CX expert Jon Picoult on forming memories, not just experiences

In today's highly competitive marketplace, meeting customer expectations is no longer enough to stand out from the competition.

For CX expert Jon Picoult, if you aspire to satisfy your customers, you aspire to mediocrity. It's a provocative take, but we understand the reasoning behind it - those who settle for satisfaction probably don't put much effort into creating end-to-end experiences that delight, captivate and excite customers. And that's exactly what you want to do. Businesses don't just create experiences; they are on a mission to shape memories.

Jon knows a little about memory. Before obtaining his MBA, he obtained a bachelor's degree in cognitive sciences. Over the next 15 years, he worked in a variety of roles, from IT, customer service, sales and marketing, until he started his own practice, Watermark Consulting, where he helps organizations to capitalize on the power of loyalty. In 2021, he decided to take everything he had learned throughout his working life and compile it into a book, "From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans< /em>", where he explores how companies can shape the perceptions and impressions of their customers.

If you're short on time, here are some quick tips:

By addressing the entire customer journey (product, marketing, sales, and design), you can significantly reduce the need for support and redirect those resources to higher value activities. Great CX is like a performance. The on-stage (product, retail stores) and behind-the-scenes (hiring process, tech stack) aspects need to come together in order to leave a positive impression. Investing in customer experience has a tangible return on investment. In fact, companies that excel in CX have a three-to-one margin in shareholder return over those that don't. To design an exceptional customer experience, focus on creating higher peaks, eliminating valleys, and ending every interaction on a high note. The same strategies companies use to engage customers can be used to engage their employees – it's about making their experience effortless.

Make sure you don't miss any highlights by following Inside Intercom on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or by grabbing the RSS feed in your reader of choice. The following is a slightly edited transcript of the episode.

oldies but goldies

Liam Geraghty: John, you are welcome to Inside Intercom. We are delighted to have you.

Jon Picoult: It's great to be here, Liam. Thank you very much.

Liam: Could you tell us a bit about yourself, your journey so far, and what inspired you to become a customer experience consultant?

"I've seen how very subtle aspects of the interaction you have with a prospect or client can significantly influence their likelihood of working with you"

Jon: Of course. So my entry into business was actually selling door-to-door radio ads. It was in college. They had a student-run commercial radio station on campus, but it received no funding from the university – it was all ad-supported. And in my sophomore year, I walked in and said to the station manager, "I'd like to be a DJ." And he said to me, "Yeah, great, but if you want anything other than the cemetery team, you have to bring the money." And so, I started selling radio commercials and ended up being pretty good at it and became the radio station's sales manager the following year.

That was when I got my first glimpse of the customer experience, as I saw how very subtle aspects of the interaction you have with a prospect or customer can significantly influence their likelihood of working with you. Even something as simple as formatting our rate schedule for our ads made a huge difference in terms of sharpness, clarity and ease of interpretation. And that's what got me interested in business and customer experience. From there I went to business school, worked in the corporate world for about 15 years and had the chance to work in many different functions - IT, sales, marketing, service, distribution . I started my own company in 2009 because I thought I had a very unique perspective after walking in the shoes of all these different functional leaders. And as you know, delivering a great customer experience requires all of these functions to be enhanced...