Process + Brand = Experience

Revenue or Relationships? Win Both. Book sample videos.

What happened with the rise of the Internet and automation? It changed everything about how we interact and engage with our customers. Those of us who work online don't realize how much business has changed. We think about digital transformation and sometimes take for granted the level of transformation that happens to businesses. It's huge! The biggest change that happened with the Internet is that our customers literally got into our business. Customers were always included in businesses until they went global. Even then, they were included, but seen as excluded. 

More is in the book I wrote, Revenue or Relationships? Win Both, but that's the general idea of these videos. How has the world changed? What does it mean for your customer to be in your business--literally? How do you now need to see your customer? 

Here are some initial thoughts about the book, topics in the book, and more.

 

Video 1: Why I wrote the book. I didn't plan on writing a book. Not by any stretch. It started as a great big white paper until I couldn't call it a white paper anymore (no such thing as a 30K word white paper). 

 

Video 2: The problem your company really solves and the "jobs to be done." This is based on work found in Harvard Business Review. It's one of my favorite articles.  

 

Video 3: Why I selected the title I did for the book. I believe that with the rise of automation, we are seeing a rise in the need for building relationships with customers. We don't focus on that because we don't have a way to measure it directly. But what if we did? What if we saw our businesses differently?

 

Epilogue: Conversations - Not Just for Humans Anymore

For the past 1.5 years, I have been working on a book - Revenue or Relationships? Win Both. The book has been the reason why my posts have been few and far between since April. You don't realize how much working on a book takes out of you. (It takes a lot!)

This is the Epilogue from the book. I wanted to share it with you to give you a sneak peek and to enjoy. Curious about thoughts and feedback. Thanks!

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Conversations are vital to building a relationship. They are ways for people to connect with each other, find common interests, and develop memories together. Social media and content marketing have elements of automated conversations. They provide information to readers to learn about the issues surrounding problems, describe solutions, and provide insights the reader should consider when making a decision. This first stage of communication starts a dialogue between companies and customers to help them recognize and understand their problems and realize they need a solution. The next stage usually involves online transactions, which is a type of conversation. The app or site requests information, the user provides it, and this banter continues until an agreement is reached and money is exchanged for an item. We are now exploring the possibility of chatbots and AIs to react quickly to human input in an automated, digital conversation. But what does that mean? And why is this relevant to discuss in the context of customer experience?

Conversations extend beyond information and transactions to decision-making, influencing, and relationship-building, with more intricate goals like information-sharing and collaboration along the way. We have created apps to facilitate automating these conversations, but there is more to a conversation than exchanging pleasantries, thoughts, and ideas. The automation of communication and conversations through bots and AI is a vital component of automating business. This has proven successful for informative and transactional conversations, but can we achieve this for more complex, relationship-driven communications? 

As we know, the more factual types of conversations—informational and transactional, related to things and action—are automated today. Decision-making, related to actions and thoughts, is semi-automated. We have tools available to help us, but humans need to actively use them to get any type of output. Influential conversations are more difficult to automate because they require conversations to discover information and insights, similar to relationship-building and brainstorming conversations. These types of conversations include emotions, feelings, empathy, curiosity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. 

The bottom layer of the diagram refers to the types and topics of the conversations, as suggested by Judy Apps in The Art of Conversation. These complement the types of conversations at the top of the diagram. It’s rare when talking about information that you’d talk about heart-related topics (like love or relationships) or discuss what really motivates you (like a soul topic). The more personal the conversation, the more emotionally driven the topics become. The more transactional and informational, the more likely factual or “thing” or “action” topics are fitting. If you are completing a transaction with a person or company, knowing that someone feels a certain way about an object may help a decision-making discussion about a purchase, but it won’t complete the transaction. Two or more people could be discussing how to implement a product or service, but the discussion goes beyond the “things” and “actions” to “head,” “heart,” and “soul.” The team is building trust through various side conversations that develop a relationship. And they understand the problem by sharing different perspectives, which they bring together in their collaboration to determine the best solution. 

Keeping all this in mind, without an appropriate program, a computer cannot reach the sentience necessary to be capable of making these connections between facts and emotions, curiosity and creativity, identifying problems and solving them. Human conversations beyond information and if/then transactions are too complex to model in a computer today. Relationship-building skills, like empathy, compassion, connection, and emotion, are required to complete more intricate life functions like decision-making, collaboration, and emotional connection.

Even if we were to create such a program, what would it look like? 

One could argue that we have achieved some type of sentience with the world-famous robot, Sophia. She has been introduced to the media as the AI representative of the future, but is she? She became a citizen of Saudi Arabia in 2017 and attends all of the popular technology events. She has even made some frequently quoted quips about AIs and robots having emotions or how robots want to kill humans. But does she have true sentience? She can see. She can respond to humans. But even her creator, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, acknowledges: 

. . .acknowledges that her development is still more akin to a baby or toddler than an adult with a consciousness or intellect that could feasibly be rewarded with a full set of rights. Even this is pushing it – toddlers, for example, have consciousness; Sophia does not.¹ 

Hanson has admitted that her responses are often based on programming, illustrating how far we can go with the if/then statement to model human behavior. We still have not created intelligence or sentience in a machine. 

This brings us back to the original question: If we were to create such a program for decision-making, collaboration, and emotional connection, what would it look like?

It’s unclear. If we don’t know in detail how these cognitive functions work in our own brains, how could we create a model to possibly replicate ourselves in a computer? We could create a new model that’s completely different from our own image, but what would that look like? Do we have any theoretical models to use as a basis for that initial approach?

We often take for granted what is involved in creating a conversation. As we listen to someone speak, thoughts rush to us regarding questions to ask next, responses to provide, and insights to share. A computer today doesn’t have the ability to respond in such ways. A computer follows its program and responds to stimuli, mostly based on user input. It processes data to present results and findings; it doesn’t provide an analysis or summarized insights without its programmed direction. Humans usually provide their own insights based on what they believe is important, using the facts that they find through traditional research methods or computer output. Ironically, computer output is based on programs humans designed to access specific data points that a group originally decided were important. In many ways, one group of people is defining for another group what is important through a program. When the computer is deciding what is important for a user using programmed judgement created by humans, that’s not entirely intelligence. From that perspective, we still haven’t reached sentience.

