Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

We British look at the world as if the glass is half empty. By contrast, Americans look at the world as if the glass is half full. So, when I share some statistics I read regarding customer satisfaction and leveraging behavioral economics, some of which I felt very glass-half-empty about, I hope a few of you, with your half-glass-full dispositions, will help me see the bright side.

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Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Stanford Professor Itamar Simonson is very clever. He brought snacks to class for his students. However, he wasn’t just being cool; he used them for research. Professor Simonson learned that sometimes, we don’t want to make a choice or at least not a new one. Once we settle on an option, we stick with it if we must make the same one again.

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Beyond Philosophy

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

Catherine, one of our podcast listeners, wants to know how to establish her organization’s reputation for having low prices without the companion reputation for having cheap and low-quality products. It’s a good question that, in my experience, is easy to get wrong. However, since I would imagine some of you have a similar problem, I also wanted to share that discussion here with you.

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Construction Marketing Personalization Management 221

Beyond Philosophy

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

We have multiple ways of evaluating prices. These differ in terms of how easy they are for us to do and how accurate they are. Understanding how customers evaluate pricing can help you correctly price your products or services. So, today, we will talk about three simple tactics you can use to maximize your pricing to gain profit. However, before we delve deeper into that, let’s first cover the three different consumer psychology theories about how customers evaluate pricing.

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Advertising Education Sales Marketing 221

Beyond Philosophy

AUGUST 12, 2023

I get mad when people waste my time. It’s probably why I have such a beef with cable companies and organizations’ call centers that have long hold times. Wasting someone’s time is also a waste of an opportunity to deliver an excellent customer experience. The source of my ire is likely tied to time being our most precious resource by some estimations.

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Healthcare Call Center Customer Experience 150

Beyond Philosophy

AUGUST 19, 2023

Waiting around for a customer experience is rarely a good thing. When customers are waiting for you, that’s usually a sign that not waiting would have been difficult or inconvenient (read: expensive) for your company. However, not valuing customers’ time is probably the most expensive mistake you can make. Then, of course, there are the times when the waiting is part of the experience.

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Wait times Customer Experience Management 150

Beyond Philosophy

AUGUST 26, 2023

It stinks to wait around for something as a customer. Whether it’s in a waiting room or a hot sweaty line at a theme park, none of us are usually very excited about waiting around for something. However, it’s a fact of life that customers have accepted over time. It also stinks to know that your experience makes customers wait sometimes.

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Management Customer Experience 195

Beyond Philosophy

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

We are very judgmental, particularly when it comes to prices. We can always tell whether something is a good or bad deal. The fact that some of the ways we do this are not as accurate as others doesn’t even occur to us. Knowing that customers have different ways they evaluate your pricing that are sometimes inaccurate shouldn’t upset you, though.

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Customer Experience 195

Beyond Philosophy

AUGUST 5, 2023

We have all been there. We think we did something great, and we look forward to getting the feedback that tells us so. Unfortunately, when we do get the feedback, we discover that we weren’t quite so great as we thought we were. It’s a matter of perception and understanding this concept can help avoid this mismatch in the future. One of our listeners, Damien, found himself in this pickle recently.

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Customer Experience Feedback Surveys 195

Beyond Philosophy

AUGUST 17, 2023

Many years ago, I read a book that changed my life, The Experience Economy by Joe Pine, founder of Strategic Horizons. As a pioneer in the experience movement, Pine has a new customer strategy concept that we discussed on a recent podcast, so I thought I would share what we learned here as well. Time Well Spent Pine developed the Time Progression with his collaboration partner and colleague Dave Norton, founder of Stone Mantel and Insights Consultancy.

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Beyond Philosophy

JULY 27, 2023

Authenticity is an essential part of an experience. However, authenticity is more complicated than you might think at first. We are discussing authenticity here because one of our podcast listeners asked us to discuss it. They are struggling with it in their experience and want advice on authenticity. Now, it seems simple. If you want to be authentic, then…be authentic.

