Tag Archive for: technology

A Brief On The Fluidity of Customer Service

Customer service is something we deal with every day, whether we want to or not. The history of customer service goes back decades, as long as there were businesses. We’re talking really long donkey years here. But essentially, here it is in brief.

Someone decided to start a business. A business relies on customers for its survival, and its essential existence. That meant providing service (go figure). Now when customer service first started, I can only imagine that there was no structure, or maybe there was. The evolution of what me now consider customer service started as early as 1793 in the United States, in the form of Loyalty programs. Sure, it has been around as long as there were traders, but let’s pick a point shall we.

Of course, this has evolved through the years, following technological advance. We live in time of amazing ease of communication. However, can you imagine when telephones first appeared on the scene? That’s right, that lead to the first customer service hotline.

Evolution of customer services aside. Have a look at the infographic for a little visual fun on that. The point is this. Customer service practices are an evolving thing. You’ve heard the terms before,:

“Business Need to Adapt.”

If you don’t evolve, you lose out.

How often have we come across often rigid, customer service structures? Business train their employees according to a structure according to possible scenarios, but here is where the ball is often dropped. They often don’t explain why certain things are done in a certain way. Expecting “people” to act like rigid “robots” to a particular situation will eventually cause a “404 error”. Customers are organic, living creatures, often looked at in terms of demographics when it comes to marketing. Yes, they do try to take this into account when it comes to customer service. But do they ever explain it in way that is assimilated into the working ethic of customer service personnel.?

With all the advances in modern tech, customer service can no longer be rigid. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (that’s seeing a resurgence thanks to current world situations), and so much more. Business need to be fluid in provide the best service possible. How personal can you get? How casual can you be? How do you turn a bad situation on its head, making it positive? Can you leverage social media?

The line between casual and stiff professionalism, is often blurred in most industries, this goes for customer services as well. The rigidity of the industrial age , no longer works at its best. This is the age of communication. So, shall we communicate?

Stay tuned for our next post on great examples of fluid Social Media Customer Service.

 

Customer Service Infographic

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Social Media, Technology & Education: Distracted Much?

Distracted much? Interruptions are the curse of this modern life we live. Day and night our phones, social media platforms, and other gadgets, buzz, ping, beep their way into our attention. This distracts us from whatever we are doing. It did become clear that these distractions hurt our productivity at work. I mean, pretty obvious, if you are completely honest with yourself how many times a day do you check your phone when it lights up or makes a sound ? Especially when you need to study for an exam or something and you have your phone next to your books. Let me tell you, not much studying is happening then, unless you put it on airplane-mode.

A study published in the Journal of Media Education last January 2016, also stated that using digital devices in classrooms for non-class reasons have its costs. Students were asked what the biggest disadvantages were and nearly 89 percent responded that “they don’t pay attention” and, therefore, miss instructions or other important information. The main reasons why students use their digital device is that they want to “stay connected” and “fight boredom”.

However, for many of us non-students our phone is our work. We literally cannot go to work without it. What if we don’t respond soon enough and the deal is off the table? That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?

Gloria Mark at the University of California has presented research that argues that standard office workers can only work for eleven minutes straight, before they get interrupted, most often by their phone. But what about multitasking? Isn’t that a thing?

Multitasking or Rapid Toggling?

The discussion starts with the neuroscientists. They say that there are very few people in the world who can actually multitask. Neuroscience researchers argue that what people call multitasking should actually be called “rapid toggling” between tasks. This means that the brain concentrates quickly on one topic and then switches to another.

This “switching” is not ‘free’; it takes time for the mind to get deeply involved with a single topic, therefore, transitioning between tasks can decrease productivity and mental performance. You take more time to complete tasks, you are less focussed and you are more likely to make mistakes.

Our brain can do amazing things like designing rockets that fly to the moon and make brownies, but it can only think about one thing at a time. So, multitasking is, in fact, not a thing.

Social Media & Communication

Right, now we’ve gained some interesting insights about multitasking. Let’s touch on the influence of social media on education and learning.

All distraction and disruptions aside, mobile technology has changed everything. We live in a world where learning is connected and through this, the impact of social media on education is becoming a driving aspect. The way we deliver instructions is changing due to social media; the world is getting smaller.

Let’s have a look at video communication platforms, such as Skype. There is no longer a need for a faculty member or student to be in the same room: instructions can be given over great distances. I must add that this system has its downsides as the internet connection can be bad and messages can always be misunderstood, and I’m talking from experience here. What I do think would be pretty cool is a hologram as a teacher, I mean that would add some vibrancy to the learning process, but we’re getting off topic here.

Social media is such a dominant part of our modern society these days. Did you know that, on average, Millennials checks their phone more than 150 times a day?! 150 times. That’s crazy. That’s 120 times more than the average adult, who checks it only 30 times a day.

When people check their phone, it doesn’t always have to do with social media, of course, but nevertheless, just to give you an estimation: in 2016, users spent roughly 50 minutes per day on social media. This might not sound like that much, and you probably think that you spend way more time on social media than 50 minutes per day. However, when you compare it to a recent survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics it is actually a lot of time. The results of this survey show that people spend way less time on other leisure activities like sports or exercise (17 minutes), or reading (19 minutes). People spend about 1 hour eating and drinking per day and social media takes up almost the same amount?!

So, what are positive impacts of social media on learning and education? Some positive influences are that social media sites can increase student collaboration. It is very easy to communicate via these mediums. Conversely, social media platforms are full of unimportant and surreal stuff, however, this increases the student ability to ‘filter’ information and learn only to use the relevant sources. Furthermore, students have the ability to reach out to experts across different disciplines.

