#55 - Numbers vs. percentages, scope drift, Customer AI for marketing, and lots more

Welcome to my 55th Customer Analytics Newsletter here on LinkedIn. A reasonably comprehensive list of topics this time:

• Communication tip: when to use numbers and when to use percentages.
• Beware of scope drift.
• Webinar replay: Customer AI benefits for Marketing & Communication teams.
• Customer AI testimonial video.
• Tom Fishburne joke (Is it really a joke?) about the ROI of marketing.
• IPSOS Global Happiness 2023 report.

As always, if you enjoy reading this, please forward to friends and colleagues, encouraging them to subscribe.

Communication tip: when to use numbers and when to use percentages

As Dan Ariely says, and as I like to repeat, “We humans are predictably irrational.” Insights into the nature of our irrationality will help you be a more effective communicator, and more importantly, more effective at persuading people to act.

I find one aspect of this to be particularly interesting: we all find percentages to be pretty boring, and absolute numbers to be highly persuasive. For example, one study showed that people told about a disease that “kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000” believed it to be more dangerous than “a disease that kills 24.14% of the population.” (Please get your calculator out if you also jumped to the wrong conclusion.) The imagery of the absolute number overwhelms the relatively abstract notion of a percentage. The former grabs your attention andthe latter makes you want to yawn. The version to use depends on what you want to accomplish.

Taking this into the area of CX and Customer Success, there is a huge difference between saying “1.37% of our customers will leave us because of this” and “387 customers will probably leave us because of this, and we know which ones they are.” The facts may be almost the same, but our reaction is not. The catch for CX professionals is that our obsolete survey-based methodologies give us a pecentage but do not provide accurate absolute numbers. Customer AI provides the details for 100% of your base, so you can be far more persuasive.

Beware of scope drift

Please take a moment to think about a never-ending project in which you have participated. Almost all of us have experienced a number of these. The most common cause is what is known as scope creep. The scope of the project has never been clearly defined, and is constantly adjusted. There are a number of techniques for avoiding this, and I particularly recommend the use of completion criteria when you first define a project. Don't do this as you go along, simply because it will be almost impossible to reach an agreement. Let's consider an example:

If your overall customer experience initiative includes a project to implement a new executive feedback process for your largest customers, some completion criteria might be:

• At least 50 customer executives interviewed.
• At least five customers covered.
• At least three customers have formally approved the resulting improvement plans.
• Formal report-out to the business unit VP, with his or her final approval for the new process.

Completion criteria need to be agreed before the project starts. Please think about this as you launch your now-essential Customer AI project. Yes, it is possible to implement it within three months, provided you are clear on what the implementation success criteria are from the start. Scope drift is your enemy. Stamp it out now!

More content from OCX Cognition

• Webinar replay: Richard Owen hosted a great webinar on the benefits that Customer AI brings to Marketing & Communication teams last week. It's the first in a series of four webinars about the benefits for various corporate teams. Worth a watch, as I am sure you will agree. Please click here to access the replay.

• Conga is a software company whose platform helps you to create and manage complex documents throughout the revenue lifecycle, especially in B2B. One of their slogans is “Crush complexity. Deliver certainty.” They were among the first customers to implement our Customer AI solution. Find out what they think about it by watching this 2.5 minute testimonial video.

Interesting content from elsewhere

• Mixing business and humor works well in most cultures, though there are some exceptions. (Yes, I am talking about Germany, among others.) Cartoonist Tom Fishburne is one of the true greats where professional jokes are concerned. With perfect timing for what I have written about today, here is what he has to say about the ROI of marketing.
• Speaking of surveys, my friend and former colleague Paul Maguire just sent me the IPSOS Global Happiness 2023 report. It covers 32 countries, unfortunately including neither Switzerland nor Ireland (my two nationalities). Plenty of coverage for larger countries. People in different countries do respond to surveys in quite different ways, though my research on that subject has of course been about the way they respond to surveys about companies, rather than about themselves. In any case, I find the demographic differences within countries quite fascinating in this report. A great and quite fun read.

Notes

OCX Cognition predicts customer futures. Our breakthrough Customer AI solution lets enterprises transform what’s possible in customer experience. Reduce your customer risk, break down silos, and drive speedy action – when you can see what’s coming, you can change the outcome. Building on more than 100 years of CX-focused expertise in our small team and thousands in teams we have led, we’ve harnessed today’s advances in AI, elastic computing, and data science to deliver on the promise of customer-driven financial results. Learn more at?www.ocxcognition.com.

Maurice FitzGerald is Editor-in-Chief, Content at OCX Cognition. He retired from HP where he was VP of Customer Experience for their $4 billion software business and was previously VP of Strategy and Customer Experience as well as Chief of Staff for HP in EMEA. He and his brother Peter, an Oxford D.Phil in Cognitive Psychology, have written three books on customer experience strategy and NPS, and a fourth book that focuses on Peter's cartoon illustrations for the first three. All are available from Amazon.