. 
• 23:46  Ryan explains how Victoria Secret might have fared better over time if they had more diversity and inclusion built into their leadership. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Fads come and go. From Tamagotchi’s to fidget spinners, we have seen plenty come and go. However, one fad that will never go out of style is treating your employees as the valuable resource they are. So, to answer our own question, Employee Experience is not just a fad and is definitely the future of a successful organization. 

We are fired up about this today because one of you, Praveen Kumar is in a pickle and he asked for our help. He wanted to know how to build an excellent Employee Experience. Not surprisingly, we had plenty of advice about it. 

You see, so much of what we talk about on this podcast applies to customers. However, it also applies to employees. People are people, whether they are buying or selling. So, until your employees are robots, you should be managing both experiences. 

In this episode, we explore the question of how to build an excellent Employee Experience. We also share some advice on how to implement the advice practically and successfully, which is more than we can say for bringing back the Thighmaster.  

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

One thing that might be a fad is what we call this area. For our part, we like Employee Experience because it goes with Customer Experience, and it uses alliteration. So, we don’t think the idea behind it will fade, but the terminology might. And we are okay with that. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 06:23  Colin explains how we are all experiential animals, so it is essential to ensure that experiences work for us, or there are negative consequences. 
• 10:46. We discuss how the Customer Experience and the behavioral science theories that we relate to it also apply to the Employee Experience. 
• 13:26  Ryan explains how Reference Points are essential in the conversation about Employee Experiences. 
• 20:56  We address the various ways you can use Customer Experience advice to manage your Employee Experience efforts. 
• 26:10  Colin gets into how a previous podcast about the 5 Rules of Leadership are essential here also. 
• 29:11  We both offer our last bits of advice for Kumar and anyone who wants to build an excellent Employee Experience. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

I have been watching the American Customer Satisfaction Index for over 20 years. Many years, there wasn’t anything too surprising in the report. However, recently there has been, and it isn’t good news for most organizations. 

After nearly two decades of investment in customer experience, only 20 percent of organizations have managed to improve their customer satisfaction scores—leaving the vast majority, 80 %, having failed to do so. 

One has to wonder, has it been worth it? We have been working on delivering experiences that surprise and delight customers for years. 

So, why aren’t they surprised and delighted? Why, despite all our best efforts, are the numbers going the opposite direction?

Before you blame COVID for all this, it is important to note that these trends began long before that, although the pandemic did nothing to help matters. Nor is it a problem of customers having unreasonable expectations. Research shows that as satisfaction declines, so do customer expectations. 

It turns out that there are a number of variables that could be contributing to this decline in customer satisfaction, which offers a lot for organizations to learn. 

We invited an expert, assistant professor Forrest Morgeson, from the marketing faculty at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and the director of research at the Customer Satisfaction Institute to share his insight. In this episode, we explore what this means to customer experience then, now and in the future. Where we are going with experiences, might surprise you. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 02:41  We introduce our guest, Forrest Morgeson, assistant professor of marketing at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and the director of research at the Customer Satisfaction Institute at Michigan 
• 05:53  Morgeson answers my question about how satisfaction can be down at this point in time with two salient reasons. 
• 15:46 Colin shares a story about apathy and how what he saw 20 years ago might be happening in C-suites all around the world as we gape into the void of a recession.  
• 22:44  We ask Morgeson to explain what the data shows about satisfaction within industry, and what he tells us might surprise you.
• 26:59 Morgeson shares his predictions for what will happen next regarding customer satisfaction and changes in experiences. 

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

One of our listeners, Clive Hearst has a bit of pickle he needs our help with today. He wants to know whether he should invest the time and money in getting his MBA. He wants to know what the true value is of an MBA, and whether it is a must-have for his career. The answer depends on a few things. 

It might surprise you to know I don’t have an MBA. (Or maybe not). However, I have experience, and much of it leading teams and driving experiences for people, but I didn’t pick that up in a classroom or an internship. I learned it on the streets, and in interactions with clients, bosses, and subordinates. 

