Behavioural science is good for marketing, but is it good elsewhere in the business? Richard talks to Jez Groom, CEO of Cowry Consulting and author of the book Ripple, about how behavioural science can positively impact your business. Jez talks about persuasive language in the service role in an organization that not only helps the customer get to a positive outcome but also strengthens the employee's ability to provide that outcome. The conversation explores other roles, including human resources and management, ultimately believing that applying these principles in your business is good and ethical!
Brandon (00:07):
Welcome to the show. This is Brandon Wehn and you are listening to the Understanding Consumer Neuroscience podcast brought to you by the folks at CloudArmy. In this episode, Richard talks to Jez Groom, CEO of Cowry Consulting about how behavioral science can be applied beyond marketing and that behavioral science is a good science throughout a business.
Richard (00:34):
Hi, this is Richard Campbell. Thanks for listening to Understanding Consumer Neuroscience. Today my guest is Jez Groom who's the founder of Cowry and focused on both behavioral science and the art of the nudge and the psychology of great customer experiences. Thanks for coming on the show, Jez.
Jez (00:50):
Hey Rich. It's great to be here. Really looking forward to the conversation.
Richard (00:53):
I'm delighted to have you on. Of course, we've chatted a bunch ahead of time and really talking about the sort of holistic aspects of behavioral science. Most of the conversations I've had in this show so far, we've very much focused on the using neuroscience and marketing to try and make better messages, things that will actually connect with people and cut through the noise, and I like that. I think it's smart that we use our money efficiently, that we actually make messages that matter to people, but you take a broader look.
Jez (01:23):
Yeah, no, I think I've dedicated, I suppose, my career in behavioral science to the application of behavioral science in business in its broadest sense. So for sure I'm pretty literate in marketing. I've worked in advertising and marketing for 25 years. I always say it's like when I got that same brief, it was for Ambrosia Custard and they said how yellow and creamy and Devony can Ambrosia Custard be, that that was my time to check out of my marketing career and start to look at different ways in which behavior could be changed. And as you say, it's fascinating because often the behavior of a customer is often heavily influenced by the behavior of the employee.
Richard (02:09):
Oh, for sure.
Jez (02:10):
And again, yeah. And you know, often like I'm sure people have said it before, it's nothing new, but what we are dealing with is not rocket science, it's human science. And that's really what fascinates me, that interaction between kind of somebody that's trying to create the experience, then ultimately how people experience the experience.
Richard (02:29):
Yeah. I can't remember. Was it Stephen Covey who said, "You treat your employees like you treat your best customer and your employees will do that for you." It's just good practice for starters.
Jez (02:40):
Yeah. I mean, I think obviously you and the guys were ahead of the curve, because when we started doing work in customer experience, our focus was very much on designing the experience with the customer in mind. But we quickly figured out that often, like the environment, like the infrastructure for the employee to excel often wasn't there or it wasn't there in the way that we want to design it utilizing psychology and behavioral science. And I think now we talk a lot more about colleague and customer experience together and essentially designing both at the same time. And yeah, we've had some great successes. So yeah, happy to talk through some of those, but yeah, no, it's fantastic.
Richard (03:29):
Yeah. And in tying it back to the sort of neuroscience element of plugging into that subconscious mind, that unconscious mind that will communicate more effectively than everything they say anyway. Like if I've got a delighted employee talking about a product they genuinely like, there's no amount of scripting I can do to that person that's going to be more effective than their own delight to that customer.
Jez (03:54):
Oh yeah. So some of the insights and the best behavioral insights are so simple, like cleverly simple, which I think is the definition term of being elegant. So it's like one of my favorites, sort of a very simple one, was we work with essentially a utilities provider, gas and electricity, which is quite tough at the moment because prices obviously are going through the roof. Sure. And there was a of people there and they were called GE, the GE team and it's the general enquiries team. And these are people of essentially it could be anything from billing to a big problem through to maybe they attention that they're electricity isn't working or is going up and down, whatever it might be, but a real sort of panacea of problems.
