I'm almost finished with my new keynote program about bettering your business with a hype-free approach to AI.
(If you're interested in having me deliver a customized version of this presentation to your organization, please reach out to Michelle@JayBaer.com ASAP, as we're actively booking dates).
How You Can Use Responsiveness to Grow Revenue
Comprehensive podcast conversation I had with Bill Cates on his show, The Referral Coach.
Top 50 Customer Experience Innovators of 2024
Honored to make this list, from the folks at Replicant.
Today's Burning Question
WOW! The responses from you to my request for lessons from the 150+ years of my family's improbably flammable furniture store were AMAZING.
Winner this time is Jeff Kruger, who wrote:
"I believe they thought their store was more than a way to make an income. In a small, Nebraska farm town, it was about serving the community first. If they weren’t open, folks would no longer have the convenience of their offerings. Successful businesses start with a servant’s heart. IMO. "
New question...What's the most important trait you seek in a new hire these days, and why? Let me know and you could win!
Anecdotes are not Data
They said it would be unforgettable.
And as I marauded the seventh time into the palms and brambly undergrowth, I realized that "unforgettable" can have varying contexts.
When you ride a camel to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, everything you read in advance suggests you will experience a seamless, spectacular adventure.
And for 39 of our 40-person group, that expectation was met, if not exceeded.
But if you ask ME what it's like to ride a camel to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, I will tell you it's a HARD PASS.
I don't believe there was any premeditation or malevolence when the camels were handed out to our group of traveling college students and professors in 1989. But yet, by any conceivable metric, I had the WORST camel.
this was not my experience
To say my camel was not on his A Game is an affront to the alphabet. He was quite ill with some sort of dromedary intestinal virus, and correspondingly ill-tempered.
As the pack loped along we fell further and further behind, due to general lethargy, and an alarming tendency for my camel to veer suddenly into the trailside palm groves to relieve himself.
In an attempt to keep us in sight of the group, a rearguard consisting of a solitary boy, perhaps 10 years old, riding bareback on a donkey, would every 30 seconds whack my camel on the behind with a branch, urging forward momentum.
This was not effective, other than to cause my camel's pace to shift from stuporous to sprinting, in between palm-side restroom breaks.
It was not an ideal afternoon.
Mathematically, my experience with camels was uncommon.
In our very own group, 97.5% had a 5-star experience. 2.5% had a 1-star experience. And a check of reviews indicates that the overwhelming majority of camel riders are enchanted, to this day.
And this is the problem I frequently encounter when working with companies on customer experience initiatives: confusing anecdotes for data.
The truth is that almost always, the camel ride is awesome. Rarely, it is not. (And never has the phrase "shit happens" been more apt.)
But inside organizations, the exception is more memorable than the usual. This is the stuff of internal legend, verbally passed from employee to employee like ancient mythology.
"Remember that one time, when (customer) did this, and (company) did that?"
These anecdotes are given too much illustrative power due to two brain science truths: we are wired to remember the atypical and ignore the typical; and we are wired to remember stories more so than numbers.
And thus, when the company seeks to alter or optimize customer experience in some fashion, these stories are often used (in the words of the Scottish poet Andrew Lang), "as a drunken man uses a lamp posts - for support rather than illumination."
Based only on my tale, it would be easy to conclude that all camels should be pre-ridden before distribution to unsuspecting tourists - or some such attempt to mitigate.
But realistically, my experience was a rare "edge case," and thus to upend the operations to try to control for that scenario might end up doing more harm than good, on the whole.
I love stories. I make a living telling them. Stories have power.
But don't let that power cause you and your colleagues to draw conclusions based solely on narrative-rich exceptions, and subsequent assumptions.
As my pal Tom Webster says: the plural of anecdote is not data.
As we enter the AI era of customer experience, it will be more important than ever to make our strategic and operational decisions based on math, not just a good story.
As they say in the camel biz, it's time to get over the hump.
The Books Report
One of the key lessons in my new AI keynote is that your website is steadily declining in importance, and that will continue, as potential customers and other stakeholders get info about you in other ways.
This is why it's more critical than ever to Atomize Your Awareness, and Ross Simmonds is the king of how to systematize that approach.
His excellent new book: Create Once, Distribute Forever is a complete guide to getting more bang for your content marketing buck. Super useful!
Jay's Faves
This tool - Magai - has become vital for me.
The problem with generative AI right now is that there are so many tools, and keeping them all straight is a hassle (and the $ can add up if you're using paid versions)
Magai is like Apple TV for AI tools. You get access to just about everything: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claud, Dall-E, Leonardo, and a ton more. Built-in personas. Create text, images, videos, and more.
ALL of it with one interface and one low price. For enterprise-class AI, you'll want different tools with built-in brand guardrails. But for small biz, Magai is a miracle.
You'll be amazed!
More Issues
