Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience

Colin Shaw's new eBook, "Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience: Short Stories of Remarkable Practices that Ensure Success" explores both the philosophy behind great Customer Experience and the best (and worst) real-world examples of them. As the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy and author of four best-selling books on Customer Experience, Shaw uses his expertise to point out where today's companies are using their Customer Experience to foster an environment conducive to Customer loyalty and retention-and where they aren't.

Many companies understand that having an excellent Customer Experience is the next great competitive differentiator for organizations. Fewer of them, however, understand the importance of creating a deliberate emotional and psychological experience that sends the right signals to meet Customer's expectations. Companies must decide whether they want to delve into the emotions of their current experience and finesse them to evoke a deliberate response or be content with whatever happens by accident.

Even if you are in the business-to-business arena, Customer emotions play a unique part of any Customer Experience. Too many organizations don't realize this, so they focus on the mechanics and processes of an Experience, but leave the emotional bits undefined and unplanned. In this way, most organizations leave the emotions of an Experience up to chance, which is a dangerous way to operate a business desiring longevity and profitability. Part 1 of this book addresses these emotional connections to Experience and how to design for them.

The emotions that are part of the Customer Experience are both conscious and subconscious. Sometimes the Customer knows exactly why they feel the way they do, and other times they don't. Because of this, it can be difficult to get to the real cause of an issue in your Customer Experience. When you are working to improve your Experience, however, it is essential that you do look at the cues that your current Experience are sending. Part 2 builds on Part 1, bringing in the subconscious part of the Experience, as both combine to help create the emotions you desire for your Customers.

Since the Experience you design is likely not carried out by you, but instead by your employees, Part 3 speaks to the importance of getting employees on board. Making sure your employees believe in your brand promise, are trained properly on how to deliver it, and are invested enough in its success to do what it takes to achieve it, is critical to having a Customer Experience that surprises and delights Customers.

All of this is a great philosophy, but what good is philosophy if it is not applied in the real world? Part 4 shows good examples of these philosophies in action...as well as those that could use a little work. Using a blend of recent headlines, anecdotal narrative research, and personal experience, Shaw highlights what works and what doesn't to help round out the book.

Shaw's book explains in detail what it takes to evoke the proper emotions from your Customer Experience at both a conscious and subconscious level. In each of his four sections, he illustrates his ideas with short story examples from recent headlines to give these concepts life. With his natural storytelling style and focus on practicality, his eBook is designed to help organizations take their Customer Experience to the next level. In other words, Shaw takes his readers "beyond the philosophy" and into the action of designing and implementing world-class Customer Experiences.