Jez (04:48):
And we sort of said to them, said, "Look, the way that you introduce yourself is, if I was sitting there it would be like, 'Hello, my name is Jez, how can I help you today?'" And it sounds okay. But we know from a psychological perspective that essentially it doesn't confer much authority. And these are people that maybe have been in the organization 25 years. They know everything there is to know about electricity and gas and all the ups and downs.
Jez (05:17):
So one of the things that we said was, "Why don't you just change your introduction to say, 'Hi, my name is Jez and I'm a customer care expert here at X company. Can I start by taking your account number please?'" And what was funny was, the initial reaction we got was a lot of the people were like, "I'm not a customer care expert. I just deal with enquiries." It was just funny, like they were embarrassed and but we're going, "But think about what you do. You've got people that want things to be solved and you solve them for them and from what we've heard, you do it in a really, really caring manner. Like you care for the service, but sometimes you go above and beyond, you really do."
Richard (05:59):
Well, this is lovely because suddenly I realized, that statement is as much for the employee as the customer, right? It's an affirmation. I am a customer care expert.
Jez (06:08):
So this is exactly it. And what initially we kind of designed to essentially offset, which it does, any kind of worries or concerns that the caller has because we've all been there.
Richard (06:22):
Yeah. It's always the question. Am I talking to the right person? Yeah.
Jez (06:25):
Yeah. I want to escalate. I want a manager. And so by a sense you putting that element into the call, you're exactly right that the caller gets reassured to go, "Well, they sound quite authoritative," but yeah, the corollary of it was that the employee essentially, because they take maybe like 20 to 40 calls a day. So every day they're telling themselves "I'm a customer care expert" and you're exactly right. It just essentially kind just makes people feel good about themselves and that by doing that essentially makes them better to deal with the call and less likely to escalate because people go, this person knows what they're doing and they do sound like they know what they're doing and they feel like they know what they're doing.
Jez (07:08):
And what we found was when we do those sorts of, I suppose, small changes and a number of them, so one alone isn't going to work, but a number of across the court might be like maybe 10, 15. When we start to change these small kind of inflection points, we then start to see some real pickup in terms of the employee engagement. So the satisfaction they have in their jobs because they're enjoying the conversations more. I mean, enjoy is a strong word, I know. But when they are solving problems for people, it's very fulfilling. And that means they're less likely to leave. They're less likely to essentially have to be retrained and they're more likely to hit business objectives and their own objectives.
Jez (07:48):
So yeah, for us, it was, yeah. Kind of like it was early days, this was about eight or nine years ago and that's a bit we really enjoy. It's really, really rewarding to see the light switch go on in an employee's head once they experience it and then also the customers being delighted with this different type of interaction.
Richard (08:09):
Yeah. And that's that old first impressions thing, too. It's like, you've made it very clear to the person calling you've come to the right place. And even that "Can I have your account number please," is like, let's get to work. I'm ready to help you.
Jez (08:23):
So you're exactly right. So obviously you know your nuts and bolts of behavioral science. And yeah, what's interesting is that what seems as like an elegant, simple sentence has got all of those things in it. So you've got authority bias, which essentially says I'm an expert, I'm going to care for you so you've got a little bit of close in empathy gap. And it's right at the beginning of the experience. The immediate, like it's the first line and anchors the rest of the experience from a better place. And then yeah, essentially by starting with your account number basically says, we're going to solve this together. Like this a branch here, we're not going to fall.
Richard (08:57):
I'm your person.
Jez (08:58):
I'm going to sit alongside you and because they're a customer care expert. They're not a customer negotiation expert.
Richard (09:04):
Nope. Yeah. And they're also not the operator who's now going to direct your call to somebody else. This is the person that's going to help you. You've nailed all that down into two sentences.
Jez (09:14):
And I think that is the beauty, I think, of kind of like I said, these sort of neurological kind of hardwired processes we have in our brains. And yeah, for sure they don't work in every domain all of the time. But what we're finding is that actually, a lot of it is codified and our brains do respond really well to quite a lot of those types of small changes and we've seen the results and we practice this a lot and yeah, it does work for people.
Richard (09:48):
The corollary has got to be true, too. That bad language reinforces bad behavior. All these words you're saying are going to matter both to the customer and the employee and so you can have a script that's actually reinforcing negative behavior.
