Category Archives: marketing

Why We Love to Hate Chatbots

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

More and more, brands are starting to get the chatbot “thing” right. AI is improving, and customers are realizing that a chatbot can be a great first stop for getting quick answers or resolving questions. After all, if you have a question, don’t you want it answered now?

In a recent interview, I was asked, “What do you love about chatbots?” That was easy. Then came the follow-up question, “What do you hate about chatbots?” Also easy. The truth is, chatbots can deliver amazing experiences. They can also cause just as much frustration as a very long phone hold. With that in mind, here are five reasons to love (and hate) chatbots:

Why We Love Chatbots

24/7 Availability: Chatbots are always on. They don’t sleep. Customers can get help at any time, even during holidays.
Fast Response: Instant answers to simple questions, such as hours of operation, order status and basic troubleshooting, can be provided with efficiency and minimal friction.
Customer Service at Scale: Once you set up a chatbot, it can handle many customers at once. Customers won’t have to wait, and human agents can focus on more complicated issues and problems.
Multiple Language Capabilities: The latest chatbots are capable of speaking and typing in many different languages. Whether you need global support or just want to cater to different cultures in a local area, a chatbot has you covered.
Consistent Answers: When programmed properly, a chatbot delivers the same answers every time.

Chatbots Shep Hyken Cartoon

Why We Hate Chatbots

AI Can’t Do Everything, but Some Companies Think It Can: This is what frustrates customers the most. Some companies believe AI and chatbots can do it all. They can’t, and the result is frustrated customers who will eventually move on to the competition.
A Lack of Empathy: AI can do a lot, but it can’t express true emotions. For some customers, care, empathy and understanding are more important than efficiency.
Scripted Retorts Feel Robotic: Chatbots often follow strict guidelines. That’s actually a good thing, unless the answers provided feel overly scripted and generic.
Hard to Get to a Human: One of the biggest complaints about chatbots is, “I just want to talk to a person.” Smart companies make it easy for customers to leave AI and connect to a human.
There’s No Emotional Connection to a Chatbot: You’ll most likely never hear a customer say, “I love my chatbot.” A chatbot won’t win your heart. In customer service, sometimes how you make someone feel is more important than what you say.

Chatbots are powerful tools, but they are not a replacement for human connection. The best companies use AI to enhance support, not replace it. When chatbots handle the routine issues and agents handle the more complex and human moments, that’s when customer experience goes from efficient to … amazing.

Image credits: Unsplash

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Win Your Way to an AI Job

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Anduril’s AI Grand Prix: Racing for the Future of Work

LAST UPDATED: January 28, 2026 at 2:27 PM

Anduril's AI Grand Prix: Racing for the Future of Work

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The traditional job interview is an antiquated artifact, a relic of a bygone industrial era. It often measures conformity, articulateness, and cultural fit more than actual capability or innovative potential. As we navigate the complexities of AI, automation, and rapid technological shifts, organizations are beginning to realize that to find truly exceptional talent, they need to look beyond resumes and carefully crafted answers. This is where companies like Anduril are not just iterating but innovating the very hiring process itself.

Anduril, a defense technology company known for its focus on AI-driven systems, recently announced its AI Grand Prix — a drone racing contest where the ultimate prize isn’t just glory, but a job offer. This isn’t merely a marketing gimmick; it’s a profound statement about their belief in demonstrated skill over credentialism, and a powerful strategy for identifying talent that can truly push the boundaries of autonomous systems. It epitomizes the shift from abstract evaluation to purposeful, real-world application, emphasizing hands-on capability over theoretical knowledge.

“The future of hiring isn’t about asking people what they can do; it’s about giving them a challenge and watching them show you.”

— Braden Kelley

Why Challenge-Based Hiring is the New Frontier

This approach addresses several critical pain points in traditional hiring:

Uncovering Latent Talent: Many brilliant minds don’t fit the mold of elite university degrees or polished corporate careers. Challenge-based hiring can surface individuals with raw, untapped potential who might otherwise be overlooked.
Assessing Practical Skills: In fields like AI, robotics, and advanced engineering, theoretical knowledge is insufficient. The ability to problem-solve under pressure, adapt to dynamic environments, and debug complex systems is paramount.
Cultural Alignment Through Action: Observing how candidates collaborate, manage stress, and iterate on solutions in a competitive yet supportive environment reveals more about their true cultural fit than any behavioral interview.
Building a Diverse Pipeline: By opening up contests to a wider audience, companies can bypass traditional biases inherent in resume screening, leading to a more diverse and innovative workforce.

Beyond Anduril: Other Pioneers of Performance-Based Hiring

Anduril isn’t alone in recognizing the power of real-world challenges to identify top talent. Several other forward-thinking organizations have adopted similar, albeit varied, approaches:

Google’s Code Jam and Hash Code

For years, Google has leveraged competitive programming contests like Code Jam and Hash Code to scout for software engineering talent globally. These contests present participants with complex algorithmic problems that test their coding speed, efficiency, and problem-solving abilities. While not always directly leading to a job offer for every participant, top performers are often fast-tracked through the interview process. This allows Google to identify engineers who can perform under pressure and think creatively, rather than just those who can ace a whiteboard interview. It’s a prime example of turning abstract coding prowess into a tangible demonstration of value.