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Customer centricity Personalization 195

Beyond Philosophy

JULY 8, 2023

Many organizations are making a common mistake when it comes to AI. They fail to capitalize on the potential to enhance Customer Experiences through this powerful technology by building it incorrectly. By changing their strategic approach, they could gain a significant competitive advantage. Take, for instance, a telecom company that developed an AI system to detect customer churn.

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Technology Customer Experience 195

Beyond Philosophy

JUNE 24, 2023

You wouldn’t think to look at it that The Magic Castle hotel in Los Angeles has been ranked in the top ten hotels on TripAdvisor, but it has. A converted apartment building has turned its unassuming appearance into an excellent experience for its guests, and how they do it isn’t that big of a thing, quite the opposite. It’s the little things make a big difference in their customer satisfaction.

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Customer Experience 195

Beyond Philosophy

JUNE 22, 2023

Our recent guest on the podcast, author Vanessa Patrick , Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Marketing, and researcher in the Consumer Behavior Marketing field, has a new book, “The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts You in Charge of Your Life.” The book addresses the area of self-regulation or self-control.

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Personalization Marketing Consulting Consulting 358

Beyond Philosophy

JUNE 8, 2023

A strange thing about corporate life is that after you get your annual spending budget approved for your department, you often still have to get approval to spend it. I have plenty of experience with this inefficient exercise in my career, and I thought I might have some things to share with all of you to get those necessary approvals. In our recent podcast, Context is King!

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Beyond Philosophy

MAY 27, 2023

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.

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Beyond Philosophy

MAY 25, 2023

Journey Mapping is an excellent tool in experience design efforts. However, I often complain that they do not include the emotional journey, which is essential to designing an experience that engages emotionally with customers in a way that promotes customer loyalty. So, today, we will look at how you can incorporate the concepts we often talk about in this newsletter into your Journey Mapping efforts.

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Beyond Philosophy

MAY 13, 2023

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.

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Beyond Philosophy

APRIL 13, 2023

FOMO, or fear of missing out, is a powerful marketing tool. The acronym denotes how we do things because we are worried about regretting not doing them later. In addition to being the subject of several research projects in psychology, it’s also a powerful marketing tool—if you know how to leverage it. I witnessed the ubiquity of FOMO while watching the latest Avatar movie.

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Beyond Philosophy

APRIL 1, 2023

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.

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Beyond Philosophy

MARCH 30, 2023

A sure way to fail in your efforts to reach your target customers is not to understand how things work where they are. Some hilarious examples are in this article, “ 11 of the Biggest Brand Blunders. ” This lack of understanding can occur domestically or globally, in different age groups or different cultures. If you don’t know about what is important to your prospects and what they value, you are sure to fail.

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Feedback Marketing Consulting Consulting 195

Beyond Philosophy

MARCH 25, 2023

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.

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Feedback Customer Experience 44

Beyond Philosophy

MARCH 11, 2023

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.

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Marketing Customer Experience Management 44

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Having a lot of choices is a blessing—until you have too many. Unfortunately, too many options can become a curse. Today, let’s look at how the number of choices could thwart your customer’s decision to buy and destroy your revenue. I have had this problem many times, but most recently regarding purchasing a heater for my home. I went to Amazon to pick one and was quickly overwhelmed by my options.

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Consulting Consulting Marketing Management 195

Beyond Philosophy

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

One of our podcast listeners Vijay Patel has a pickle, and many of you probably have the same one. Patel’s company isn’t getting the sales they need, and Patel asked us how we can tell if they are focused on the right segments. Today, we are discussing customer segmentation and whether your organization is doing it right. Before we get into that, let me share an example of a segmentation that works.

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Beyond Philosophy

JANUARY 7, 2023

Every so often, I get a chance to chit-chat with colleagues of mine about the future of customer experience. This time, my colleagues were pioneers in customer experience, Lou Carbone ( Experience Engineering.com) author of Clued In , and Joe Pine (StratgicHorizons.com) , author of The Experience Economy. We discussed what we see changing in CX. We all think we are at a turning point in the movement.