I probably won’t get an MBA. I am closer to getting a fishing boat and a new tackle box than a degree at this point. However, I still say probably because there is a part of me that says, “never say never.” Part of me is interested in an MBA and I have to wonder why…

So, does an MBA have any value or is it just a piece of paper? In this episode, we try to help Hearst answer these questions for himself and shed some light on the current state of the MBA in today’s business environment. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

There should always be deliberate goals for everything we do in business, and that includes post-graduate education. Post graduate education in this case is an MBA, but the same goes for a Ph.D., law school, or medical or dental school, any other programs too. Part of the decision should always be one’s plans for what they will do with the education in which they invest. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 04:53  We start with one of the most important questions a person should ask themselves when considering getting their MBA, and the rest of everything will depend on the answer. 
• 06:27   Ryan explains how MBA programs are structured and how long a person can expect to be in one, depending upon the program they choose.
• 09:54  Colin asks Ryan to explain some of the key advantages of getting an MBA, and the answer might surprise you. 
• 13:04    We discuss the increased earning potential that can occur from getting an MBA, and how it sometimes doesn’t, and why. 
• 20:20 Ryan explains how the most prestigious MBA programs tend to require several years’ experience before getting one and why that is.
• 24:50 We discuss how MBA programs are changing and what type of MBA might be a good investment for today’s business employee.

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Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Time is our most valuable resource. It’s a resource that you aren’t able to get any more of,  no matter what you do, and you are losing more of it every second. 

When you look at it like that, asking people for their time a much bigger deal than you might have considered at first. Therefore, when you are spending it with them, you should make the most of it. 

Moreover, you are competing for customers’ time. So, when they do give it to you, they are going to evaluate whether that was a good move afterward. If you are careful with it, you can end up on the bad side of an evaluation and a losing side of the battle for their attention in the future. 

Joe Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy, writes about this battle for customer attention and how they evaluate time given to you in a recent article about 'Competing for Customer Time'. Check it out here. We also hosted him on a recent podcast where he shared his three categories for customers’ evaluations of time given to your organization. They include time well saved, time well spent, and time well invested. 

In this episode, we discuss these three categories and what they mean to organizational experiences. We also talk about how some organizations do it well, and some waste our time unapologetically. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 03:22  Colin explains how the three categories of customer evaluation of time as Pine explained in the article and on the recent podcast created an Aha! Moment that rivals some of the most significant in his career. 
• 08:10  Colin shares a story about calling his health insurance company and how they did not respect his time, how that could result in his finding a new provider, and how they will never know why.  
• 12:39 We share an example of a company that takes their service and elevates it with the theatrical to create a time well spent evaluation. 
• 22:44 We get into time well invested, and what expectations customers are likely to have before they would give an organization a positive evaluation in this area.
• 25:33 We share our final thoughts on what is happening here regarding the battle for customer’s time and how you can leverage this insight for your organization.

Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here.

Price increases are part of today’s business environment. Unless you live on the moon, you are experiencing them from your suppliers, too, and will pass those on to your customers also. However, if you handle the price increase the wrong way, you will also likely be losing some of those customers, too. 

One of our listeners, Alan Flower, has a pickle regarding the need to increase his prices without losing his customers. Since our advice not to raise prices or to decrease prices instead will end up with him going out of business, we came up with a few other, more practical, ideas. 

The fact is no one wants a price increase. So, on its face, it seems like an impossible scenario. However, it might surprise you to learn that there are ways to increase a customer’s price, maintain your company’s margins, and keep most of your customers. 

