Verghis View - March 2008

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In this issue:

• New Web site and blog
• Perception is reality – but what about the other way around?
• New Talks
• Upcoming Events

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New Web site and blog
by Phil Verghis
President, The Verghis Group, Inc.

After four years, I’ve completely overhauled my web site and set it up so that the home page changes frequently with lots of new information. I’ve also added a blog, and I hope you will be pleased with the results. Please take a peek and let me know what you think.

The future of this newsletter? In my last newsletter I asked you whether I should replace my newsletter with a blog, and you have spoken. The overwhelming majority of responses said to continue with the newsletter, while a smaller percentage preferred only a blog. Thanks to everyone who participated and offered their opinion. I’ve decided to go with both.

You can now sign up for the newsletter from the front page of my web site.

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Perception is reality – but what about the other way around?
While researching a new talk, I came across a study on the role the brain plays in adjusting reality to better fit our perceptions. Think about that for a second. In support we have long believed that perceptions become a customer’s reality. But this research shows that even realities like touch and taste can be altered by our perceptions.

Expectations have long been studied by psychologists. What we expect plays a big role in determining how effective certain medications are, for example. Now there is additional research showing the brain does even more active ‘adjusting’ of our senses than previously thought. Consider the following experiment done on volunteers by scientists from Caltech and Stanford.Volunteers were asked to take a sip of wine, swish it in their mouths for six seconds, swallow it and then rate it. Before they tasted each wine, they were told what the wine cost (between $5 and $90 a bottle). The catch? The wine prices were random and arbitrary. But you can probably guess the results. When rating how much they liked the wine, they gave the more “expensive” wines higher scores.

By the way, the study did not rely solely on subjective ratings. The medial orbitofrontal cortex of each volunteer’s brain was also scanned. Their synapses confirmed objectively what the volunteers said in terms of which wines tasted better.

This experiment was repeated (without the brain scans) on the Stanford wine club with similar results. Even among these oenophiles, the wines the subjects believed were more expensive received higher ratings.

CalTech associate professor of economics Antonio Rangel, one of the authors, said the most interesting part of the study is that how pleasant an experience will be depends not only on the experience itself, but in our belief of what the experience will be like.

Think about this in the context of your organization. What are your customers’ expectations of your service? Do they approach you with dread because of all the rules and restrictions you cite every time they ask for something? Or do your customers look forward to interacting with you, because they know (expect) you to be competent and to have their best interests at heart?

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New talks
As some of you know, when I feel that my talks are ‘good,’ I retire them. Why? Frankly, if I’m not learning while I speak (in terms of challenges from the audience or changes based on new research) then it starts boring me. If it bores me, I can only imagine how it will be for the audience!

So I’m now developing two new talks. One is ‘Becoming a Trusted Advisor.’ The other, so far unnamed, ties together research from customer psychology, anthropology, medical research, even NASA and the FAA, to see what service and support leaders can learn from them. (Hint: a lot!)

Let me know if you want me to talk to your team or customers either in person or via a webinar.

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Upcoming events
In the next few weeks and months, I’ll be at:

• Consortium for Service Innovation Executive Summit (Scottsdale)
• IBM Pulse in Orlando
• 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium MIT campus, Cambridge, MA
• Global Support Summit in Berlin, Germany

I hope to see you at one or more of these events. The most up-to-date information about all of my upcoming appearances is always on my website at http://www.verghisgroup.com/about/in-person/

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Connecting
If you are on LinkedIn, feel free to connect up.

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Talk to me
Your comments, questions, ideas, suggestions, feedback and contributions are welcome. Send them to me here.

Please forward this to colleagues, co-workers and anyone else you think might be interested in improving the quality of their customer service. To subscribe, visit my website.

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