Jez (10:05):
But that's it. So we deal a lot in complaints. Working in complaints is pretty tough.
Richard (10:12):
Nobody calls happy. Nobody calls happy.
Jez (10:16):
Exactly. It's kind of, it's called that for a reason. So we do a lot of work in complaints and a lot of work as I described from a colleague perspective, just trying to get them to understand about what they're going through psychologically. So kind of like the broader sense of behavioral science, so less kind of heuristics and biases, more broader emotions.
Jez (10:38):
But you're exactly right. It's to say, if a caller comes in and they've got a problem, you need to quickly get that problem to a solution. So you say, "Hey, Rich. I totally, totally understand. You've got a problem with your energy supply, but why don't we work together to get to a solution and that solution is going to be solved on this call today. Is that something that you would like to do?" "Yeah. I'd like to do that." "Okay. Well, let's go."
Jez (11:01):
So essentially what you've done is you've turned the problem into a solution. You don't know what that solution is, you're not going to be able to solve maybe on the call, but you're essentially going to get to a point where you can get to a plan and then the next step. And then that reciprocity of essentially shifting the balance from I'm going to fight you to I'm going to essentially work with you.
Richard (11:21):
Yeah. I'm on your side. I'm here to get you there. Yeah.
Jez (11:24):
Yeah, and get their commitment. "Is that okay?" You know? So we know that we've codified a lot of conversations and we know what bad friction full conversations look like, and we know that fluent conversations are more positive for better outcomes. And words like problem, when you do the speech-to-text analysis, they feature very highly in zero to six MPS scores and the nine and tens are more focused on solutions, but critically this commitment piece. So when you're asking customers for clarification that they're happy with the experience they're having or the progress that you're making or the plan that you're creating and get them to say, "Yeah, I'm okay with that." Then essentially you get to a good place because that's what people want.
Richard (12:08):
Right. Well, and I think it's interesting that you're asking them to affirm, this is what you wanted. And it's as much reminding them they're getting a positive outcome as well as confirming that you've taken them the way you want to go.
Jez (12:21):
Yeah. And it is. And I think when people interact with us from a professional perspective, from a business-to-business interaction, the type of feedback we get, that we've got lovely people, they're very smart, very approachable. And we do hire on those kind of values and personality types. We wouldn't be good psychologists if we didn't do that due diligence. But quite a lot of the conversations are built on these principles.
Jez (12:49):
So when I send an email to my team, often and then they play back sometimes, "Thanks very much for all your support, thanks very much for your help, thanks very much for doing this and I'd like you to do this." And then they fire back and say, "Cheers, we understand you're using the reciprocity principle. And actually you are thanking us, but the ask is far bigger, but we get it." So I think that is quite funny sometimes when you've got quite fluency with the team and they start to essentially codify it and play it back to you, it's quite nice.
Richard (13:25):
What about on the internal side? In theory, police departments, service, sports, and so forth, there's still kind of, it's all customer interaction stuff and so using good neuroscience and behavioral science to make sure you're very effective and both supporting the employee and the customer is great. But in employee to employee space, do you see behavioral science showing in HR?
Jez (13:48):
Yeah. So that's been a growth area. And so we've done some work in like performance management. And so one of the areas that I think is often philosophized, if that's a word, but kind of like strategies are put in place, that an annual review isn't enough and actually kind of having more frequent, regular, every day sort of moments.
Jez (14:15):
And so one of the things that we did is working with one of the bigger companies that we work with, essentially bring two cultures together and essentially repurpose their performance management sort of program. But often it's done to you. And it's important. We know that line managers are the critical point for career progression, but actually a lot of the onus is on the manager to essentially take people from one place to another.
Jez (14:45):
And actually in a lot of sport, we were talking about sport earlier before we started, there's a big drive in player-led coaching, which essentially is that players take responsibility for their own kind of development so they need to know what they're good at, what they're not good at, what they're working on, to create that sense of awareness about their abilities and some humbleness about where they've got to work harder.
Jez (15:09):
So we work with one of these bigger, again, it was a utilities company, and essentially reframed the performance management process to something which was a very simple piece of language, but reorientates the relationship hugely. And so rather than being reviewed, it was changed to my coachable moments. And essentially you see your manager as your coach, your mentor and that is quite interesting because they are in an area of expertise, but rather than them essentially observing you and telling you what you're doing great and what you're not doing great, essentially you use them to essentially get to a higher plane in the world of work.