In this episode, we explore the many ways you can soften the blow of a necessary price increase to retain as many customers as possible while doing what you need to do for your bottom line.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

Communication is the underlying theme of this exercise. Many of the suggestions we make during this podcast relate to the “how” of communicating. However, the why of it is just as essential, so be sure that you pay attention to both when you inform your customers of an impending price increase—or face their wrath instead. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 03:51  The first suggestion we make is to set proper expectations, which includes giving people time to adjust to the news; upping prices without warning will not get this price increase process off to a very good start.
• 07:25  Ryan explains how using framing is an essential way to manage the outcome of the price increase conversation, and that without it, you can make a mess of this process pretty fast. 
• 11:06  Colin shares some things not to do, deceptive practices that you might get away with, until you don’t, and then the consequences can be severe, like Shrinkflation. 
• 17:35  We explore sweetening the offering with companion products or services that add value, a situation that make a price increase much more palatable to customers. 
• 19:34 We look at the value in delaying a price increase or taking it incrementally instead of all at once.

Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

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To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here 

How long does it take to choose a craft beer at a big box liquor store? Four hours. 

That’s what it felt like anyway. Why did it feel so long? Too many choices. In fact, when I was done, I needed a beer to recover from the exercise of choosing a beer. 

Of course, if there had only been a few, I would probably complain that there hadn’t been enough options for craft beers. 

The fact is, we like having choices, until we don’t. There is a point where not enough choices becomes way too many and the end result is the same, a negative experience and sometimes a lost sale. 

In this episode, we explore the negative effects of too many choices on your bottom line. From overwhelming customers to elevating their expectations, what you offer has a significant effect on what people buy—or don’t. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

There are two ways choice affects customers psychologically. First, too many choices can make people give up on deciding and wander off. Second, the plethora of options can increase the expectations for what a customer wants out of the transaction, and often keeps them on the hunt longer for the perfect choice. Neither is an outcome that is doing great things for an organizations bottom line.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 05:52  Ryan shares the results of research conducted at a Grocery Store in California that tested how many jam options was too many (Spoiler alert: It was more than six).
• 09:14  We discuss whether there is an optimal number and what considerations would go into determining that.   
• 12:22  Colin explains how his TV shopping has increased his knowledge about TV offerings while also making him feel more anxious about choosing one. 
• 21:33  Ryan uses dating opportunities to explain how more choices can change what you expect out of a date and Colin explains how he ends up in the matrimonial doghouse because of his lack of romanticism.
• 24:25. We share what firms can do to make decisions easier for people and maximize their decision potential in different offering scenarios. 

Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn HERE.

Follow Colin on Twitter HERE.

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

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

To learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services Click here 

I have written seven books, countless articles, and tons of keynote speeches, not to mention thousands of emails. As a writer, through and through, I know how difficult it can be to stare at a blank screen watching that blinking cursor wondering where to start. 

But a new AI-powered chatbot might make my life a whole lot easier, and yours, too. 

It’s called ChatGPT, and it has the potential to change how we create things and make the power of AI accessible to everyone. It is a conversational chatbot that can process requests and, if you want, write things for you. It has written poetry, code for applications, the copy for a Ryan Reynold’s MINT mobile company commercial, and more.  

Unfortunately, it also means ChatGPT is accessible to high school students that need to write a five-paragraph essay about Romeo and Juliet. If there is one group where ChatGPT is unwelcome, it’s the teacher’s lounge at any high school or college. 

In this episode, we discuss how ChatGPT might change the way organizations do things moving forward.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

We also discussed what some of my readers on LinkedIn think of the AI technology in ChatGPT. Igor Rodrigues likes how it handles context. Sergei Liashenko thinks it could be useful for staff training. Graham Hill worries that if too many people leverage the technology, we will lose the distinctions between organizations that often provide a competitive edge. 

We would love to also hear your insight. To subscribe to the newsletter and weigh in, please click here.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 02:41  We introduce what ChatGPT is and how we have been working with it, and how it differs from what other technology we have encountered.
• 07:54  Colin shares some of the ways he thinks it will serve as a writing assistant for him moving forward, and Ryan explains how it has completely wrecked the educational essay. 
• 16:51 Colin shares some of the responses he got from readers of the newsletter on LinkedIn. 
• 22:53  We share what the 8^th imperative would have been for our book, The Intuitive Customer, if we had leveraged the AI, and it was surprisingly good.
• 24:32  We share our insights about what you should take away from this topic and apply it in your organization.

Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

If you have customer segments that read like the drink sizes on a fast-food menu, then this podcast is one you really need. The fact is many organizations get customer segmentation wrong. So, we came up with some critical questions that can get it back on track. 

One of our listeners is in a pickle and it has to do with their firm’s segmentation. Vijay Patel’s sales haven’t been what he hoped, and he wondered if the problem might be targeting the wrong customers. We think they might be, too, but probably not for the reasons Patel thinks. 

Many organizations use databases to segment their customers based on easy-to-collect data, like demographics, industry vertical, or total annual sales. While this information is useful, it is incomplete. We discuss what needs to be included to make these numbers mean anything for targeting. 

In this episode, we explore what are critical questions an organization should be using to create customer segments that lead to effective targeting. And to be clear, they don’t use the words “small,” “medium,” or “large.” 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

I have had a terrible time with UPS recently. I sent a package 2-day priority international and ten days later, I still don’t have it. Plus, I have had no luck getting answers about what happened to it. In part, I am to blame because I don’t have a lot of experience with shipping things via UPS. However, part of the problem is UPS because they don’t have a targeted experience for inexperienced shippers like me. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 05:12  We share a pickle from Vijay Patel who asks us how to ensure that their customer segmentation is correct.
• 07:27  Colin talks about one of the best segmentations he has ever experienced in Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, where they separate leisure and business travelers.
• 11:42  We lead into the first question about segmentation and how it should serve your organization.
• 14:25  Colin poses the next question about the data used to segment customers and whether it is meaningful for this exercise (spoiler alert: if it involves small, medium, and large, then it isn’t).
• 18:18  Ryan explains selection bias and how it can doom your efforts by missing an enormous opportunity for your business.
• 21:04  We explain how using databases can lead to stereotyping and how that is sloppy marketing. 
• 25:18 We discuss psychographics and how it applies to segmentation, and why it might not work either and what we know will work better.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE.

Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.

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Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 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 as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. 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 35,000 subscribers. 

How can we help?

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

It’s a new year so we decided we needed an update.  A few years ago, we gave you some rules for gaining growth. But times have changed, and so the rules need to change, too. Therefore, we took another pass at the questions that can help your organization gain growth in 2023. 

In some ways, these are more like provocations than questions. However, we aren’t picking a fight. We are, however, trying to be provocative. In fact, we usually ask them because we know that people can’t answer them. We want them to realize that they don’t know these answers and get them thinking about it so we can help them move forward. 

The first two questions you are probably familiar with already. They set the stage for what we are trying to uncover. Then, we move into specifics about what customers want from your experience. Next come the future questions that explore areas about where you should be trying to go and the tools you can use to get there. Finally, we get into a question about my absolute favorite part of experiences, memory. 

In this episode, we explore what we ask and why. We also talk about what they need to realize from their answers and how it can help them gain growth in the new year. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

One company we helped move forward was Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping company. We hosted one of the successful leaders of this organization on another episode to share the five rules for a highly successful implementation. One of the things Maersk shared is that these questions made a difference in their improvement program—which is saying something since they improved their scores by 40 points over 30 months. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 07:36  After we discuss Maersk line, we get into our second strategic question that explores how customer-centric your organization is, and how that affects your growth.
• 10:21  We get into an area that we are devoting a whole episode to soon, which is about how people describe their experience with you, as well as what they really want and what drives value for them, all crucial areas to answer for your experience. 
• 18:34 This kicks off the future part of the strategic questions, where we talk about predicting customer behavior and using Customer Science to be successful at it.  
• 20:42 Ryan takes a 2,000-word detour to express how he agrees with Colin, much to his chagrin and Colin’s supreme delight. 
• 28:19 We talk about Colin’s favorite subject memory, and why it matters so much to make them deliberately in your experience.
• 29:31  We summarize the seven strategic questions and how you can actually work on them on top of everything else you have to do—and why you should make time for them. 

Did you know we have a YouTube Channel too? Check it out here.

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 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 as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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

How can we help?
Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.
Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.