This raises the question of whether we are limiting our own data knowledge by not considering the impact of outlier data to improve situations and provide a different perspective. Are we developing AIs to help us in the way we want to be helped? Or are we developing AI to identify problems or patterns that we could use to create something new? There are initiatives in companies and consultancies to have AIs discover trends found in “dark data,” outside of the knowledge that people commonly have and can immediately leverage and reference. Leveraging such an approach is the only way we could expand human conversations using AI to add value for us to see problems and issues differently. Otherwise, we are defining what we need in a program, inadvertently limiting AI discoveries based on our existing knowledge. 

 

If/Then versus How and Why

Conversations about “things” and “actions” are based on direct questions and answers. Do you have this in stock? When will it be shipped? How can I order that? That’s why it is easy to automate this into chatbots. They are if/then statements about information that’s required and requested.

However, when we talk about thoughts, emotions, and abstract ideas, more relevant topics for decision-making, influence, relationship-building, and collaborating, conversations no longer follow if/then structures to provide information. How are you feeling? Why are you feeling that way? What can I do so you feel better? One could create an if/then program to create answers, but that’s not what’s required in these types of conversations. These are questions that require cognitive processing related to sentience, or self-awareness. They require that subjects know they are alive and want to remain that way. We organic beings “feel” because we are self-aware and we know what is happening in our bodies and minds. We are driven to stay alive based on this self-awareness. But are computers aware of their existence? Do they feel? Do they seek to stay alive at any cost? What does this mean for them?

Science fiction has explored these ideas for more than 75 years in books and movies like 2001: Space Odyssey and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. It has been in the realm of fantastical thinking and philosophy for decades, if not centuries (for example, Frankenstein explores this idea at some level), but it is relevant today as we are in the early stages of creating intelligences and sentient beings that use AI. 

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick created an AI entity, the HAL9000 computer, in the movie 2001: Space Odyssey. In one scene, Dave is dismantling and deactivating HAL because of its psychopathic actions. Unknown to Dave, this was because HAL’s programming was conflicting with his orders; Dave assumed that HAL was simply malfunctioning. While Dave was dismantling HAL, the computer admitted his faults, attempted to apologize, and asked him to stop. HAL was aware of what Dave was doing and told Dave that he was afraid. If HAL was only a computer, how could he have identified—never mind experienced—an emotion like fear? Or felt his mind drifting away with the removal of each chip and circuit board? It seemed like HAL was aware of the physicality of what was happening and the impact on his own mind and being. Or was he? Was that part of his programming?²

The question that Clarke and Kubrick explored was: Was it possible to kill an AI like HAL, which seems to have the qualities of a sentient being, by deactivating his “brain”? That’s hard to say, because in future movies HAL comes back to “life” when reassembled. The other question that Clarke and Kubrick explored with HAL as a character, which is more central to this discussion, is: What exactly is sentience for a computer or AI? Are they mimicking humans? Is it programmed behavior? Or do they have their own experience through their own desire to survive?

In a real-life example, we could consider the Facebook bot that was created to negotiate ad deals through chat.³

Programmers theorize that the bots created a language to streamline communications with each other. The programmers didn’t add code for the bots to use only human-friendly language. It’s pretty amazing that an AI would optimize a language to communicate better with another AI. This makes me wonder about their perception of what they were experiencing, if there was any at all. We assume there isn’t, but we also have assumed for centuries that animals have no emotions, which is now proven false. Animals do have emotions, possibly experienced differently or similarly as humans. We don’t know because animals can’t speak about them. But this idea raises the question: Why couldn’t this also be true for an AI? Could an AI be aware of what it is? Could a program created to communicate be sentient and we aren’t aware of that? In a way, the AI was sentient and self-aware enough to realize it was speaking with another AI rather than a human. 

This introduces a more philosophical question: What constitutes sentience? If a bot is creating a language to communicate with another chatbot, that demonstrates some level of awareness, even if that is part of its programming. One could imagine a programmatic entity thinking: “I know from my programming that I am not a human, but a bot. It seems based on the input I am receiving that this other subroutine interacting with me appears to be another bot. Since we are both bots, I will communicate in ‘this’ style. If the entity communicated with me in this other human style, I would use that style to communicate with it.” Based on input provided by the other entity, it can determine if it is interacting with a bot or human. That is a sophisticated yet simple level of intelligence and self-awareness. It is if/then thinking, but it illustrates that it is possible to understand the difference between two audiences and have enough self-awareness to communicate differently. It’s unclear if there were emotions and feelings experienced by the bot, mainly because it doesn’t have a physical body, but we should consider that emotions and feelings as humans perceive them may be a human construct and we have more to discover and understand regarding what intelligence and sentience include.⁴

If we read some of Antonio Damasio’s more recent work, cells and more simplistic organisms have feelings to help them stay alive. Emotions emerge from nervous systems and a type of brain to help keep the organism feeling good—and, consequently, alive. This will to live and feeling good is a sign of life that leads to intelligence and sentience. But what is part of this drive to live? According to Viktor Frankl, meaning. Beings will create meaning in their lives to drive them through adverse challenges. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, documents his experience in the concentration camps and its influence on him in developing logotherapy. He found that the search for meaning above all things (reproduction, power) drove men to survive the camps.

If we apply these ideas to an AI, we must first acknowledge that AIs often don’t have a body, except through robotics, but they do have a brain. It’s unclear if that brain does have a desire to stay alive unless it is programmed to believe that. However, if we programmed an AI to have meaning, would that change an AI’s sentience? Isaac Asimov suggested this in his fiction work, I, Robot, through his presentation of the three laws of robotics: 

• “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 
• A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”⁵ 

How the AI interpreted these laws to give them meaning was what got it into trouble in his book. It had a different interpretation and perception of what the three laws represented for its purpose. From this, you could argue that having meaning and purpose is a type of sentience.