Kaggle Competitions for Data Scientists

Kaggle, now a Google subsidiary, revolutionized how data scientists prove their worth. Through its platform, companies post real-world data science problems—from predicting housing prices to identifying medical conditions from images—and offer prize money, and often, connections to jobs, to the teams that develop the best models. This creates a meritocracy where the quality of one’s predictive model speaks louder than any resume. Many leading data scientists have launched their careers or been recruited directly from their performance in Kaggle competitions. It transforms theoretical data knowledge into demonstrable insights that directly impact business outcomes.

The Human Element in the Machine Age

What makes these initiatives truly human-centered? It’s the recognition that while AI and automation are transforming tasks, the human capacity for ingenuity, adaptation, and critical thinking remains irreplaceable. These contests aren’t about finding people who can simply operate machines; they’re about finding individuals who can teach the machines, design the next generation of algorithms, and solve problems that don’t yet exist. They foster an environment of continuous learning and application, perfectly aligning with the “purposeful learning” philosophy.

The Anduril AI Grand Prix, much like Google’s and Kaggle’s initiatives, de-risks the hiring process by creating a performance crucible. It’s a pragmatic, meritocratic, and ultimately more effective way to build the teams that will define the next era of technological advancement. As leaders, our challenge is to move beyond conventional wisdom and embrace these innovative models, ensuring we’re not just ready for the future of work, but actively shaping it.

Anduril Fury

Frequently Asked Questions

What is challenge-based hiring?

Challenge-based hiring is a recruitment strategy where candidates demonstrate their skills and problem-solving abilities by completing a real-world task, project, or competition, rather than relying solely on resumes and interviews.

What are the benefits of this approach for companies?

Companies can uncover hidden talent, assess practical skills, observe cultural fit in action, and build a more diverse talent pipeline by focusing on demonstrable performance.

How does this approach benefit candidates?

Candidates get a fair chance to showcase their true abilities regardless of traditional credentials, gain valuable experience, and often get direct access to influential companies and potential job offers based purely on merit.

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons, Google Gemini

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Reimagining Personalization

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Reimagining Personalization

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Personalization was one of the leading rationales for companies investing in digitalization. The idea was that you were going to delight your customers by proactively offering them goods and services they were predisposed to want. This would create customer loyalty, increase their lifetime value, spur word-of-mouth endorsement, drive up Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and solve world hunger.

OK, not so much. A decade or more in, it’s time we ask ourselves, what is the real value of personalization, and how should we allocate our future investments in it? This begins with getting ourselves onto the right playing field in the first place. Personalization has different dynamics depending on whether your enterprise is Business to Consumer (B2C), Business to Business (B2B), B2B2C or B2G2C. Here’s how it plays out.

B2C

Let’s face it — as consumers, we are tired of personalization in its current form. It isn’t really personal, it is just an unending barrage of re-targeted advertising that works statistically but not psychologically. Despite all its promises to the contrary, it is not in fact delightful. So, best to take all that language about delighting our customers and throw it in the trashcan.

Instead of looking for delighters, we should be examining our hygiene factors. These are the things that annoy customers most when they go awry — late shipping, lost luggage, long hold times, rejected passwords, tedious surveys — you name it. Getting hygiene right is hard, but doing so consistently drives brand loyalty through the roof — just ask Amazon. We love what they do so much we subscribe to them! The point is, the things we love are not personal, they are institutional. Amazon has invested enormously in systems that set expectations through timely communication, early anomaly detection, instant alerts, and the like. This is not marketing, it’s logistics, but it is personally delivered, and we feel empowered in a highly differentiated way. (BTW, note to Amazon — you are increasingly over-monetizing your landing pages with sponsored ads, thereby eroding your most valuable asset. You need to set limits and stick to them.)

B2B2C

Rethinking personalization creates a whole new wave of innovation for B2B2C companies to pursue. Instead of optimizing for clicks, help your customers better detect signals. To be fair, some of these could be buying signals, and they should be used to drive consumer traffic along existing lines. But machine learning is also extremely effective at monitoring hygiene factors wherever there is log data to exploit. Omniture was an early pioneer in using this technology for website optimization, and now with generative AI you can let your customers’ websites ask visitors what they are interested in seeing instead of playing whack-a-mole with their best guesses.

The point is, no company is happy with their website, ever — and frankly, for good reason. They are just too hard to navigate, too much about themselves, not enough about the customers and prospects they are there to serve. By focusing on hygiene factors rather than delighters, this can be changed.

B2G2C

OK, when it comes to dealing with government services, no one is really thinking about delighters. Nightmares, on the other hand, do come to mind. Once again, it’s all about hygiene factors. The services that are being offered meet real needs. It’s the obstacles that systems and bureaucracies put in the way of citizens seeking those services that drive everyone crazy.

The fastest way to cut through this mess is to embrace the adage Time is money. The goal is to relentlessly optimize for reducing latency while at the same time reducing fraud as well. This requires the very best in ML and AI, but those resources are available today, and there are plenty of socially minded entrepreneurs who are ready to put in the hard work to make them scale. The core metric of success is time to closure, the tracking of which will be no mean feat. One consequence of its success, to be frank, would be a reduction in bureaucratic employment — not just to free up more money for social services but rather to expedite transaction processing throughout the system. My hope would be that impacted agencies could redeploy their workforces into the field where face-to-face personal interaction actually can make a powerful difference in the moment.

