Month: November 2016

Characteristic #5: The customer feels a sense of accomplishment for an activity. But what drives someone to accomplish anything?

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What drives you to finish a crafting project? Fixing your car? Making a meal?
 
Why not kinda, sorta do something? Isn't that enough?
 
Usually we tend to finish what we put our minds to complete. But what drives you to finish a project to 100%? Sure, you get a sense of accomplishment, but isn't there more to accomplishment than simply finishing a task?
 
To better define what accomplishment means, let's consider the reverse:
  • Why do you NOT finish a craft project?
  • Or DON'T get your car fixed?
  • Or DON'T finish a writing project?
It's because you don't see a reason to do it. You no longer care. You lost interest. 
 
So why do we choose to accomplish some projects and tasks and not others? One could say it is due to our motivation to do it, which is based on our belief systems and emotional investments/commitments.
 
Sure, we do different tasks throughout a day because we feel we need to finish them. But what drives that perspective? If you are objective about your answer, you know you don't really need to do anything in a day. You don't need to make a bed. You don't need to go on social media. You don't need to work. You don't need to cook dinner. 
 
But you do it anyway – for other reasons, purposes, and motivations. And those reasons are tied to how you see yourself. You cook dinner to eat well, be a good wife, or a good husband or parent. You make a bed so maybe people don't perceive you to be a messy person. You go to work to get a paycheck and not be embarrassed with bill collector calls. And your motivation to do these tasks drives how you feel about yourself and defines you and your self-worth.
 
You choose which tasks you are going to do at any moment, essentially choosing what you want to accomplish in a day – or not. You may think that others are expecting you to complete a task for them, that they are dependent on you. And that may be true. But most likely you are doing a particular task or activity for your own benefit, for your own self-image, and to feel a certain way about yourself.
 
We all like to feel successful and we choose to do activities and tasks that make us feel that way. We define for ourselves what success "looks like" and make choices that validate that vision.
 
Accomplishment – or abandonment – is related to that vision.
 
Feeling a sense of accomplishment is highly subjective because a company will never fully know or understand a prospect or customers' motivation to solve a problem – even if in fact, that person wants to solve it at all. You'd have to know and understand that individual's belief systems and values, and it's just not possible.
 
However, not all is lost. One can make assumptions based on a well-researched persona - a generalization. It provides enough information to make assumptive leaps. But these generalizations, these personas, need to be based on real people. That's the only way to truly understand them.
 
 
Learn why someone does what they do
You need to connect to your customer and learn his true motivation for accomplishing a task and get answers to these questions:
  • Why does a prospect or customer need your product?
  • What problem is he trying to solve?
  • Why does the prospect or customer want to solve his or her problem?
  • What does a prospect or customer want to feel when he or she purchases your product?
  • What is happening in his or her life to make this problem a priority?
But the most important question of all: What is the person's benefit to solve that problem? Why are they trying to solve the problem in the first place?
 
Once you identify the motivator for purchase or use, you have greater insight into why accomplishing a certain task is important to this person.
 
Once you have that information, you can then help him better determine how to accomplish solving his problem.
 
 
You still need to define a baseline process to help a someone complete a task – or rather, create a Journey Map
As a company, you can define the journey for your customers and prospects, but always keep in mind that you can't make a customer follow that path. You can provide and request information to help them make a decision. You know the decisions that need to be made to make a sale, complete a transaction, or complete a task in the app from your company's side. The customer may have some additional decisions to make on their side, but your company can define a baseline set of tasks through the journey. 
 
A journey helps the process, but it isn't the only process.
 
 
Decisions are closely related to accomplishment and the feeling of finishing an activity.
Even if you are submitting information a la Turbo Tax, you need to decide that enough information has been provided to consider a task finished or that you have enough information to complete a task. 
Usually this information flow is defined by business requirements. However, that's not always the case. Sometimes, a step in a process could be divided into sub-steps based on how users perceive it. 
 
This leads to how prospects, customers or users define accomplishment.
  • Are you accomplished for today? For now?
  • How much do you break down a task and decisions to consider it complete?
That's where you need user input to define great stopping points to gather additional data or simply take a breather from a long process.
 
  
The further you break down steps, the more someone will feel accomplished towards his goal 
Why do we have shopping carts for ecommerce? We broke down the shopping process and turned it into tasks. 
  • Someone browses and determines what he would like to buy
  • He may create a wishlist (decision point)
  • Then he decides to buy – puts it into the cart
  • Debates the cart and promos and the like (decision point)
  • Then he completes info to purchase (decision point)
  • Select the button to spend the money (decision point)
  • Confirmation (done)
Now, for a small purchase, completing this process is simple and fast.
 
However, for a larger purchase, this can be stressful and have many pauses along the way. Sometimes, the site will only include the steps up to the shopping cart – especially for larger purchases where a sales person is needed to complete the transaction. 
 
But for less expensive purchases, the flow as it exists allows someone to complete the process and feel that he accomplished something in his shopping project. He has a wish list. He narrowed it down and is ready to purchase. He purchased.
 
The same can be applied to completing an insurance application. Someone may start the process, have some questions to be answered through other sources and come back later to complete it. That person will want to feel that some of the application is complete and he did, in fact, accomplish something. 
 

This is also true for functionality. Look at Turbo Tax. Turbo Tax is successful because it breaks down figuring out your taxes into simple steps. You can leave at any time and come back. You can skip around and finish sections that you have the information to complete and leave other sections blank until later. There are percent complete indicators for each section so you always know how much you really have left to do. And it tracks how much of a refund you will get – so you know that progress as well and where you could find additional deductions.

 
(Back to the Emotional Investment/Commitment section…Why is Turbo Tax so popular? People are committed to submit their taxes to be a good citizen. Why do people take time to complete an insurance application? They want to reduce their risk.) 
 
 
Similar to experiencing progress: timing of steps towards accomplishing a goal is related to relative value (money or time) and priority for solving the problem
The time spent inbetween decisions and steps of a process is directly proportional to the value of what's being asked of the customer and the severity of the situation at hand. What does this mean? Let's start with value.
 
If an item is perceived to "not cost very much" it is an easy, simple purchase. "Not cost very much" is relative to the income one makes in a year. So a widget for $3 doesn't cost very much for someone making $100K/year compared to a $20K car. Then again, a $20K car doesn't cost very much for someone who makes $200+K/year. It's all relative and about perspective. 
 
Then there is the severity of the situation of the customer/user. If it is an urgent problem that needs repair, then most likely the purchase cycle will be fast and the customer will want to fix it right away. Even if the cost is high, if the priority of the problem to the person making the decision is very high, the decision turnaround may be fast. For example, a leaky roof will get fixed very quickly if the leak is severe – even if it costs $10K. Someone will buy a new car if he needs one to get to work – even if he needs to get a loan for $20K to do it. 
  