Would meaning or purpose change the nature of an AI so it could have self-awareness and be able to participate in more advanced conversations like collaboration and relationship-building? It may be worth considering.

We can’t forget that we are still in the very early stages of developing AI. I am aware that much of this section is based on conjecture and science fiction, but for us to support the automation of more complex conversations and human-computer interactions, AI programs need to evolve to achieve sentience, and to get there, we may need to dream and expand our perception of what sentience means. 

To return to the question posed at the beginning of this section: Is it possible for us to automate conversations, and therefore, automate relationships? To me, this is highly unlikely any time soon. It is in the realm of dreams, philosophy, and science fiction. There will always be an element of human interaction required for two beings to connect and have a conversation that humans have grown accustomed to having. AI allows us to identify and use data in ways we never dreamed possible. But when I dream of AI and humans having conversations, I keep remembering a scene in the movie, Rogue One, with the droid K2S0 announcing, “There is a 97.6 percent chance of failure,” as they are flying toward their mission. The humans continued regardless of the challenges. This is what I perceive to be the balance between AI and bots and humans. As we know through the work of Antonio Damasio and Viktor Frankl, human conversations and decisions are not always driven by logic. Emotions and an individual’s self-perception often drive their will and a desire for a specific outcome that defies the odds. That element of human nature based on feelings and emotions to move towards a goal won’t go away. If anything, with better data elements selected for us, we may be able to achieve our goals faster and more completely by using a better approach than we do today. It would be a tremendous partnership, providing us a complete picture of our options, choices, and current situation. And our corporate world could further expand to include employees, customers, and our computers, all interacting to create a more balanced emotional and factual customer experience. 

 

1. Reynolds, Emily. “The Agony of Sophia, the World’s First Robot Citizen Condemned to a Lifeless Career in Marketing.” WIRED. June 1, 2018. 

2. 2001: Space Odyssey. Deactivation of HAL9000. ()

3. McKay, Tom. “No, Facebook Did Not Panic and Shut Down an AI Program that Was Getting Dangerously Smart.” Gizmodo. July 31, 2017. 

4. Griffin, Andrew. “Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Robots Shut Down after They Started Talking to Each Other in Their Own Language.” The Independent. July 31, 2017. 

5. Asimov, Isaac. 3 Laws of Robotics.

Please read before you send me that unsolicited sales LinkedIn email.

 

These days on LinkedIn, I get 2-3 messages each day. I know, that makes me sound popular, but I'm not. I'm getting messages from people who overtly want to covert me into a lead, not by people who authentically want to get to know me and what I do.

Sigh. I feel like they see me as a walking dollar sign.

After I get over my frustration of being objectified, I realize that these types are missing the point of what networking is, nevermind LinkedIn. 

I joined LinkedIn for a number of reasons:

• To stay current with my network and informed of what they are doing
• To build relationships with other professionals and discover their contributions (and how we could collaborate)
• To learn about new methodologies, ideas, and innovations
• To share my resume so people know what I do and how I've contributed to companies

Notice, I never joined LinkedIn to receive advertising or hear about new products or services.

I understand that you need to network to get new business. But great networkers don't network only to get business; they network to meet new people and see how they can help them. They offer information to help people solve a problem. Or they just have a conversation and listen to them, getting to know them as a person.

You could say that networking is synonymous with relationship building.

The motive behind someone networking is completely different than the motive of a sales person. And if someone is purely selling, you can feel the motive right away. Someone who wants to get to know you often says it through actions and words. But if you get 5+ sales emails on LinkedIn each day, I think you lose your sensibility to read between the lines to identify a motive. I mean, it's almost inevitable. You get worn out being objectified as that walking dollar sign.

I used to network often on LinkedIn and at local Meetups and organization meetings. I stopped when I was working on my second Master's. It was difficult to commit to attend an event when I had school work looming in the background of my mind. Usually, school won my attentions. After I graduated, I realized how much I changed as a person and how I view business. I didn't know where I fit in anymore, nevermind how I could help clients. I started working on a book, which was just as time consuming as school, and also prevented me from attending. And considering that I'm still trying to discover where I fit into the DFW area and beyond, I'm hesitant to commit to much. It has been hard, but I'm getting there.

However, before I start to sell my services to anyone I meet, I try to make sure I have some type of relationship with them. I want to know how I could help someone else achieve their goals and see if they can help me in some way too. And if not, I figure something will work itself out in the future so we can help each other. I have a different motive.

If you reach out to anyone cold without a relationship, they probably won't buy your products and services after the first email. Building a relationship takes time. You want to see if there is a fit between companies and personalities. But most importantly, your prospective customer needs to have the problem that you solve. And it is rare that this happens after that cold-call email. What's more common is that you meet someone, you click, and later (3 days, 3 months, or up to 3+ years later) you discover that yes, this is the right time to work together. There's no immediate sale. 

A sale right after the first email to a new customer is like a romantic comedy. It doesn't happen in real-life.

I did have two interactions recently where I wanted to talk to the people who Inbox'd me:

• One woman was promoting a remote worker site and she asked to meet with me to see if there were synergies. Yes, she wanted to know who I was and what I was like as a person. And she had an awesome profile picture that was engaging, energetic, and it felt like she was interested to talk - and I wanted to listen. Her product sounds fantastic and she sounds super interesting. So I look forward to that call.
• I got a great email and sales brochure from a company that works on podcasts. It told me the cost, what they do, the value they provide - everything. It clearly showed me how they could help me. And how they got my attention: it looks like you have your sh*t together. That's their target. I'm not ready to work with them now, but when I'm ready to do a regular podcast (which will be soon, after this book), I will be.

I respond to few sales emails these days because they have become noise. It's sad. I really do want to understand what you do. But more than that, I want to know why I should care about what you do. I want to feel the passion of what you do like you and understand the value you'll provide me if we collaborate. Those two emails provided passion. That motivated me to take the next step.

Have I met some great people through LinkedIn? Yes. And we've had great conversations. One in particular was with a great guy working on AI in the midwest. We had an awesome conversation that went well over time because it was just fun. If I'm working on an AI project, I'll call him. 