B2B

One question that bugs the you-know-what out of CEOs of successful global enterprises is, Why do our customers keep telling us we are hard to do business with? Of course, the answer is because they are. The real question is what can they do about it? Here are some low-hanging-fruit places to start:

Disintermediate your salespeople from replenishment transactions. Instead, empower customers to transact on their own behalf through digital self-service portals. And extend the same courtesy to partners who are acting as agents on behalf of their customers.
Attack the long tail of your SKUs. Not only do they entangle your salespeople in majoring in minors, they confuse the heck out of your customers.
Stop imposing buying risks on your customers and take them upon yourself instead by tokenizing bundles to allow for swapping out unconsumed portions and truing up on overused ones.
Invest in customer success initiatives that build relationships higher up in the customer organization, leveraging thought leadership marketing, customer health scoring, and executive sponsors focused on deep listening. Customers can tell you what they really need from you if you’ll let them.

Here as elsewhere, the goal is not to delight the customer. Customers don’t want to be delighted. They want to be served – thoughtfully, reliably, and economically. Remember, it’s not about you. It’s about them.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pexels

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Top 40 Innovation Authors of 2025

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After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Authors of 2025:

Robyn Bolton
Robyn M. Bolton works with leaders of mid and large sized companies to use innovation to repeatably and sustainably grow their businesses.
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Greg Satell
Greg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, was selected as one of the best business books in 2017. Follow his blog at Digital Tonto or on Twitter @Digital Tonto.

Janet Sernack
Janet Sernack is the Founder and CEO of ImagineNation™ which provides innovation consulting services to help organizations adapt, innovate and grow through disruption by challenging businesses to be, think and act differently to co-create a world where people matter & innovation is the norm.

Mike Shipulski
Mike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog Shipulski On Design.

Pete Foley
A twenty-five year Procter & Gamble veteran, Pete has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Find him at pete.mindmatters@gmail.com

Geoffrey A. Moore
Geoffrey A. Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo! Best known for Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win with the latest book being The Infinite Staircase. Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

David Burkus
Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

John Bessant
John Bessant has been active in research, teaching, and consulting in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. Today, he is Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Research Director, at Exeter University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank, and the OECD. John has authored many books including Managing innovation and High Involvement Innovation (Wiley). Follow @johnbessant

Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the FutureHacking™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Art Inteligencia
Art Inteligencia is the lead futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. He is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Art travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. His favorite numbers are one and zero.

Stefan Lindegaard
Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor. His work focuses on corporate transformation based on disruption, digitalization and innovation in large corporations, government organizations and smaller companies. Stefan believes that business today requires an open and global perspective, and his work takes him to Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Dainora Jociute
Dainora (a.k.a. Dee) creates customer-centric content at Viima. Viima is the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world. Passionate about environmental issues, Dee writes about sustainable innovation hoping to save the world – one article at the time.

Teresa Spangler
Teresa Spangler is the CEO of PlazaBridge Group has been a driving force behind innovation and growth for more than 30 years. Today, she wears multiple hats as a social entrepreneur, innovation expert, growth strategist, author and speaker (not to mention mother, wife, band-leader and so much more). She is especially passionate about helping CEOs understand and value the role human capital plays in innovation, and the impact that innovation has on humanity; in our ever-increasing artificial/cyber world.

Soren Kaplan
Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award-winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an affiliated professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, a former corporate executive, and a co-founder of UpBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top keynote speakers and thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.

Diana Porumboiu
Diana heads marketing at Viima, the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world, and has a passion for innovation, and for genuine, valuable content that creates long-lasting impact. Her combination of creativity, strategic thinking and curiosity has helped organisations grow their online presence through strategic campaigns, community management and engaging content.

Steve Blank
Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement that changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Jesse Nieminen
Jesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500. He’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organizations and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.

Robert B Tucker
Robert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.

Dennis Stauffer
Dennis Stauffer is an author, independent researcher, and expert on personal innovativeness. He is the founder of Innovator Mindset LLC which helps individuals, teams, and organizations enhance and accelerate innovation success. by shifting mindset. Follow @DennisStauffer

Arlen Meyers
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyers/

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.

Ayelet Baron
Ayelet Baron is a pioneering futurist reminding us we are powerful creators through award winning books, daily blog and thinking of what is possible. Former global tech executive who sees trust, relationships and community as our building blocks to a healthy world.

Scott Anthony
Scott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.

Leo Chan
Leo is the founder of Abound Innovation Inc. He’s a people and heart-first entrepreneur who believes everyone can be an innovator. An innovator himself, with 55 US patents and over 20 years of experience, Leo has come alongside organizations like Chick-fil-A and guided them to unleash the innovative potential of their employees by transforming them into confident innovators.

Rachel Audige
Rachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.

Paul Sloane
Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, both published by Kogan-Page.

Ralph Christian Ohr
Dr. Ralph-Christian Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

Dean and Linda Anderson
Dr. Dean Anderson and Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson lead BeingFirst, a consultancy focused on educating the marketplace about what’s possible in personal, organizational and community transformation and how to achieve them. Each has been advising clients and training professionals for more than 40 years.

Howard Tiersky
Howard Tiersky is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, innovation consultant, serial entrepreneur, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”

Chateau G Pato
Chateau G Pato is a senior futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. She is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Chateau travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. Her favorite numbers are one and zero.

Shilpi Kumar
Shilpi Kumar an inquisitive researcher, designer, strategist and an educator with over 15 years of experience, who truly believes that we can design a better world by understanding human behavior. I work with organizations to identify strategic opportunities and offer user-centric solutions.

Anthony Mills
Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group (www.legacyinnova.com), a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm working with organizations all over the world. Anthony is also the Executive Director of GInI – Global Innovation Institute (www.gini.org), the world’s foremost certification, accreditation, and membership organization in the field of innovation. Anthony has advised leaders from around the world on how to successfully drive long-term growth and resilience through new innovation. Learn more at www.anthonymills.com. Anthony can be reached directly at anthony@anthonymills.com.

