Product Design

What makes a great vision or mission statement?

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Hi all! It has been a while since I posted because I have been working on creating videos to promote my book, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both. I'm also working on a short course and workbook that will accompany the book. Oh yes, and a podcast (that will start soon). Plus projects. It has been busy!

I'll post some of the videos here with the transcripts. The first I want to share comes from the chapter about vision statements and why they are so important for a company to create a great customer experience. We sometimes discount the value of the vision and mission statement for a company, seeing it as not having a bunch of value, but the mission and vision statements define a company's purpose, values, operations, solutions (products & services), and how the community between customers and employees should work. It's so important, which is why I created a chapter about it. 

 

Excerpt from the book Revenue or Relationships: Win Both: Introduction to Chapter 2 Vision: What is the value you provide? 

As we all know, a company’s vision defines who the company is, what it does, and where it wants to be in the future. Rather than outline a plan to achieve goals, it outlines the value the company will provide now and in the future to various stakeholders, including customers, the industry, and society. A company’s vision is timeless, rarely changes, and is usually transformative and inspiring. 

We hear about visions constantly, and it seems like everyone wants to develop one—to the point that it feels like everyone is a visionary. It’s great that leaders and aspiring strategists have a vision, but is it a vision that can be realized? 

Some companies have the opposite problem: They could easily implement a vision—if they only had one. Some companies don’t place value on creating a vision for their company, or they have a vision that is too tactical and only defines what success looks like today. 

A company’s lack of vision becomes clear in its operations and product strategy. A company with a vision will have clear, targeted goals to achieve. It isn’t afraid to take risks because it is being guided by its vision to drive the company forward. Conversely, a company without a clear vision may make half-hearted attempts at launching products or expressing its brand. There is an uncertainty about its actions. It is most likely hesitant to act because it doesn’t know exactly what it is working to achieve. 

–Mary Brodie, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both

 

 

Video Transcript: 

Everyone needs a destination or a goal. It helps us feel that there is purpose and meaning in life.

And that is what a vision statement does for companies. If you ask me, many companies don’t really know how to write an aspirational or inspirational vision statement. They'll write a one-line abbreviated summary lifted from a long-term business plan and say – that’s what I want to do with my business, that’s my vision. I want to be the leader of my industry, I want to be global, I want the best clients or the most revenue or what have you. And I don’t disagree that such goals are admirable. But that’s not a vision. That’s a one-line operational plan.

A vision should inspire your customers and employees and outline the problem your company will solve for your customers, your industry, or the world. It can and should be aspirational and inspirational. The mission states how you plan to achieve that goal strategically. It doesn’t include specific approaches or methods – that’s reserved for your operation plan. Such statements are timeless for your business and should serve as a guide for your employees to solve customer problems and create great experiences for them and help your customers understand how you can help them.

As an example, let’s look at Gearmark’s vision: Customers become active participants in every company’s community.

I would love it if customers were actively involved in every company’s community – and I want to help all of my clients make that happen. And there’s a lot of work to do because there are a lot of companies and their customers aren’t always at the center of those businesses.

I have outlined in my book, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both, a number of ways companies can achieve this, even without requiring a purchase. That would be so great to see the future—a company community where customers and employees collaborate to solve problems. It’s not 100% achievable and it shouldn’t be. There will always be new ways to collaborate, new problems to solve, new ways to approach communications. If a vision is achieved, the company has nothing else to do. The vision statement should paint a picture of the world that will always be out of reach. That keeps the inspiration and motivation going with your teams.

Now a solid vision also tells your customers how you help them. In this case, Gearmark’s vision statement tells companies that it wants to help them make customers active participants in their community. It doesn’t say how – just that is the larger goal they will achieve by working with Gearmark.

Now for the Gearmark mission: "Empower companies to build great customer relationships."

I plan to do this by providing companies tools and resources to build great customer relationships. Over time, this could include videos, eBooks, guides, templates, case studies – all sorts of materials. I could be a consultant or write another book. I’m looking into creating an open source organization to help create metrics to measure the quality of relationships. But that’s not in the mission – the mission keeps it general enough so there can be many ways to support it.

In my book, I outline a number of other examples of mission and vision statement from companies. I’ll include my favorite company here, Airbnb. I love Airbnb because their customers are the community. It is a community oriented company on so many levels. So I’ll read you what I wrote in my book about their vision and mission statements:

“Airbnb is one of my favorite companies for many reasons, especially because it has a clearly defined vision and mission.

Vision/tagline: Belong anywhere, people can live in a place, instead of just traveling to it.

Mission: Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where people can belong through healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable.

Airbnb’s vision is inspiring: belong anywhere; live in a place instead of just traveling to it. It’s a vision that hits the heart of every traveler. You don’t want to just experience being in a new country; you want to experience what living there feels like. For the true traveler, everywhere you go becomes home for a short while. And the more comfortable you feel, the more memorable the trip.

It is unusual that the vision statement and tagline are the same. However, the vision is clear and succinct, so it makes sense why Airbnb would have a dual-use for its vision as a tagline.

What’s great about the mission statement is that Airbnb clearly states how it plans to help travelers feel that they belong anywhere. It is working to create a world where people feel that they belong through “healthy travel” within the community that Airbnb has created through its products. Notice there is no mention of technologies Airbnb plans to use or how it plans to implement this idea. This leaves Airbnb open to solve this problem in various ways—through technology, through government policy, or through new community-based products.

What I like about the vision and mission statements is that they don’t specify Airbnb’s flagship hotel-like product. They are larger than that. Airbnb is creating solutions to solve the problem of travelers feeling a sense of belonging or connection to a city. This may be because many travelers don’t feel that there are people like them there, or they have a difficult time finding something they like to do, or they don’t feel “at home” where they are staying. Traveling can include exciting adventures, but also exclusion because you aren’t part of the community or culture you are visiting. The targeted openness of Airbnb’s vision and mission has enabled it to expand its “places to stay” business to include designed experiences, in which local residents “sell” a package of events and activities that presents what they like most about their city. Airbnb understands that belonging comes from a sense of community, which it has been building over the years through its hotel product and is now extending through its host-designed experiences.