I have sent legitimate networking requests to people to have a conversation and get to know them - like truly get to know them - only to be ignored because they think that I want something. I can understand that perspective, especially in a world where people are sending sales emails to people all day, using the guise that they want to get to know you, only to turn around and sell you something.

I tried to reach out to meet new people last year and one person I tried to introduce myself to told me as much: "I'm unemployed and I have no work for you." I was ready to respond back: "Maybe I could help connect you to find work?" But I decided to keep it to myself because it seemed that she just wasn't interested in talking to anyone new at all and I'd become a troll, and I'm not a troll. I really wanted to get to know this person and see how we could help each other. But alas! I was placed into the ad-bin bucket and I doubt I was going to come out any time soon.

If this trend of LinkedIn becoming an advertising service continues, we're going to lose the great platform it is for networking. Maybe we need more classes to understand what networking is so we all understand how it really works?

Again (for those in the back), networking is about relationship building. That's the motive behind it. It's not selling. It's not "give to get." It's not about people signing up for your services on the first ping. It's not about getting appointments to later sell to someone. It's a way to help people, provide advice, share insights, and discover new ideas. I enjoy networking to get to know other people, understand their passions, and from there, we can see how we can help each other.

This leads to my favorite, yet overused, image that I probably don't have rights to use, but I'll use anyway because it's' great:

 

So you have been warned: If you approach me to get my business without a relationship and I sense that your motive is purely to sell me something, I'll send you right to this post.

Imagine what could happen if we were all more engaged with each other and understood each other's businesses? No, I probably don't want your product. But if you are curious about what I'm doing and how I am contributing to the business community (because I can guarantee I am curious about your business and how you contribute), I'll be more open to who you are and what you do. And then we can see if we can collaborate on a project, or just be experts together. And then we build a network of our own, together, on LinkedIn.

 

 

Wish your customers a Happy Valentine's Day and tell them that you love them

(Ok, maybe appreciate them is a little less over the top.)

In business, we are trained to keep emotions out of the workplace. Don't cry. Don't be too happy. Don't be too excited. But is that realistic because we are, well, people?

People have emotions. That's just a fact of life. And people are driven by feelings, emotions, and the desire for meaning in their lives when they make decisions. They also make decisions based on self-interest. We like to think that people choose based on facts and numbers and the right options, but they don't. We are one great big ball of emotion and feeling tied to our biology.

(Don't believe me? Check out my masterclass webinar, Emotional Engagement: The magic ingredient in any customer experience, and you'll discover what Antonio Damasio, Viktor Frankl and Srini Pillay share in common. And it's how they have observed scientifically how people make decisions based on feelings and emotions.)

This is why listening is so important and we need to engage our customers at a deep emotional level (see my presentation from Big Design 2018: Listening: Three Shifts You Can Make to Connect and Build Empathy with your Customer). To connect, we need to listen and understand someone else's perspective. And it's through this listening and undestandimg that we can build emotional connections that show our love.

Heck, just being curious can change your attitude towards someone else from being judgemental and critical to understanding and loving.

This Valentine's Day, remember that your customer is a person, and probably could use a little love too. You don't need to get out the flowers and candy for them, but expressing your gratitude for their presence in your business is a great way to express your love for them. They may see being told "I love you" a little over the top, but a quick note today or tomorrow to say "I appreciate your business and working with you" may do the trick.

Happy Valentine's Day! And I appreciate you too! 

Making an aging car a gem: give your customer meaning and a vision of the future for a better customer relationship

Meet my car, Putt-Putt. I love my car. I bought it in 2011 when it was 4 years old. It's now 12 years old - halfway to being considered a classic car in Texas. Driving it gives me a lot of joy. I mean, who doesn't love a convertible, especially a cute little red convertible with racing stripes!

I get my car fixed at a MINI dealership in Dallas. MINI Coopers are basically lite-versions of BMWs that truly require experts to fix. Sure, the repairs can be costly, but they do a great job to keep my mini-driving machine on the road.

The dealership always encourages me to fix my car, which could be seen as a blessing and a curse. When my car was between 7-10 years old, it required a number of repairs and replacement parts, becoming unsustainable to keep. I started wondering if 5+ years of car payment commitment for a new car would have been less than the repair costs each month. But what stopped me short of buying a new car was that I would miss Putt-Putt after a few days of a loaner. Of course I wondered if the dealership liked my car because it generated revenue. We are taught that car dealerships can't be trusted because they always have a motive to make as much money as possible and don't really care about their customers. With this stigma, why should anyone trust them? Especially me because I know so little about how cars work. I may know how IT systems work, but I can't figure out how an engine works for the life of me! If there is a problem with my car, I usually have no idea if it is a legitimate concern--or not. And, sadly, I don't have a lot of people to consult to help determine that.

The auto industry is typically focused on persuading customers to purchase new cars every few years and rarely encourages repairs to keep what we have. We are sold visions of new technology and improvements, not how our current car can work better for us as-is. When my car was aging, some friends and family encouraged me to buy a new car and asked if I was "afraid" of getting rid of my current car. I wasn't. I just liked my car and wanted to keep it. But there is no narrative or story in the auto industry to support that idea or make it a "cool" behavior. Trying to keep an older car working is seen as a fools errand.

Luckily, the dealership I go to for my MINI has a different view and vision about their cars. They are helpful, understanding, and want to do the right thing for their customers. I trusted them, but the dealership stigma was always underlying each conversation I had with them. In a way, I trusted them only so much. What made it worse - I always wondered if they were right because I didn't know about cars enough.

Recently, when my car started making a funny noise, I brought it into the shop and it was diagnosed with a couple of problems - one was that it needed a new gas pump (a problem I thought I fixed, but unfortunately didn't.). The other was what I considered to be "car athritis" - the plastic/rubber padding between the metal joints was wearing down.

