This week on the show, Alex is looking at healthy practices and behaviours an organisation can adopt at societal level to function at a high standard. Alex has recently completed a study on the effects of home working during lockdown and has done further research into the evolution of conformance. Looking at these two areas she has developed theories about how and why humans operate the way they do in organisations. She shares her learnings here, that are underscored by the big question - sare social norms genetic or are they a product of nurture.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Conformance can come about through two different means, voluntary or compliance. Alex details the difference between these two approaches and how they operate in society and how they have evolved over time.
• Alex recently concluded a study of people's perception of working from home during lockdown and how that affected their conformance, she explains her findings here. 
• Alex shares the finding of her recent study into the evolution of conformance and how early humans developed strategies that may have been passed down genetically and how we are now living with those consequences. 
• Everybody dreams of not working for a living and having enough money to do whatever they want, but Alex argues that if we evolved to seek high status then this would not be a happy life. So, how can employers use this knowledge to motivate their employees?

BEST MOMENTS

“The need to seek status and appreciation is incredibly common, in all walks of life.”

“What if the meaning of our lives is to be a giver? That’s what science suggests we have evolved into.”

“Employers should understand that money is only the compliance part of the equation and that recognition or status and contributions is equally important to employees.”

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com 

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey 

Alex’s email: [email protected]  

 

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

PODCAST DESCRIPTION

In today’s world businesses and organisations are able to deliver things much more quickly at the touch of a button than 15 years ago. And our competitors can too.

We are in danger of escalating  journeys down the wrong track and be too far gone to retrieve them. 

Wouldn’t it be so much better to do the right thing right first time instead of becoming very efficient at doing the wrong thing? 

Well this is what this podcast is about. It is about optimising value in your customer or employee or stakeholder experience in different manifestations. You get to understand how we think and behave in different scenarios and can apply them to your own purchasing, sales, recruitment, team-building, customer retention and audience perception management.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Alex is joined by guest Ellie Gill. After a recent post on LinkedIn around the advantages of remote working, Alex and Ellie started a conversation about the disadvantages. In this interview the ladies discuss the downside of remote working, from not being involved in the company culture to missing out on the shared experiences that come from working every day with your colleagues. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Ellie talks about how the new trend in remote working may affect the younger generation, such as missing out on how to behave in a professional environment. 
• Alex discusses how working in an office can lead to a sense of belonging and help you to align better with the organisational culture. 
• Ellie talks about her early career in sales, working in a high paced high pressure environment, and how the comradery with her co workers helped her prevail. 
• Ellie and Alex discuss the difficulties with onboard new employees in remote companies. 

BEST MOMENTS
“Working with people on a video call just isn’t the same as being there in the business environment.”
“Working in an office based environment early in your career can help shape your career trajectory.”
“People who work remotely haven’t got colleagues to help them when they have a bad day, they haven’t got that shared experience, which can develop you in so many ways.”

 

EPISODE RESOURCES
Alex’s Website
Alex’s Instagram 
Alex’s Linkedin 
Alex’s email

ABOUT THE HOST
Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician. She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

PODCAST DESCRIPTION
In today’s world businesses and organisations are able to deliver things much more quickly at the touch of a button than 15 years ago. And our competitors can too.
We are in danger of escalating journeys down the wrong track and being too far gone to retrieve them. 
Wouldn’t it be so much better to do the right thing right first time instead of becoming very efficient at doing the wrong thing? 
Well this is what this podcast is about. It is about optimising value in your customer or employee or stakeholder experience in different manifestations. You get to understand how we think and behave in different scenarios and can apply them to your own purchasing, sales, recruitment, team-building, customer retention and audience perception management.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Better Value, Better Business podcast, Alex explores the changing landscape of products and services in the digital age. Drawing inspiration from books, articles, and a Forbes magazine article, Alex discusses how the traditional value chain model is being disrupted by information technology and the internet. She highlights the shift towards customer-centric experiences and the importance of collaboration and integration between businesses and customers. Alex also delves into the concept of confidential computing and its potential to enable secure data sharing and collaboration without compromising privacy or security. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The traditional value chain model, where a firm creates value and passes it down to consumers, is being disrupted by information technology and the internet.

• Consumers now have access to more information, transparency, and potential customers, which has led to a shift in their expectations and desires for personalized experiences.