What about the negative impacts of social media on education? First of all, (shocker) it is very distracting. From personal experience, I know for a fact that when a class gets boring, first thing you do is check your phone and social media. During breaks, you’re less social. Nowadays, when you go out for dinner and look around, how many people are on the phone instead of having a real conversation? When people mainly communicate via technology, body language clues can be missed; it’s like having half a conversation.

Now, of course, we are talking about communicating, when we communicate via social media or WhatsApp or something else, we tend to make a lot of spelling mistakes or write words differently on purpose. Many of these messenger platforms have a grammar correct function, but students do not develop the same accuracy than when they actually write the word themselves.

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

Whether we like it or not, social media has a powerful impact on education and learning. It has its positive and negative influences, but if I go from personal experience, and then I primarily look at the distracting aspect, I would say mainly negative effects. The fact is, social media – and mobile technology – will continue to evolve and change the educational landscape.

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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[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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[Intern Insight] Learning through Experience: The Hard Way

Learning, one way or the other…

“I learned it the hard way.” I think everybody had an experience with this phrase. I mean it happens, like when you forget to lock your car and you come back and your personal belongings are stolen. Or you cheat during a test and the teacher catches you out and you score a 1, which really decreases your previously good average. Learning things the hard way. Haven’t we all been there in some shape or form? I know I have…

Then the phrase “Learned it hard way” really applies. It means that you learn from unpleasant experiences rather than being taught. Like, if you tried to warn somebody several times, but they won’t listen, then you’re like: “Well, I guess they’ll find out the hard way then.”

Graydon Carter once stated: “Most of us have learned the hard way that there are very few things can you absolutely count on in life”.

That said, there are several things we can always count on in life like toast with jam will fall jam-side down, or that the postman will come just as you step into the bath, that no bus shows for 30 minutes and then 3 arrive at the same time, or that you click on ‘send’ and then immediately spot a typo. Be honest here, you recognised some of these things.

What we can conclude is that learning ‘the hard way’ is an effective method of learning. The bad experience you achieved is still an experience and should prevent you from doing it again right?

We learn from experience. Like we know that after lightning you hear thunder and that we are not going to stand close to a high point, as there’s a change you get electrocuted. According to General Psychology: “learning is acquiring a relatively permanent change in behaviour through experience.” This means that we adapt our behaviour based on what we learn through experience.

There are two types of learning: observational learning and associative learning.

I could seriously elaborate on those types of learning, but the short story is that observational learning is about learning through observing others engage in different types of behaviours. Associative learning, on the other hand, is the process by which someone learns a connection between two stimuli. You have two forms of associative learning: classical and operant, but we’ll skip those two for the moment as I’ve probably already bored you enough with psychology.

Factors and Variable

What I find interesting is that the process of learning is influenced by a variety of factors. Teachers and/or parents might find these factors handy to know to guide kids through the learning process. There are many, let me tell you that, but some are worth highlighting:

The Personal Factors

First, you have personal factors such as ‘fatigue’ and ‘boredom’. The difference is that fatigue refers to mental or physical tiredness, which (shocker) decreases efficiency and capability to work. Boredom, on the contrary, is a lack of motivation or desire to work.

This links with the factor ‘interest’. Learning should always be stimulated with different types of tools, like videos, for example, to keep it interesting.

The most important personal factor of the learning process, also known as actually the heart of learning, is ‘motivation’. It really takes a person’s internal willpower to accomplish something. We can divide motivation into two elements: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to behaviour that is driven by internal rewards. Extrinsic motivation refers to behaviour that is driven by external rewards. For example, someone who writes music for his own listening pleasure relies on intrinsic motivation, and a person who writes his songs for money is driven by extrinsic motivation.

The Environmental Factors

Enough about the personal factors, let’s go to the environmental factors. Environmental influences on learning already begin when the child is in the womb. Studies show that the physical, emotional, and mental condition of the mother influences the development of the foetus in the womb. Crazy, right? Apparently, it has something to do with stress levels. So, if a mum wasn’t in a good place when she was pregnant, it already has an impact on you’re the child’s level of intelligence and development.

Other environmental factors that influence learning capacity include things in your immediate surroundings: cultural, social and natural. Factors of nature seem quite logical to me, it has been found that humidity and high temperature can reduce mental efficiency. I could relate to that, always when I tried to work outside with sunny weather in The Netherlands (this happens very rarely) my concentration is really bad. You simply can’t concentrate since you just want to enjoy the good weather.

Your social surroundings include your school, home, favourite bar, basically anywhere where you have your family and friends around you. You can be sure that they can both positively and stupidly – thinking about some ‘interesting’ things my friends have done in the past – influence learning.

Lastly, cultural pressures and social expectations play a role, as the essence of culture is mirrored in its social and educational institutions. Therefore, the learning is greatly determined by the prospects and demands of your culture.

Social Media

A sort of ‘post-script’ environmental factor is the quite big influence is social media. Social media is seen as an important component in transmitting information. Does it have a place as a learning and teaching tool or it is simply a distraction? Again, it has its pro’s and con’s, but I’ll come back to that in another article. For now, let’s just say that social media does play a role in “learning the hard way”.
Nowadays, when something happens people have their smartphone. They film it, post it, share it, you name it and suddenly, the event is everywhere, good or bad. This is a positive thing if you filmed a theft or something, but a negative thing when you accidentally stumble over a doorstep for example, then your fall will become the laugh of the day.

Life goes on

At the end of the day, if we are going to learn things the hard way, hopefully, we learn quickly.

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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[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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