Jez (15:53):
So the onus is not entirely on you. I think it would be unfair to say, look, a real development responsibility to say, "Look, we're not going to review you, it's up to you," et cetera. But we do it at Cowry. So we ask essentially our people to essentially put in their quarterly reviews with their line manager, their coach, their mentor. And they're smart, smart goals. And we have conversations about that, but it's on the employee to go "Look, I'm going to get all the resource that I can from this great knowledge that essentially sits within the organization and further my career in that process." And of course it works for certain organizations and certain levels and there are some quirks in some systems, but just that simple reframing essentially means that on a quarterly basis, I've got to think about essentially how I'm going to utilize my coach to get to that better place. And yeah, I mean, that's just a reframing and a reorientation of a line manager interaction. So that's in play.
Richard (16:55):
Well, I appreciate that a coach is not an athlete, right? They may have been at some time, but now they're in a different place and they're working on a different set of skills to support others. So one of the things I like about that particular framing is the coach is expecting the athlete to improve, to exceed. And so this idea that you're working with your employees that way, that this is a growth path, this is to a greater place and that it's just the role of having eyes on your progress.
Jez (17:29):
But yeah, and I think there's been a shift in the world of work and the world of sport and I was really intrigued by this player-led coaching sort of language. Like I'm a big rugby fan and I think it is great because it just creates this sense of awareness and self-awareness and I suppose some critical thinking about your own abilities and some humbleness that I think often you just don't get in those types of interactions. Often it's someone observing you and scoring you better for worse, as opposed to you yourself saying, "I'm really good at this" or "I'm quite good at that and actually I recognize this is something that I need to work on, can you help me on that?" And it gets to a far, far better place.
Jez (18:11):
So yes, that's kind of one of the things that I think are in play that I think can really sort of help in HR. I mean, we've done some work in DE&I, in diversity, equity, and inclusion, which was really, really interesting. And one of the big challenges of a lot of these businesses is that for all the right reasons, essentially, we just don't have an understanding of the fabric of these businesses. Like, what's the makeup of the business from a DE&I perspective? So essentially what heritage have people got, sexuality, all this type of stuff and things like, obviously there may well be some simple demographic-type stuff, age, et cetera, which people are happy to disclose but when you start to go to these more sensitive areas, then obviously there's other facts involved.
Jez (19:08):
So when surveys are sent out to essentially sort of, I suppose find that information, what businesses are finding is that not a lot of people want to respond. So it's only a small minority are willing to essentially complete the survey, but for some good reasons in minds, so especially in some sensitive areas.
Jez (19:29):
So we've worked with one company to essentially say, well, what type of message would essentially get people to open an email and fill in a survey? I mean, again, it's quite quite simple stuff, but if diversity, equity and inclusion is a key part of that company's mandate moving forward to essentially make progress in the area, they need to have a benchmark so it's at a board level and maybe a shareholder level in terms of reporting. So we've done experiments that essentially say, okay, well, given the nature of this business with this audience which we don't think is responding, which messages do we think are more likely to get people to one, open the email and two, complete the survey?
Richard (20:11):
This is a classic neuroscience problem, right? It's really no different than a piece of marketing material. Like, how am I going to get you to open this?
Jez (20:18):
No, no. It's, yeah. I mean, one of my, sort of, I do chuckle. So the direct marketing industry 20 or 30 years ago, really, really cracked sort of segmentation and now we're digital to kind of virtually an individual sort of level with the power of computing now. But even then you'd have maybe five segments 20 years ago and there'd be different messages and packs that were mailed to American Express users or British Airways users. And so marketeers have known this for a long time that people respond in sort of different ways.
Jez (21:01):
But interestingly, in behavioral science I think there was kind of like a semi-false narrative that was put out that I think we all bought into, which was the behavior and nudges were kind of like, there was a lot of homogeneity. Our brains are systematic, these heuristics and biases are held by all, and nudges essentially can work very powerfully at a kind of homogenous sort of level.
