Big Data, consumer insights, NPS and benchmarking… Ugh, Enough already! Its all great stuff but when do you stop analyzing and start acting? Leaders need tools to act not another report! Take a look at our approach. Applied behavioral science, intuitive easy to digest information and simple, actionable leadership tools.

1. Mind Blindness, Asperger's,
and Why Consumers Hate Surveys

2. CX’s Bill Maher Moment

3. CX’s Bill Maher Moment

4. New York Times Article
• Is this something you’d want
said about you, personally?
• If it were said about you, what
would that indicate about you?
• Insecure
• Tone-deaf
• Self-centered

5. New York Times Article

6. What’s going on here?
What’s under the surface of the
customer’s antipathy toward surveys?
(Hint: It’s not the length of the survey.)

7. Is survey fatigue about time?
• Max (Sr.)’s Rule: Brevity is good – but not
brevity for brevity’s sake.
• Why do people share feedback?
• Incentive?
• Do they work for you?
• Max (Jr.)’s Rule: Never behave in an online
feedback experience in ways you wouldn’t were
you face-to-face with a customer.

8. What happens in healthy face-to-face feedback?
Actions
 Often doing most of the talking
Actions
 Doing most of the listening
 Demonstrating empathy: verbal
and non-verbal acknowledgement
 Adjusting responses to meet
emotional level
Sharer of
Story
Receiver of
Story

9. What happens in healthy face-to-face feedback?
Outcomes
 Feels listened-to
 Feels validated
 Feels important
Outcomes
 Better informed
 Can better separate emotion from
fact
 More credible for having listened
Sharer of
Story
Receiver of
Story
 Both sides leave the conversation feeling more
invested in the relationship

10. What happens in unsuccessful face-to-face feedback?
Actions
 Often doing most of the talking
Actions
 Not listening authentically
 Either not sending non-verbal
queues…or sending the wrong
ones
 Failing to meet the sharer’s
emotional level
Sharer of
Story
Receiver of
Story

11. What happens in unhealthy face-to-face feedback?
Outcomes
 Feels like he’s not being listened
to
 Positive emotion reduced
 Negative emotion compounded
Outcomes
 Better informed?
 Less able to separate emotion
from fact
 Perceived as less credible and
authentic
Sharer of
Story
Receiver of
Story
 Leaves conversation
feeling less invested in the
relationship.

12. We’re wired to have a negative reaction to many
surveys
• When sharing feedback, we’re predisposed to desire a degree of
empathy. So, what’s going wrong in most Cx surveys?
❌ Whether we’re sharing a positive or a negative experience,
we’re not receiving an empathetic response. (In fact, we might
be receiving a counter-productive one.)
❌ We’re being asked questions without any “conversational
context”.
❌ There’s no association with real people – the employees of the
company, for example.

13. What would we call this behavior in a person?
Mind Blindness
• Term popularized by the British psychologist Simon
Baron-Cohen to describe adults and children with
Asperger’s Syndrome
• People with Asperger’s have difficulty decoding language (and
body language) in a social context
• They can struggle to respond in the ways their conversational
partners usually expect – frustrating and unsettling for both sides of
the discussion

14. Mind Blindness
What can we learn from how therapists offer
help to those with Asperger’s?

15. Lessons from Asperger’s Research
• The focus is not on teaching empathy – but rather on mimicking
empathetic responses
• What are some responses that therapists coach?
• Personal eye contact
• Nodding (To signal disagreement or agreement)
• Statements of encouragement
• Knowing when to give control to your interlocutor
• In solicited feedback, we need some kind of conversational context™

16. Example Case: High-end Hotel, Singapore

17. Case Comparison

18. Example Hotel Survey Mind Blindness Comparison
• Over the course of many
minutes, shifts subjects with little
or no warning
• Introduces concepts without
introducing the human factor
behind them. (People respond
to people, not forms.)
• Hop-scotches and often repeats
questions in an erratic way
• Doesn’t respond or change
course based on what happens

19. Hallmarks of any Emotionally
Intelligent Cx Survey

20. 4 hallmarks of a highly functioning Cx survey
• Provides conversational context
• Humanizes the experience
• Responds and changes course based on situation – always putting
the course of the customer conversation ahead of the data
collection
• “Nods” – reinforcing that real people will read and think about the
response

32. Watch Out! The Peak-End Rule Pitfall
• Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice .
• Peak-end Rule says that in memories and consumer experiences
what matters most is the highlight of the event and the final
experience.
• Any mind-blind survey as the “end” experience factors against
whatever “peak” experience you created.

33. Follow-up Notes
• Watch for the recorded version of this webinar within 24 hours.
Feel free to share it.
• We’ll include links to the Ideas & Inspiration articles referenced.
• We invite you to do a one-on-one VoC or Survey Diagnostic. It’s
free – and as part of that we’ll send along copies of any of the
books we reference “on the house”.

34. Question & Answer