Paul Hobcraft
Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Follow @paul4innovating

Jorge Barba
Jorge Barba is a strategist and entrepreneur, who helps companies build new puzzles using human skills. He is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog www.Game-Changer.net

Douglas Ferguson
Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.

Jeffrey Phillips
Jeffrey Phillips has over 15 years of experience leading innovation in Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and non-profits. He is experienced in innovation strategy, defining and implementing front end processes, tools and teams and leading innovation projects. He is the author of Relentless Innovation and OutManeuver. Jeffrey writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog. Follow him @ovoinnovation

Alain Thys
As an experience architect, Alain helps leaders craft customer, employee and shareholder experiences for profit, reinvention and transformation. He does this through his personal consultancy Alain Thys & Co as well as the transformative venture studio Agents of A.W.E. Together with his teams, Alain has influenced the experience of over 500 million customers and 350,000 employees. Follow his blog or connect on Linkedin.

Bruce Fairley
Bruce Fairley is the CEO and Founder of The Narrative Group, a firm dedicated to helping C-Suite executives build enterprise value. Through smart, human-powered digital transformation, Bruce optimizes the business-technology relationship. His innovative profit over pitfalls approach and customized programs are part of Bruce’s mission to build sustainable ‘best-future’ outcomes for visionary leaders. Having spearheaded large scale change initiatives across four continents, he and his skilled, diverse team elevate process, culture, and the bottom line for medium to large firms worldwide.

Tom Stafford
Tom Stafford studies learning and decision making. His main focus is the movement system – the idea being that if we can understand the intelligence of simple actions we will have an excellent handle on intelligence more generally. His research looks at simple decision making, and simple skill learning, using measures of behaviour informed by the computational, robotics and neuroscience work done in the wider group.

If your favorite didn’t make the list, then next year try to rally more votes for them or convince them to increase the quality and quantity of their contributions.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

Download PDF versions of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 lists here:

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. . .

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Happy New Year everyone!

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Making Empathy Your Secret Weapon

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GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When I first moved to Kyiv about 20 years ago, I met my friend Pavlo, who is from Belarus. Eventually our talk turned to that country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, and an incident in which he turned off the utilities at the US Ambassador’s residence, as well as those of other diplomats. It seemed totally outlandish and crazy to me.

“But he won,” Pavlo countered. I was incredulous, until he explained. “Lukashenko knows he’s a bastard and that the world will never accept him. In that situation all you can win is your freedom and that’s what he won.” It was a mode of thinking so outrageous and foreign to me that I could scarcely believe it.

Yet it opened my eyes and made me a more effective operator. We tend to think of empathy as an act of generosity, but it’s far more than that. Learning how to internalize diverse viewpoints is a skill we should learn not only because it helps make others more comfortable, but because it empowers us to successfully navigate an often complex and difficult world.

Identifying Shared Values

We all have ideas we feel passionately about and, naturally, we want others to adopt them. The ideas we believe in make up an important facet of our identity, dignity and sense of self. For me, as an American living in post-communist countries, the ideas embedded in democratic institutions were important and it was difficult for me to see things another way.

My conversation with Pavlo opened my eyes. Where I saw America and “the west” as a more just society, people in other parts of the world saw it as a dominant force that restricted their freedom. My big insight was that I didn’t need to agree with a perspective to understand, internalize, and leverage it as a shared value.

For example, once I was able to understand that some people saw Americans as powerful—something akin to an invading force—I was able to shed the feelings of vulnerability that arose from being in a strange and foreign land and focus on the shared value of safety in my dealings with others.

A great strategy for identifying shared values is to listen closely to what your opposition is saying. People say and do things because they believe they will be effective. Once I was able to stop dismissing Lukashenko as a corrupt thug, I was able to identify the issues surrounding safety and dominance that could be useful to me.

Building Shared Purpose

Using empathy to identify shared values is a crucial first step, but doesn’t achieve anything by itself. To move things forward, we need to build a shared purpose. Consider a famous study called the Robbers Cave Experiment, which involved 22 boys of similar religious, racial and economic backgrounds invited to spend a few weeks at a summer camp.

In the first phase, they were separated into two groups of “Rattlers” and “Eagles” that had little contact with each other. As each group formed its own identity, they began to display hostility on the rare occasions when they were together. During the second phase, the two groups were given competitive tasks and tensions boiled over, with each group name calling, sabotaging each other’s efforts and violently attacking one another.

In the third phase, the researchers attempted to reduce tensions. At first, they merely brought them into friendly contact, with little effect. The boys just sneered at each other. However, when they were tricked into challenging tasks where they were forced to work together in order to be successful, the tenor changed quickly. By the end of the camp the two groups had fallen into a friendly camaraderie.

As Francis Fukuyama writes in his recent book, “Identity can be used to divide, but it can also be used to integrate,” which is exactly what I found in my years working is foreign cultures. Once I was able to leverage shared values to create a shared purpose and began engaging in shared actions, that purpose and those actions became part of a shared identity. Yes, I was still an American, with American values and perspectives, but I became their American.

Overcoming Conflict By Designing A Dilemma

Unfortunately, building a shared purpose isn’t always possible. A simple truth is that humans build attachments to people, ideas and things. When those attachments are threatened, they will lash out. That’s why whenever we set out to make a significant impact, there will always be those who will work to undermine what we are trying to achieve in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive.