This is also true for tasks in an app, except rather than costs relating to money, it's about time investment costs. A user will take the time to learn how to use a product if he needs the result it offers. Users don't have much time to learn how to use software or how to use a feature – that's why they should be familiar to use. A user needs to invest as little time as possible to learn anything new. He doesn't need training and can get started right away.
 
However, if the problem doesn't have much of a priority to be fixed, he may – or may not – take the time to learn the complex features. This is the space where unused software lives.
  
 

How this maps to the Customer Relationship Lifecycle

Pre-purchase
  • Find out why someone wants your product – learn more about them, their motivations, and their problems. Conduct surveys, start a social listening program, interview customers – find ways to gather their input and voices. Learn not just the logistics for why they are purchasing. Learn about the emotional benefits they want to get from solving their problems.
  • Invest in proper personas. I can't stress this enough. Get that baseline ready to create your journey. 
  • Create a journey map for the various pre-purchase processes and indicate all of the customer decisions required. This would be the minimum decisions for a process. Get customer input for additional decisions needed.
  • Provide quizzes, checklists and other materials to help someone determine what their problems, challenges, and potential solutions really are. Just because a prospect is researching your product doesn't mean that the prospect really should buy your product.
 
Purchase decision
  • Learn the personal benefit for the customer to solve their problem as well as the personal benefit for everyone who would use the product.
  • Provide checklists and related materials to help the prospect decide if your solution is right for him
  • Provide materials that outline your capabilities and solution versus your customer
  • Provide cost calculators to help determine monetary value
  • Provide calculators to determine the time and cost it will take to use the product
  • Ensure that you are meeting the emotional needs of the customer once he purchases the product – it was worth his investment and commitment to your company and product. This is more involved and requires customer research. But if this is done properly, it is worth it from the perspective of happy customers, repeat customers and referrals.
 
Product Experience
  • Make sure that the features related to the user's motivation to fix the problem are easiest to complete
  • Understand what it driving the need to solve a problem and offer the right assistance when it makes sense. This includes help, supporting content, reference materials, videos, and related items.
  • If possible, keep functionality simple, clear and quick. It shouldn't take long to complete a task (meaning it should be familiar to use)
  • Reduce the amount of training needed to start using and understanding a product
  • Include status bars and indicators for percentage complete or what it takes to reach a goal provide input/insight into what’s happening. The user needs to know what is being asked of him and what to expect
  • Product pricing – make sure it is in line with the severity and priority of the problem. A complex problem will take a while to buy – and solve – even if the price is low. Or at least, it should. Simpler problems can be solved more easily and directly. But there should be a relationship between the price, time to purchase, and the product cost
 
Post-Purchase
  • Make sure, based on user motivation for why they want to use the product, that support is easily available. And it is available in formats that they prefer to use.
  • Similar to product, keep steps simple and clear or include a status bar for solving problems or resolving logistical/operations issues
  • Include checklists to help fix problems
  • Communicate in the best way digitally – video, audio, or text. Communicate to the user the way he wants to receive communication
  • To determine eligibility for special offers, make it clear what will earn you the rebate or other offer
  • Understand the emotional motivation for someone to buy and use your product – and respond to your customers with empathy if they are failing to use it in some way
Characteristic #5: The customer feels a sense of accomplishment for an activity. But what drives someone to accomplish anything?

Characteristic 4: The customer feels that he is experiencing progress – whatever that may mean.

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This is #4 of the 9 Characteristics of Great Customer Experiences. It is closely related to #5: The customer feels a sense of accomplishment for an activity.

These two characteristics -#4 and #5 – are unique in the characteristics set because you are enabling a customer to feel productive rather than allowing your experience to reflect your brand and personality and using that to capture their attention. It's less about what you are doing and more about what you are enabling.  
 
Helping a customer feel he is experiencing progress or accomplishing a task is not really something you can control or influence; it is something a customer needs to experience himself. There is no "secret" for all customers to feel this way. There are techniques and approaches that can be used, tools that can be offered, but it is a personal experience that is different for each customer. He has to experience progress or accomplishment in his own way.
 
 
The customer feels that he is experiencing progress – whatever that may mean. 
 
This characteristic of great experiences is similar to #5 (The customer feels a sense of accomplishment for an activity.), but different. You may be asking why I made 2 different characteristics about similar topics.
 
(I asked myself the same thing and mediated on it for a long time for a proper answer. And I mean a LONG time.)
 
I was ready to revise my list from 9 characteristics to 8, but after thinking about it some more, I realized that I had a little wisdom when I originally created this list. There is a difference between progress and accomplishment.
 
Progress is feeling movement towards your goal, sensing that change is truly happening. You are typically moving forward in a process or journey. But moving forward doesn’t always mean that you are going directionally forward. It means you are moving forward to your goal. Sometimes our path to a goal requires us to move backwards, sideways, or diagonally. The feeling of progress often includes taking a step back to take a step forward.
 
Here's are some examples.
  • Let’s say you are ordering food at a restaurant. You may have an idea of what you want to get, but progress may mean that you ask questions, you reconsider options, and make a new decision. Or you decide to change your order completely.
  • If you are buying software, you may have your mind set on buying specific hardware or software, but after some research you realize that maybe it doesn’t solve your problem. Maybe you need something different. So you start over and find something else that may be more suitable.
  • If you are using a product, you start using its features and functionality. You realize half-way through that there is a better way to do what you want. You course-correct and start over.
This is why I am challenged by journeys. Journeys imply that there is one way, a direct way, to achieve a goal, but that’s not exactly true. It’s how a company defines a path to purchase or to complete another task. It doesn’t consider how the customer or prospect thinks or makes a decision. They may follow that general direction, so a mapped journey makes a great guide, but it’s not the only path. Progress is a highly personal experience. It’s about the prospect and customer, their decisions, their goals, and their understanding of what’s happening along the way. 
 
The secret to progress is based on the customer’s decisions. Customers may decide not to purchase. Customers may decide to use your product for something slightly different than what was intended. It’s about what the customers truly want to do and how they want to do it.
 
Feeling that you accomplished something is a little different than progress. Accomplishing something implies a decision, a sense of finality. It also implies that you completed part of a process. It’s not ongoing. The next post will cover this more, but essentially, the difference between progress and accomplishment is that progress is ongoing until you reach your final goal; accomplishment means to feel that you completed a process, or part of a process, full stop.
 
Why is movement important to customers and prospects? They want to feel that you are helping them move towards their goals. This can only happen when they are in a partnership with you. If someone is experiencing progress with your company and it is truly providing guidance to a customer, there is the feeling that you are becoming an extension of your customer. You become a little more than a partner, and more like a family member.
 
And this should be encouraged because relationships are the cornerstone of business. It is through these relationships that people choose to do business with other people and companies. Business doesn’t just happen between companies. It is between people. When people get together with a common, shared mission, great things happen. Progress helps cement relationships.
 
Help customers define progress
One way to help customers is to assist them in defining what progress means for them. Most people have set processes in their companies to purchase new devices, objects and services. Consumers usually have a method to make a purchase decision as well.  And that process or method is always dependent on the company they work at or the individual himself. For companies, either the company works with existing “approved” vendors and to choose a new one, there is a process. For consumers, they have their own approaches for deciding what to purchase.
 