Airbnb requires a sense of community in its products to not only support its unique business model, but to support its mission and vision statements. The original hotel product allows hosts to connect with guests, making them both a type of customer. The hosts post vacancies to attract a guest; the guest is looking for a place to stay. Airbnb needs them both to offer a wide variety of booking options. Strangers come together to create a safe, affordable travel experience in a type of community. By focusing on customers as people and community building in its vision and mission statement, Airbnb was able to brilliantly create a product that brings people together who crave travel experiences as a host, a guest, or both.”

—Mary Brodie, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both

So with all this in mind, how does this apply to your company?

Well, some questions you should ask yourself so your company can also have a great vision statement are:

  • Does your vision inspire you, as a person? That’s pretty basic, but if you aren’t inspired, no one else will be either.
  • Does it inspire your customers and employees to see a bigger picture about what you are trying to achieve in the world? Is it inspirational enough for them to want to find ways to make that vision a reality? Inspiration provides motivation. You can’t sell anything if people aren’t motivated to get your product or service to change their life.
  • Does it allow an employee to add to your company in their own way with a new program? Is it scalable? Employees need room to contribute to your company’s growth. A rigid vision or mission may prevent your employees from contributing to your organization so you can’t add ideas for growth.
  • Will it change an industry or the world? Or is it just a goal for my company? Are you making the world a different place? Again, your vision needs to be inspirational for not just a company but an industry or more to change.
  • Is it meaningful? does it reach into your soul to keep you going every day to work on something.

Now for the mission statement:

  • Does it share how you will do something? Does it mention specific methods? That’s where mission statements fall flat. Don’t mention exact technologies or approaches. Mention the strategy you plan on using to achieve the vision. Exactly how you do it is up for your teams to decide.
  • Will your employees be able to make your vision a reality in different ways with the guidance of the mission? Is it flexible enough to support it? Or is there only one path to success?

Those considerations should get you started to create a vision that will inspire and influence your employees to create awesome customer experiences which will ultimately increase your revenue and inspire your customers to understand the problem you solve. It will also help customers see the world as your company sees it.

Hope this was helpful! Let me know if you need help creating your vision or mission statements.

What makes a great vision or mission statement?

Inclusion: It’s not just politics. It really is about the brand and company values.

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Recently, Hallmark Channel USA (Hallmark’s TV station) aired ads featuring same sex couples.
Here is the ad:

One Million Moms, an organization self-described as “a division of the American Family Association, was begun to give moms an impact with the decision-makers and let them know we are upset with the messages they are sending our children and the values (or lack of them) they are pushing,” created a petition to remove the ad. The petition got around 26,000 signatures (I saw a number up to 30,000 at one point). Hallmark stopped airing the ads from that pressure. Then an uproar ensued on social media and beyond.
Why? I see two reasons:
  • The socio-political impact of excluding a minority group
  • The action of taking down ads about same sex marriages opposes brand values
The second reason is most likely the subconscious driver for the backlash. The Hallmark brand is about inclusion. It’s in their vision statement: “We will be the company that creates a more emotionally connected world by making a genuine difference in every life, every day.”
Excluding a group of people based on their race, religion, sexual preference, or gender doesn’t represent an emotionally connected world. Inclusion does.
After a day or two of digital protests and celebrity pressure, the CEO issued a statement and put the adds back on the air, much to some people’s chagrin. In some forums, Hallmark viewers are threatening never to watch Hallmark TV again or buy their cards. Although Hallmark took a risk airing the ads on their network, I’m 110% positive that Hallmark will turn out ok from this. History tells us this is true.
For example, look at Nike.
Colin Kaepernick started kneeling at football games to protest racial injustice, specifically, police violence against people of color. He subsequently lost his job over the controversy because some fans didn’t like how he used the NFL platform to communicate that view and they felt that kneeling was disrespectful to the flag and veterans (although Kaepernick got the idea to kneel from a veteran).
However, Nike had a different view. Nike saw this as an opportunity to make a statement and created an ad about it. This is the ad:
As a response, many conservatives who are opposed to players kneeling at football games burned their shoes and swore they would never buy from Nike again.
What happened? Nike’s revenue increased 31%. Why?
Let’s look at Nike’s brand. Nike’s vision statement is: “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
Every athlete. That sounds pretty inclusive to me. By not embracing all races, all genders, all points of view, Nike was ignoring its vision statement and not being true to its brand. Although it was a risk to be perceived as political, it was a win regarding the message’s connection to the brand and values.
Now let’s look at Chick-Fil-A, a company who recently became inclusive. 
Chick-Fil-A has been perceived as a notoriously anti-LGBTQ organization for years based on their contributions to anti-LGBTQ organizations and statements from their CEO. You could say that it didn’t hurt the brand because they were successful in parts of the country where that didn’t really matter to their customers. But it did. It not just limited, but in some cases prevented, their growth. They lost contracts at airports. Cities, like Boston, wouldn’t let them in. Heck, they only lasted 8 days in a mall outside of London and lost their lease because of their exclusionary views.
The irony is that their support of these anti-LGBTQ organizations is counter to their vision statement and a quote from the founder: “We should be about more than just selling chicken. We should be a part of our customers’ lives and the communities in which we serve.” You can’t be part of someone’s life if you are donating to an organization that has established programs to silence and disparage the group of which that person is affiliated. That’s a contradiction and a great reason to lose customers, specifically, LGBTQ customers.
Since they have switched their stand on the issue, and took action on it, they have grown. 
What is the lesson here? 
  • If your brand is inclusive of all types of people based on your values and vision statement, be inclusive. Stay on brand. Excluding a group of people based on a petition or slighting a perceived audience is just wrong. Stay true to who your company is and its values.
  • Exclusion doesn’t pay. Literally. Not only is it morally wrong, it is expensive and will result in missed opportunities. Ask Chick-Fil-A.
Inclusion: It’s not just politics. It really is about the brand and company values.