When that happens—and it always does eventually—we can get sucked into a conflict, which will likely take us off course and discredit what we’re trying to achieve. Yet, here too, developing empathy skills to identify shared values can be extremely helpful once we learn how to design a dilemma action, which puts the opponents into an impossible position.

Dilemma actions have been used for at least a century—famous examples include Gandhi’s Salt March, King’s Birmingham Campaign and Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinels—but more recently codified by the global activist, Srdja Popović. They are just as effective in an organizational context, using an opponent’s resistance against them.

One of the great things about dilemma actions is that you approach them exactly the same way you approach building allies—by identifying a shared purpose. Once you do that, you can design a constructive act rooted in that shared purpose that advances your agenda. Your opponent then has a choice: they can disrupt the act and violate the shared value or they can let it go forward and let change progress.

For example, I was once running a transformation project that was being impeded by a Sales Director hogging accounts. Although it was agreed that she would distribute her clients, she never got around to it, so I set up a meeting with a key account and one of our salespeople. When she tried to disrupt the meeting, she violated the shared value we had established, was dismissed from her position and everything fell into place after that.

Empathy Is Not Absolution

Empathy, as powerful as it can potentially be, is widely misunderstood. It is often paired with compassion in the context of creating a more beneficial workplace. That is, of course, a reasonable and worthy objective, but the one-dimensional use of the term is misleading and limits its value.

When seen only through the lens of making others more comfortable, empathy can seem like a “nice to have,” trait rather than a valuable competency and an important source of competitive advantage. It’s much easier to see the advantage of imposing your will, rather than internalizing the perspectives of others.

One thing I learned over many years living in foreign cultures is that it’s important to understand how people around you think, especially if you don’t agree with them and, as is sometimes the case, find their point of view morally reprehensible. In fact, learning more about how others think can make you a more effective leader, negotiator and manager.

Empathy is not absolution. You can internalize the ideas of others and still vehemently disagree. There is a reason that Special Forces are trained to understand the cultures in which they will operate and it isn’t because it makes them nicer people. It’s because it makes them more lethal operators.

It is only through empathy that we can understand motivations—for good or ill—and design effective strategies to build shared purpose or, if need be, design a dilemma for an opponent. To operate in an often difficult world, you need to understand your environment. That’s why building empathy skills can be like a secret weapon.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pexels

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Important Questions for Innovation

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Important Questions for Innovation

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Here are some important questions for innovation.

What’s the Distinctive Value Proposition? The new offering must help the customer make progress. How does the customer benefit? How is their life made easier? How does this compare to the existing offerings? Summarize the difference on one page. If the innovation doesn’t help the customer make progress, it’s not an innovation.

Is it too big or too small? If the project could deliver sales growth that would dwarf the existing sales numbers for the company, the endeavor is likely too big. The company mindset and philosophy would have to be destroyed. Are you sure you’re up to the challenge? If the project could deliver only a small increase in sales, it’s likely not worth the time and expense. Think return on investment. There’s no right answer, but it’s important to ask the question and set the limits for too big and too small. If it could grow to 10% of today’s sales numbers, that’s probably about right.

Why us? There’s got to be a reason why you’re the right company to do this new work. List the company’s strengths that make the work possible. If you have several strengths that give you an advantage, that’s great. And if one of your weaknesses gives you an advantage, that works too. Step on the accelerator. If none of your strengths give you an advantage, choose another project.

How do we increase our learning rate? First thing, define Learning Objectives (LOs). And once defined, create a plan to achieve them quickly. Here’s a hint. Define what it takes to satisfy the LOs. Here’s another hind. Don’t build a physical prototype. Instead, create a website that describes the potential offering and its value proposition and ask people if they want to buy it. Collect the data and refine the offering based on your learning. Or, create a one-page sales tool and show it to ten potential customers. Define your learning and use the learning to decide what to do next.

Then what? If the first phase of the work is successful, there must be a then what. There must be an approved plan (funding, resources) for the second phase before the first phase starts. And the same thing goes for the follow-on phases. The easiest way to improve innovation effectiveness is avoid starting phase one of projects when their phase two is unfunded. The fastest innovation project is the wrong one that never starts.

How do we start? Define how much money you want to spend. Formalize your business objectives. Choose projects that could meet your business objectives. Free up your best people. Learn as quickly as you can.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Creating Memorable Experiences to Drive Loyalty

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Memory-Driven CX

Creating Memorable Experiences to Drive Loyalty

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Why do customers come back to the places where they love to do business? Our annual customer experience research ranked the top experiences that get customers to come back:

Helpful employees
Knowledgeable employees
Friendly employees
A convenient experience
Hassle-free shipping and delivery
Easy returns
Personalized experiences
Empathy

The decision to come back could include any one of these or a combination of items on this list — or anything else that the customer experiences the first or last time they did business with the company or brand. The point is that it’s not the experience itself that drives loyalty — it’s the memory of the experience that truly determines loyalty.

This subtle but powerful distinction explains why some businesses enjoy fierce loyalty. The customer’s memory creates an emotional connection that transforms a simple transaction into one of many interactions—in other words, a repeat and/or loyal customer. A recent MarTech article about creating these emotional connections through CX memories and how B2B and B2C brands are winning over customers with “memory-driven CX” included some compelling ideas that validate this concept. The article emphasized the power of a sentence that starts with the words, “Remember when. …” It turns out that the memory of a good experience can boost dopamine in the brain, and the result is that customers are more likely to trust and stay with the brand.