Given the highly dependent nature of this process, you need to provide guides and checklists to help people choose for themselves – define what they should know and identify each step of the way. Don’t ignore existing processes. Enhance them. Provide tools that make them better defined or augmented.
 
Appreciate your customer’s process
Companies sometimes forget that customers have their own way of doing things. They want to tell the customer the best way, and that only goes so far. Remember that the customer has the final word. As a company or vendor, you need to understand your customer, provide input and guidance, but respect and appreciate your customer’s perspective and process. Sometimes a customer doesn’t have a process. Sometimes a customer may have an odd perspective of a situation. Or a customer may not want to listen. That is their decision that you need to respect. Progress is about them – not about you.
 
Same with using a product. You may have spent time and energy constructing the perfect product to use only to realize that the customer wants to use it in a different way, or selects a different path to complete a task. This is normal and why usability testing is so important to get feedback during the process.
 
The rate or timing of progress is dependent on the size of the sale or task to be completed
Progress is quick and easy if the item to purchase doesn’t cost much or solves a key problem. If the cost is significant in relation to the customer base’s income or revenue, then the timing will be longer. 
 
Same with the task to be completed. If it is a relatively easy decision, then it would be quick. Otherwise, it would take a while and need multiple steps. Either way, the user needs to feel like he is making progress along the way. 
 
You can make progress feel faster and easier, especially for items that may take longer. But again, remember to include tools, checkpoints and guidelines to allow a customer or prospect feel that he is making progress in his own way. Encourage him to take breaks if needed. This is where research can be useful to inform where customers and prospects need a break – where they need to go find additional information or make a decision vs where they can pause and keep going.
 
What are some examples of experiencing progress in the customer relationship lifecycle?
 
Pre-purchase
The goal: customer acknowledges that there is a problem, but is able to define and understand the problem and possible solutions
  • A customer can define what his problem is and what he would like to see happen with a solution
  • A customer knows what you do, what you offer for a solution
  • Customer stories provide insight into how others used and liked the products
  • Provide comparative research – compare your products to other vendors to help understand what your product does vs others 
  • Help define the purchase process for the customers – checklists and guides
 
Purchase decision
The goal: customer wants to definitely solve his problem – find a vendor and get a solution in place
  • Customer understands all solutions available – fee and free
  • Customer knows the vendors who offer a solution
  • Customer has or found budget for a solution
  • Customer has completed due diligence with the vendor and solution he is choosing
  • Customer feels confident making a decision about the solution and/or vendor
 
Product
The goal: customer use the product to solve his problem
  • Customer feels confident using the product and features – they are easy to find and familiar to use (hint: there was probably some usability testing completed if the customer feels confident using a product)
  • Customer sees multiple uses for the product beyond what he signed up for
 
Post-purchase
Goal: Customer has a challenge with the product and needs help to resolve it
  • Easy to reach company to resolve issues
  • Easy to find the resources needed to resolve issues (videos, text, etc.)
  • Customer can resolve billing questions without too many problems
  • Company is easy to work with – flexible options for returns, warranties, payments, shipping. Always an option that appeals to a customer and how he operates.
 
Characteristic 4: The customer feels that he is experiencing progress – whatever that may mean.

Do you love your virtual team? The birth of Empathy Exercises.

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The idea of Empathy Exercises started as a conference proposal about Agile and virtual teams.

My friend and colleague, Elinor Slomba, and I were discussing collaboration projects around Agile virtual teams. Although Agile can be integrated into virtual teams, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto almost discourages virtual work.

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

—Agile Manifesto

This makes one wonder – why the fuss of virtual teams then? Why not have everyone work onsite?

Well, it isn't that straightforward. Many organizations have virtual teams simply because they offshore work, have teams located in multiple offices, or have employees working from home. Some companies need to just make it work.

Virtual teams bring their own set of challenges. Elinor and I worked closely with virtual teams and were quite familiar with what worked, what didn't work, and where the gaps were. Some virtual teams weren't successful because communication challenges ran deep (mostly around listening) and team members were out of reach – literally. These created great hurdles. But we were constantly brainstorming how to best address these challenges so people understood them and fixed them.

We would discuss writing articles and creating videos including our recommendations, ideas and advice, but we knew that may not solve the virtual team problems for people. It was dependent on them identifying their own problem within the virtual team and looking for a solution. We knew we could also have have created a case study presentation that did that too, but we wanted something more interesting.

So we created a game.

 

I realized that the best way to tell people how to work in a virtual team is to let them experience it. Show them. Heck, we are told in writing classes all the time, "show, don't tell." This would be a perfect opportunity – and it is the only way empathy is built anyway.

We created a simulation game, similar to Monopoly in that it would be a set of simplified Agile sprints that would allow people to complete a simulated project as a virtual team.

We did follow a process to create the game, which is a loose form of the process being used for Empathy Exercises.

Pre-step: Discuss challenges and potential for change

Game Preparation

  • Step 1: Identify prospects’ & customers’ problems
  • Step 2: Identify who your customers are
  • Step 3: Research to determine why the prospect/customer challenges exist
  • Step 4: Research team’s feelings about prospects and customers
  • Step 5: Determine situations where empathy can be built
  • Step 6: Create a game that uses those situations

Game Day

  • Step 7: Game Play
  • Step 8: Reflection and recommendation for improvements

Post-game

  • Step 9: Report and recommendation
  • Step 10: Measure ongoing success
  • Step 11: Improvements

Pre-step: Discuss challenges and potential for change

Why would someone need this game?

Let's say you have a virtual team that isn't meeting launch deadlines. Or the quality of the product is lacking. Or the requirements are half-baked and half-developed. Or the prioritization isn't working out well. This all means that the team isn't communicating well and not collaborating. They may need some help to work together better.

Step 1: Identify prospects' & customers' problems

Elinor and I used our experiences coaching and working with teams as the basis for our research – and many of our experiences were shared across a number of organizations. We saw similar patterns in our clients.

