Tag Archive for: customer experience

[Intern Insight] Imagine the Future: Influencing Customer Behaviour: Lizard, Monkey, or Rookie

Understanding how people think, and why, can directly influence what they do and how they react to things. As a result of this, it’s important for businesses to learn to understand what influences customer behaviour, why, and how they can tap into it.

The Mechanics of Human Brain

An obsessive-compulsive lizard, an emotional monkey and a design-oriented rookie enter a clothing store during a winter storm.
The lizard says: ‘A warm coat.’
The monkey says ‘No. A fluffy coat.’
The rookie says: ‘A long sleeved, doubled layered coat, with a hoodie.’
The employee says: ‘We have all these features in this coat!’
The lizard, monkey, and rookie say: ‘BINGO!’

I bet you have no clue what I am talking about! It sounds like a really bad joke. Bear with me.

In previous articles, I discussed how I envisioned the retail industry to look like in the near and not so near future. In all these entries, the one challenge I always took into account was the fact that our environment was in constant motion, evolving.

Somehow, when we speak about the environment we always associate it with the external surroundings. However, we have another environment, a micro one, that changes at a very slow pace. But when it changes, humankind can only experience one thing… revolution.

I am talking about the human brain. It represents only 2% (Live Science, 2016) of our body mass, but consumes about 20% of our energy (Neuroscience Marketing, 2015). It is arguably the most complex system on Earth and the reason we are alive. So, how does it work? The brain is actually divided into three distinct parts:

  • The first part or the outer layer is called the neocortex (the new brain) or the ‘rookie’ in our case. It is in charge of designing our body according to the prototype code provided by our DNA. It starts from a common structure – after all, at conception all complex living creatures first look like a fish embryo (yes, even humans) – and then it adds specific functionalities (opposable thumbs, anyone?).
  • The second one is called the mammalian brain (the visceral brain) or the ‘monkey’. It is in charge of our basic functions such as thirst, hunger and regulates our emotional behaviour. It first developed in mammals around 150 million years ago, hence the name.
  • The third one and the core of our brain is the reptilian brain (R-complex in humans) or the ‘lizard’. It strongly resembles the brain structure of reptiles and it’s in charge of keeping us alive. It keeps us breathing, regulates our body temperature and controls our aggressive behaviour (flight or fight reflex) (Brain and Behaviour, 2017).

So, let’s try this again:

A customer enters a clothing store during a winter storm.
His survival brain says: ‘A warm coat.’
His emotional brain says ‘No. A fluffy coat.’
His higher-function brain says: ‘A long sleeved, doubled layered coat, with a hoodie.’
The employee says: ‘We have all these features in this coat!’
The customer says: ‘BINGO!’

Neuromarketing

Why did I go through the trouble of explaining that? It’s something to do with neuromarketing.

Neuromarketing is the point where human brain science meets marketing. If marketers tap into the secrets of human behaviour, which are regulated by the mechanics of the brain, new and wondrous things happen (Neuromarketing World Forum, 2016).

All this neuromarketing hype has brought to my attention that we are trying to find any kind of explanation of how customers behave. That includes the underlying pattern, and how to mimic the desired traits to trigger the purchasing action. So obviously, we have to look at who is in charge in our heads right now and who will take control in the future according to human evolution. Many specialists focus on the ‘lizard’. Why? Because the ‘lizard’ makes the vital decisions and we want our products and services to be vital for customers. And as the ‘lizard’ communicates the best through visual receptors, we bombard people with well-designed adds and splashes of colours to attract attention and create visual stimuli.

Of course, the ‘monkey’ and the ‘rookie’ also have their parts to play. Whatever we buy must serve a purpose (outside our own survival) and must encompass the necessary traits to fulfil this purpose – for business, for pleasure, for family, for work, etc.

Now, the ‘lizard’ is here to stay. Therefore, we must attract its attention first and foremost. That is the role of marketing. However, the purchasing decision is filtered through all three brains and I must say, the ‘rookie’ is in charge of this one. Let me make it visual for you.