• Businesses need to adapt to this new paradigm by focusing on co-creating value with customers and integrating resources with other businesses to provide convenient and personalised experiences.

• The four dimensions of dialogue, access, risk assessment, and transparency (DART) are crucial building blocks for creating these new experiences and forming trust with customers.

• The emergence of technologies like confidential computing and smart contracts allows businesses to partner and collaborate while maintaining privacy and security, opening up new possibilities for value creation.

BEST MOMENTS

"The traditional thinking of value has been that a firm creates value… The value is passed down step by step through wholesalers, resellers or dealerships or showrooms, eventually to the customer." 

"We are going through a customer experience-focused revolution where the customer wants to interact and control their experiences to ultimately personalize them within their own networks." 

"A firm no longer owns the value and passes it on to the consumer. The consumer now gets value at an intersecting node between the suppliers sharing their resources." 

"The most promising potential for confidential computing is to allow businesses to partner and collaborate using generalized smart contracts." 

"The internet has transformed the possibilities of our experiences. Consumers integrate resources with each other, businesses integrate with customers, businesses integrate resources with other businesses." 

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com 

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey 

Alex’s email: [email protected] 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the podcast host Alex Stacey is looking at Social Norms. What are social norms and why do we adhere to them? How have they changed over time? What happens if you go against them and how can businesses capitalise on and modify them to add better value to their services and for their customers?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Alex breaks down what social norms are, how they constantly develop over time and how businesses that are quick to respond to them can profit. 
• Alex talks about why social norms exist and why people follow them without question.
• Alex discusses the idea of using social proof, such as photographs or statistics to help modify people's behaviour toward new social norms.
• Alex talks about the challenges businesses face when trying to change social norms as people are so entrenched in existing behaviour. 

BEST MOMENTS
“Social norms are a society level agreement on how to behave in certain situations.”
“If you go against social norms you are seen as an outsider, and if you turn out to be right, the group will turn against you.”
“Adhering to social norms means that individuals save cognitive effort by following the crowd.”

EPISODE RESOURCES
Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com
Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   
Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey
Alex’s email: [email protected] 

ABOUT THE HOST
Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

PODCAST DESCRIPTION
In today’s world businesses and organisations are able to deliver things much more quickly at the touch of a button than 15 years ago. And our competitors can too.
We are in danger of escalating  journeys down the wrong track and being too far gone to retrieve them.
Wouldn’t it be so much better to do the right thing right first time instead of becoming very efficient at doing the wrong thing?
Well this is what this podcast is about. It is about optimising value in your customer or employee or stakeholder experience in different manifestations. You get to understand how we think and behave in different scenarios and can apply them to your own purchasing, sales, recruitment, team-building, customer retention and audience perception management.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Alex is looking at time and how this is affected by our daily rhythms and energy levels. Joining Alex is Mark Kreling Director of Fenland District Brokers Ltd. When Mark launched a new insurance product he noticed some unusual patterns in the times that customers were engaging online. He researched this phenomenon and his conclusions allowed him to modify his business to offer greater value to his customers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

• Alex talks about how, when we are tired, our decisions are based on our system one thinking method, which is low effort.
• Alex talks about the differences in how sales methods are structured to appeal to our system one and system two thinking methods.
• Mark goes into detail about his insurance products and how he noticed a spike in customer engagement in the early hours of the morning, when people had woken up after only a few hours sleep.
• Mark talks about how his business has adapted to make sure people can get the information they need any time of the day after he noticed a spike in engagements during the night.

BEST MOMENTS

“We have the most cognitive energy after a good night's sleep and then it diminishes during the day.”

“When our energy is low we are susceptible to framing of sales messages in fun and pleasure terms.”

“When we think about problems in the middle of the night they become a lot more prominent and people are more determined to find solutions for them.” 

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey

Alex’s email: [email protected] 

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

PODCAST DESCRIPTION

In today’s world businesses and organisations are able to deliver things much more quickly at the touch of a button than 15 years ago. And our competitors can too.

We are in danger of escalating  journeys down the wrong track and be too far gone to retrieve them.

Wouldn’t it be so much better to do the right thing right first time instead of becoming very efficient at doing the wrong thing?

