Category: Customer Experience

…when someone decides to selfishly push.

There’s an assumption of civility and fairness in all of our interactions. When a harsh competitor unilaterally breaks unwritten rules (because it’s “not technically against the rules”) the community then writes down a new rule.

The best way for a market to be a free market is for the participants to exercise self-restraint.

The second best way is for clear and useful rules to be stated and enforced.

What doesn’t work are unwritten rules that are often broken by selfish bullies.

For a decade, Cliffs Notes were the bestselling section of the bookstore. They were a simple way for any high school student to get insight, examples and answers about the books they were assigned and read (or didn’t read).

When Cliffs published a list of their thirty bestselling titles, I saw an opportunity and created a book that was the cliffs notes of the Cliffs Notes. Quicklit didn’t sell very well, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Used as intended, Cliffs Notes and Quicklit were a gold mine of insight. They opened the door for real understanding, and often got to the heart of the literature better than an overworked high school teacher might be able to.

The paradox? More availability of notes didn’t lead to more learning.

It’s not clear to me that widespread availability of these summaries and guides actually led to much in the way of understanding.

And so here comes ChatGPT and its cousins. Here’s ChatPDF, a miracle that instantly reads a PDF, summarizes it and gives us the chance to ask it questions. The results I’ve seen are extraordinary. Here’s a session about a 48-page summary of my new book.

Except…

It doesn’t work until we choose to understand.

Part of the magic of an actual book is that the reader ends up understanding. It seeps in, the aha’s are found, not highlighted.

TLDR is internet-speak for “Too long, didn’t read.” It’s one of the consequences of too much to choose from, combined with a lazy quest for convenience. It’s a checklist mindset. And all we get after we finish a checklist is a bunch of checked boxes, not real understanding.

If you were on a long train ride with the smartest person in the world, what would you ask her? And how long before you went back to scrolling on your phone?

It doesn’t matter how much we summarize, at some point, effort is required. More summaries won’t automatically lead to more understanding.

Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products over others in the hierarchy of attention.

It’s probably true that someone shopping on Amazon is going to either buy something or not… the purpose of the “ads” isn’t to amplify consumption, it’s to shift what someone chooses to buy.

It’s a zero sum game–paying for a slot increases market share by stealing sales from the competition.

The thing is: all of that spend is paid for by the consumer.

Search and discovery would work just fine without the ads. Our satisfaction with what we bought would be at least as good if organic search simply highlighted the best match.

This is simply a transfer of money from shoppers like us to one company with a shopping search engine.

The best way to win a short-term game is to bet it all on one strategy. Someone is going to get lucky and it might be you.

But we rarely thrive in the long run if we persist in playing a series of short-term games.

Instead, organizations, individuals and teams do better when they understand the value of resilience.

In the last year, we’ve seen well-funded and heavily hyped crypto companies hit the wall and fail. That’s because it was easy for them to get funded and grow fast by making a simple bet, and in a bull market, everyone looks like a genius.

But their less flashy competitors are still around. They understood that resilience is expensive and resilience is worth it.

Often one of the biggest challenges in CX can be breaking down silos within businesses. Ensuring inclusivity for those included in the working groups presents another layer of complexity. I want to discuss the value of inclusive teams, and the need to consider bias in CX and customer journey mapping.    Securing the perspectives of many different…
The post Neurodiversity & unbiased CX approaches: the opportunities you may be missing out on appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Customer champion programmes have been around for over a decade, yet they’re still not all that common. They’re imperative to maintaining customer centricity. With customer success champions, you can ensure that your customers and their best interests remain at the heart of everything you do.  This CXM guide aims to inform you about the customer…
The post Customer champion programmes: building the customer-oriented working culture appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

We’re in an experience economy. Consumers have more choices than ever before, and they’re extremely pressed for time. That means organisations need to continually earn their customers’ loyalty. Every aspect of every interaction needs to be seamless and personalised.  But the personalisation consumers expect is rarely the “Dear Name” marketing messages that flood their inboxes. The Genesys report “The State of Customer Experience” finds…
The post Put personalisation at the heart of digital transformation appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

The market research industry is in a bona fide golden age. Between 2020 and 2023, global turnover is forecasted to increase by 33% to over $100 billion, and innovation is at an all-time high. More businesses are relying on data than ever before for their day-to-day decision-making. This data is also more sophisticated than ever, with new technologies making research and insights data easier to gather and integrate as…
The post 5 ways to strike gold in the golden age of market research appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

In 2023, it’s tricky to avoid fast fashion brands. And that’s either because you’re a customer of theirs, or you have seen their influx of advertising on TV and social media. Common household names of fast fashion retailers currently include Pretty Little Thing, Primark, and boohoo being amongst the most popular.  However, there’s a few things…
The post The lessons, cost, exploitation, and sustainability of fast fashion appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

The fashion sector is now constantly under pressure for its sustainability policies and claims. For brands, it can be challenging to demonstrate credentials when selling products as ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘sustainable’. Yet, consumers are becoming increasingly sceptical of these claims and they are right to exercise caution. A new trend has now come to the fore…
The post Greenwashing: rip the seams on eco-friendly fashion labels appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.