Issues we decided to address in the game:

  • What it means to work in different timezones. We don't realize how team members in different timezones can impact our work. A timezone difference can mean people simply aren't available. Or early or late meetings for you. There is sometimes the expectation that colleagues should adapt their schedules to the timezone of the majority or the parent office. All of theses approaches – as well as others not included here – can have different impacts worth exploring and discussing openly.
  • What it means to have team members included or excluded randomly from meetings. Sometimes when you are working in an open office environment, you may eavesdrop and hear something that pertains to you and join the conversation. That's the benefit of being in an open office – opportunities for greater collaboration. Needless to say, that doesn't happen in virtual teams. You are home alone or you are in an office with some team members who get aligned and the others in different offices aren't aligned. It's difficult to make sure the team is aligned.
  • People out of reach – literally and figuratively. We have a false sense of security sometimes working with people next to us in an office. We think that because we are there, we can grab them at any moment. Except if they are at lunch. The bathroom. In a meeting. Having a smoke. Taking a walk. You get the picture. At times, you may need to talk to someone virtually and they may not be at their computer, but sometimes we will assume that they are off watching a movie, having a long lunch, tending to children or chores. In fact, that colleage may be in a phone meeting, eating lunch, finishing something up and not wanting to be disturbed. Now add a timezone to that and who knows what people are up to! It's about trust. You need to trust that your teammates are around, will be available when needed, and show up.
  • When being left out feels intentional. This is difficult – but it happens. Sometimes, the person who is not onsite with a team may feel left out if not called or included in a meeting. You can't take it personally, but it's hard NOT to take it personally. But the people onsite don't notice what they are doing and don't feel the problem. But it is a problem to exclude others who should be included. There is a point where it becomes easier to be more inclusive and let people self-exclude.
  • UX team is not always included. This is my personal pet peeve because I am a UX strategist. UX professionals are usually included in projects when they are present in the office – people will pull a UX professional into a conversation and then they start sketching. But this doesn’t always happen on a virtual team – especially if you are new to the team and trying to fit in. See the previous bullet. The fact is that people aren't used to working with you and – sadly – out of sight, out of mind. And it can feel intentional when it isn't. But frankly, it shouldn't happen in the first place.
  • The disappearing product manager. I have heard too many developers complain about product managers disappearing, not to be found. I have then seen and heard product managers who disappeared for a day or two looking beat up and emotional because they had to defend their product – like to even exist as a product. Or to get budget. Or to be a priority and get something launched. Or work on a change in company strategy. The product manager has a hard job and sometimes the developers don't empathize because they don't know – and sometimes knowing would be so demotivating that they are kept uninformed. And the cycle continues.

In addition to these issues, Elinor and I saw some general Agile issues to address:

  • Prioritization. Sometimes this can be challenging for a virtual team. Sure, we all know that the team sets the prioritizations each planning session, but that may not be what's really happening at people's desks. Sometimes on teams, team members will make their own decisions about priorities and not communicate that. Needless to say, that's not a factor for success.
  • Collaborating with a team and how that does or doesn't work virtually. Every team is different in how its team members collaborate. They find their own vibe. They find the tools and approaches that work best for them. Sometimes teams need help; sometimes teams naturally "get" it.
  • How to build a virtual team. There are ways to bind a team together. Sometimes, team members need time to get to know each other personally. The team may need to be encouraged to have social calls and online social activities to help with bonding.
  • Tools and stories – how things get done. Again, every team has their own approaches and methods, but they need to find what works for them.

There were other issues as well, but we decided to address these first.

Step 2: Identify who your customers are

In this case, we knew the audience – developers. We worked with them every day. If we didn't do this work already, we would have had to research the personas of a development team.

Step 3: Research to determine why the prospect/customer challenges exist & Step 4: Research team’s feelings about prospects and customers

I included this in the description of Step 1 earlier. Again, our past experience with teams informed us of what we may want to highlight in the game.

Step 5: Determine situations where empathy can be built

We identified some core issues where we needed to build empathy amongst people working on virtual teams:

  • You don’t know what is really happening with your team members. If you look at the list above, that’s really the core issue happening. In an office you have a false sense of security that you know what is happening with your colleagues. You need to learn to trust your team.
  • How to get people engaged who aren’t always seemingly available. It is easy to blow off team members on a virtual team. And it is easy to believe that team members don't want to be engaged if they are living in a different timezone. However, that's often not the case. They are simply not available – and schedules on all sides need to be more flexible to accommodate everyone.
  • Misunderstandings. Listening is probably the most important communication skill to have when you are working virtually. And not listening to respond, but listening to understand. This is hard to do until you experience it. It is easy to think you can listen to people in the background or multi-task. But you can't if you want a successful virtual team. You have to listen to others and understand where they are coming from. Here is a post about listening.

Step 6: Create a game that uses those situations

We decided to create a simulation game (similar to Monopoly) for virtual teams – model of what it would be like to create a mock ecommerce site in 3 iterations plus a planning iteration if you worked "virtually." We would see how far the teams get and whoever finishes the most stories is the winner. The object of the game is to learn what happens when you work on a virtual team. There are blindfolds to simulate what it means to be out of the office. Earplugs would help simulate when you don't have a phone. There are rules for roles, timezones, a product manager corner (to simulate those all day meetings), gameplay – even a timer/clock.

If you would like a walkthru of what we have so far, let me know!

The remaining steps?

We have had interest from Agile leaders and groups in testing the game. Feedback so far: “People are not talking about this enough! Can't wait to find out more!” and ”Challenge is current. The content is interesting.”  Nearly 100 people signed up to play at the Agile Leader’s Network in Dallas but the weather that day was severe, and we had to cancel.  Since then, the game has been refined and simplified. Now, it is even more ready for roadtesting!

 

Regarding the team…

Elinor has been a great partner on this project. Her work as a curator continues to deepen, and we have mutually agreed that I will take this game to market. She provided a lot of inspiration and many of the ideas along the way.

Elinor’s purpose is to help grow great ideas. She finds work for artists outside the traditional arts world and helps businesses solve problems by hiring artists. As a result of her events and trainings, creative entrepreneurs learn to talk to each other more easily, use each other’s models and build value across domains.  

And a quote from Elinor about the game:

"I am honored to have worked with such a smart and dynamic colleague on the Proof of Concept phase for this project. Gearmark is well positioned to take this thing forward, and I can't wait to see what happens next."

– Elinor Slomba, Arts Interstices

Do you love your virtual team? The birth of Empathy Exercises.

To create a product, you need to feel empathy. Part 2.

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Part 1 defines empathy and introduces the idea that empathy is about a shared experience. Now for the connection to Empathy Exercises.
 
Why do we like Monopoly? 
Monopoly is fun because you get to experience what it is like to own and develop property. You may not have all of the challenges that property brings, like property repairs or loud tenants, but you get to experience enough to imagine how difficult it is.
 
It's a simulation of what life would be like if you were a landlord and property developer.
 
Games like this (simulation games) have two objectives:
  • You learn what you need to do to win
  • You learn about the premise of the game through the experience 
To win Monopoly, you have to be the last man standing and own pretty much everything (or bump your competitors out of business).
 
What you learn in the experience of the game of Monopoly:
  • How to buy property
  • That location matters
  • What success means in the land development/property business
  • How to balance income and expenses
  • When to build vs buy
  • When it is a good time to mortgage
  • When cash is king but credit may be a better idea 
We find Monopoly fun because it allows us each to walk a bit in someone else's shoes. Sure, it doesn't exactly replicate what it means to develop property, but it gives you a "good enough" idea.
 
What if you could play a game like this to better understand your customers and prospects and what they experience with your products?
 
That's Empathy Exercises. But how does it work?
 