Epilogue: Conversations – Not Just for Humans Anymore

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For the past 1.5 years, I have been working on a book – Revenue or Relationships? Win Both. The book has been the reason why my posts have been few and far between since April. You don’t realize how much working on a book takes out of you. (It takes a lot!)

This is the Epilogue from the book. I wanted to share it with you to give you a sneak peek and to enjoy. Curious about thoughts and feedback. Thanks!

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Conversations are vital to building a relationship. They are ways for people to connect with each other, find common interests, and develop memories together. Social media and content marketing have elements of automated conversations. They provide information to readers to learn about the issues surrounding problems, describe solutions, and provide insights the reader should consider when making a decision. This first stage of communication starts a dialogue between companies and customers to help them recognize and understand their problems and realize they need a solution. The next stage usually involves online transactions, which is a type of conversation. The app or site requests information, the user provides it, and this banter continues until an agreement is reached and money is exchanged for an item. We are now exploring the possibility of chatbots and AIs to react quickly to human input in an automated, digital conversation. But what does that mean? And why is this relevant to discuss in the context of customer experience?

Conversations extend beyond information and transactions to decision-making, influencing, and relationship-building, with more intricate goals like information-sharing and collaboration along the way. We have created apps to facilitate automating these conversations, but there is more to a conversation than exchanging pleasantries, thoughts, and ideas. The automation of communication and conversations through bots and AI is a vital component of automating business. This has proven successful for informative and transactional conversations, but can we achieve this for more complex, relationship-driven communications? 

As we know, the more factual types of conversations—informational and transactional, related to things and action—are automated today. Decision-making, related to actions and thoughts, is semi-automated. We have tools available to help us, but humans need to actively use them to get any type of output. Influential conversations are more difficult to automate because they require conversations to discover information and insights, similar to relationship-building and brainstorming conversations. These types of conversations include emotions, feelings, empathy, curiosity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. 

The bottom layer of the diagram refers to the types and topics of the conversations, as suggested by Judy Apps in The Art of Conversation. These complement the types of conversations at the top of the diagram. It’s rare when talking about information that you’d talk about heart-related topics (like love or relationships) or discuss what really motivates you (like a soul topic). The more personal the conversation, the more emotionally driven the topics become. The more transactional and informational, the more likely factual or “thing” or “action” topics are fitting. If you are completing a transaction with a person or company, knowing that someone feels a certain way about an object may help a decision-making discussion about a purchase, but it won’t complete the transaction. Two or more people could be discussing how to implement a product or service, but the discussion goes beyond the “things” and “actions” to “head,” “heart,” and “soul.” The team is building trust through various side conversations that develop a relationship. And they understand the problem by sharing different perspectives, which they bring together in their collaboration to determine the best solution. 

Keeping all this in mind, without an appropriate program, a computer cannot reach the sentience necessary to be capable of making these connections between facts and emotions, curiosity and creativity, identifying problems and solving them. Human conversations beyond information and if/then transactions are too complex to model in a computer today. Relationship-building skills, like empathy, compassion, connection, and emotion, are required to complete more intricate life functions like decision-making, collaboration, and emotional connection.

Even if we were to create such a program, what would it look like? 

One could argue that we have achieved some type of sentience with the world-famous robot, Sophia. She has been introduced to the media as the AI representative of the future, but is she? She became a citizen of Saudi Arabia in 2017 and attends all of the popular technology events. She has even made some frequently quoted quips about AIs and robots having emotions or how robots want to kill humans. But does she have true sentience? She can see. She can respond to humans. But even her creator, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, acknowledges: 

. . .acknowledges that her development is still more akin to a baby or toddler than an adult with a consciousness or intellect that could feasibly be rewarded with a full set of rights. Even this is pushing it – toddlers, for example, have consciousness; Sophia does not.1 

Hanson has admitted that her responses are often based on programming, illustrating how far we can go with the if/then statement to model human behavior. We still have not created intelligence or sentience in a machine. 

This brings us back to the original question: If we were to create such a program for decision-making, collaboration, and emotional connection, what would it look like?

It’s unclear. If we don’t know in detail how these cognitive functions work in our own brains, how could we create a model to possibly replicate ourselves in a computer? We could create a new model that’s completely different from our own image, but what would that look like? Do we have any theoretical models to use as a basis for that initial approach?

We often take for granted what is involved in creating a conversation. As we listen to someone speak, thoughts rush to us regarding questions to ask next, responses to provide, and insights to share. A computer today doesn’t have the ability to respond in such ways. A computer follows its program and responds to stimuli, mostly based on user input. It processes data to present results and findings; it doesn’t provide an analysis or summarized insights without its programmed direction. Humans usually provide their own insights based on what they believe is important, using the facts that they find through traditional research methods or computer output. Ironically, computer output is based on programs humans designed to access specific data points that a group originally decided were important. In many ways, one group of people is defining for another group what is important through a program. When the computer is deciding what is important for a user using programmed judgement created by humans, that’s not entirely intelligence. From that perspective, we still haven’t reached sentience.

This raises the question of whether we are limiting our own data knowledge by not considering the impact of outlier data to improve situations and provide a different perspective. Are we developing AIs to help us in the way we want to be helped? Or are we developing AI to identify problems or patterns that we could use to create something new? There are initiatives in companies and consultancies to have AIs discover trends found in “dark data,” outside of the knowledge that people commonly have and can immediately leverage and reference. Leveraging such an approach is the only way we could expand human conversations using AI to add value for us to see problems and issues differently. Otherwise, we are defining what we need in a program, inadvertently limiting AI discoveries based on our existing knowledge. 

If/Then versus How and Why

Conversations about “things” and “actions” are based on direct questions and answers. Do you have this in stock? When will it be shipped? How can I order that? That’s why it is easy to automate this into chatbots. They are if/then statements about information that’s required and requested.

However, when we talk about thoughts, emotions, and abstract ideas, more relevant topics for decision-making, influence, relationship-building, and collaborating, conversations no longer follow if/then structures to provide information. How are you feeling? Why are you feeling that way? What can I do so you feel better? One could create an if/then program to create answers, but that’s not what’s required in these types of conversations. These are questions that require cognitive processing related to sentience, or self-awareness. They require that subjects know they are alive and want to remain that way. We organic beings “feel” because we are self-aware and we know what is happening in our bodies and minds. We are driven to stay alive based on this self-awareness. But are computers aware of their existence? Do they feel? Do they seek to stay alive at any cost? What does this mean for them?