And that is the basis of an emotional connection. Dopamine is a chemical the brain releases that makes you feel good. This chemical release potentially happens twice: during the actual interaction with the brand and when the customer recalls the interaction at a later time and date.

This doesn’t happen by accident. Just as a brand can be purposeful about giving the customer an experience worthy of remembering, it can also be purposeful about getting the customer to recall the experience.

Certain companies have done this at scale. Chewy, the online pet supply retailer, sends birthday cards to its customers’ pets. The cards are often personalized with the pet’s name. Starbucks sends its “members” a free drink or food item for their birthday. It also celebrates “coffee anniversaries,” reminding customers of when they first joined its rewards program. Netflix sends a “What We Watched” summary of what its subscribers have watched in the past year.

You don’t have to be a recognizable brand to do this. Any size company—in any industry—can do the same with a little thought and this five-step process:

Create the Experience: First, you must deliver an experience that is positive and worth remembering.
Identify Key Touchpoints: Map the customer journey (if you haven’t already done so) and identify the key touchpoints that could have the highest emotional impact.
Enhance the Key Touchpoints: Once you’ve identified the impactful touchpoints, engineer them to become memorable. For example, Trader Joe’s, the grocery store chain, trains its employees to interact with customers when they check out, enthusiastically commenting about what’s in the customer’s cart. This last impression leaves a lasting impression.
Design a Follow-Up Campaign: Design a campaign similar to Chewy, Starbucks or Netflix that reminds the customer why they enjoy doing business with you.
Measure the Impact: Don’t assume the prior four steps are working. Ask or survey your customers to ensure you’ve created the “Remember When” experience that will help drive repeat business.

When customers are excited about their experience, they say, “I’ll be back.” Taking that to the next level is doing something that gets the customer to think back on the experience, creating a “Remember When” dopamine reaction moment. That reinforces the original (or last) experience the customer had with you. By deliberately creating experiences worth remembering and then helping customers remember those memories, you are increasing the chances of the customer coming back. And the more they come back, the more likely they are to become a coveted loyal customer.

Image credit: Pexels

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Why Amazon Paid $3.9 Billion to Get into the Healthcare Business

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Why Amazon Paid $3.9 Billion to Get into the Healthcare Business

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Amazon is known for its amazing customer experience, despite most customers never talking to an Amazon employee. How does this digital experience — with no human interaction—drive so much loyalty? The short answer is confidence. There is very little that goes wrong with an Amazon experience, and if by chance it does, its system takes care of almost all problems—again, without human interaction. That said, if a customer does need to talk to a human, which is very seldom, the customer support team is there.

But what happens if you combine technology with a high-touch business, like a doctor’s office? You get One Medical, which Amazon bought in 2023 for $3.9 billion. One Medical’s founder, Dr. Tom Lee, is a Harvard-trained primary care physician who then went on to Stanford to get an MBA. Before opening his first clinic, he asked himself, “Why do we do these in healthcare like we’ve always done them? Why does every waiting room look like some sterile IKEA? Why do I wait in a reception area and then wait again in the exam room?” It was questions like these that caused Lee to tinker with and disrupt the traditional medical visit model.

Starting with one clinic, Lee created a different experience. He built an app and charged patients an $89/year subscription that gave them access to doctors. He focused on simple things like getting an appointment without making a call. Those little things were the start of what turned out to be a stellar experience that allowed him to expand, ultimately catching the eye of Amazon.

When the Amazon deal was completed, HealthCare Dive reported that Amazon now had a network of more than 220 medical offices in 27 U.S. markets with more than 836,000 members plus 9,000 enterprise clients. Neil Lindsay, SVP of Amazon Health Services said, “We’re on a mission to make it dramatically easier for people to find, choose, afford and engage with the services, products and professionals they need to get and stay healthy, and coming together with One Medical is a big step on that journey.” That’s what Amazon does. They make it easy for customers.

Joseph Michelli, bestselling business author of numerous books that tell the stories of iconic brands like The Ritz-Carlton, Starbucks, Mercedes and others, recently released a new book, All Business Is Personal: One Medical’s Human-Centered, Technology-Powered Approach to Customer Engagement, that tells the One Medical story. I had a chance to interview him on Amazing Business Radio, and here are the highlights that will give you some insight into why Amazon became interested in acquiring this amazing company.

Question Everything

Just ask, “Why?” It doesn’t matter what type of business you are in, there are reasons for everything. Often the reason a company or person does something is because “We’ve always done it this way.” So, question everything. Maybe you’ll still do it the way you’ve always done it, but at least you will have tried to find a better way.

Create a Stellar Customer (Patient) Experience

As Lee created a Customer Experience (CX) that drove impressive ratings, he looked at the friction most patients experienced. He started with an obvious pain point, the waiting room, which is, as the name implies, a room for people to wait. Some patients in traditional medical practices are forced to wait for unreasonable amounts of time. But not at One Medical. In addition to being easy to get a same-day or next-day appointment, Michelli shared that 95% of patients are seen within three minutes of their scheduled times. As already mentioned, Lee questioned every aspect of the patient’s experience, and he found many ways to make it better.

Blend Technology with the Human Touch

Technology, like apps and AI, makes life more convenient for customers by allowing things like easy online scheduling or getting immediate answers from AI chatbots. Often, technology can feel cold and impersonal, especially in healthcare. The best use of technology is to make things faster and simpler, but smart businesses, like One Medical, know to offer human backup when a customer/patient needs it. Finding the right balance between tech and the human touch keeps your business from being a commodity—just “another faceless service.”

