Are you asking the right questions?
Whichever your job is, you are interacting with customers. You are interacting with customers unless you sit behind the screen all day and speak to no one -and I mean, speak to one via any means of communication.
Customers could be internal or external. In both cases, you work to gain their trust.
If you haven’t established and gained your customers’ trust, your day-to-day job wouldn’t be so much fun.
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Simple Language. Simple Name. Simple Font.
Simple Language.
When I joined consulting, one of the very first Directors I worked with used to say the word “pragmatic” a lot. “We need to be pragmatic”, he says. When I heard it, I was OK, interesting, and thought, “Are you just trying to say be practical?”
If you have ever been in a business meeting and heard people throwing in some complex words trying to sound smart or read a business report where they were also trying to seem clever, you might relate to the below.
“The following communication sent out by a manager to his team, as reported in the New York Post in October 2006: ‘We’re leveraging our assets and establishing strategic alliances to create a robust knowledge center - one with a customer-ruled business structure using market-leading technologies to maximize our human systems.'” - Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion by Noah Goldstein ,Robert B. Professor Cialdini, Steve J. Martin
Consumer behavior varies from one culture to another — both offline and online.
Learning about different cultures is usually associated with travel, but also, the more you interact with people from different cultures, regardless of whether you have actually visited their country, the more exposure you get.
People introduce you to their culture.
Culture is the study of social behavior and norms.
Culture is not just a different language. It’s not just about the location on the map or the music they like to listen to. It’s not just about whether they prefer to have tea or coffee in the morning.
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Whether it’s an event, a workshop or a training session, having no shows is a challenge to many entrepreneurs, event organizers, and trainers.
They put in the effort. They carefully craft the messaging for their advertised content. They write implicit descriptions. They educate their customers. They even confirm their attendance on the phone, and still, a big percentage of those customers wouldn’t show up. They wouldn’t show up. They wouldn’t even send a message apologizing for not coming.
Those event organizers get frustrated, they get disappointed… and then ask themselves…
How can I make my customers commit?
I have some good news… and an answer to that question, of course using the principles of those consumer behavior studies that I am in love with.
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Let’s talk a little bit about customer service.
While it’s a very well-known trend to companies and service providers that now is the era on which they compete on customer experience, some of them still go out of their way to disappoint us, customers.
I wouldn’t say that this is the company’s strategy per se, but it’s more about the customer service agent that you end up dealing with.
I don’t know about you, but I personally like to avoid interactions with customer service as much as I can… and if I absolutely have to do it, I opt for the e-mail, online chat, etc. I don’t want to do the phone conversation. Maybe it’s because I am a millennial. Maybe not. It’ doesn’t matter. What matters is that the mere thought of having to repeat my story more than once turns me off. I had times on which I had to repeat the same complaint, like 5–10 times to different people, just to get my issue resolved.
That kind of interaction gets to you. It definitely gets to me. In fact, I resort to my mom in some situations because she has more patience than me when it comes to those customer service conversations. God bless her. Most of the time though I have to do it myself.
If I am lucky, I would be dealing with a professional who understands how to handle disappointed customers. For the most part, you call customer service either because 1. you have a complaint or 2. you are asking about some information.
… And here comes the challenge, if I end up with someone from customer service who practically doesn’t give a damn, then, I am screwed. I bet most of you could relate to that.
So, then comes a question.
How can you ensure the customer service agent would be cooperative and help you without driving you insane?
I recently learned a trick. Thanks to consumer behavior studies… and I am going to share it with you.
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Giving away free ‘bonuses’ could backfire.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post, 4 Words that will bring your sales to the next level. One of the words was the word “bonus”, which personally drives me insane. However, now, that I know about it, it might not work that well on me… or maybe not? I am not too sure about that.
In my post, I promised, that if I learn anything scientific about the word ‘bonus’, I would share it. I am not really sure why it works better on me than the word ‘free’, but here is an interesting find if you are a business owner and give away ‘bonuses’ to increase your sales.
It could backfire.
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Stories. Aren’t they incredible?
A story - you live in it, empathize with it and sometimes relate if it rings a bell.
Today, I am not going to talk about fictional stories, but rather stories told in a business context - or for that matter, one of my very own stories.
About five years ago I made a career shift from what we, consultants, call “industry” into management consulting. Consulting was my dream job and when I had an opportunity to jump in it, I took it and dived right into it. Consulting was my dream job for one simple reason:
You will constantly surprise yourself with what you are capable of.
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A few weeks ago I attended a training for leading successful engagements - and during that training, I learned about the psychology “run” test. A very eye-opening test and I am here to share it with you.
You see, self-development is an on-going process and I always think of myself as a WIP (work in progress). While learning about consumer behavior, I learned tricks that can help in self-development. At the end of the day, what motivates us as consumers, might motivate us as people.
In fact, one of the key concepts that are utterly used in marketing is scarcity. Do you know where else that works best? Dating. I am not only talking about self-development here, but relationship talk… and well, God knows, I am not by any means eligible to talk about this topic. However, it is a well-known theory, that when you are not that “available”, your partner finds you more attractive. Be it a woman or a man - the same theory applies.
So here I am, doing it the other way around. I learned something about self-development and I pretty much see how it impacts how you as a business owner could think of your customers.
What is it?
It’s called the run test.
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It seems like in every ‘business’ discussion, there is no escape to mentioning the emergence of technology and how it is currently changing the customer experience, let alone the future experience.
While I personally love technology and how it enabled me as a consumer, especially when it comes to saving my time, I still believe in the importance of the human factor.
I love it when I complete all the services online, and God only knows how much I hate calling customer service. I love when I buy heavy items online but hate it when I can’t return them.
I also love it when I interact with a friendly face, let’s say when buying coffee. Sometimes a simple hello, a smile and my misspelled name in a takeaway cup make my day.
Which reminds me to ask you…
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Some words trigger you — they excite you to the extent that you want to spend, right now, eagerly, whatever is in your pocket, or your credit card.
In his book, Brainfluence, Roger Dooley, mentions the magical power of some words on our brain. I could also say I recently discovered one word that works like magic. Read on to find out.
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