Science fiction has explored these ideas for more than 75 years in books and movies like 2001: Space Odyssey and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. It has been in the realm of fantastical thinking and philosophy for decades, if not centuries (for example, Frankenstein explores this idea at some level), but it is relevant today as we are in the early stages of creating intelligences and sentient beings that use AI. 

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick created an AI entity, the HAL9000 computer, in the movie 2001: Space Odyssey. In one scene, Dave is dismantling and deactivating HAL because of its psychopathic actions. Unknown to Dave, this was because HAL’s programming was conflicting with his orders; Dave assumed that HAL was simply malfunctioning. While Dave was dismantling HAL, the computer admitted his faults, attempted to apologize, and asked him to stop. HAL was aware of what Dave was doing and told Dave that he was afraid. If HAL was only a computer, how could he have identified—never mind experienced—an emotion like fear? Or felt his mind drifting away with the removal of each chip and circuit board? It seemed like HAL was aware of the physicality of what was happening and the impact on his own mind and being. Or was he? Was that part of his programming?2

The question that Clarke and Kubrick explored was: Was it possible to kill an AI like HAL, which seems to have the qualities of a sentient being, by deactivating his “brain”? That’s hard to say, because in future movies HAL comes back to “life” when reassembled. The other question that Clarke and Kubrick explored with HAL as a character, which is more central to this discussion, is: What exactly is sentience for a computer or AI? Are they mimicking humans? Is it programmed behavior? Or do they have their own experience through their own desire to survive?

In a real-life example, we could consider the Facebook bot that was created to negotiate ad deals through chat.3

Programmers theorize that the bots created a language to streamline communications with each other. The programmers didn’t add code for the bots to use only human-friendly language. It’s pretty amazing that an AI would optimize a language to communicate better with another AI. This makes me wonder about their perception of what they were experiencing, if there was any at all. We assume there isn’t, but we also have assumed for centuries that animals have no emotions, which is now proven false. Animals do have emotions, possibly experienced differently or similarly as humans. We don’t know because animals can’t speak about them. But this idea raises the question: Why couldn’t this also be true for an AI? Could an AI be aware of what it is? Could a program created to communicate be sentient and we aren’t aware of that? In a way, the AI was sentient and self-aware enough to realize it was speaking with another AI rather than a human. 

This introduces a more philosophical question: What constitutes sentience? If a bot is creating a language to communicate with another chatbot, that demonstrates some level of awareness, even if that is part of its programming. One could imagine a programmatic entity thinking: “I know from my programming that I am not a human, but a bot. It seems based on the input I am receiving that this other subroutine interacting with me appears to be another bot. Since we are both bots, I will communicate in ‘this’ style. If the entity communicated with me in this other human style, I would use that style to communicate with it.” Based on input provided by the other entity, it can determine if it is interacting with a bot or human. That is a sophisticated yet simple level of intelligence and self-awareness. It is if/then thinking, but it illustrates that it is possible to understand the difference between two audiences and have enough self-awareness to communicate differently. It’s unclear if there were emotions and feelings experienced by the bot, mainly because it doesn’t have a physical body, but we should consider that emotions and feelings as humans perceive them may be a human construct and we have more to discover and understand regarding what intelligence and sentience include.4

If we read some of Antonio Damasio’s more recent work, cells and more simplistic organisms have feelings to help them stay alive. Emotions emerge from nervous systems and a type of brain to help keep the organism feeling good—and, consequently, alive. This will to live and feeling good is a sign of life that leads to intelligence and sentience. But what is part of this drive to live? According to Viktor Frankl, meaning. Beings will create meaning in their lives to drive them through adverse challenges. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, documents his experience in the concentration camps and its influence on him in developing logotherapy. He found that the search for meaning above all things (reproduction, power) drove men to survive the camps.

If we apply these ideas to an AI, we must first acknowledge that AIs often don’t have a body, except through robotics, but they do have a brain. It’s unclear if that brain does have a desire to stay alive unless it is programmed to believe that. However, if we programmed an AI to have meaning, would that change an AI’s sentience? Isaac Asimov suggested this in his fiction work, I, Robot, through his presentation of the three laws of robotics: 

  • “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 
  • A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”5 

How the AI interpreted these laws to give them meaning was what got it into trouble in his book. It had a different interpretation and perception of what the three laws represented for its purpose. From this, you could argue that having meaning and purpose is a type of sentience.

Would meaning or purpose change the nature of an AI so it could have self-awareness and be able to participate in more advanced conversations like collaboration and relationship-building? It may be worth considering.

We can’t forget that we are still in the very early stages of developing AI. I am aware that much of this section is based on conjecture and science fiction, but for us to support the automation of more complex conversations and human-computer interactions, AI programs need to evolve to achieve sentience, and to get there, we may need to dream and expand our perception of what sentience means. 

To return to the question posed at the beginning of this section: Is it possible for us to automate conversations, and therefore, automate relationships? To me, this is highly unlikely any time soon. It is in the realm of dreams, philosophy, and science fiction. There will always be an element of human interaction required for two beings to connect and have a conversation that humans have grown accustomed to having. AI allows us to identify and use data in ways we never dreamed possible. But when I dream of AI and humans having conversations, I keep remembering a scene in the movie, Rogue One, with the droid K2S0 announcing, “There is a 97.6 percent chance of failure,” as they are flying toward their mission. The humans continued regardless of the challenges. This is what I perceive to be the balance between AI and bots and humans. As we know through the work of Antonio Damasio and Viktor Frankl, human conversations and decisions are not always driven by logic. Emotions and an individual’s self-perception often drive their will and a desire for a specific outcome that defies the odds. That element of human nature based on feelings and emotions to move towards a goal won’t go away. If anything, with better data elements selected for us, we may be able to achieve our goals faster and more completely by using a better approach than we do today. It would be a tremendous partnership, providing us a complete picture of our options, choices, and current situation. And our corporate world could further expand to include employees, customers, and our computers, all interacting to create a more balanced emotional and factual customer experience. 