Convenience Is King

People love doing business with companies that create convenient experiences. For One Medical, this means offering same-day appointments, speedy callbacks or handling many issues online versus the phone, so the patient doesn’t have to wait on hold or wait for a callback. Research shows that 73% of customers will pay more for a convenient experience. The easier you make someone’s experience, the more likely they will come back as well as tell others about you.

Make It Personal, Not Just Personalized

It’s great to remember a customer’s name or recall past purchases. That’s personalization. To take it a step further, make it personal. Make the customer feel that you care about them. That means when the customer (or patient) talks to an employee, they feel cared for, listened to and valued. Personal connections build trust and confidence, which leads to repeat business and potential loyalty.

The Effort Is Worth It

These five reasons (and a few more) are what gave Amazon 3.9 billion reasons (as in dollars) to acquire One Medical. Even if you were to practice these reasons flawlessly, you may never catch Amazon’s attention, but you will catch your customers’ (and potential customers’) attention. And that will make the effort worthwhile.

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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The Secret to Endless Customers

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The Secret to Endless Customers

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Marcus Sheridan owns a pool and spa manufacturing company in Virginia — not a very sexy business, unless you consider the final product, which is often surrounded by beautiful people. What he did to stand out in a marketplace filled with competition is a masterclass in how to get noticed and, more importantly, get business. His most recent book, Endless Customers, is a follow-up to his bestselling book They Ask, You Answer, with updated information and new ideas that will help you build a business that has, as the title implies, endless customers.

Sheridan’s journey began in 2001 when he started a pool company with two friends. When the 2008 market collapse hit, they were on the verge of losing everything. This crisis forced them to think differently about how to reach customers. Sheridan realized that potential buyers were searching for answers to their questions, so he decided his company would become “the Wikipedia of fiberglass swimming pools.”

By brainstorming every question he’d ever received as a pool salesperson and addressing them through content online, his company’s website became the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world within just a couple of years. This approach transformed his business and became the foundation for his business philosophy.

In our interview on Amazing Business Radio, Sheridan shared what he believes is the most important strategy that businesses can use to get and keep customers, and that is to become a known and trusted brand. They must immerse themselves in what he calls the Four Pillars of a Known and Trusted Brand.

Say What Others Aren’t Willing to Say: The No. 1 reason people leave websites is because they can’t find what they’re looking for — and the top information they seek is pricing. Sheridan emphasizes that businesses should openly discuss costs and pricing on their websites. While you don’t need to list exact prices, you should educate consumers about what drives costs up or down in your industry. Sheridan suggests creating a comprehensive pricing page that teaches potential customers how to buy in your industry. According to him, 90% of industries still avoid this conversation, even though it’s what customers want most.
Show What Others Aren’t Willing to Show: When Sheridan’s company was manufacturing fiberglass swimming pools, it became the first to show its entire manufacturing process from start to finish through a series of videos. They were so complete that someone could literally learn how to start their own manufacturing company by watching these videos. Sheridan recognized that sharing the “secret sauce” was a level of transparency that built trust, helping to make his company the obvious choice for many customers.
Sell in Ways Others Aren’t Willing to Sell: According to Sheridan, 75% of today’s buyers prefer a “seller-free sales experience.” He says, “That doesn’t mean we hate salespeople. We just don’t want to talk to them until we’re very, very, ready.” Sheridan suggests meeting customers where they are by offering self-service options on your website. For his pool and spa business, that included a price estimator solution that helped potential customers determine how much they could afford — without the pressure of talking to a salesperson.
Be More Human than Others Are Willing to Be: In a world that is becoming dominated by AI and technology, showing the human side of a business is critical to a trusting business relationship. Sheridan suggests putting leaders and employees on camera. They are truly the “face of the brand.” It’s okay to use AI, just find the balance that helps you stay human in a technology-dominated world.

As we wrapped up the interview, I asked Sheridan to share his most powerful idea, and the answer goes back to a word he used several times throughout the interview: Trust. “In a time of change, we need, as businesses, constants that won’t change,” Sheridan explained. “One thing I can assure you is that in 10 years, you’re going to be in a battle for trust. It’s the one thing that binds all of us. It’s the great currency that is not going to go away. So, become that voice of trust. If you do, your organization is going to be built to last.”

And that, according to Sheridan, is how you create “endless customers.”

Image Credits: Shep Hyken

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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You Just Got Starbucked

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Layoffs, Store Closures & What It Means for Customer Service

LAST UPDATED: September 25, 2025 at 10:58PM
You Just Got Starbucked - Layoffs, Store Closures & What It Means for Customer Service

Exclusive Interview with Mario Matulich

In a world where corporate decisions often prioritize efficiency, the human element can be the first to suffer. The recent layoffs and restructuring at Starbucks, a brand synonymous with a unique, human-centered “third place” experience, have sent a tremor through the industry. In a wide-ranging interview, we will unpack the strategic and operational implications of these changes. Together, we will explore the difficult balance between trimming corporate fat and maintaining a brand built on emotional connection, diving into how these decisions could affect everything from in-store morale to the long-term loyalty of its customers. Central to the conversation is the following strategic question:

How can a company that has undergone significant corporate restructuring and layoffs maintain and restore a premium, human-centered customer experience?

Today we will explore this question, along with its various aspects with our special guest Mario Matulich, a practice lead at the Customer Management Practice with a diverse commercial understanding in a variety of industry verticals across the customer management sector. He is well versed in market research, product development, sales, marketing, and operations in addition to cross functional management and leadership development.