I was working with a new customer account manager. What surprised me was that we started the conversation about the repair cost with a candid conversation regarding if it was worthwhile to for me to buy a new car. The repairs were expensive, but I still considered them cheaper than a monthly car payment for 5 years, even for a used car. At that point, I didn't have a major car repair in over 3 years, so all things considered, this wasn't that bad. And I was afraid that I couldn't find a new car like my car. 

During the conversation he dropped what I never thought I would hear: my car was in phenomenal shape. Apparently, most people's cars have dials that are yellowed, clogged engines, and convertibles that don't work. He told me that my engine was clean, the body is almost brand new, the convertible works with no damage. It was a great car and I'd be crazy to replace it.

And since we are trained NOT to believe anyone who works at a dealership, I wasn't sure if I should believe him. So I did a little online research, and he was right. Compared to other cars its age, it's in great condition. Then I did a little more research and discovered that a car becomes a classic car in Texas when it is 25 years old. My car is halfway there. So given that it's in great shape, I had my new long-term plan for the car - I was going to keep the car and try to make it a classic rather than buy a new one in a few years because the car was just old. Keeping my car was no longer a "fools errand." It actually wasn't such a bad idea.

Shortly after that repair, my car suddenly wouldn't start. The electricity worked and went on, but the car wouldn't turnover. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. The guys from my boxing class couldn't figure out what was wrong. The towing guy couldn't figure out what was wrong. But what was most disconcerting: the car dealership couldn't figure out what was wrong.

After a week or two, they discovered the problem and fixed the car. I was worried about the cost to fix the problem, but mostly if they could fix it at all. I started looking for a new car, just in case. Needless to say, I couldn't find a replacement. But fortune was on my side and they made sure that the car worked great - better than it ever has before. It was during this last 2 months of repairs that my stigma left and my perspective of them permanently changed. Why? 

• They gave me a vision for my car's future - and my future as a customer - besides replacing it with a new car. This was the pivotal point of the switch in my attitude towards them. When I heard that my car was in such good shape that I should keep it, it got me to wonder about making it a classic car. I got a new way to see my car, besides it being old and needing work. I now see it as a gem it is; not an aging dinosaur to be retired.
• Transparency, accountability, and honesty. Multiple transparent discussions to understand what was happening with my car at any point in time made it easier for me to trust them. I knew they were looking out for the best interest. Stigmas are hard to overcome, especially with the auto industry. There is little trust and every transaction is perceived to be a way for a dealership to make money. But if you are getting value for your repairs, it's better to go to the dealership and get the updates done right than have to get them redone later. And if they are honest with you - that helps!
• They cared. This happened with the dealership from day one buying the car. When I would be presented with bad news or notified of delays, the people I worked with were genuine. To be authentic means that they were being themselves, but to be genuine means that they are truly caring and make sure that I knew what they were feeling. Whenever I brought my car into the shop, they truly felt bad about what was happening and wanted to help me as much as possible. This is why I trust them with my car. They truly meant what they were saying.

Not only did they give me a vision for what I want to do with my car beyond buy a new one, they also gave me a vision of the type of relationship I should have with them in the future. It's candid and it's long-term. They helped me see my car's value and why these repairs matter. It's not to further their revenue and keep the stigma of car dealerships alive and well. It's to keep a MINI Cooper that's in good shape on the road longer and keep a happy client who will gladly refer business. That's what's most important.

We'll often undervalue the notion of giving customers a vision of what their purchase will bring them. We'll assume that once they purchase an item, they are in the replacement lifecycle. But there has to be a more meaningful solution than that. What else can a customer aspire to as a vision, a goal? Give that to your customer and you'll get more than loyalty. You'll get a business partner for life.

 

 

Why emotional engagement in any expeirence creates magic?

Sometimes in business, we forget that we are interacting with people. And people have feelings, emotions, needs, and desires. We aren't robots. 

You can create a simple interaction to collect customer information and automate a workflow, but if that automation doesn't benefit customers or employees in some way, they just won't do it. And receiving a PDF of a white paper or webinar doesn't necessarilly benefit a customer. Customers are smart. They know that to get that white paper PDF they need to provide their contact information to become a lead. They also know that the white paper you are offering is about your product and how you think about your solution. They don't know if it will help them, really.  This is why the adoption of any technical intiaitive comes from people feeling motivated to do what you are asking. And the motivation to make any decision is not seated logic, but in emotion.

That may sound too strongly counter to how you believe decision making happens. But it's true. Decisions are often seated in emotion and people use facts to make their emotional decisions appear to be logical. (If you often wonder why some people's decisions don't sound logical, this is why.)

Further, decisions, no matter how mundane, are seated in change. Even getting up out of bed and starting your day or choosing to eat a meal is a type of change. You are going from being nice cozy warm to starting your day or hungry to satisfied. And a motivation for change is that what you are doing right now doesn't feel great; you change to feel better. You may get up to go to work and earn money to afford rent because you believe staying in bed means you are lazy; or you eat becuase you are hungry and cranky and that doesn't feel very good.

At least, that's how Dr. Srini Pillay sees it. One of his key discussion topics is change. He claims that change happens when you know that staying where you are is more painful than doing something different. This explains why alcoholics needs to hit rock bottom before they change. It's comfortable and manageable to continue a habit or addiction until you realize that it's disasterous for you personally. Unfortunately, that realization may not happen until you are close to death. 

As another example, people adopt using the Internet because being offline entirely makes life more challenging than buying a smart phone and downloading and interacting with various apps and media to stay connected with other people. There are so many apps to choose from and so much media to consume. It's overwhelming.

But it's not just media options that are overwhelming. There are dozens of product brands in the world, too. People are bombarded each day with thousands of marketing messages, all targeted at grabbing their dollars. As a response, we ignore them and tune them out of our lives, becoming immune to their messaging. Well, we at least are immune to the messages that don't connect to us emotionally. We connect to the brands that resonnate most with our lives, our choices, and our perception of ourselves.

So how do you connect with your audience to take your marketing to that next level? I created a Masterclass webinar that has some suggestions for that. 

