This week on our podcast and Intuitive Customer YouTube channel, we address a listener's "Pickle" with our "I'm in a Pickle" feature. You might remember that a Pickle is our term for a business problem that might be addressed with customer strategy and/or the behavioral sciences. We hadn't featured one for a while, so we thought it was time to dig into a new one.

This week, we hear from a frustrated and disappointed insurance professional named Tonya Dunn who wants to know why, after all their Customer Experience improvements, they still aren't seeing the results they expected. She wants to know what we think the problem is and what we think they should do.

Customers are complicated and so are the reasons they do what they do—or don't do— in an experience. In our listener's case, the thing they are not doing is recommending them to their friends and family.

This problem is not unusual, nor is it insurmountable. However, it usually requires taking a hard look at what an organization is doing to improve and where they might have veered off course from a successful customer strategy to manage customer behavior.

In this episode, we take that hard look at what might be going on with their improvement program and how the organization might change what they are doing to get back on course and start getting those referrals rolling in the door.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

First of all, it's important to note that there is rarely one reason something like this happens. Like many things, there are several reasons that this can happen with a Customer Experience program. There are theoretical reasons that could influence the results our listener is getting and tactical ones, too. We discuss them all in the podcast.

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 03:02 We hear about the pickle and why Colin chose this one to feature on the podcast.
• 04:07 We talk about the theoretical reasons that our listener isn't getting the results she wanted, starting with a favorite topic, Reference Points.
• 13:26 Ryan talks a little about the Evaluative Heuristic, which is something we use when comparing complicated or hard to understand things in a decision.
• 17:23 Colin talks about some tactical problems that could be happening, starting with how organizations sometimes focus on the wrong parts of the experience.
• 23:04 We discuss why it is essential to identify what customers value the most when choosing what to invest your time and resources into improvement.
• 27:21 We wind down the discussion and share our recommendations for our listener (and anyone else out there with a similar problem) about what to do about this pickle.

Do you have a business pickle? Tell us about it here.

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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.

Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.