Sound Business

Professor Mark Whittle is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia and has been part of their academic team since 1986. He specialises in stars, galaxies, cosmology, solar systems, and various observation techniques. His research focuses on the nuclear activity in galaxies and uses radio and optical telescopes. Mark is also fascinated with the different sounds the universe makes, studying sound waves that were emitted billions of years ago and weaving them together to know what that part – and time – of space sounded like.

Mark joins me today to discuss what space – and some of its heavenly bodies – sound like. He shares his deep fascination with the sound of the universe and how sound can be heard in space. He explains what we would hear given the opportunity to be at the centre of the sun or near a gas cloud millions of lightyears away. Mark also describes some of the recent discoveries in space sounds and what the Big Bang would have sounded like.

“There’s another way of contacting the universe – and that is through sound. There are various places in space where genuine soundwaves move.”

Professor Mark Whittle

This week on the Sound Business Podcast:

● Mark’s fascination with the creation and evolution of the universe
● How sound can be heard in the emptiness of space
● What certain heavenly bodies sound like
● The various global modes that the heavenly bodies emit
● What we would hear if we were in the centre of the sun or a gas cloud
● Recent discoveries in space sounds and what they sound like
● What black holes sound like and why space “wiggles”
● The role of sound in the Big Bang and what we would have heard
● The boundaries of space and how it gives notes in the cosmic sounds
● How light emits pressure and contributes to space sound waves

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Boosting Business Success with the Power of Sound

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We’ve all been at the end of a phone call that seems to never run out of automated responses. No matter what we do, we keep getting a computer to tell us their lines are busy, which feels like their customer service representatives would rather do something else than help with our queries. Some of us have an endless thread of patience, others not so much. While the former leads to business or profits, the latter leads to losses, and companies are losing a lot of money due to customers just hanging up out of frustration.

In this episode, I discuss how your robotic call handling systems may be costing your company significant amounts of money. I share the best and worst practices when it comes to utilising a call handling system and explain how to make sure your customers don’t end up feeling frustrated by the time they reach a representative. I describe some of the reasons why scripts should be thrown out the window and why you should train your agents to respond like actual human beings. I also share the risks of setting up a call centre overseas and why I don’t recommend playing music over the telephone.

“Never compromise on the quality of a call.”

Julian Treasure

This week on the Sound Business Podcast:

● Why the telephone loses more business than any other in the world
● The best and worst ways to hang up phones
● What call handling systems are and why are they generally bad systems
● How to give people genuine service to let them feel ‘looked after’ during a phone call
● Why call handling systems should always offer a human alternative
● The ideal call handling system every company should have for their clients
● The problems that can happen when a company uses a call centre overseas
● Scripts and why you should train people to respond off-script instead
● Why playing music over the telephone is a bad idea

Boosting Business Success with the Power of Sound

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Sound Business. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

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In all my years of working with sound, I’ve only ever encountered one person who disliked birdsong. The birds have been on Earth far, far longer than we have, so it’s no surprise that their songs affect us.

Professor David Rothenberg is a distinguished professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a world-class Jazz clarinetist, and the author of the classic international best-seller: Why Birds Sing – which has been turned into a feature-length BBC TV documentary.

Dr. Eleanor Ratcliffe is a Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey who researches how our environment affects us from an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral viewpoint. 

David and Eleanor join me today to discuss the world’s favourite sound – bird song – and what the current research shows about its effects on human cognition and wellbeing. David shares his passion for creating music with the sound of nature and explains how birds make the sounds we hear from a physiological perspective. We discuss how the bird’s brain enables them to learn with sound and how even birds with small brains can produce beautiful music. We also discuss how hearing birdsongs can positively affect our mindset and how sound has enabled the evolution and survival of birds since prehistoric times.

“People can build a whole world in their mind through memories and association based on just listening to one very small sound of a bird.”

Eleanor Ratcliffe

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Boosting Business Success with the Power of Sound

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of Sound Business. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

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The future opens up to a sea of change in the way we communicate with others. As we move from visual to auditory user interfaces, from typing and peering at screens to speaking and listening to others, smart speakers like Siri and Alexa are just the first raindrops of a storm that I believe will sweep away many of the things we’ve become accustomed to. The connection between human and machine is no longer the work of science-fiction. But if you truly want a glimpse of what the future could hold, there are people you can ask who earn a living by thinking deeply about how things will be. They’re called futurists – and I happen to know a couple of rather good ones.