Well this is what this podcast is about. It is about optimising value in your customer or employee or stakeholder experience in different manifestations. You get to understand how we think and behave in different scenarios and can apply them to your own purchasing, sales, recruitment, team-building, customer retention and audience perception management.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the show Alex is joined by Sarah Evans-Howe. Sarah is a lecturer at the University of Buckingham business school and recently produced a PHD on customer perceptions of temporality. In this interview Sarah and Alex explore the perception of time and the effects it has on customer behaviour.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sarah talks about how the methods of customer complaints have changed over the years and how complaining is now a lot more immediate due to social media.
• Sarah describes the four ways she has discovered consumers perceive time, as an entity, as a passage of time, an experience of now and as a memory or vision of the future.
• Through her research Sarah discovered that companies are quicker to deal with complaints as now most of them are public through the use of social media.
• Sarah talks about the trend in people recording events on mobile phones as opposed to experiencing them first hand and why she thinks this might be because people trust their devices more than their own memories. 

 

BEST MOMENTS

“Companies want to solve problems quickly so they can take them off social media and the public don’t see them.”

“A lot of customers perceive that social media provides solutions to the temporal problem that they have.”

“We expect speed to be appropriate but our own judgement of what speed is alters by context.”

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com 

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey 

Alex’s email: [email protected]  

 

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the show Alex talks about the most valuable commodity, time. Looking at different definitions of time, how we perceive time, how consumers perceive time and how we value time in comparison to other commodities, Alex helps you to understand the importance of time and how you can understand it to add better value to your business. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Alex discusses the phrase ‘Time is Money’ and looks at examples of this as both a true statement and an untrue statement.
• Alex discusses the value of time amongst people from different economic backgrounds and how each of those groups value time differently.
• Alex discusses the evolution of human understanding of time from ancient Roman times to modern day.
• Alex talks about the attentional resource allocation model and how attention and other components dictate the way an individual perceives time. 

BEST MOMENTS

“As a business owner you need to know what are your customers attitudes to time.”

“Consumers are risk averse when making time related decisions as opposed to money related decisions.”

“Life, if well lived, is long enough.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com 

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey 

Alex’s email: [email protected]  

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

 

 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Better Value Better Business podcast, host Alex Stacey is taking a look at value creation through the lens of value destruction. There are many ways a consumer and a business can destroy value in products and services and this can, in turn, have catastrophic effects in the short and long term. Join Alex as she explains this principle in detail and how you can learn from the mistakes of others. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Alex talks about value destruction through the Covid pandemic and how many consumers had to look elsewhere to find the enjoyment they previously received from products and services.
• Value can also be destroyed when a provider changes their working methods, such as a local business moving to a cashless system.
• Alex talks about how value can be destroyed via a deliberate withholding of resources from either the provider or the consumer and how this can have an effect on third parties.
• Alex talks about the other ways value can be destroyed such as through laziness, carelessness, malice or deception. And how, sometimes, this may be the behaviour of one individual in an organisation but the effects are felt far and wide. 

BEST MOMENTS 

“Value deconstruction can be accidental or deliberate in terms of accessible resources.”

“Value destruction does not just come from consumers but can manifest internally within organisations.”

“The knock on effect of value destruction is the damage to culture and performance.”

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey

Alex’s email: [email protected] 

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

 

 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex is joined by business coach and culture design consultant Emily Potts to discuss how organisations can create customer satisfaction. However, it might not just be achieved by offering a great service or product. Have you ever thought about how the performance of your staff contributes to the satisfaction of your customers? Tune in and let the ladies guide you through the steps you need to increase customer satisfaction. 

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Alex talks about frontline employees and how much an organisation relies upon them, as they are always the first point of contact for our customers and an integral factor in whether or not our customers are satisfied. But did you know, as their experience grows, their enthusiasm often diminishes. 
• Alex defines psychological safety and how it can, and does, affect how your employees behave at work, and in turn, how this affects the satisfaction of your customers. 
• Alex’s guest, Emily, talks about the importance of company culture and how, if anything, it is the most important factor in attaining a successful business. She breaks down what she believes to be the most important factors that contribute to a high performance culture. 
• What makes a good leader? Alex and Emily discuss this question as they share positive experiences from their past and identify common elements that they see in all good leaders and the effect these traits have on the company employee’s.