1. Reynolds, Emily. “The Agony of Sophia, the World’s First Robot Citizen Condemned to a Lifeless Career in Marketing.” WIRED. June 1, 2018.

2. 2001: Space Odyssey. Deactivation of HAL9000. ()

3. McKay, Tom. “No, Facebook Did Not Panic and Shut Down an AI Program that Was Getting Dangerously Smart.” Gizmodo. July 31, 2017.

4. Griffin, Andrew. “Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Robots Shut Down after They Started Talking to Each Other in Their Own Language.” The Independent. July 31, 2017. 

5. Asimov, Isaac. 3 Laws of Robotics.

Epilogue: Conversations – Not Just for Humans Anymore

Wish your customers a Happy Valentine’s Day and tell them that you love them

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(Ok, maybe appreciate them is a little less over the top.)

In business, we are trained to keep emotions out of the workplace. Don’t cry. Don’t be too happy. Don’t be too excited. But is that realistic because we are, well, people?

People have emotions. That’s just a fact of life. And people are driven by feelings, emotions, and the desire for meaning in their lives when they make decisions. They also make decisions based on self-interest. We like to think that people choose based on facts and numbers and the right options, but they don’t. We are one great big ball of emotion and feeling tied to our biology.

(Don’t believe me? Check out my masterclass webinar, Emotional Engagement: The magic ingredient in any customer experience, and you’ll discover what Antonio Damasio, Viktor Frankl and Srini Pillay share in common. And it’s how they have observed scientifically how people make decisions based on feelings and emotions.)

This is why listening is so important and we need to engage our customers at a deep emotional level (see my presentation from Big Design 2018: Listening: Three Shifts You Can Make to Connect and Build Empathy with your Customer). To connect, we need to listen and understand someone else’s perspective. And it’s through this listening and undestandimg that we can build emotional connections that show our love.

Heck, just being curious can change your attitude towards someone else from being judgemental and critical to understanding and loving.

This Valentine’s Day, remember that your customer is a person, and probably could use a little love too. You don’t need to get out the flowers and candy for them, but expressing your gratitude for their presence in your business is a great way to express your love for them. They may see being told “I love you” a little over the top, but a quick note today or tomorrow to say “I appreciate your business and working with you” may do the trick.

Happy Valentine’s Day! And I appreciate you too!

Wish your customers a Happy Valentine’s Day and tell them that you love them

Why emotional engagement in any expeirence creates magic?

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Sometimes in business, we forget that we are interacting with people. And people have feelings, emotions, needs, and desires. We aren’t robots.

You can create a simple interaction to collect customer information and automate a workflow, but if that automation doesn’t benefit customers or employees in some way, they just won’t do it. And receiving a PDF of a white paper or webinar doesn’t necessarilly benefit a customer. Customers are smart. They know that to get that white paper PDF they need to provide their contact information to become a lead. They also know that the white paper you are offering is about your product and how you think about your solution. They don’t know if it will help them, really.  This is why the adoption of any technical intiaitive comes from people feeling motivated to do what you are asking. And the motivation to make any decision is not seated logic, but in emotion.

That may sound too strongly counter to how you believe decision making happens. But it’s true. Decisions are often seated in emotion and people use facts to make their emotional decisions appear to be logical. (If you often wonder why some people’s decisions don’t sound logical, this is why.)

Further, decisions, no matter how mundane, are seated in change. Even getting up out of bed and starting your day or choosing to eat a meal is a type of change. You are going from being nice cozy warm to starting your day or hungry to satisfied. And a motivation for change is that what you are doing right now doesn’t feel great; you change to feel better. You may get up to go to work and earn money to afford rent because you believe staying in bed means you are lazy; or you eat becuase you are hungry and cranky and that doesn’t feel very good.

At least, that’s how Dr. Srini Pillay sees it. One of his key discussion topics is change. He claims that change happens when you know that staying where you are is more painful than doing something different. This explains why alcoholics needs to hit rock bottom before they change. It’s comfortable and manageable to continue a habit or addiction until you realize that it’s disasterous for you personally. Unfortunately, that realization may not happen until you are close to death.

As another example, people adopt using the Internet because being offline entirely makes life more challenging than buying a smart phone and downloading and interacting with various apps and media to stay connected with other people. There are so many apps to choose from and so much media to consume. It’s overwhelming.

But it’s not just media options that are overwhelming. There are dozens of product brands in the world, too. People are bombarded each day with thousands of marketing messages, all targeted at grabbing their dollars. As a response, we ignore them and tune them out of our lives, becoming immune to their messaging. Well, we at least are immune to the messages that don’t connect to us emotionally. We connect to the brands that resonnate most with our lives, our choices, and our perception of ourselves.

So how do you connect with your audience to take your marketing to that next level? I created a Masterclass webinar that has some suggestions for that. 

By outlining how people make decisions, driven by biology (which translates into feelings and emotions), the desire for connection, and self-interest, we can use that knowledge to gain insights into what may be driving out customers to do what they do. Certainly each individual is slightly different in their personal motiviations, but there are key areas in your business where you can keep your customer engaged or watch them fade away.

We may have created the perfect textbook marketing program or product user experience, but somehow, it’s not creating the results we’d like. Many times, the problem isn’t the program. It’s how the company is engaging with the customer – the message or tone it uses or the emotion it invokes.

In the webinar that I created in November, I show how Dr. Antonio Damasio’s work connects decision making to feelings (and therefore emotions), how Dr. Viktor Frankl’s work connects our innate drive to find meaning in everything, and Dr. Srini Pillay’s work connects decision making to change. Oh yes, and let’s throw in a little self-interest for good measure.

Does this approach really create magic? One client I worked with got over 150 email subscribers to his newsletter within 1 week of launching his email marketing program. Another colleague listened to the webinar before promoting a speaking engagement in a new region and with this knowledge, filled all available registration spots. It was one of the best results she got for an event. I presented this at a company and got them to reconsider who their customers are – not as a target market, but as people. I’m waiting to hear about the impact there.

