Month: November 2018

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

GearmarkLeave a comment
Business is based on the relationships bewteen people. For years, business occured through conversations, agreeements, and handshakes. The Mom and Pop businesses thrived on conversations, loyalty, and general goodwill. With the rise of automation, we were able to streamline conversations and transactions in real-time. But what happened in the process?
We put machines in the middle, removed direct interactions between people, and got hyper-focused on results.  
In this new, atuomated world, we often forget that business is about people. We get focused on the outcome of business relationships, or revenue, and dismiss the value of relationships – the actions and opportunities that get us there – because they aren’t tangible or meauresureable. But are measureable results all that is necessary for business? What about strong relationships and partnerships? Can’t you measure them too? (And yes, you can measure their effectiveness…more about that soon!)
In this drive for automation, we’ve learned that companies no longer only create products. They produce solutions to people’s problems. And customers only purchase if they realize they have the problem a company solves and see the solution as something that they need to live a better life.
Customers are key parts of our company’s ecosystem because they pay a company’s bills. They are probably more important than any shareholder or other stakeholder. And with the rise of automation, they are more included in a company’s operations than ever before.
That’s why we need to consider how to make experiences more human.
How do we engage best with customers so we stop seeing them as walking revenue sticks, but as people? How do we interact with people and build a relaitonship? Journeys are a great way to get us there, but they illustrate a finite path to purchase or to use a product or during use, and people don’t always work that way. People are messy. They jump around and don’t always make linear decisions. This is why AIs can’t be programmed to follow a simple linear conversation path unless they are driving the conversation to keep it linear. People aren’t computers.
This means that we need to humanize experiences again. And the only way to do this is to get back to engaging with people emotionally and with empathy and compassion. But how do you do this?
Sales knows, but I’m not sure marketing and product development does. Wtih all of the innovations in personas and research, we should, but it seems that there is work to be done to put the pieces together and engage with people emotionally – not just transactionally.
This is why I’m fascinated with listening and how to develop emotional engagement. This is the work involved in customer expeirence – how to enage with customers beyond transactions and journeys. How do you build a relationship with customers? How do your employees interact with customers in your company’s ecosystem? That’s the next area of growth for companies and their brands – evolve to becomes a community of employees and customers.
Latest resources:
Why do we need to integrate emotions and compassion into our experiences?

Designing while grateful.

GearmarkLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

We were fed a myth.

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

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

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

Designing while grateful.

You’re invited to the new Gearmark community

GearmarkLeave a comment
A few years ago, I met entrepreneurs at networking events who were creating exciting new products. I realized during these conversations that many could have used a consultant with user experience and marketing expertise like me on their team. I think these entrepreneurs did too.
We’d have great conversations brainstorming ideas and solutions. Many of these founders were changing industries. Personally, I love working on projects like these, create a product from simply an idea and see it go to market and make money. However, the end result of these conversations was often the same. After about 10-15 minutes of intense brainstorming, right where the boundary between free ideas and paid, implementable ideas lies, I would see their faces change. Excitement, hope, and promise faded to silence. Often, these founders had little to no budget available for my services. They were nice people, so rather than pretend that there was an opportunity for me and get more free ideas out of me, they found a gracious way to exit the conversation, suddenly needing a beer or a sandwich. We’d connect on LinkedIn, but that was that.
After these conversations, I often felt that I failed. But I didn’t feel that I failed as a business owner. In business you want to find people who can pay you. I felt that I failed as a person who couldn’t help them achieve their dream and help us both succeed. I felt that my design mind should have been able to create a solution for this problem, but I wasn’t sure what would work best.
After about 6 months of these incidents, I knew that I needed to offer more than consulting services for Gearmark. Something more economical and scalable.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
– Origin unclear. Possibly African or general Internet proverb.
I first encountered this quote at an Agile conference in a session about teams. I think it’s overused because it’s just too accurate. Teamwork is always the answer. Even in learning.

Where did this community idea come from?

I tried to create a user experience course for managers and directors twice over the past few years. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I tried. I failed. I wanted to share my ideas, but I wasn’t communicating them as well as I could, and I didn’t understand how video really worked at the time. Until I took a course in public speaking, I didn’t know how little I understood how to give a proper talk.
But hey, I tried!
So now I’m trying again – in a different way.
There was one lesson I got from HP that I will always carry with me: consensus and collaboration is key for anyone to achieve a goal. We all help each other, even though the message may not come from the expected source. Sometimes HBR resonates better with people than McKinsey or MIT Tech Review or someone’s blog post. It matters less where you learned what you did; what matters is that this learning, this message, helped you achieve you goal.
This is why I want to create a community.
Not only is it great for the members to learn in a community environment, but I learn from them too. We are all learning and sharing knowledge to help each other succeed. On all teams, everyone has something to contribute. A link. An idea. A thought. A video. Sometimes, a comment can give you a new perspective that you never considered and inspire you to finish a project.
Here’s how I describe the Gearmark community on the site.
The Gearmark Community is a place where you can learn how to create great customer relationships through exceptional customer experiences. The best learning happens from others.
Knowledge comes from everyone sharing their experiences, information, and insights. Why learn alone when we can learn together?
But it’s not up to the community alone to do this. We’ll also be available to answer questions and participate in conversations to provide help and advice.
Who would benefit most from the community?

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

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

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

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

Let’s learn together so we all win.

Special introductory rate. 

Join the Gearmark Community.

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

What else is coming soon near you?

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

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