By outlining how people make decisions, driven by biology (which translates into feelings and emotions), the desire for connection, and self-interest, we can use that knowledge to gain insights into what may be driving out customers to do what they do. Certainly each individual is slightly different in their personal motiviations, but there are key areas in your business where you can keep your customer engaged or watch them fade away. 

We may have created the perfect textbook marketing program or product user experience, but somehow, it's not creating the results we'd like. Many times, the problem isn't the program. It's how the company is engaging with the customer - the message or tone it uses or the emotion it invokes.

In the webinar that I created in November, I show how Dr. Antonio Damasio's work connects decision making to feelings (and therefore emotions), how Dr. Viktor Frankl's work connects our innate drive to find meaning in everything, and Dr. Srini Pillay's work connects decision making to change. Oh yes, and let's throw in a little self-interest for good measure.

 

Does this approach really create magic? One client I worked with got over 150 email subscribers to his newsletter within 1 week of launching his email marketing program. Another colleague listened to the webinar before promoting a speaking engagement in a new region and with this knowledge, filled all available registration spots. It was one of the best results she got for an event. I presented this at a company and got them to reconsider who their customers are - not as a target market, but as people. I'm waiting to hear about the impact there.

Further, Harvard Business Review recently issued a video that summarized a study about connecting emotionally with your customers. It drastically improved one retailer's bottom line. Further, researchers originally published an article promoting this idea in 2015. This approach to solve what seems like a complex customer problem where customers are just "stuck," not purchasing and not taking action, works. 

Such results come from building relationships with customers - not just talking to them about whatever topic interests them that day, posting about your company's announcements or interests, or promoting gimmicks to get an email address or make sales projections.

There is a process to use and a workbook with questions to consider each step of the way. Some questions may seem to overlap, but if you consider these items at different steps, you may have a different perception of your customers - and your business. And from this work, you can create programs and products that help customers solve the problems, do what they need to do, and get more work done. 

I invite you to check out the Masterclass webinar landing page to learn more about it and how it could help you. And if you would prefer to work on this in a more structured way, I do offer a coaching package as well. 

Why do we need to integrate emotions and compassion into our experiences?

Business is based on the relationships bewteen people. For years, business occured through conversations, agreeements, and handshakes. The Mom and Pop businesses thrived on conversations, loyalty, and general goodwill. With the rise of automation, we were able to streamline conversations and transactions in real-time. But what happened in the process?

 

 

We put machines in the middle, removed direct interactions between people, and got hyper-focused on results.  

 

In this new, atuomated world, we often forget that business is about people. We get focused on the outcome of business relationships, or revenue, and dismiss the value of relationships - the actions and opportunities that get us there - because they aren't tangible or meauresureable. But are measureable results all that is necessary for business? What about strong relationships and partnerships? Can't you measure them too? (And yes, you can measure their effectiveness...more about that soon!)

 

In this drive for automation, we've learned that companies no longer only create products. They produce solutions to people’s problems. And customers only purchase if they realize they have the problem a company solves and see the solution as something that they need to live a better life. 

 

Customers are key parts of our company’s ecosystem because they pay a company's bills. They are probably more important than any shareholder or other stakeholder. And with the rise of automation, they are more included in a company’s operations than ever before.

 

That's why we need to consider how to make experiences more human.  

 

How do we engage best with customers so we stop seeing them as walking revenue sticks, but as people? How do we interact with people and build a relaitonship? Journeys are a great way to get us there, but they illustrate a finite path to purchase or to use a product or during use, and people don’t always work that way. People are messy. They jump around and don’t always make linear decisions. This is why AIs can't be programmed to follow a simple linear conversation path unless they are driving the conversation to keep it linear. People aren’t computers.

 

This means that we need to humanize experiences again. And the only way to do this is to get back to engaging with people emotionally and with empathy and compassion. But how do you do this?

 

Sales knows, but I'm not sure marketing and product development does. Wtih all of the innovations in personas and research, we should, but it seems that there is work to be done to put the pieces together and engage with people emotionally - not just transactionally.

 

This is why I'm fascinated with listening and how to develop emotional engagement. This is the work involved in customer expeirence - how to enage with customers beyond transactions and journeys. How do you build a relationship with customers? How do your employees interact with customers in your company's ecosystem? That’s the next area of growth for companies and their brands - evolve to becomes a community of employees and customers.

 

Latest resources:

• Listening talk (short): Listening with Empathy to Connect with Customers
• Listening talk (long): Listening: Three Shifts You Can Make to Connect and Build Empathy with your Customer
• Webinar: Emotional engagement: The magic ingredient in any customer experience
• For solopreneurs and early-stage start-ups: coaching
• Gearmark Community - Experience Club

 

Designing while grateful.

Thanksgiving is my absolutely favorite holiday. It's not just because I love to cook. Ok, maybe it's a strong reason. But I love this holiday because I like to reflect on my life and what I'm thankful for - the people, my health, work, just everything. Life is pretty wonderful.

I am grateful and feel blessed that I chose the career path I did in customer experience. I feel like my life is a present every day. I get to work on innovative projects with smart people and develop solutions for people's problems. And I'm encouraged to consider multiple approaches and options to discover what's best. It really is a great job. In what other profession do you get to help people complete tasks in their lives, help businesses engage with customers in a better way, and be paid to be creative with crazy ideas? 

This is why I'm bothered when I see designers being snarky. I understand why. First, there is no excuse for poor design. There are too many great designers out there to help you create a usable product. A designer spending an hour on a product can improve its experience 100%. Great design doesn't cost that much. Second, it's easy to be critical of ourselves and others when it comes to design. Hindsight is 20/20 and if we could all go back in time to create a different product than what we did, we probably would. Or we would take a different approach entirely, making and experience simpler. Third, if our egos are involved in our designs, then no one designs better than we do ourselves. I have been in too many arguments with other designers, not about the design approach, but an argument closer to, "I would have done it THIS way."  I used to joke that information architects (what a UX designer was called 500 years ago) were like Betta fish (or Siamese Fighting Fish). You can only have 1 per bowl. So only 1 IA per team. And don't question their design or approaches. 