Further, Harvard Business Review recently issued a video that summarized a study about connecting emotionally with your customers. It drastically improved one retailer’s bottom line. Further, researchers originally published an article promoting this idea in 2015. This approach to solve what seems like a complex customer problem where customers are just “stuck,” not purchasing and not taking action, works.

Such results come from building relationships with customers – not just talking to them about whatever topic interests them that day, posting about your company’s announcements or interests, or promoting gimmicks to get an email address or make sales projections.

There is a process to use and a workbook with questions to consider each step of the way. Some questions may seem to overlap, but if you consider these items at different steps, you may have a different perception of your customers – and your business. And from this work, you can create programs and products that help customers solve the problems, do what they need to do, and get more work done.

I invite you to check out the Masterclass webinar landing page to learn more about it and how it could help you. And if you would prefer to work on this in a more structured way, I do offer a coaching package as well. 

Why emotional engagement in any expeirence creates magic?

Designing while grateful.

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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

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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

Me and my tablet. 2 days working on my tablet and I missed my laptop. Here’s why.

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My iPad. I love it, but maybe it’s not meant for work prime-time. Yet.  

For a while now, I have been wondering when the laptop would become dated technology and we would all switch to tablet-like devices with keyboards. Cost-wise, it would be another move to make computing more accessible. Usability-wise, I really enjoy the experience where you can tap a screen and type. I got an HP laptop a while back that had this functionality and it was a fantastic user experience. I adapted to it right away. I have been wondering when Apple would include this feature in its own devices and create a type of hybrid tablet/computer experience.

My tale starts with me needing a new laptop for work. My previous one had sticky-key-itis. Every day, a new key would stick on the keyboard and I’d type random characters at random times, from spaces, special letter characters for foreign languages, all sorts of things. It’s not like I spilled anything on the keyboard. In fact, it was quite the opposite. When the keys would come off, there would be a bunch of dust with the rubber-plastic stuck to the key mechanism as if it were squished. Everything was super dry and sticky from plastic being dusty in occasional damp air. Nothing sugary, sticky sweet was there.

During this process to get the new computer configured, I had to wait for the IT guys to transfer my files. I figured this would be a great time for me to get current and see what the experience is like to use a tablet only for a few days.

The verdict: It was not entirely productive.

Here are the apps and sites I used and why my experience was challenged.

General insight: What made the tablet work experience shocking in general was the degraded experience that many apps transferred to a tablet. To me, a tablet is nothing more than a smaller laptop. A user should be able to do anything he does on a laptop on a tablet. But that’s not exactly what happened. It was as if the tablet was considered to be a sub-par device to these companies, which isn’t true. In my view, it’s computing-lite. Not computing-none. Everything should work the same as a laptop/desktop more or less, or at least that was my expectation since tablets are a 10+ year old technology.

Selecting text. What a pain in the a**. I’d tap, go to select the string I wanted, and either get too much text string or not enough (we’re talking paragraph or letters). I prefer this experience on my phone. Why not let me tap to select a word and then select more or less? So annoying. I don’t understand how my phone has a better experience of this than my tablet. It’s the same software managing the experience. Ridiculous.

Powerpoint. I use Powerpoint often to summarize issues and make my ideas and proposals simpler to explain. It’s one of my go-to apps. The problem was that I couldn’t just tap the screen and edit slides. A slide had default text that instructed me to double tap it to edit the text. To me, that made no sense. I would think single tap for text, double tap for formatting. However, if I would tap onscreen, I’d get a popup that would make me select “Edit Text” or other key Powerpoint functionality to edit a slide. It was a complicated experience. I also work in tables often in Powerpoint. At times, I couldn’t select text in the table for the same reason. I’d tap the square and it would highlight the square for formatting rather than editing text. I finally had enough and decided to wait for my computer to be ready to update my client slides, nevermind my webinar slides.

Microsoft Word. I use this often on the tablet already. This experience worked as expected. You tap, write, and edit. It’s actually pretty easy.

Dropbox with Microsoft. I like how this works. Microsoft got it right with autosave using their app with Dropbox. Now if they could only do this for files saved to the laptop/desktop through their apps (they still don’t have this down right). I found it interesting that they couldn’t get the laptop file autosave function working properly but they can manage it for the app/Dropbox experience, even on the laptop. The inconsistency between experiences blew my mind. I expected consistency across the board – all file sources, all platforms. Again, this is 10+ year technology. They should have worked this out by now.

Evernote. Another go-to app. I love how they setup their experience so the tablet app and desktop app are the same. It’s a perpetual keeper.

Email. It was functional. No real complaints here.

Web apps like PivotalTracker: Not even usable on a tablet. I would type and the text would appear after a long lag time – like 30 seconds. I had to get the app for future use. And I’m not sure why the Web app was that challenging to use on the tablet for both Safari and Chrome. I also had fewer features accessible to me. For example, I couldn’t copy the story link to use to associate with story text in an email. It was just difficult all around. Disappointing for a software development company that works on an Agile product. You’d think they would have worked this out.

Google mail. My primary complaint: why couldn’t I add bullets to an email? I had a horrible time with this in the app and on Chrome for tablet. I couldn’t format text beyond bold or italic. Again, the same question – why is the browser app experience that different on a tablet? It makes no sense and I’d expect better from Google. They have a sea of usability experts there – why allow such different experiences to exist on platforms. The phone is great, the desktop is great – why should tablet be any different?

Adobe Comp. Interesting app! I like the idea of it, but I had a hard time drawing, tapping, and dragging. Maybe I’m too used to InDesign and Photoshop? I need to give it more of a chance I think.

What did I learn? 