Let’s say you have a group of health insurance product managers who want to create a new insurance product that the average person with little understanding of insurance could "get," use and buy without a lot of background research. Sure, they would do some research about their customers to identify the base need. The product would be empathetic that way. But the research wouldn't necessarily identify the experiential challenge people have with insurance overall.
 
From research I've worked on in the past, the main challenge of health insurance is that most people don’t understand the terminology and how it works. The audience ranges in their knowledge of insurance, but most don’t understand it. Many fear it, find it confusing, and are afraid to make a decision. Some scare themselves in the process before they get started. And if they do make a decision, they often aren’t at ease with it.
 
What’s the best way to get a set of insurance product and marketing managers to understand how their customers may be feeling? To feel empathy for them? One solution: have them play a game that they never played before.
 
Let’s say the group of managers you work with have never played rugby. They don’t know the sport – it is completely new to them. What if you had them jump in and play with minimal instruction before the start? You had them learn the game as they played.
 
How would this experience help product managers have more empathy for their customers? The common/shared experience would be both the marketers/product managers and their customers experiencing a situation with new and unfamiliar terminology that some, but not all, understand. They are in the middle of a game/experience with unclear and unknown rules – that the officials know and understand, but they don't share that knowledge with you. This would cause people to not be able to make quick decisions or to feel like they are making an uninformed or bad decision.
 
After that game, one would assume that the product managers would be able to better relate to their customers because they would have experienced a situation that is shared with their customers. The experience is a metaphor of sorts. Buying insurance is like playing rugby without knowing the rules.
 
That's powerful. And that would allow the product managers to create a product that is easy to understand and familiar, recalling the experience with rugby and the challenges to just get through the game. And the marketers would be able to sell something in a more straightforward way, remembering that special terms make it harder to understand what to do and what's expected. Oh – and to keep the rules simple. 
 
How the game stops pity
Pity would be expressed by the product managers looking at the customers, thinking, "Poor them!" There is no connection with the customers. But after the shared experience of a game, the product managers would understand what unites them together. And I've posted other pieces that address pity and why it prevents you from creating a product or understanding your customers. It really is about the connection.
 
 
What if you could have a custom game that would allow your team to feel empathy for your customers and prospects? To simulate for your team, in a game like Monopoly, what they experience?
 
This exists already for virtual teams and could be augmented for customer service teams. But there is more. The process to create the virtual team game will be outlined in a blog post coming soon. 
 
To create a product, you need to feel empathy. Part 2.

To create a product, you need to feel empathy – Part 1

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"You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

— Atticus in Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird 

 

Empathy has been slowing turning into a buzzword. But what is it really? And why is it necessary?

I always like to start these conversations by defining the terms we are using so we are aligned on what we are discussing.

To get started, empathy according to Merriam Webster is defined as:

  1. the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

  2. 2:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also  :  the capacity for this

Sometimes, empathy is confused with sympathy. But they are quite different. Brene Brown helps us understand the difference in this video:

 

 

Empathy allows you to relate to what someone else feels like and what that person may be going through. Sympathy doesn't allow that much of an intense emotional connection between people; it is about observing someone going through something difficult. 

Psychology Today defined the differences between the two, but they included pity and compassion. 

Pity is a feeling of discomfort at the distress of one or more sentient beings, and often has paternalistic or condescending overtones. Implicit in the notion of pity is that its object does not deserve its plight, and, moreover, is unable to prevent, reverse, or overturn it. Pity is less engaged than empathy, sympathy, or compassion, amounting to little more than a conscious acknowledgement of the plight of its object.

…

Sympathy (‘fellow feeling’, ‘community of feeling’) is a feeling of care and concern for someone, often someone close, accompanied by a wish to see him better off or happier. Compared to pity, sympathy implies a greater sense of shared similarities together with a more profound personal engagement. However, sympathy, unlike empathy, does not involve a shared perspective or shared emotions, and while the facial expressions of sympathy do convey caring and concern, they do not convey shared distress. 

…

Compassion (‘suffering with’) is more engaged than simple empathy, and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With empathy, I share your emotions; with compassion I not only share your emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the main motivators of altruism.

— Neel Burton, MD, Empathy Vs Sympathy, Psychology Today

I also created a chart to sum this up (I included it in a previous blog post, but just in case for reference):

Pitytocompassion1
 

Products are created out of empathy. Products are sold and marketed through compassion.

Many products are created by an inventor/programmer/creator who is looking to solve a problem that he, and possibly a handful of people, have. This inventor believes that there has to be a better way to do something. If the creation solves problems for a few, someone will usually give the inventor the inspiration to sell the product to other people. If some people are having a particular problem, it logically follows that more must too.
 
Alternatively, the inventor may have an idea and share it with others, who come to find out, have a similar problem. Then someone may suggest the inventor make that product – for real – and market it to others.
 
The key here is how products are created. The inventor:
  • Identifies a problem
  • Observes others with that same problem
  • Realizes that there is a solution
  • Creates the solution
That's empathy in progress. 
 
Marketing such products is a little different when it comes to emotions. Marketing can start at sympathy. With sympathy, you feel bad for your prospects and customers and want to tell them that there is at least one way to solve their problems – your solution. 
 
However, by elevating that connection to empathy, you more deeply connect with the prospects and can relate to their problems. And if you can relate to your customers, that means you can more easily explain how your product can help them from different perspectives and discussions. You get it. And you want to help them get it too through content, social media, and other venues. You feel their pain.
 
And that thought leads you to marketing through compassion. When you market using compassion, you want to solve the prospect’s problems and truly believe that your product is THE solution. You become an evangelist. Additionally, you are more open to collaborating with your customer because you not only understand him and his problems, you highly respect where your customer and prospect is coming from. How he or she got to have the problem they have doesn't matter. What matters is that you get out of the problem together (and use your product).
 
 
Empathy cannot happen through imagination; it is based on experience
There was a study completed recently about creating empathy in business managers, and its findings dismissed the value of empathy. After an initial pass through the research, although shocking, you have to wonder why anyone would bother with empathy. It seems like it would be a waste of time given the study's results.
 
However, after deeper investigation into the study, you have to ask if they were working with a flawed premise when they did the study on empathy.
 
How the study prepped the managers:
The researchers then primed some managers to be empathetic by having them describe a typical customer of the offering and imagine that person’s thoughts and reactions. All managers were asked to predict customers’ desires and took a survey assessing empathy levels. The more empathetic managers were, the more “egocentric” they became; that is, the more likely they were to say that the customers’ preferences were the same as their own.
Did the study miss the point about what empathy is? I think it did. Empathy isn't something you imagine someone else experiencing. Empathy is based on connecting through a shared experience. And by shared experience, I mean an experience that reflects a similar situation.
 
That's what it means to walk in someone else's shoes. It is to experience something similar or parallel to better understand where that person is coming from.
 