When customers enter a store, and see the available selection of products – most of them would be a warm coat. So, if you have a warm coat for $50 and one for $500, the ‘lizard’ says: ‘Well, I am satisfied. What do you want monkey?’. Now, as we are such complex creatures we do seek the fulfilment of our emotional desires. If the coat is fluffy and offers comfort through its texture, the monkey will want it! But is this enough to buy it? What if both are warm and fluffy? Then the ‘rookie’ intervenes: ‘I have to pay bills, book a ticket for my holidays, buy a present for my mom, pay my school…”. (Honestly, at this point, my ‘monkey’ would say: ‘But it’s soooo fluffy!’ And it would have plausible chances of winning). It is quite simple.

The ‘lizard’ sees it.
The ‘monkey’ wants it.
The ‘rookie’ chooses it.

 

The Future of Customer Behaviour

The future retail industry must have a nice chit-chat with our ‘rookie’ brains and design their in-store processes to make this decision-making mechanism as easy as possible.

The hard part is already done. From all the multiple retailers offering the same range of products the customer entered in your store. So right now, all you need to do is to make the features, advantages and benefits of your products obvious enough in order for the consumer brain to have no doubts about the decision he is making.

Learning the secrets of customer behaviour gives an added advantage. It provides the path to one of the most desirable traits in customer service: personalization of the experience. And it’s so easy to do! Why? Because both your employees and customers are just people with brains. A company’s perspective is usually quite rigid when it comes to the human element, as people are more than people, they are resources.

Customers are divided into segments represented by personas Employees? Not really. They are almost faceless entities that must follow clear procedures. Ultimately, the real experience is that you have a ‘lizard’ brain talking to another ‘lizard’ brain. A ‘monkey’ brain feeling as intense as the other ‘monkey’ brain. A ‘rookie’ that analyses and provides logical information just like any other ‘rookie’. Brain to brain, customer and employees could have a wonderful interaction, provided they follow the same brainwave patterns.
Cognitive retailing is the future (Economic Times, 2016). It means that you are talking to the consumer on a higher level and not responding just to his basic needs. I think customers will appreciate that. To be able to do that you would need the insights that Big Data gathering can provide you but the funnel through which it has to go would still be human in origin for a long time to come. At the same time, this is what makes humans irreplaceable in the service context. Machines would not have the advantage of knowing how to engage the brain of customers. At the very least you would have a very distressed ‘monkey’ in that case.

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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Human Decency and the Customer Experience

This morning on the way into work, I was confronted with human decency.

After a rough start to the day – starting with my oversleeping – all I wanted was to buy my morning caffeine hit from the little coffee place where I get my wake-up call every morning.

I auto-piloted off the train and out of the station and headed towards caffeine. As I waited in line, coffee in hand, the gentleman in front of me glanced back and then told the cashier that he’d get my drink as well. I didn’t think I looked that tired, but maybe I did; it was one of those days.

Now. As a female, alone, and in public, there are several things that go through my head when something like this happens. My brain processes go roughly like this:

Brain: Wait what?
Voice: You don’t have to!…Are you sure?
Brain: What’s the catch?/I’m not going out with you./There has to be a catch, no one does stuff like this./Do I really look that tired?/Do I come across as being unable to afford my own coffee?/I’m offended/I’m flattered/I’m late! I don’t have time to be nicer!
Voice: Thank you!
Brain: Darn, I hope I expressed my thanks properly./Oh, he’s gone with no further queries or conversation./Now I feel guilty for doubting his motives, I hope he understands that I’m grateful./Faith in humanity restored.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times, or possibly of my inner cynic revealing herself because it’s too early in the morning and my collective consciousness has had a rough start. Truth is, I am grateful. Not just for the coffee, but for the fact that there are still people out there who believe in doing right.