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Consulting Consulting Customer Experience Surveys 221

Beyond Philosophy

JANUARY 5, 2023

What do leadership and rabbits have to do with each other? Usually, not much. However, in the context of leading a team that needs to put the customer at the center of everything they do, I have a story that explains how they are. It turns out that a customer strategy that puts the customer at the center of everything you do requires letting your employees get comfortable outside the hutch.

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Beyond Philosophy

DECEMBER 31, 2022

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. Bad leadership leads to bad Customer Experience. To have a great Customer Experience, you have to have great leadership. It reminds me of rabbits.

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Beyond Philosophy

DECEMBER 17, 2022

Ah, yes! It’s the most wonderful time of the year. When we reflect upon the passing year and make plans for the New Year: what we want to keep, where we want to be, and how we need to change. Then, we make them, our New Year’s Resolutions. However, in just a few days’ time, we will have failed at keeping these resolutions (again) and forgotten all about it.

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Consulting Consulting Surveys Customer Experience 150

Beyond Philosophy

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Have you ever wondered why things go viral or, better yet, how you can make your #content gain millions of views and shares? If so, then you are in the right place because we are going to share the secrets of how to go viral on social media. Frame it Properly. So, let’s say we have a story we want customers to hear. We might send a press release to see if reporters will pick up the story.

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Entertainment Airlines Advertising Technology 195

Beyond Philosophy

DECEMBER 10, 2022

Going viral is the goal of any passionate social media poster. Posting your content and watching as the views and shares grow exponentially is the dream for marketers trying to build a brand online. Unless, of course, the viral post is about how you broke a guitar during a customer’s flight and then showed “indifference” to their complaint.

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Airlines Consulting Consulting Surveys 170

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 19, 2022

Claire Hillman, a loyal listener, a subscriber to our NL, Why Customers Buy , and viewer of our podcast on our new YouTube Channel is in a pickle and needs our help. She asks, Should I move to where my customers are or move them to where I want to be? Now, our first reaction was to tell Claire that she should absolutely meet customers where they are.

Airlines 150

Airlines Self service Consulting Consulting 150

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

The world is crazy. There’s a war in Ukraine. The UK has a cost-of-living crisis as energy prices are rising, and loads of people are moving into fuel poverty. There’s inflation, strikes, and the looming threat of a recession and catastrophic climate change. The current environment I describe is very stressful, with many things you cannot control, which makes a few things on the path forward uncertain.

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Management Consulting Consulting Marketing 195

Beyond Philosophy

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

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. As if the world isn’t crazy enough—with the war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis, the looming threat of recession, and the ostensible beginnings of catastrophic climate change— we learned a flesh-eating bacterium (Vibrio vulnificus) is running rampant in Flori

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Management Consulting Consulting Surveys 221

Beyond Philosophy

OCTOBER 22, 2022

This week on our podcast and Intuitive Customer YouTube channel , we address a listener’s “Pickle” with our “I’m in a Pickle” feature. You might remember that a Pickle is our term for a business problem that might be addressed with customer strategy and/or the behavioral sciences. We hadn’t featured one for a while, so we thought it was time to dig into a new one.

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Consulting Consulting Surveys Customer Experience 30

Beyond Philosophy

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Memory Mini Series Part 2: Loyalty is a Function of Memory. This is How Memories are Built. This newsletter is the second in a 3 part series related to one of my favorite topics in my continuing mini-series on memory. Last time, we discussed how recall drives our behavior and where memories are formed based on a podcas t that covered the same topics.

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Consulting Consulting Customer Experience Management 195

Beyond Philosophy

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Memory Mini Series Part 1: Our Behavior is Motivated by What We Recall. So, How Are Memories Formed? This newsletter is the first of three I will publish on the subject of Memory. Memory is fascinating and a broad topic related to experiences. Therefore, one issue of the newsletter won’t be enough. In this issue, we explain why memories are essential to experiences, when we use them to decide sometimes, and how memories form.

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