A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.

Experiments serve as the gold standard for determining causality. If we create them correctly, we know that an action we take makes something else happen and there isn’t any other explanation. 

That is, if we create them correctly.

Even in my corporate career I realized that determining causality is tricky. After presenting to organizations the revenue gains they can expect by taking my advice, they ask, “How do we know that your changes caused the increase instead of something else?” My answer was always the same, unsatisfying one: You won’t.  

That’s because we can never know the causality of behavior at 100 percent certainty (even if we follow all the rules). 

However, when we have more data we also have more confidence that there is no other explanation. Sound experiment creation strategies will help us build a solid case for our causality. 

In this episode, we share the five rules for creating behavioral experiments. We talk about how academics design behavioral experiments and how that could work regarding your experimentation regarding changing experiences to inspire new customer behavior. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

So, what are the 5 rules? The 5 Rules for Running Behavioral Business Experiments include:

1. Define your metrics and what you're going to measure. 
2. Establish comparison conditions.
3. Randomize or get as close to randomization as you possibly can. 
4. Define the theory…or not.
5. Foster a culture of experimentation.

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 03:46  Ryan begins his list of rules by first explaining why you should care about following them, which is because proper experimentation determines causality.
• 07:43  We get into a discussion about the three things that you need to establish causality in your experiment and why they are important to your results.
• 10:12 Ryan begins the list of the rules, starting with the most foundational, which is to determine what you want to measure before you design your experiment.    
• 12:48  We discuss why it is essential to establish different conditions in your experiment (Hint: it comes down to one word: comparison).
• 20:25  Ryan explains why having a theory going into an experiment than not having one.  
• 25:42  We talk about why it is essential to allow failure with regards to experiments, and why you will be glad you did (most likely). 

 

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Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

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