Part of the problem with the world is that we’ve lost sight of each other as individual people. We’re all so caught up in our personal issues that we forget that we’re all part of the same world and we could all use a bit of human decency.

“Pay it forward,” the gentleman from this morning said to me. And I will.

Something else this experience highlighted was that one of the best customer service pointers you can have in your toolbox is simple human decency.

Empathy is one of those things we talk about a lot, but rarely practice. How much do we actually care that the customer who just came in had trouble parking? Or ran into an old friend just down the street? Be honest: we don’t actually care at all – we may listen, and nod and smile, but as soon as the customer’s out the door we’ll forget about their little experience. That’s just how humanity works.

I’m not suggesting that we take everyone’s stories home with us – that’s not healthy, but really listening to someone’s story gives you a deeper connection with that customer, and customer service is all about connections. Human decency is about how well we develop those connections and under what motives we form them.

The gentleman from this morning had nothing material to gain from buying my coffee for me – he wasn’t even the one doing the selling – but what he did prove was that a simple gesture of human decency completely changed my day. Apply that to customer service and you get a winning recipe. Showing people a personal touch, paying a little more attention to their needs, can make all the difference.

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[Intern Insight] Imagine the Future: The Transformation of Brick-and-Mortar Stores

In the previous articles in this ‘Imagining the Future’ series, I talked about technological advancements and how it may impact the retail industry. How it can help train employees, or establish the customers’ journey in stores. How it can offer detailed insights at a level previously impossible, and how that can that affect customization, which is so important.
In this article, I would like to imagine how the brick-and-mortar stores will be affected by these technological advancements. After all, if you ask a customer about their shopping experience the first thing that pops into their minds is still the last physical store they visited.
Let’s start with the beginning: What is the current state of the brick-and-mortar stores?
Well, they are still important, that’s for sure! How do I know? Look at Amazon! With pop-up stores and bookstores all across USA – and the new launch of Amazon Go – as a physical location, the largest online retailer has performed a reverse psychology on very unsuspecting customers [Source]! Sure, there are no cashiers and no check-outs, but the question remains:

‘Why does Amazon need to open a real store, in the real world?’

It turns out that customers are not as unsuspecting as we thought! One of their retail cravings is the experience, and nothing creates a better experience than something that reaches all our senses. We live in the real world and although the digital one offers many wonders, at the end of the day we go to sleep and wake up in the ‘here’ and ‘now’!
So what will the ‘here’ and ‘now’ look in the future?
Our lives are cyclical! We wake up, we go to sleep…every day! We look at the ‘kimonos’ from the Edo period and Alexander McQueen transforms them into the new ‘it’ in his ‘Haute-Couture’ Collection [Source]. We look at how food preparation 200 years ago, and Jamie Oliver starts advertising the benefits of growing your own food and eating local products [Source]! If those people from long ago could look at us they would think:

‘What’s so different?’

Would it be so surprising if, in the future, brick-and-mortar stores look just like they do now? Would have the ‘vintage’ feeling? With so many service interactions turning into digital experiences, at one point we will want to go back to the roots of what ‘service’ used to mean. That’s what Amazon is anticipating [Source].
When we analyse the retail brick-and-mortar landscape we notice that stores offer two types of experience designs – boutique self-standing stores, or as part of department stores. The first one offers the sense of exclusivity. ‘No other customer, but you, will ever experience this in-store journey! We are here to make your day special and unique!’. The other conveys the sense of choice.‘You can eat, you can drink, you can shop, you can go onto a roller-coaster! And you only have to move two feet to do these things!’

The truth is that brick-and-mortars must add multiple layers to create the level of complexity that a customer desires to experience. It’s like an onion. The customer enters and assesses the ‘atmosphere’ of the store, forms a first impression, filters the products available, analyses the services and after all this peeling, in the centre, the holy grail of all retailers – the Purchase!

In my opinion, this ‘onion’ is perpetual, simply because customers expect it, anticipate it and desire it! Whereas for the digital customers, if the buffering screen pops up you’ve lost all chance of Purchase!

