Top Ten Quotes: What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You
I recently downloaded Melina Palmer’s What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You: Unlocking Consumer Decisions with the Science of Behavioral Economics. Melina is the host of The Brainy Business podcast, and her new book is a fantastic deep dive into the psychology of why people buy a product, remain loyal to a company, or how they feel cared for by the businesses they do business with.
Her bite-sized chapters take a big concept like scarcity or loss aversion and translate it into an understandable guide to helping people take a next step.
(And here’s my standard disclaimer: if you’re in the church world and the word “customer” bugs you, that’s okay. Sub in “guest” or “attendee.” People are people. And while you’re not selling a product to a consumer, you’re certainly dealing with ingrained human behaviors and you want those humans to take a step to connect.)
Here are my top ten favorite quotes:
- [Behavioral economics is] the psychology of why people buy and the rules of the brain that help us predict what people will actually do instead of what we think they should.
- When you first meet [a brand, company, individual, etc.], you are on high alert—your defenses are high, and you are ready for them to do something that will allow you to categorize them as a hero or a zero.
- It is easy to find the right answer to the wrong question.
- One of the biggest culprits contributing to the solving-problems-too-soon conundrum is brainstorming. It is built completely backward from what we need to do and is not conducive to the way our brain works.
- I don’t think I’ve ever seen a business that couldn’t benefit from a little less friction. Even when customers tell you they want lots more choices, it will likely be a barrier that keeps them stuck, so be wary of too many options and details.
- Make it easy for people to do business with you. Remove unnecessary partitions in the process and everyone will be happier.
- Many people assume there is a linear relationship between dissatisfaction, satisfaction, and delight, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t do more of what is satisfactory to get someone delighted, because “super satisfactory” is still just satisfied.
- Customers can’t tell you what would delight them because it must be unexpected.
- When your own data surprises you, be thankful for the opportunity to ask why, and dig deeper with an open mind.
- The opposite of distraction is traction. You cannot know if something is a distraction until you know what it is distracting you from.
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