Jez (21:25):
And literally in the last sort of, I suppose, couple of weeks, there's been a lot of talk about heterogeneity in behavioral interventions to drive behavior change at scale. And yeah, so experimentation like this we've been doing in direct marketing for years. The interesting thing is that the direct marketeers wouldn't know why certain messages might change behavior or not. They just knew that message did work against that segment and I think that's the critical difference that rather than essentially creatively generating lots of messages with just conceptual thought and creativity, I think was a different methodology than what we're doing in behavioral science which is, here's a particular way that the brain thinks. How can we essentially play on that and allow us to drive it?
Jez (22:14):
So, yeah. So we did these sort of subject headers, and we did like a micro-experiment with a representative that wasn't in the organization because you don't want to test these things with live people in your organization because it presents a risk, you know? So there might be people saying, "Why did I get that crazy message?" And so a representative sample. And the sample that we had was kind of a difficult-to-reach audience which was predominantly kind of workers that may well be doing quite manual labor. So yes, they might be digging up roads. So that's mainly for a broad bank company, something like that.
Jez (22:50):
And so essentially these guys, predominantly guys, there are some women but it's predominantly guys, and yeah, they're just not going to respond. You know, they're like, I'm happy in my role, in my job. I might've been here for quite a long time and I don't need to fill this in. It's just not relevant to me. I understand it's important to some people, but it's not important to me.
Jez (23:12):
And then there's some active rejectors that they're like, "Look, I don't get it. I don't want to know anything about it." So there's for sure some of those. So we tested messages which were based around social norms around actually this is something that everybody's sort of now doing. Or it might be, this is for the benefit of the company and the company plays a critical role in society. So it might be again, more of a reciprocity. Or it might be one which was kind of like, actually this is helping us kind of understand more about the types of people in the organization and can help with your personal career progression.
Jez (23:45):
And so we had about seven or eight of these different types of messages and as behavioral scientists, I think what's fascinating obviously you've got your hypothesis and then the methodology to execute but people are hedging their bets. They're kind of placing bets in their mind, like "I think that one's going to work."
Richard (24:01):
Yeah. We all have our instincts, right?
Jez (24:04):
Oh yeah. And like social norms, very powerful, we know that defaults are very powerful, but we observe norms to often be like the second or third most factor. And what was happening is those types of norm type messages just weren't as effective as one other. And it's kind of, people might say, well, it's obvious or that's a bit sad. But actually the message which is about your own personal progression, more essentially a bit of effort reward, so put a bit of effort in and you generate some form of reward. And that worked the best because we're essentially saying, "Look, by you filling in this form helps us understand more about you and that's going to help you in your own personal careers." And for that audience, that really, really resonated. Statistically significant in terms of response and that's how you get it. And I think that's not going to get everybody. That was that specific segment, it was kind of 45-year-old routine.
Richard (25:00):
But no more than we can write one marketing message for every kind of customer.
Jez (25:05):
Exactly. No, Rich, honestly, you're so spot on. So spot on. And so the principles are the same, but it's a different environment and that's what I do love about behavioral science.
Richard (25:16):
I like the ethical side of this, Jez. That recognizing that your employees are different from each other. I mean, it's a little serious to say I'm segmenting my employees, but that's also the truth, right? That different folks respond to different messages and it's worth our time as employers to do a good job of communicating with them. To use the same strategies to communicate with them effectively.
Jez (25:40):
Yeah. I mean, again, it's sort of like sort of ethics and integrity is a critical sort of point of behavioral science sort of practice. And again, I think when we were chatting just thinking about what topics we could talk about, that if you are going to practice behavioral science and understand how the brain works and neurologically sort of change things, then ethically you've got to feel comfortable that you would practice it on each other.
Richard (26:13):
It's not a trick, it's actually more effective communication.
Jez (26:16):
Exactly. But yeah, no. So one of the things that we don't talk about, and again, I think the narrative I think 10 years ago was quite often, and there's still a little bit of it hanging around, which essentially is people that kind of fearmonger as a form of manipulation. And then some people go to trick. And there are some principles around sort of anchoring that people refer to as decoys. And yeah, I think we're really clear at Cowry that what we are doing essentially is we are dealing with people's psychology and how they live their lives and we have impact and that has accountability and responsibility. But what we don't do is position ourselves as magicians or mind readers or trick masters and practice deception.