The transformation of brick-and-mortar stores through technological advancements assumes that technology will help us create a better customer experience. For example, the insights provided by Big Data, as well by the biometrics that start being implemented [Source]. The augmented reality devices designed to help customers make a purchasing decision [Source]. However, the core customer journey will still take place in the brick-and-mortar stores. It’s like Disney, we come back again and again even after fifty years!

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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[Intern Insight] Imagining the Future: How Retail Industry Customization Might Evolve

The retail industry is by no means ‘new’ in the general economic landscape. Ever since humans became conscious, developed opposable thumbs and learned that they could use them to create tradable objects, retail started to ‘boom’. It evolved from the Neanderthal trading venison with Homo Sapiens for sturdier clubs, to the beautiful ball gowns tailored specifically for each lady in the glamourous court of France’s Louis XIV. What was the competitive advantage? Easy answer: customization.
Jumping a few centuries forward, the Industrial Revolution enabled us to create more, better and faster. Amidst all these benefits we celebrated the ‘death’ of customization. With the birth of mass production facilitated by assembly lines, we witnessed a levelling of social classes economically as well as socially. After all, we still define ourselves by the objects we own.

Now, customization is back with a vengeance. As we say in Romania – bear with me, the translation isn’t all that easy –  ‘the wheel could even be square but it would still turn at least once more’! We tried so hard to revive this practice of personalization when yet another revolution came to the rescue. This time The Technological one! Digitalization, mobile development, 3D printing… These things have radically changed the retail environment, and have gone a far way in helping to deliver customized products and services.
Will we repeat our previous mistakes?
The Industrial Revolution gave us two alternatives: ‘more and faster’ or ‘customized and slower’. The Technological Revolution transforms these alternatives into one cohesive package: ‘more, faster and customized’. After all, today’s Homo Sapiens is far more complex, and, some might argue, a lot greedier… So, say in 100 years, how will this package evolve?
To answer this question, let’s take a look at three major trends affecting the retail landscape:

  • The rise of the online shopping and its supremacy over brick-and-mortar stores, that gave birth to the omnichannel practice (Lunka, 2015).
  • The shift in the general mindset of the customer towards ‘caring’ for the environment (Nielsen, 2014).
  • The appetite for the luxurious and exclusivist experience (Deloitte, 2015).

So, on top of it being ‘more, faster and customized’, we now also want it to be ‘online, sustainable and luxurious’. We’re not picky at all!

Well, do not fear! I have a solution!

Let’s do an imagination exercise together. It’s December 2116. We wake up, we wash our face, we check the news – which, of course, is displayed on our ‘smart’ mirror (Internet of Things, and all that). We want to dress for work. Maybe a Louis Vuitton skirt, a Chanel blouse, some Gucci shoes, a Burberry scarf…top of my head! Oh, and I forgot, we belong to the middle class.

Most importantly, all these items must be customized for us! I mean, maybe we don’t like our neck so we need to have a specific collar shape for the blouse. We are neither too tall or too short, so the skirt length cannot be universal. The soles of our feet are quite flat so we need orthopaedic features integrated into our Gucci’s.
Now, imagine that we have this robot assistant and all we need to do is to click on the preferred clothing brand and model. This robot measures our body in that specific moment – I don’t know, maybe you gained some weight from one day to another. Then it sends this information to the 3D printer, which uses recycling textile material to print out the clothes, in the desired shape, pattern and colour. Then we go to work, look fabulous and when we come back we can recycle our clothes in order to create new ones the next morning. It’s like shopping every day!

Also read this article: Retail Customer Service: Reality of Retail Industry

So, what are we going to pay for, you might be wondering? For the specific design for that specific brand. After all everything is shifting towards intellectual property! Why not retail? It won’t be long and we will see the ‘Spring/Summer Ready-to-wear Collection’ package on Amazon-like platforms. And if we want the real, live experience? We can go to the flagship store. It would be like visiting the Louvre. Glamorous, educational and spectacular in the sense – ‘Was it really this way clothes were made in the day?”