Without further ado, here is the Q&A I had with Mario on a range of topics regarding the recent Starbucks’ store closures and layoffs and their implications:

The Strategic Context of the Layoffs

Q: Starbucks’ leadership framed the recent restructuring as a necessary step for efficiency and a return to their core mission. From your perspective in customer management, how do these internal changes directly affect the external customer experience in the short and long term?
A: In the short term, layoffs, especially in corporate roles, can create gaps in innovation, brand narrative, and strategic support for store-level teams. Employees on the front lines may feel increased pressure, which can impact morale and the human connection customers expect. In the long term, if these gaps aren’t addressed, the result can be a more transactional experience that erodes both loyalty and trust.

Q: In many companies, layoffs are a last resort. Do you believe this restructuring reflects a failure of previous strategies, or is it a forward-thinking move to adapt to a changing market? What specific market trends do you think are driving these decisions?
A: I don’t view this restructuring as purely a failure of previous strategies, but rather as an attempt to adapt to a changing market. That said, Starbucks’ bigger challenge is restoring its customer experience. Trends such as rising demand for personalized, convenient, and high-value experiences, along with increased competition in the premium coffee market, make it clear that customers are evaluating Starbucks not just on price, but on the overall experience delivered.

Q: The layoffs primarily targeted corporate roles in marketing, technology, and creative. How does the loss of talent in these specific areas impact the company’s ability to innovate and maintain its brand narrative?
A: These areas are critical for innovation, storytelling, and digital experiences that connect customers to the brand. Losing talent here makes it more challenging to maintain a consistent, differentiated experience and risks further disengagement from customers.

Impact on the Human-Centered Experience

Q: Starbucks has long prided itself on the “third place” concept. How does restructuring and potential employee demoralization affect the in-store experience and the emotional connection customers have with the brand?
A: The “third place” experience relies on motivated and supported employees. Restructuring can disrupt this, as uncertainty and low morale may trickle down to in-store interactions. Customers may perceive a decline in warmth, attentiveness, and consistency, which can undermine the emotional connection.

Q: With fewer people in corporate roles, who now owns the responsibility for a seamless customer journey? Does this push more responsibility onto store-level partners, and if so, are they equipped to handle it?
A: While partners remain at the front line, the burden shouldn’t fall solely on them. Leadership must provide tools, guidance, and support to ensure a seamless experience, even as corporate teams shrink.

Q: Customer management is about building long-term loyalty. Do you believe this restructuring risks eroding the trust and loyalty of both employees and customers, and what would your practice recommend to mitigate that risk?
A: Yes, there’s definitely a risk. The key is to go back to the basics and make the experience personal, easy, and fast. Nail those, and customers’ trust and loyalty will .,¬./come back, and the layoffs won’t linger in their minds.

Measuring and Recovering from the Impact

Q: How would you advise Starbucks to measure the real-time impact of these changes on customer satisfaction? Beyond traditional metrics like NPS, what holistic experience measures should they be tracking?
A: Starbucks should look beyond NPS to measure speed of service, personalization, emotional connection, and overall experience consistency. These metrics provide a more comprehensive view of the customer journey and help identify gaps that layoffs may create.

Q: Layoffs can create a perception of instability. What is the most effective way for a company to communicate its recovery plan and rebuild confidence with its customer base after such a significant change?
A: Clear communication focused on restoring the core pillars of customer experience, personalization, ease, and speed, is key. Customers respond when they see tangible improvements in the experience they receive every day.

Q: In your experience, what is the typical timeline for a company to recover from the brand and cultural damage that can follow widespread layoffs? What are the critical milestones they should be focused on achieving?
A: Recovery timelines vary, but visible improvements in customer experience can begin within months if executed strategically. Critical milestones include reestablishing operational consistency, restoring employee morale, and relaunching key brand initiatives that reinforce the premium experience promise.

Future-Proofing for Long-Term Growth

Q: Looking ahead, how can Starbucks utilize this moment of disruption to adopt a more resilient and human-centered organizational model? What key lesson should other companies learn from their experience to avoid similar pitfalls?
A: Starbucks has a chance here to get back to what really made it successful: combining innovative, tech-forward solutions with a human touch, every time. The bigger lesson for any company is clear. Growth and cost-cutting shouldn’t come at the expense of the customer experience. People are willing to pay a premium, but only if the experience feels worth it.

Q: What message does it send that the popular Starbucks Roastery location in Capitol Hill in Seattle is being closed as part of this layoff and restructuring initiative? Why do you think they chose to do it?
A: Closing the Roastery signals a prioritization of efficiency over experiential destinations. While it may make financial sense in the short term, it also serves as a cautionary reminder that iconic, high-touch experiences are critical to maintaining brand differentiation and customer loyalty.

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mario!

Ultimately, the Starbucks case study is a powerful lesson for every organization. As Matulich’s insights make clear, the pursuit of efficiency and growth cannot come at the expense of the human experience that defines your brand. The true measure of a company’s resilience is not in its stock price, but in the trust it has built with its employees and customers. A single-minded focus on traditional metrics is insufficient; a holistic approach that values emotional connection and employee morale is the only path to sustainable growth. The greatest challenge for Starbucks now is to move beyond reacting to a difficult market and begin proactively shaping its future—not just through cost-cutting, but by recommitting to the core narrative that made it a cultural institution in the first place. The future of any business is not found in a spreadsheet; it’s built on a foundation of human connection, one interaction at a time.

Image credits: Pexels, Mario Matulich

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