I'm always nervous when I design a new approach for an app. I want everyone to like it and find it useful or helpful in some way. I'm always looking for experiences to be innovative, yet familiar. And I have to remind myself, how people see my design, my work, is not a reflection of me. My work reflects my understanding of what will help the business and the customer. I could have misunderstood a strategy or approach. Or I missed a way to simplify some steps. In the end, I'm helping people complete a task to help them in their lives and helping the business help their customers. I'd say I'm less a designer and more a facilitator. 

There's this weird legacy belief about "the hero designer," who becomes a celebrity for having "the" innovation that rocks the world. I remember being at a Design Management Institute conference over 10 years ago where one of the speakers said that such an idea was dead. With the rise of interactive design and automation, you can't create anything alone. This is true. I think this also speaks to the elusive unicorn - designer, developer, UX strategist, all-in-one. Some exist, but some debate that maybe not. Or that it is difficult to do all things well. Either way, I would argue that design was never about heroism. Even in the "Mad Men" advertising era, great graphic design relied on great copy, good account management, honest customer ad testing, and clients who knew their business and markets.

We were fed a myth. 

Instead, I believe that heroism in experience design comes from being that facilitator in the background, listening, observing, and discovering trends in the conversation. It's not always the fabulous, glamorous person who makes everything shiny and spectacular or fills a room with charisma. It's the person who makes an experience come alive by communicating well with the entire team, making sure everyone is aligned and the business and customers have been heard and understood. The great experience designers often sit in the background, helping the team make a vision real, leading the charge through influence.

Effective experience design helps a team collaborate, bring a vision to life, and enables everyone to be more productive.  

So this Thanksgiving, maybe we designers and strategists need to look at our jobs differently. Rather than be the "fabulous designer creating," what if we were facilitating change, solving people's problems, and helping visions become real? We shouldn't dismiss the fact that as business facilitators, we are helping professionals ease into this new world of automation and customer interaction. We are working at the cutting edge of a new world, a new age. That's a wonderful opportunity. I know I'm truly thankful and grateful to be part of it.

You're invited to the new Gearmark community

 

A few years ago, I met entrepreneurs at networking events who were creating exciting new products. I realized during these conversations that many could have used a consultant with user experience and marketing expertise like me on their team. I think these entrepreneurs did too.

 

We'd have great conversations brainstorming ideas and solutions. Many of these founders were changing industries. Personally, I love working on projects like these, create a product from simply an idea and see it go to market and make money. However, the end result of these conversations was often the same. After about 10-15 minutes of intense brainstorming, right where the boundary between free ideas and paid, implementable ideas lies, I would see their faces change. Excitement, hope, and promise faded to silence. Often, these founders had little to no budget available for my services. They were nice people, so rather than pretend that there was an opportunity for me and get more free ideas out of me, they found a gracious way to exit the conversation, suddenly needing a beer or a sandwich. We'd connect on LinkedIn, but that was that.

 

After these conversations, I often felt that I failed. But I didn't feel that I failed as a business owner. In business you want to find people who can pay you. I felt that I failed as a person who couldn't help them achieve their dream and help us both succeed. I felt that my design mind should have been able to create a solution for this problem, but I wasn't sure what would work best.

 

After about 6 months of these incidents, I knew that I needed to offer more than consulting services for Gearmark. Something more economical and scalable.

 

 

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together"

- Origin unclear. Possibly African or general Internet proverb.

 

I first encountered this quote at an Agile conference in a session about teams. I think it's overused because it's just too accurate. Teamwork is always the answer. Even in learning.

 

 

Where did this community idea come from? 

I tried to create a user experience course for managers and directors twice over the past few years. I really didn't know what I was doing. I tried. I failed. I wanted to share my ideas, but I wasn't communicating them as well as I could, and I didn't understand how video really worked at the time. Until I took a course in public speaking, I didn't know how little I understood how to give a proper talk. 

 

But hey, I tried! 

 

So now I'm trying again - in a different way.

 

There was one lesson I got from HP that I will always carry with me: consensus and collaboration is key for anyone to achieve a goal. We all help each other, even though the message may not come from the expected source. Sometimes HBR resonates better with people than McKinsey or MIT Tech Review or someone's blog post. It matters less where you learned what you did; what matters is that this learning, this message, helped you achieve you goal.

 

This is why I want to create a community.

 

Not only is it great for the members to learn in a community environment, but I learn from them too. We are all learning and sharing knowledge to help each other succeed. On all teams, everyone has something to contribute. A link. An idea. A thought. A video. Sometimes, a comment can give you a new perspective that you never considered and inspire you to finish a project.

 

 

Here's how I describe the Gearmark community on the site.

 

The Gearmark Community is a place where you can learn how to create great customer relationships through exceptional customer experiences. The best learning happens from others.  

 

Knowledge comes from everyone sharing their experiences, information, and insights. Why learn alone when we can learn together?

 

But it's not up to the community alone to do this. We'll also be available to answer questions and participate in conversations to provide help and advice.

 

Who would benefit most from the community?

Anyone who feels that their business isn't meeting its potential, but they aren't sure why.

Anyone working alone or who feels like they are working in a bubble when creating a customer experience.

Anyone working in a company that doesn't support this style of thinking, but feels this is the right approach.

The Gearmark Community is a great place to find other like-minded professionals who want to create great experiences. Connect with other marketers, sales, UX and CX professionals to stay current about trends, results, and what's coming next.

 

Let's learn together so we all win.

Special introductory rate.  

Join the Gearmark Community.

 

If you are an entrepreneur or solopreneur who feels you need more focused guidance, I offer a special startup package. I won't be writing your marketing plan, but I will help you identify elements that you can use to build a better customer relationship and get you started on your business. Email me or contact me through social media for more information. 

 

What else is coming soon near you? 

I plan on creating more ways for leaders to learn about customer experience. So much is coming in 2019 - it's crazy!

• My new book, Revenue or relationships? Win both. A customer experience primer to shift your perspective of business, will be released in early 2019.
• A new webinar to complement the book (of course!)
• I'll be launching a 4 week course in February, What are your customers telling you that you aren’t hearing? This course will look at how your metrics are giving you a wealth of customer information - if you are listening.