Here’s an example. Let's say two people just met in a doctor’s waiting room. One is waiting to hear about the results from his series of blood tests for AIDS. The other is waiting to hear about the results of his biopsy for Stage 4 lung cancer. Both have very different ailments. Both have very different lives. However, the connecting experience is that they both have life threatening ailments and are, right now, waiting to hear about their results. Both are most likely feeling similar anxiety to hear about their health conditions, although they are different. 
 
In some ways, these two people are walking in each other's shoes. It may not be an exact situation, but their situations are similar. Both are in the situation of waiting to hear news about their lives and what’s next. 
 
 
What are the other ways in which the study was flawed?
In the study, people were thinking about what it was like to be the customer and provided data about them. To really know your customer, you need information to help define this person as being separate from you, the marketer or product manager. You still need stats and metrics to know who these people are, what their challenges are, where they get lost in an experience, and try to understand what they think about and what motivates them. 
 
You need to find the commonality shared between you both to try to imagine what an experience COULD be like for them. It's a parallel experience to spark insights.
 
The study used an example of creating a cafe for students. Let's use that one here. And let's use the empathy approach I'm suggesting, where a common or shared experience is created between the prospects/customers and marketing manager.
 
Based on a student persona I'm making up right now, let's say the student:
  • Doesn't have a lot of cash
  • Wants good quality food to stay somewhat healthy
  • Would prefer to use his food plan that parents or scholarship pays for
  • Doesn't have a lot of time to eat
  • Wants something tasty and fun – not vile and gross like institutional food can be
Basically, you want to replicate an experience where someone can find moderately priced food, that is healthy, tastes good, and can be eaten on the go. The hardest part to balance here is the moderately priced food that is healthy. Food that tastes good and is mobile is easy – McDonalds and Burger King has been doing that for a long time.
 
Now let's say you are a marketing manager for the cafe and want to get more students to buy from you. And you want to understand your students better. Let's start with the question: What could be a great parallel experience for you to understand where they are coming from? Maybe a trip to Whole Foods or Central Market. And go there with a budget in mind – $50/person for the week. Or think about experiences at a high-end farmer's market when peaches at $7/lb is just out of budget. How does that experience feel? Are you feeling confident to buy anything? 
 
 
Most likely, you feel like a failure all around – nothing is affordable, you can't stay in budget, and then wonder how you will stay healthy. Suddenly, Burger King sounds like a great idea – you can't afford anything healthy anyway, so at least it should taste good.
 
Now think of a trip to a vegetable stand. I'll use for myself a trip to my local veggie market, which sells vegetables and other items. Some items are expensive, but others aren't. It's affordable and I can feel healthy when I leave. I stay in budget when I go there and get some great food options. I feel successful on two fronts here – I can eat healthy and I can stay under budget.
 
Now, if I were the manager, I'd use that experience at the more reasonable vegetable stand as an experiential connection point with the students. With that in mind, I'd suggest maybe a menu with sandwiches and salads ready on the go, with ingredients that are healthy, familiar and reasonably priced. Not all healthy food is expensive (Kale can be SUPER cheap. As can squashes and sweet potatoes.) The food doesn't need to be too fancy, could be very straightforward, but it uses fresh ingredients. Think roast chicken sandwich with lettuce and a spicy mayo. Maybe throw in the occasional bacon, or use turkey bacon. Or create a salad with reasonably priced ingredients and a fun-flavored dressing. Test different combinations to see how they sell and get to know your customers better.
 
The menu will be particular to your audience. But the understanding you have about your audience is based on the shared experience: wanting to eat good quality food on a budget.
 
 
Feeling empathy isn't about you and your experience. It is about a shared experience with your prospects and customers, the common underlying experience you both are having. You have to take what you learn from that shared experience, what you believe your customers are experiencing, and apply a solution that they will like. 
 
In the next part, we will address why people like Monopoly, what that has to do with empathy, and explore Empathy Exercises more.
 
To create a product, you need to feel empathy – Part 1

The Continuum from Pity to Compassion

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In order to understand how to design games that include experiences that will help people to feel empathy (Empathy Exercises), I need to be able to understand the range of feeling from pity to compassion.
Here is a chart I came up with that outlines the similarities and differences. It is a draft – so any feedback is welcome.
Rather than repeat the phrases “people feeling emotion” and “people experiencing problems/challenges” throughout the chart, I decided to refer to them as:
  • Person A (people feeling emotion)
  • Person B (people experiencing problems/challenges).

With Empathy Exercises, this chart raises the question, how do you bring someone from pity to at least empathy? 
To start to answer that, let’s start with why it is difficult, if not impossible, to create or market a product when you are feeling pity for prospects or customers. There are two main reasons:
  • You can’t relate to your prospects’ or customers’ problems
  • You don’t think they can solve the problems they have

If you can’t relate to your prospects or customers problems, then you will never understand what they are experiencing. This is where the games in Empathy Exercises can help change that perception (and I have a post about this for tomorrow/Wednesday).

What does it mean to understand what someone else is going through and walk in their shoes? 

Here’s an example. Lets say two people just met in a doctor’s waiting room. One is waiting to hear about the results from his series of blood tests for AIDs. The other is waiting to hear about the results of his biopsy for Stage 4 lung cancer. Both have very different ailments. Both have very different lives. However, the connecting experience is that they both have life thretening ailments and are waiting to hear about their results. Both are most likely feeling similar anxiety to hear about their health conditions, although they are different.
This is what is meant by walking in someone else’s shoes. It may not be an exact situation, but it is about the similarities of the situation. In this case, both are in the situation of waiting to hear news about their lives and what’s next.
The second reason is more problematic and harder to solve. If you don’t think your prospects or customers can solve their problem, then you have a respect problem. And the only way to repair a respect problem is through you and your perspective of your customers and prospects. No one can make you respect anyone else; that is a choice. Often the way to improve respect between people is to start treating them with respect with the hope that grows.

Keep in mind, if you don’t respect someone, that doesn’t mean the other person does not respect you. In fact, the other person may hold you in high regard.

Empathy Exercies may help here because it is possible that if you can relate to someone’s problems, respect may grow out of that. It may be a way to build respect through understanding, but there is no guarantee. There may be deeper issues at hand to cause the lack of spect.

Now, if you fix these problems, you may still have a challenge with your customer and why they won’t buy your product: they don’t recognize that they have a problem. That’s a different type of problem. That means either:

  • You aren’t clearly communicating what you do
  • The prospect/customer simply doesn’t relate to having the problem you solve
  • The prospect/customer doesn’t see his problem as necessary to fix

In some way, you aren’t relating to your prospect or customer so he understands what you do. Again, this is where Empathy Exercises could help you better relate to your customer and inform them of your product and services.

The bottom line: to connect with prospcts and customers you cannot feel pity. Great products are created when you feel empathy for your customers and prospects and want to help them fix their problem. Great marketing happens when you feel compassion and want to solve problems with your prospects and customers and include them in the process. More on that soon.

The Continuum from Pity to Compassion

Do you love your customers? Pity vs. Empathy and Compassion.

