"The future for both organizations and entrepreneurs is in leveraging innovation techniques to design masterful customer experiences." Nicholas Webb knows a thing or two about both customers and innovations. As an inventor, he's been awarded over 45 patents. He now channels his innovative skills to help some of the world's top brands excel at customer experience. We discussed all of this and more on this week’s episode of the On Brand podcast.

About Nicholas J. Webb

Nicholas Webb is a world-renowned technology futurist innovator. As an inventor, Nicholas invented one of the first wearable technologies and one of the world’s smallest medical implants. Nicholas has been awarded over 45 patents by the US Patent Office. Nicholas is the author of several best-selling books including, The Innovation Playbook and his recently released number one best-selling book, What Customers Crave. As the CEO at Cravve, Nicholas works with some of the top brands in the world to help them lead their market in enterprise strategy, technology, and innovation. Nicholas has been awarded his Doctorate of Humane Letters by Western University of Health Sciences, a Top Southern California Medical School for his contributions in healthcare technology.

Episode Highlights

How did an inventor like Nicholas end up in branding, marketing, and customer service? "I started out by inventing all of these bright shiny objects. But then wit the 'Uber-fication' of things I started thinking about how you could apply these innovation techniques to creating customer experiences."

From demographics to nodes. "Experience design used to be based on demography. We don't think of ourselves as demographics. We're really a range of nodes. What we hate and what we love. The brands that have this figured out win."

What are the five most important brand touchpoints? As Nicholas talks about in his new book, What Customers Crave, there are five key touchpoints we need to be aware of — 1. The Pre-Touchpoint Moment (mostly digital — before the customer has sought you out), 2. The First Touchpoint Moment (the first impression — usually one of the five senses), 3. The Core Touchpoint Moment (what you do for them day in, day out — online and off), 4. The Perfect Last Touchpoint Moment (that surprising bit of value you add at delivery — a special gift, etc.), and, finally, 5. The In-Touchpoint Moment (how you stay in touch with your customers on an ongoing basis). It sounds like a lot of work but ...

"This (approach) is the least expensive way to grow your business and improve your workplace." As Nicholas has found, most companies are losing around 30% of their business based on average or "criminally bad" customer experiences. Avoid this by mapping all of your touchpoints and rising to the "customer value strata" that Nick notes. You want customer advocates, not "madvocates."

What brand has made Nicholas smile recently? As someone who is constantly examining customer experience, Nick laughed that his family can get annoyed by his observations ("They usually leave the restaurant thinking 'Oh no — he's going to complain.'"). Nick smiled recently at the focus on people and policies at IKEA.

To learn more about Nicholas Webb, check out his customer experience firm Cravve and his speaking website.

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