Zappos.Com

Alex is an experienced customer research professional who applies his Experimental Social Psychology background and his passion for research, design, and innovation to solving important customer and business problems. His professional goal is to help teams create remarkable products and services which make people’s lives easier and more enjoyable.

Currently Alex is leading Customer Research for the Zappos Family of Companies. In previous positions, he was responsible for research and usability of the products and services for companies like TurboTax (Intuit), State Farm Insurance, and the Active Network. He has over 20years of relevant experience – 5 years of academic research and over 15 years of customer research in the software industry. Alex received his PhD in Experimental Social Psychology from Clark University. His areas of research include: defining and measuring emotions, individual differences, usability, and consumer segmentation.

In 1675, Sir Issac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” In 2021, we acknowledge some of the intellectual giants on whose shoulders we are standing. Those include over 200 years of modern scientific Psychology; Jakob von Uexküll, the 19th century biologist who demonstrated the existence of a multitude of perceptual worlds; Professor Roberto Verganti, who has proposed that innovating on meaning is much more powerful in developing products and services people love than innovating on solutions to problems; Professor Peter Fader, who teaches a customer-centric way for companies to be very successful and points out that all customers are not created equal; Danny Meyer, the famed restaurateur and businessman who has shown that businesses can trigger positive emotions and create long lasting employee and customer loyalty through the idea of hospitality; Tony Hsieh, the entrepreneur and innovator who started one of the first online e-commerce stores and helped change how we work and how we deliver not only products and services but also happiness to customers and others.

"We believe that the uncertainty brought about by ever-changing economic conditions can be mitigated if we focus our attention less on technology and more on the human side of busines"

We wrote the book hoping to achieve two things. One is to help change readers’ minds, to provide another way of thinking about customer data, and to inspire towards action. The other is to provide some tools and know-how to help business leaders who see value in this different way of thinking to start putting those insights into practice. We have not invented new processes or models and have not coined new terms, there are plenty of those out there already. We refer to established and time-tested knowledge from Psychology, Marketing, Market Research, Product Development and so on.

One practical matter we tackle in the book is personalization. We argue that without the foundation of meaning, personalization is an empty, overused business term that just sounds good. Businesses understand, at a gut level, that offering “personalized products and services” sounds better to consumers than offering “generic products and services”. They are also taking cues from luxury goods and services as well as luxury hospitality where “white glove” and “high touch” service is the norm and is expected by wealthy consumers. However, when put into practice and in an attempt to scale that approach to millions of consumers, personalization has been nothing more than algorithm-powered suggestions based on averaging millions of online transactions. There is nothing personalized or personal about that approach in the way customers experience it or how it feels to them.

 Another hot business topic we cover is customer experience design. Experience is a feeling. If you believe that statement, you will recognize that businesses cannot design customer experiences. They cannot design feelings. They can try to trigger positive feelings. This, of course, is dependent on knowing your customers’ personalities and situations through feedback loops.

At the end of the day, the purpose of this book is not to examine in detail the changes in business practices as a result of COVID-19. Rather, we believe that the uncertainty brought about by ever-changing economic conditions can be mitigated if we focus our attention less on technology and more on the human side of business, namely on customers and employees as people. There are probably many more unexpected and dramatic changes in our environment in store for us in the future. However, a solid understanding of human nature will serve for us as a reliable anchor in the stormy seas of change.