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We all like to think we love our customers, but if we really loved our customers we’d feel:
  • empathy for them regarding their challenges and issues and
  • the compassion required ready to help them solve their problems
We’d create products and services to make their lives better. We’d communicate with them not with the intent to sell, but with the intent to help them lead a better life, knowing that our products could offer them that. We’d want to collaborate with them to create solutions. We’d welcome their calls.
 
As I was working on the product Empathy Exercises today, I was contemplating what it means to feel pity for someone versus empathy and compassion. To start, there is a range of emotion in this category:
 
Pity > Sympathy > Empathy > Compassion
 
Pity is the most detached emotion to feel for others; compassion is the most engaged and involved. UX and CX work centers around empathy and compassion. Products are typically forged in those emotional expressions, as is marketing. So I could better understand why people need Empathy Exercises, I decided today to research pity and understand more about what it really is. 
 
I learned that pity as an emotion carries a lot of baggage. It starts like any of its brethren expressions with sorrow and sadness, but it takes an odd turn. Some key characteristics that differentiate pity from its brethren:
  • With pity, you are removed from the subject 
  • When you feel pity, you really don’t think the subject can fix the situation he is in his or herself
  • And that attitude is condescending
  • Condescension invokes contempt, or anger and disgust
  • And those negative emotions encourage one to objectify another person
If you don’t think someone can solve their own problems, obviously, you aren’t seeing the possibility of that person’s full potential. You are objectifying that person in the same way a man objectifies a woman when he sees her as a sex object.
 
How do you know if you feel pity or empathy and compassion for your customer? 
 
Let’s look at the chart below:
 
Pity-compassion
 
 
Sure, we all can flip between both sides of the chart at any time. But the key question remains – do you love your customers? If respect is there, I’d say love is there, so yes, you do. Otherwise, you may want to explore why you feel pity for them. Do you not really understand their problems? Are you not able to relate to them? Is there a connection missing? Do you just not like them as people? 
 
Unforgettable experiences are created when you are authentic. And you are most authentic as a person or company when you feel empathy and compassion for your customer. If you feel pity and it approaches contempt, there is no way to create an unforgettable experience. You are authentic, but not in the right mindset to help a customer. You really need at least empathy to do that. More coming on this soon!
Do you love your customers? Pity vs. Empathy and Compassion.

We live in a world of conversations – Part 2. We automated lead gen, but did that make a business relationship a transaction? Let’s reverse that.

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How businesses worked pre-Web 
Once upon a time, there were no Web sites, social media apps, or anything like that. And people made money.
Businesses thrived without a Web site or a Facebook account or Twitter. They didn’t have blogs. Some had articles published, but most didn’t. Few people were writers. Then, being a writer meant that you were published by a publication or through a publishing company – not through your own blog, which is a blessing and curse.
Women-work
Sales people and business owners would go out into the world and share with whomever they met what they did for work. You’d hear about someone’s company at a dinner party, a cocktail party, in a line at the bank, or at your child’s dance recital. Or you’d walk past a storefront and if what was in the window struck your fancy you would enter and start exploring.
On their journeys, sales people and business owners would distribute business cards that could be placed into a rolodex for later reference. You didn’t need to talk to someone the moment you got a business card about something like a new roof, but you knew that you may need one in the next year or so. So you kept that card because you knew it may come in handy in the future.
Company-shorr-packaging-history-1970s-sales-meeting-employees
The sales person or business owner would often take your information as well, if you had it available, and contact you from time to time with new information about what they sold – new products or techniques – or a promotion. You’d have an open conversation about what you were looking for when, granted if it wasn’t a high-pressure sale. (For those, most people hung up on the sales person and he lost that contact.) This sales person or business owner could be considered minimally an acquaintance; sometimes a friend.
Business was all about relationships pre-Web.
And it extended to larger projects and leveraging networks. Let’s say there was the possibility of a larger deal with multiple parties involved in buying and selling. Then a sales person or business owner would consider who was in his network of acquaintances and who would benefit from such a deal. And if those people didn’t want to participate, the sales person or business owner would ask the contact to reach out to their network and ask who they would recommend.
Successful business required relationships. Friends of friends.
Word of mouth has always been what really got you business. 
 
Curiously – that’s what is also true today. How so?
First, let’s start with sales people. Sales people are often hired for their contact lists, which is mainly their relationships. Sometimes, sales people are told that they need to leave their contacts, again relationships, with their employer if they quit. This proves how relationships are key for business – especially introductions. If the individual trusts the judgement of the sales person at any level, at least that person will listen to what’s being offered.
Secondly, why are review sites so popular? We all value each other’s opinions about their experiences with the same company or product. Yelp is popular because it gives you insights into what other people experienced at a restaurant or another establishment. And I think we all read product reviews written by people like us before we buy anything. We want to know what other people think about a product or service.
Third, there is the influence people have through word-of-mouth. Most people trust the opinions of their friends – and that is what sells ideas and products. If you know that a widget was useful to your best friend, you’d probably consider getting it to fix your problem too.
And there are stats to prove that word of mouth is alive and working:
74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision.
Word-of-mouth engines. They are 1.6x more likely to rate a product or service online at least once a week (versus consumers driven by entertainment or connection).
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
But do companies really understand this? I’m not too sure.
As written in Part 1, when companies want leads, they collect names and numbers by placing a form to collect that info before a key “asset.” The form may include additional questions – or not – that help with lead scoring.
And in the previous blog post, people caught on to the purpose of such a form and stopped falling for that nonsense. They started putting the connections together that filling out a form meant a call. And who wants to be bothered with sales people looking to sell.
(Something to consider here: no one wants to talk to a sales person who only wants to sell. Isn’t it more fun to talk to someone about new product ideas and better ways to do things? What if sales dropped the pressure and talked about how they could help instead and became a friend? But more on that later.)
Let’s talk about what a lead really is.
In the old model before the Internet and social media, a lead was someone who was interested in buying. There were a number of conversations that happened to introduce someone to a product or service before this happened, and that prospect was showing interest. It could take months or years sometimes to develop that lead – and a number of conversations occurred for that to happen.
And this process was based on facts, but slightly subjective. The relationship was what mattered.
The new Web world leveraged lead scoring methods. But are these scoring methods for a conversation and relationship or simply a transaction? Sadly, I think in our desire to simplify the lead process, we turned lead generation and nurturing into a transaction like everything else. It made sense at the time to help with prioritizing leads, but it missed the mark about building a relationship and what that means. And what word of mouth means.
We re-focused our efforts on willingness to buy rather than understanding what the customer wanted and determining if the company and prospect were a fit. We trusted that sales would be doing that – and they are. But knowing someone’s willingness to buy only tells part of the story.
Things like budget are necessary for purchase, but financing can be worked out in larger sales. What matters more, and what makes the sale, is the relationship. And from that relationship, you know someone’s general problems, pain points, what they need to be successful, what’s missing today. That is the knowledge you need to make a sale. It is that relationship that is required to go to the next level of the sale and the commitment after the sale.
The relationship is focused on making the customer successful. Lead gen scoring is focused on getting the product sold. There is much more potential for sales and a relationship if the customer succeeds.
And I think we all know, relationships happen through conversations and word of mouth.