Gerd Leonhard is recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Europe and has focused his career on the impact of technology on our humanity. He has spoken on countless stages around the world and authored several books including his most recently published book, Technology vs Humanity.

David Houle specializes in mapping the future for CEOs and has helped over 4,000 CEOs to date. He played an instrumental role in the launch of MTV and has coined the phrase “the shift age” to describe the current situation we’re in. In addition to advising CEOs, David is an award-winning international speaker and the author of six books, including Brand Shift: The Future of Brands and Marketing.

Gerd and David join me today to share their perspectives on the technology behind the sound revolution and how it impacts brands and organizations. We discuss the opportunities and threats of this new voice-based technological world and how we’re moving toward a world more focused on speaking and listening rather than typing. We discuss why Gerd believes AI technology is on the cusp of being as good as human understanding in terms of context, connotation, and semantics and the social-cultural changes we can expect as smart technology continues to advance. We also discuss why brands will need to be strategic when directing their focus on sound and how technology will ultimately rehumanize marketing, bringing us back to the original context of an individual conversation.

“We have to embrace technology, but we should not become technology. And that difference is sometimes hard to tell.”

Gerd Leonhard

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Resources mentioned:

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Boosting Business Success with the Power of Sound

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Professor Charles Spence is the Crossmodal Research Laboratory Head at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University. He studies how the human brain manages to process and analyze external stimuli to create vibrant multisensory experiences. Charles has published over 500 articles over the last 15 years and has been recognized for his skills and contribution in cognitive science. He is also the author of the book Sensehacking: How to Use the Power of Your Senses for Happier, Healthier Living, where he writes about how everyday objects affect our wellbeing.

Charles joins me today to discuss how the senses affect one another in what are called cross-modal effects, and why sound is getting more attention when it comes to branding and product design. He describes scenarios of how sound affects the way we perceive the taste of our food or our decisions throughout the day. He explains the concept of super-additivity, where adding congruent sensory messages creates a powerful multiplier effect, and shares real-world applications. He reveals how music is being used in healthcare spaces and how it aids physicians and patients. Charles also describes the importance of multisensory congruence in space design, including for our homes.

“Just because you are not aware of sound, doesn’t mean it’s not there, going to your brain and affecting you.”

Charles Spence

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Boosting Business Success with the Power of Sound

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It seems to be common sense to create workspaces that support people in being productive, that they enjoy working in, and that they feel proud to be a part of. Sadly, that has not always been the case. To determine which aspects of a workspace matter to people and make a difference to the way they work and feel, we need an authoritative survey that analyzes everything from workstations and noise to the catering, breakout areas, and lighting – something that allows us to benchmark any workspace against global averages in every minute detail so we can identify exactly where we’re succeeding and where we need to make improvements.

Fortunately, one man has already thought about this.

Tim Oldman is the creator and Founder of the Leesman Index, a workplace benchmarking tool based on over 800,000 identical, completed questionnaires from workspaces all over the world. Tim joins me today to share some of the key revelations revealed from the Leesman Index survey and the do’s and don’ts of current and future workspace design. We discuss what the Leesman Index is and how it helps organisation leaders determine how well their workplace supports their employees. We discuss what CEOs should consider when designing – or redesigning – their employees’ workspace, and how the varying roles within an organisation often require different design needs to increase productivity. We also discuss what Tim’s newest survey reveals about at-home workspaces and the future of workplace design, how COVID-19 has allowed people to become acutely aware of their activity profile, and how employers can support and empower their employees in different activities throughout their work day.

“It comes down to which activities are important to you in your workplace and how well are those activities supported.”

Tim Oldman

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Over the course of my career, I’ve seen (or more accurately, heard) many businesses and organizations miss the mark and make mistakes when trying to apply sounds in their business. One of the most common audio clangers I’ve come across is the reception space. Many corporate reception areas today are designed to impress the people that enter their business – instead of welcoming them. Their primary focus is often on boosting their company’s success, status, or ‘power’ instead of forming a relationship and making visitors feel welcomed.

In this episode, I discuss why organization leaders need to consider the people they serve when designing their reception areas. I explain how to think about the acoustics and noise level of your reception area and how they impact the way your customers and clients feel when entering your business. I share how the type of content you display on your reception’s screens can have a positive – or negative – impact on your customers and clients. I also explain how you can audit your reception area’s auditory journey to transform your customer’s experience from the moment they open your door.