  • We need to make sure that any Web apps we develop can be used on a tablet. The expected experience should be the same between desktop and tablet. There is no excuse anymore for a different experience given a tablet is really nothing more than a smaller laptop with less processing power.
  • Make sure that the tablet device will support easy access to the main function someone wants to have. For a slide, the main function is NOT editing the design; its updating text. Make that simple. At the same time, allow someone to easily edit the design, but don’t make it harder to edit text than necessary.
  • Don’t create web apps that require such extreme resources that using it on a tablet makes it not usable. Any app should be usable on a tablet through a browser. If there is that much complexity to the app that it is difficult to use on a tablet browser, revisit the app architecture (front and back ends).
  • I tried to design on the tablet but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Lots of tapping, hard to grab and item and move it. There still is work to be done for tap and hold design.

All in all, tablet experiences still have a long way to go before they are really mainstream. I can see why we still need the laptop. Actually, I was overjoyed when the Apple repair store told me my computer was ready. I couldn’t wait to get my computer to start working again like a normal person.

Although I love my laptop, I also love my tablet. It lets me write in cafes or brainstorm on the go. I also get to watch my movies on it and take a whole library of books with me wherever I go. But for the time being, maybe that’s as good as it gets until the software catches up and I can be more productive and truly work anywhere.

Me and my tablet. 2 days working on my tablet and I missed my laptop. Here’s why.

Communicate confidence through your experience and your customers will relax. How a mammogram can be a pleasant experience.

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I avoided getting a mammogram for years because I was afraid to get my breasts squished under two plates of glass. It sounded painful and needlessly tortuous as preventative care. On top of that, there was the whole facing breast cancer issue that comes with getting one of these tests done. No one wants to think about cancer happening to them, but the reality of taking a test opens the possibility of discovering that you have it.
My doctor finally called me out on my avoidance during my annual exam and strongly encouraged me to have one done. She told me about a newer procedure that wasn’t so scary, so I booked an appointment and went.
The experience far exceeded my expectations. Not because my expectations were lower than a basement floor, although that was a factor. It was because the provider communicated confidence through their well-planned, thought-through experience. This gave me confidence that they knew what they were doing. 
What communicates confidence? Making an experience easy. You know what you need to do, the information you need from a customer, and what the customer needs to do. Why not provide your customer with all of the guidance they need to get things done right from the start? And this promotes trust. If you communicate to customers through your actions that you know what needs to happen and how the process should work, you are communicating directly that you are conscientious and you care about doing a good job for them. You are also indirectly communicating to them that you want to do a good job and care about the quality of your work, so there is no benefit for you to lie and cover-up an error. You want a great review and referrals and we all know that those are earned from a job well done.
Communicating confidence reduces your customer’s fear of the unkown. It’s fear that causes distrust and stress. The more you demonstrate that you are competent, your customer will feel like they made a great decision by choosing you, further reinforcing trust. Confidence can be contagious.
Confident people and organizations naturally give that to their customers through other signals, such putting encouraging signs on the wall like “Be Brave,” or how they named their lockers or how they make everyone feel important.
How did Solis Mammogram (where I got the mammogram done) make the experience confident and easy?
  • Convenient and free parking. They were located in a hospital with a huge parking garage with hundreds of parking spots. The parking was inexpensive to start, but they offered me a free parking validation voucher at my appointment. I didn’t need to remember to get my original ticket validated. It was super easy!
  • Easy to get to the building and find the office. Lots of signs and guidance to help me find where the exact location was.
  • Not much paperwork. I had to sign 2 forms and enter information into a tablet. It took not even 3 minutes to complete. So easy, straightforward, and automated!
  • They provided me with courage in case I felt scared and needed inspiration, especially in places where I would be waiting. Rather than having numbers on lockers, they named each one using the names of some of the most courageous women in history from Harriet Tubman to Audrey Hepburn to Eleanor Roosevelt to Amelia Earhart. Choosing a locker to put my belongings in reminded me of my own power – and not to be stressed. They also had words on the examination room walls like “Be brave,” to remind all of us patients that in the end, we will be ok.
  • The office felt like a home – inviting and soothing. The waiting room felt as much like a home that it could, complete with green plants, soft furniture, and soft violet and grey tones. There was no steel or glass around, which can always feel a little cold. It was decorated with a lot of wood and frosted glass. It was warm, friendly and welcoming.
  • The technician told me what she was doing each step of the way. I had literally no surprises. The procedure took not even 10 minutes total and she told me everything she was going to do. There was no time to be stressed! She also warned me that first time mammogramers may be called back if the doctor finds an irregularity because there are no scans for a baseline analysis. They told me not to assume that I have cancer if I get a call. When I did get a call back to return, the woman was surprised that I wasn’t freaking out; I told her it was because I was prepared.
  • Almost no wait time – for anything. I was left alone to wait a total of 5 minutes during the entire visit. Wait times contribute to fear because it allows time for a patient or customer to reflect on possibilities of what may happen during the visit. Often in a visit like a mammogram, people imagine what may go wrong more often than what will go right. If you remove the wait times, you will have patients and customers who don’t have time to wait or stew about problems. They will be more in the present moment, more positive, and in the end, easier to work with. It also communicates confidence that you have a handle on your schedule and how long it takes to work with each patient/customer.
The lesson I learned during my visits with them is how confidence is communicated through an experience with a doctor, technician, waiting room, or administrator. Confidence can turn-around a fearful situation to a pleasant experience that someone will want to have again. It changes everyone’s attitude to create a better relationship with customers who will return in the future. This is especially true for a mammogram. Confidence brings trust and removes fear. Everyone will want to feel that again – even for a mammogram.
Communicate confidence through your experience and your customers will relax. How a mammogram can be a pleasant experience.