 

 

Me and my tablet. 2 days working on my tablet and I missed my laptop. Here's why.

My iPad. I love it, but maybe it's not meant for work prime-time. Yet.  

For a while now, I have been wondering when the laptop would become dated technology and we would all switch to tablet-like devices with keyboards. Cost-wise, it would be another move to make computing more accessible. Usability-wise, I really enjoy the experience where you can tap a screen and type. I got an HP laptop a while back that had this functionality and it was a fantastic user experience. I adapted to it right away. I have been wondering when Apple would include this feature in its own devices and create a type of hybrid tablet/computer experience.

My tale starts with me needing a new laptop for work. My previous one had sticky-key-itis. Every day, a new key would stick on the keyboard and I'd type random characters at random times, from spaces, special letter characters for foreign languages, all sorts of things. It's not like I spilled anything on the keyboard. In fact, it was quite the opposite. When the keys would come off, there would be a bunch of dust with the rubber-plastic stuck to the key mechanism as if it were squished. Everything was super dry and sticky from plastic being dusty in occasional damp air. Nothing sugary, sticky sweet was there. 

During this process to get the new computer configured, I had to wait for the IT guys to transfer my files. I figured this would be a great time for me to get current and see what the experience is like to use a tablet only for a few days.

The verdict: It was not entirely productive.

Here are the apps and sites I used and why my experience was challenged.

General insight: What made the tablet work experience shocking in general was the degraded experience that many apps transferred to a tablet. To me, a tablet is nothing more than a smaller laptop. A user should be able to do anything he does on a laptop on a tablet. But that's not exactly what happened. It was as if the tablet was considered to be a sub-par device to these companies, which isn't true. In my view, it's computing-lite. Not computing-none. Everything should work the same as a laptop/desktop more or less, or at least that was my expectation since tablets are a 10+ year old technology.

Selecting text. What a pain in the a**. I'd tap, go to select the string I wanted, and either get too much text string or not enough (we're talking paragraph or letters). I prefer this experience on my phone. Why not let me tap to select a word and then select more or less? So annoying. I don't understand how my phone has a better experience of this than my tablet. It's the same software managing the experience. Ridiculous.

Powerpoint. I use Powerpoint often to summarize issues and make my ideas and proposals simpler to explain. It's one of my go-to apps. The problem was that I couldn't just tap the screen and edit slides. A slide had default text that instructed me to double tap it to edit the text. To me, that made no sense. I would think single tap for text, double tap for formatting. However, if I would tap onscreen, I'd get a popup that would make me select "Edit Text" or other key Powerpoint functionality to edit a slide. It was a complicated experience. I also work in tables often in Powerpoint. At times, I couldn't select text in the table for the same reason. I'd tap the square and it would highlight the square for formatting rather than editing text. I finally had enough and decided to wait for my computer to be ready to update my client slides, nevermind my webinar slides.

Microsoft Word. I use this often on the tablet already. This experience worked as expected. You tap, write, and edit. It's actually pretty easy.

Dropbox with Microsoft. I like how this works. Microsoft got it right with autosave using their app with Dropbox. Now if they could only do this for files saved to the laptop/desktop through their apps (they still don't have this down right). I found it interesting that they couldn't get the laptop file autosave function working properly but they can manage it for the app/Dropbox experience, even on the laptop. The inconsistency between experiences blew my mind. I expected consistency across the board - all file sources, all platforms. Again, this is 10+ year technology. They should have worked this out by now.

Evernote. Another go-to app. I love how they setup their experience so the tablet app and desktop app are the same. It's a perpetual keeper.

Email. It was functional. No real complaints here. 

Web apps like PivotalTracker: Not even usable on a tablet. I would type and the text would appear after a long lag time - like 30 seconds. I had to get the app for future use. And I'm not sure why the Web app was that challenging to use on the tablet for both Safari and Chrome. I also had fewer features accessible to me. For example, I couldn't copy the story link to use to associate with story text in an email. It was just difficult all around. Disappointing for a software development company that works on an Agile product. You'd think they would have worked this out.

Google mail. My primary complaint: why couldn't I add bullets to an email? I had a horrible time with this in the app and on Chrome for tablet. I couldn't format text beyond bold or italic. Again, the same question - why is the browser app experience that different on a tablet? It makes no sense and I'd expect better from Google. They have a sea of usability experts there - why allow such different experiences to exist on platforms. The phone is great, the desktop is great - why should tablet be any different?

Adobe Comp. Interesting app! I like the idea of it, but I had a hard time drawing, tapping, and dragging. Maybe I'm too used to InDesign and Photoshop? I need to give it more of a chance I think.

What did I learn? 

• We need to make sure that any Web apps we develop can be used on a tablet. The expected experience should be the same between desktop and tablet. There is no excuse anymore for a different experience given a tablet is really nothing more than a smaller laptop with less processing power. 
• Make sure that the tablet device will support easy access to the main function someone wants to have. For a slide, the main function is NOT editing the design; its updating text. Make that simple. At the same time, allow someone to easily edit the design, but don't make it harder to edit text than necessary.
• Don't create web apps that require such extreme resources that using it on a tablet makes it not usable. Any app should be usable on a tablet through a browser. If there is that much complexity to the app that it is difficult to use on a tablet browser, revisit the app architecture (front and back ends).
• I tried to design on the tablet but it wasn't a pleasant experience. Lots of tapping, hard to grab and item and move it. There still is work to be done for tap and hold design.

All in all, tablet experiences still have a long way to go before they are really mainstream. I can see why we still need the laptop. Actually, I was overjoyed when the Apple repair store told me my computer was ready. I couldn't wait to get my computer to start working again like a normal person. 

Although I love my laptop, I also love my tablet. It lets me write in cafes or brainstorm on the go. I also get to watch my movies on it and take a whole library of books with me wherever I go. But for the time being, maybe that's as good as it gets until the software catches up and I can be more productive and truly work anywhere.