“There’s a huge missed opportunity for almost all organizations to welcome people, to inform them, and to communicate the brand or the character of the organization.”

Julian Treasure

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Design awards are handed out all over the world – for how things look. Yet we experience the world in at least five senses and they all affect how we feel, think, and act. There’s a great deal of scientific research on the impact of all these inputs, so it’s time now to start designing spaces with a real understanding of how to make all the sensory inputs point in the same direction, instead of clashing with one another.

Dr. Sally Augustin is doing just that. She is an Environmental and Design Psychologist and the author of several books, including Designology: How to Find Your PlaceType & Align Your Life with Design. She is a Principal at Design With Science where she applies scientific findings to advise clients worldwide on the design of places, objects, and services to create specific cognitive, emotional, and physical experiences by considering and integrating all the human senses. Dr. Augustin’s work has been featured widely in the media from The New York Times and Psychology Today to the Harvard Business Review. She also holds leadership positions at the American Psychological Association and the Environmental Design Research Association.

Dr. Augustin joins me today to discuss why the eyes are so dominant when we think about design and how we can integrate our other senses when designing a living or working environment. We discuss how the things we consider when designing an area or environment have shifted over time and why it’s crucial for designers to remember that people absorb information through all the  senses, not just our eyes. We highlight the role that space and workplace design plays on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and the ‘universal standards’ designers can implement when designing a sensory-focused shared space, like an office. We also explain how our personality traits can influence our design preferences and what designers should consider when working with neurodiverse personalities like people with depression, ADHD, and autism.

“We have different goals for different sorts of spaces. Considering the full range of sensory experiences can make achieving those goals more likely.”

Dr Sally Augustin

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For a long time, sound has been a nice-to-have in business. Something you could think about, but not really essential. But that, my friend, is changing.

Sound today matters more than ever because there’s an audio revolution happening. You may not have noticed it, but it will have a profound effect on your business. Billions are being invested in speech recognition and voice synthesis – which you’ve probably noticed already with vocal interaction with Siri, Alexa and the like, while smart speakers are appearing in huge numbers of homes across the western world. These devices may not be particularly bright yet but they are maturing quickly, and before we know it, we’ll be dealing with something much more like J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man – an intelligent agent that we control with our voice and our ears, and that acts as a gatekeeper between us and anyone trying to sell to us.

In this imminent future, if you have no audio brand, you may have no existence at all.

In today’s episode, I discuss how to respond to the impending audio revolution, how your business is already making sound every day, how to get conscious about that sound and most of all why the key questions you need to ask yourself are: “Is our sound congruent with the rest of our branding?” and “Is our sound working for us or against us?”

“Your business is already making sound every day. Lots of it. The question is – is it positive?”

Julian Treasure

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One of the most profound and possibly long-lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the change in the way people work – especially those who were working in open-plan offices. “WFH” has become a familiar acronym as people discover all the joys and the challenges of distributed, solo working from home.

As we consider coming together in shared spaces again, the big question is – does the traditional office have a future? And if so, what is it?

Professor Jeremy Myerson holds the Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design at the Royal College of Art in London. He’s a writer, a researcher, a speaker, and an expert who focuses on design, especially in the workplace. He’s written more than a dozen books about various aspects of design and the office, including New Demographics New Workspace: Office Design for the Changing Workforce. Jeremy is the Director of WORKTECH Academy, the world’s leading online knowledge platform and member network exploring the future of work and the workplace and sits on the international advisory boards of design institutes in South Korea, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. He has also been recognized as one of Britain’s 100 Most Influential People in Digital Technology by Wired Magazine.

Jeremy joins me today to explore what the future may hold for the office workplace. We discuss how office efficiency has evolved since the early 20th century and why efficiency optimization is still a driving principle for many workplace environments. We discuss how the office environment evolved from focusing on efficiency to working as a community and how this evolution aided in current workplace trends like activity-based working and working from home. We discuss the benefits and disadvantages of working in a traditional office environment and working from home and how the COVID crisis has redefined our definition of what an office location is for. Jeremy also shares what he believes the ‘Office of the Future’ will look like in the post-COVID world.

“We’ve got to keep a sense of proportion about the future of the workplace. It’s not going to disappear – but it is going to change.”

Jeremy Myerson

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