The X-Mentor | Predictions
Issue #19
The Secret: CX happens in the heads of customers.
The Source: Harley Manning, author of OUTSIDE IN: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, and formerly VP of CX at Forrester Research. Harley founded Forrester’s CX Research practice when he joined the firm in 1998. Before retiring in 2022, Harley shared these 5 Universal CX Truths:
You need your customers more than they need you.
Superior CX creates superior customer loyalty.
Superior customer loyalty leads to superior business results.
Delivering superior CX requires business discipline.
Emotion is the key to differentiation.
It’s that last truth on “Emotion” that I’d like to drill-down on further in this post.
While at IBM, I was working with people from across many corporate silos to help improve the company’s mutual understanding of CX. To further that goal, we invited Harley to speak to a large group of IBM’s middle managers. If anyone could enlighten IBM’s middle managers on CX, it would be Harley. After all he had decades of data, copious case studies, and practical advice that was highly relevant for IBM. But how can we talk to middle managers about emotions?
“CX happens in the heads of customers.”
Harley said, “CX happens in the heads of customers.” He was explaining how emotions are driven by customer perceptions at different levels of interactions with brands and products. E.g., What are the interactions like when customers are:
Trying to evaluate your products or services?
Attempting to buy for the first time?
Learning how to use your product?
Needing support to fix a problem?
Interactions at every level accumulate in the heads of customers. And today we’re learning more about how those experiences influence customer behavior.
What It Means: Experiences cannot be “delivered to customers” because experience only happens in the heads of customers. I.e., a customer’s experience is not something that a Designer creates, nor is it something a Product Manager delivers to the market. Marketers can’t create a “brand image” either because brands are perceptions of sensory signals, emotions, and other internal and external factors that are created in the heads of customers. An experience is certainly an outcome of what we create for customers, but we’re not delivering an experience.
What’s going on inside the heads of customers?
Predictions
In Issue #4 of The X-Mentor | Emotions, we introduced the research of Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D. In her book, How Emotions Are Made, Dr. Barrett explains the process of prediction that is happening inside the darkness of the brain. Every decision made, or action taken by a human, is the result of a prediction their brain has made about some incoming signal they’re receiving. And as Dr. Barrett’s research shows, our brain is continuously receiving signals from sensory surfaces that are both outside and inside our body. When these signals arrive, the brain attempts to figure out the cause of those sensory surface signals.
We’re very familiar with sensory surfaces outside our body (e.g., eyes, ears, nose, touch). As a result, we’re very good at predicting the cause of sensory surface signals coming from those external surfaces. However, few of us are as familiar with what’s happening inside our body and how those sensory surface signals inform our experiences.
According to Dr. Barrett’s research, our brain ‘guesses’ at the cause of those sensory surface signals by looking for context (i.e., where has this happened before?”) Then the brain makes a prediction about what sensory signals will be arriving next. The detail of that prediction depends on what past experiences the brain brings to bear to make sense of the incoming sensory signals from both inside the body and outside the body. Then the brain compares its predictions to new incoming sensory signals. The signals either confirm the brain’s predictions or change those predictions.
Changing our predictions is how we learn.
Emotions
The brain uses predictions to prepare us for action (i.e., run to safety, fight the threat). Because humans are mostly doing things that we have already done before, our brains are very good at making predictions about how we will feel about incoming sensory signals.
Our brain is predicting how we will feel even before the signal arrives!
Think about this for a moment.
Dr. Barrett’s research shows that our feelings are in fact predictions about the world, not reactions to it!
For example, anger is a category of electrical activity in the brain that signals some highly variable degree of discomfort that will be felt. New incoming signals will confirm the [anger] prediction or change the prediction.
What the brain is doing is predicting:
Predicting what actions will be required in the next instant.
Predicting what sensory signals will be arriving in the next instant.
Then our brain compares those predictions to incoming sensory signals.
Incoming signals either confirm the prediction or change the prediction.
The brain’s prediction (i.e., ‘guess’) becomes our experience. Even if that prediction is wrong, Dr. Barrett says it’s still our experience.
Why It Matters: Predictions are how the brain prepares customers for action.
Predictions are what’s happening inside the heads of customers and it’s preparing them to take some form of action. E.g., Buy now. Cancel my subscription. Switch.
If we want to change a customer’s behavior, we must first be aware of these signals that are influencing their actions. A better understanding of what happens in the heads of customers will help us optimize CX & UX outcomes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Parrott is The X-Mentor and publisher of The X-Interviews.
Learn how your business can benefit from The Business Impact of Design.
Contact The X-Mentor: Greg@theXmentor.us