This is just a picture of the future.

Turning back to the present, the truth is, we are witnessing the rebirth of customization. It has a new shape, a new feel, but it’s there and it will always be waiting for us.

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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[Intern Insight] Just Google It

Just “Google” it

Honestly, I think everybody said this, or it has been said to them at one point in their lives. I mean, every time you quickly want to know something, you go to Google, right? It’s the easiest way.

Have you ever actually counted how many times you “google” something per day? Yeah, I put it quotation marks, as “google” is actually a recognised verb now, since it’s used so often. Crazy how this verb really became part of our society.

Truth is, I don’t think we want to admit it but WE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT GOOGLE. Google saves my life at least several times a day.

I can hear you thinking: “Well how many times is Google used then in our daily lives?”

Google now processes an average of over 63,000 search queries every second , which is about 3.8 million per minute. This translates into over 5.5 billion searches per day and about 2 trillion searches per year globally. WOW. Yeah, I googled that. Ironic, isn’t it?

Let’s think about our parents for a second, they didn’t have Google. Can you imagine high school without Google? I couldn’t. How else would you write your reports? I mean, they did it all with books and – depending on how old you are – with the worldwide web – yes, Gen Z, that is was WWW stands for. They actually had to really, really search for the content for their reports, in analogue libraries. Using these things called ‘card catalogues’. Don’t ask me, I don’t know how they work either.. Amazing.

Google was founded 18 years ago, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. I bet these guys were just really tired of continuously looking through the “World Wide Web” or those card catalogue things for information. You have to admit, it is quite an extradentary thing to have set up – Google, I mean, not the card catalogues.

Last time, I wrote about videos that give a more meaningful, immersive and better learning experience. Now I am wondering what influence Google plays when it comes to the way we learn. Does it actually support the learning process or does this overload of information only distract our brains?

Again, lots of research is done on this. And well, shocker, the results are divided.

Some researchers have argued that the easy access to information actually really stimulates our brains, giving us the opportunity to focus on other skills. Steve Pinker, a Harvard Psychology professor, reaffirmed this by stating that the Internet and technological advancement are truly the only solutions that keeps us human beings smart. Would you agree on that? Personally, I’m not so sure…

On the other side, you also have those that argue if instant access to information via search engines has a negative effect. Research from Kaspersky Labs has even found that we are increasingly forgetting information, because it’s all stored in external memory – like our smartphones. For example, do you know all the birthdays of your closest friends by heart? If you do, great. I often hear people saying things like: “If not for Facebook, I would have forgotten it was her birthday today.”. This is called ‘digital amnesia’ and it’s rising. A little over a decade ago, people could remember each other’s phone numbers – now? It’s once again stored in our phones. People are ready to forget important information because they know that they can retrieve it from a digital device with internet.

What we can conclude from this is that we have learned to rely on Google rather than on our own memory, particularly when it comes to storing long-term knowledge. The fact that we are able to access information wherever we like, has a negative impact on our motivation to actually memorize information for later on. I mean, why would we? We can find it again in a split second. People with iPhones don’t even have to type anymore, they can just ask SIRI. And now Android isn’t too far behind with that either!

Truth is, Google makes our lives easier, there’s no denying that, but it has also changed the way we think and remember. Without realizing it, we’ve become Google-dependent. It has replaced our need to memorize details. These new habits, using Google for almost everything, interfere in the development of our deep and conceptual knowledge. That aside, I don’t think I have to tell you this, but the internet is full of incorrect information. So, you are never completely certain if what you actually googled is the truth? Maybe we should just go back to card catalogues after all…. Nah, just kidding.

Secretly, I think we are all a little troubled with digital amnesia, also known as the Google Effect…

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Paula van Staalduinen. As part of our internship programs undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Paula’s primary project focuses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure.

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