So what happened to word of mouth, relationship building, and lead nurturing – not of the transaction flavor?

It went on pause. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do this.
We would need to shift how we perceive campaigns and content marketing to start, develop, and interrupt industry conversations. Something as simple as an ad campaign should spark a conversation – it should introduce a thought that is revolutionary to how someone sees the world now. There can be content support pieces to help describe the idea, but the idea should merit additional discussion.
The goal of content marketing is to introduce the right ideas that get someone interested enough to WANT to talk to sales. People should WANT to give out their contact information to keep the conversation going. And the conversation shouldn’t be so focused on selling – that alone ends a conversation if someone isn’t ready to buy. The conversation should be focused on building a relationship.  To build additional conversations at the individual-level as well as larger company-level. And these conversations should be focused around how the customer defines success for him, for his team, and for his company.
The person sales is talking to from such a campaign may never become a lead – and that is ok. The person that sales is talking to may become an ally. And an ally could do the selling for you.
Any conversations like these would start a relationship. But the key is to shift a lead generation engine away from being transactional to more relationship driven, i.e. conversation driven. If we do this, we may have more success driving leads and sales – and promoting a word of mouth engine.
I’m not saying remove the forms before content. That works today at some levels. Keep that.
I’m proposing that we evolve lead generation to incorporate social media, online communities, and conversation-styled engagement. We need to reach out and engage with our followers on social media, get them to express their opinions. We need to get these people to understand what we are offering. We need ways for people to discuss ideas, share their thoughts, get involved, participate.
We need to move ourselves and others into the hybrid world of conversation that includes online and offline discussion.
And that brings us to why there is a Customer Relationship Lifecycle rather than simply a Buyer’s or Customer Journey. We need to focus on how the relationship progresses for each step of the process, how do we reach and interact with our customer, and bring them along the next step of the relationship to engage them further.
Customer Relationship Lifecycle
We need to make relationships the focus of businesses again. And that is what it means when we say business is all about the customer.
We live in a world of conversations – Part 2. We automated lead gen, but did that make a business relationship a transaction? Let’s reverse that.

We live in a world of conversations – Part 1. Is it a conversation – or really a transaction?

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Have you noticed how often people are walking around, staring at their phones? I think we’ve all witnessed people stumbling, walking into doors and the like while holding – and staring at – their phones. Or we’ve witnessed people glancing at and interacting with their phones at dinner with their companions each doing the same.
Although what these people are doing could be considered rude, each of these people are having some type of conversation with another through their phone.
Sadly, they are forgetting that you don’t need to have a phone to have a conversation.
Conversations have a simpler origin that requires no devices – only language and listening between at least two people.
What is a conversation?
We have a number of ways to start a conversation with people today – all of these valid communication methods (listed from most interactive to least, according to my perspective):
  • In-person discussion
  • Video chat
  • Telephone
  • Letters (paper letters through the mail)
  • Social media
  • Texting
  • Email
  • Blogs
  • Web
  • Fax (no one uses it really, but it is an option)
  • Books and magazines
I’m sure I’m missing a few items here, but you get the idea.
I think as conversations move from person-to-person interactions (in-person, phone, video) towards a more abstracted means of written and electronic communications (email, texting, social media), there is less of a volley between at least two people discussing ideas and more of a push of ideas and information from a single person to others to provide immediate feedback. Almost like a transaction – someone receives information from someone else and does something with it.
What do I mean by volley? Not just two people talking, back and forth. I mean a volley where people talk, take a pause, collect their thoughts to respond, and listen. That is what makes an engaging conversation.
Listening is a key aspect of any conversation – and required if you want to keep it interesting and engaging.
We know if we are engaging when we talk to someone in person, and we can somewhat determine that through phone and Webcam/Video chat conversations. But it is only in person where you get immediate feedback that what you are saying is resonating with the other person, that he or she understands you, that the person has feedback or input for you, that the person wants to contribute to the conversation.
(Note: Julian Treasure does a lot of work on listening and how to improve your listening skills. He has done about 5 TED talks on the subject. A favorite is 5 Ways to Listen Better.)
And listening happens not only by hearing words and understanding what is said, but watching people’s physical reactions – their facial expressions, their body language. We can sense if someone agrees, disagrees, or has a different perspective. There could be nods, head shaking, smiles, frowns, or smirks. And we can ask for their opinion if they are silent with no expression.
In written and electronic communications, we’ll push out thoughts and ideas and hope that someone reads them and provide their reactions. Most won’t, whether they agree or disagree, unless you write something extremely controversial. Or you send an individual an email, where he or she feels that he should respond in some way.
Over social media and through blogs or Web sites, we build relationships with people who like or repost what we say. They complete an action to let us know they agree. It’s a relationship built through agreement. People like a post. Or they subscribe to a newsletter. And the social media engines leverage algorithms that learn this and link us closer together.
But such social media posts promote one-way conversation. Which raises the question: are these really relationships? Or are they groups of like-minded people who agree with each other? 
Two-way conversations allow people to share ideas and information; they can include disagreements and hopefully, changed perceptions. But what makes conversations interesting is that they allow people to grow personally. Listening gives you the opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes for a second, possibly experience a little empathy, and change your own perspective of the world. The ability to share your ideas allow you to change others’ perspectives as well.
It’s a beautiful thing.

What happens with companies and conversations?

Companies often create content to satisfy content marketing programs, but these questions need to be asked:

  • Are these companies having a conversation with readers?
  • What are people doing with the content they create?
  • Do people care about this content? Do they want to continue a conversation about it?
Companies will often create a form to collect contact information and place it before “important” content that they think people will find interesting. They post the package on the Web, promote it through SEM, email marketing, social media and all the usual suspects. They will also distribute the content to sales and hope they send it around as well.
In other fronts, companies will create apps that allow users to complete tasks that would normally require a phone call or conversation to complete. For example, someone could place an order, find an address, get a phone number, pay a bill, write a letter through an app without contacting a single person. Basically, the person completes a transaction that would have required a conversation in the past.
But when we do these things, are we encouraging or preventing conversations? Or are we engaging in transactions – from our content marketing programs to our apps. Do this – then that happens.
We only know what people think about us and our content based on the stats we get from these transactions. We know how many comments we get, or likes, or follows, or reposts. We can view data about how many people download a PDF or view a blog page. But as stated earlier, in social media, even companies can end up forming “tribes” of followers who think similarly as they do.
In apps, how people use the apps gives us insights into which functionality is most effective (however we define that), which functionality works as planned, which functionality is not used often or users end up with many errors using it.
But again, these have nothing to do with conversations. These are transactions. And transactions are meant to get us into agreement about factual things. Do this – then that.
A conversation requires much more than that.
We live in a world of conversations – Part 1. Is it a conversation – or really a transaction?