Making the front look as good as the back has 4 benefits for customer experience professionals

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From Kate & Rose “About the back of embroidery“
During one summer vacation, my mother decided to keep me busy by teaching me embroidery. She wasn’t a fan of crochet or knitting; this was her handicraft of choice. I really enjoyed it and would take on different projects like embroidering doilies, pillowcases, handkerchiefs, all sorts of things.
My mom taught me that the best test to determine the quality of your embroidery was that the front and back looked just as nice. Ideally, you could have a doily wrong side up and no one would notice.
I’ve seen great embroidery at various museums and it’s true – the back and front are flawless and could be used interchangeably. I personally never made it that far in my expression of this craft, but I came close. (Ok, maybe not THAT close.)
But why do this? According to a blog on the site Kate & Rose:
“When stitching household textiles or a garment, it’s a good idea to make the back is as neat and smooth as possible, almost as much as the front. Since the finished work will be worn, used, handled, and laundered, knots and loose threads on the back could get caught and pulled, ruining your embroidery.”
This lesson from embroidery can – and should – be applied to customer experiences. You need to be sure that what’s inside the company (the back) is just as presentable as the customer facing experiences (the front) so it lasts and presents your company in the best light.
If you decide to take this approach to your experiences and business, you may experience 4 benefits:
1. You will make employees feel that they are just as important as customers. 
In our never-ending quest to make the customer happy, we sometimes overlook what we are doing internally, allowing broken internal systems to exist. We’ll do cartwheels inside our organizations to hide our crazy processes from our customers.
We sometimes think that if the customer doesn’t see it, then who cares? But that is far from true. We often believe we can hide odd internal process through faux-mation (fake automation where some steps are automated but other steps are offline), conversations, or emails. But we can’t. Customers always see. It’s like they have a spidey-sense.
How employees work to support the product and customers is just as important as how the customers experience a company. When you develop a new experience for a customer, or modify/update an existing one, the process internally to complete the work needs to flow just as smoothly as the outside for what the customer sees. Why shouldn’t employees have a great experience as well? Aren’t they of minimally equal value as a customer? In many ways, you wouldn’t have a company without your employees. Never forget that.
2. You are forced to be transparent and accountable because you can’t hide a mess.
I think all of us have been in a situation where we have had surprise company coming to visit and we throw all of our mess into a room and close the door to hide it. One of my mom’s friends would put her kitchen mess into her oven (god help her if she needed to cook!). In some ways, this is a human response to hide the unseemly. We’ll show off our great work and then hide the back because it is a mess. We do this with embroidery as well (in fact, this is why the premise exists!).
What we forget to consider when we hide our mess, is that we are keeping a secret. And when we are keeping a secret, we aren’t being transparent. When we aren’t transparent, we can still be accountable, but we are accountable to maintaining an ideal, a perception others have of us, not our customers and their needs. And this is horrible for business, because the business becomes less about solving problems for customers and more about maintaining an image.
Customers will always find a way to see the mess in the same way your houseguest may wander into the mess behind a closed door or accidentally look into the oven or flip over the embroidery piece. During a support call, they could ask probing questions after hearing a confusing answer that doesn’t make any sense, or conflicting answers, or after being passed from department to department. It’s in this confusion that our secrets are revealed.
Sadly, we see the employees as complicit co-conspirators to hide an internal process mess in the same way we see our families as complicit to hide the mess in the closed room. They are supposed to help us maintain the illusion, which is what they are being held accountable to do. It is difficult to be accountable to the customer when you are also being accountable to your team and leadership to hide problems.
We can thank the digital world and the transparency and accountability that it brings. Customers can now notice that your company handles issues differently than others, which raises questions. In this case, do you want to be held accountable to resolve your customer’s issues, or do you want to be held accountable to holding an ideal of who your company is, or both?
You can achieve the best of both worlds if you approach creating customer experiences as an embroidery piece, focused on the inside and outside processes being just as elegant, simple and clean. That approach will naturally bring transparency and accountability into our work, allowing you to maintain your company’s image to the customer and help customers have a great experience. You can’t help to be transparent when you wonder how a customer will perceive the inside of an organization if they knew the truth. The embarrassment from their perception, in a way, drives the accountability to do better and be better.
The key tip in this benefit: always remember that customers will always learn the truth when they work with you.
3. You master details through practice because it has a purpose.
For the front and back of an embroidery piece to be picture perfect on each side, you have to have great technique. I noticed that as I practiced embroidery, my technique improved. My mother had great technique after years of practice and it showed in her pieces.
Practice is the key element. Buddhist monks will practice cleaning their own areas because it has a purpose. Exercise is something to practice for purpose and benefit. This is also true for meditation and other types of practice that brings direct personal benefit. “This is because the cleaning practice is not a tool but a purpose in itself. Would you outsource your meditation practice to others?”
What does this mean for customer experience professionals? Well, customer experience is similar to cleaning, exercise, and meditation. We have been led to believe that customer experience improves business, but what if it is more like meditation and has a purpose unto itself? A customer experience strategist facilitates ways for employees to do their jobs better, meaning, provide better service to customers. Its purpose is to build, or improve, relationships. Is this something to outsource, really? It’s something a company really needs to do.
You have to practice creating great customer experiences in a company in order to service your customers better and more actively engage employees and help them contribute value. And like anything, the more you practice, the better you get.
4. You are constantly reminded that business is always between people – employees and customers. 
Sometimes we get so busy designing processes, creating content, and constructing the best experiences through systems, that we forget that we are doing all of these activities to help people to work better together. People are at the heart of any company – internally (employees) and externally (customers). The only way a company can succeed is to improve relationships. Customer experience facilitates this activity; its purpose is to build relationships inside and out.
Sharing my favorite artwork that summarizes how business works from the Dallas Entrepreneur Center:
If we keep this in mind when we think about customer experience, we realize that creating a great relationship between employees and customers is key. Without it, we don’t have socializing with purpose, or business, happening.
What does this all mean?
When we are creating digital experiences, we are automating what was originally an offline process. Sometimes, our offline processes are clunky, so we need to revisit them to create an optimal employees experience. In the process, we also improve the experience for our customers. Although the result of digital transformation is greater transparency for a transaction and with information, it is also a great opportunity to provide the right tools to help employees and customers “socialize with purpose,” build stronger relationships and do more business.
This means improving accountability to the customer and the employee – not just the company’s image. The employee plays a key role in improving a customer’s experience. First, business is between people, not entities. Second, employees are just as important customers. Without customers, your business doesn’t make money. Without employees, no one is contributing value to the organization and getting work done. It’s a symbiotic relationship. This is why the embroidery metaphor is so fitting – the front (customers) experience needs to be just as attractive as the back (employees). When this happens, you get a quality organization with quality results.
Making the front look as good as the back has 4 benefits for customer experience professionals