 

BEST MOMENTS

“Using an arrow as a metaphor for company culture. The tip of the arrow is the strategy, the shaft is the performance and the feathers are the culture. Get the feathers wrong and the arrow goes nowhere.” 

“Can you map your company culture onto one page? Try it, it might help you communicate your vision easier and clearer.”

 “Clear communication is the fastest, simplest way that you can improve your company's culture.”

 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com 

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey 

Alex’s email: [email protected]  

Emily’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-potts-coach/

 

ABOUT THE GUEST 

Emily is a business coach and culture design consultant with a special interest in enabling successful and sustainable growth in SMEs.

With 18 years of experience as a business owner and a background in management consultancy she has first-hand experience of the challenges that come with scaling and growing a successful business.

After successfully selling her online retail business in 2017, she became a qualified coach and mentor so that she could bring together the three strands of her consulting, mentoring and coaching experience to help other business owners living through all the same challenges that she had experienced and learnt from; supporting them to scale their business successfully, sustainably and with less stress.

Emily particularly loves supporting business owners to navigate the challenges in taking their business from the £500k to £1million+ mark through creating successful business strategies and the means to deliver them via healthy and high performing cultures and teams.

When Emily is not hanging out with other business owners discovering what makes them and their business tick, she loves spending time in the outdoors with her husband and two teenagers and playing the bassoon in local orchestras.

 

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

 

PODCAST DESCRIPTION

In today’s world businesses and organisations are able to deliver things much more quickly at the touch of a button than 15 years ago. And our competitors can too.

We are in danger of escalating  journeys down the wrong track and be too far gone to retrieve them. 

Wouldn’t it be so much better to do the right thing right first time instead of becoming very efficient at doing the wrong thing? 

Well this is what this podcast is about. It is about optimising value in your customer or employee or stakeholder experience in different manifestations. You get to understand how we think and behave in different scenarios and can apply them to your own purchasing, sales, recruitment, team-building, customer retention and audience perception management.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Alex looks at what organisations should aim to do to make sure their customers have a positive experience. However, as all customer experiences are unique to the individual and rest on a number of personal, external factors, is it even possible for a company to deliver a positive experience for all? Join Alex as she shares an invaluable insight into this tantalising question. 

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Despite the delivery of a service from an organisation, the customer experience is unique to the individual, this can be based on many factors including our taste, past experience, influences and expectations of what we will receive. 
• Consumers are creators of their own experience. Alex highlights this by giving the example of a potato as a product and how 20 different consumers could be looking for 20 different experiences from that potato.
• Alex discusses the idea that your consumers can become service providers themselves. She gives the example of social media and how the company provides a direct service to the user, who can then use that service to sell their own product, thus making them both a consumer and service provider. 
• Alex goes into detail about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. What do we really need? How do our essential needs impact our non essential needs, or is it the other way around? Alex breaks it down for you. 

 

BEST MOMENTS

“We experience the world as the main actor in the play.”

“People want unique experiences, not services or products.”

“To create better value, give your customers the tools they need to get the experience they desire.”

 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

Alex’s Website:  www.as-insights.com 

Alex’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexvci   

Alex’s Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrastacey 

Alex’s email: [email protected]  

 

 

 

ABOUT THE HOST

Alexandra Stacey is fascinated about value and our perceptions of value. She undertook an MSC in Strategic Marketing and Customer Experience Management with the University of Buckingham’s Business School and her dissertation included how value is experienced. Her own life experience includes being a parent, marketer, teacher, project and events manager and musician.  She is the founder of AS Insights. This is a business that helps organisations improve through uncovering their stakeholder’s experiences interpreting them through behavioural theories.

 

PODCAST DESCRIPTION

In today’s world businesses and organisations are able to deliver things much more quickly at the touch of a button than 15 years ago. And our competitors can too.

We are in danger of escalating  journeys down the wrong track and be too far gone to retrieve them. 

Wouldn’t it be so much better to do the right thing right first time instead of becoming very efficient at doing the wrong thing? 

Well this is what this podcast is about. It is about optimising value in your customer or employee or stakeholder experience in different manifestations. You get to understand how we think and behave in different scenarios and can apply them to your own purchasing, sales, recruitment, team-building, customer retention and audience perception management.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.