Jez (27:14):
That is essentially, I suppose, part of the toolkit that other people may well want to use, but that's not something that we do. Because behavioral science, it should be about mutual benefit. So how transparent that is is an interesting debate about is it good to know that essentially it has been designed with what other people think is in your best interest and is that disclosed? I think that's a good debate to have, because if you went around the world all the time and choice architecture was being designed by choice architects, essentially having to be told why it's being designed in that way, even though it was a good experience of good mutual outcome, the world would be like the internet is now.
Jez (28:00):
I mean, I saw something from Tom Goodwin, who's kind of a futurist and he said on one of his recent tweets, he'd like to sit down with the person that thought it was a good idea to essentially allow all cookies and press that button like 80 times a day. So like in principle, brilliant idea, but actually in practice where we are currently is how many people review their cookie rights on each website that they interact with?
Richard (28:31):
Right. Now you reveal the real issue we have on the internet which is that an awful lot of these free services on the internet are ad-based and they need to track you to make those ads effective. If we give you an automated tool to click all the accept cookies, you will configure it to accept no cookies, which is detrimental to the free service providers, the browser makers and the ad generators and so forth. And so we're making it easy as possible to accept all cookies by making you click it over and over and over.
Jez (29:02):
Exactly. And I mean, I agree that people should have control over how their data is used, but I'm not so sure GDPR, that new legislation that went through a number of years ago, I'm not so sure it's hit all the right buttons. And so I think businesses are incredibly wary now of you say compromise themselves against GDPR regulation. But yeah, I do feel that maybe the mechanism needs maybe a rethink in terms of how that data interaction, that transaction. But I think [inaudible 00:29:38].
Richard (29:38):
It does seem like we're in a period where, I mean, we appreciate the GDPR and granted I'm in Canada, so GDP is an EU thing, although it still affects Canadian websites, is a move towards people being able to control their privacy. Like it's hard to argue against the right to be forgotten, the right to know what people know, like those are all good things. But it's only a first step. We are clearly in a period of change to try and figure out how we manage our own privacy.
Jez (30:07):
Yeah, no, for sure. But surely there's got to be a universal approach where essentially you set out some parameters and say this is how I want to interact with the world and if there's anything different, then please tell me. But let's wait and see.
Richard (30:24):
And yeah, I see those things out there. That's a very challenging thing. And I love your idealism, Jez Groom, that's lovely that we would actually have a universal solution.
Jez (30:33):
Yeah. Unfortunately, there's too much money in that system and as ever, money talks. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, we're on Google sort of now, but yeah, it is funny how when you utilize a lot of platforms, I'm sure you do too, but sometimes, I just think it's interesting that like I've used Teams and I go to Google or I'll go to a Zoom and sometimes the gremlins do get in the way I think and so yeah, you're sort of thinking, "Hmm, okay." So there's some things going on in the background, but yeah, that's for another call.
Jez (31:08):
I mean, one of the things, just pick up, which I think is a real positive step, the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK led by Stefan Hunt in the regulations space or in behavioral science have really just produced a new kind of set of kind of their toolkit and guidelines for regulation in behavioral science called the Online Choice Architecture, OCA, and it's brilliant. Essentially setting out like the guidelines for positive practice, which is great, but also highlighting now the use of dark patterns. And dark patterns has been predominantly a UX term, but I think now it is really being brought to the fore.
Jez (31:50):
So drip pricing, hard-to-cancel. And we were recently talking to a client about the new German legislation about it should only be two clicks to be able to cancel a subscription, which they're actually spot on, I think is really right. You know, I don't agree that essentially we have to wade through sludge to essentially stop things when it was so easy to start if that behavior is something that you don't want to pursue.
Richard (32:23):
But this ties back to that ethical story. Like when does a compelling headline become clickbait? You can use neuroscience inappropriately, but I think the main thing here is is there deception involved?
Jez (32:37):
Yeah. And I mean, I'm really, really clear and I'm really, really confident. So we have our personal values, our company values, we have essentially that the companies that we work with, their values, we have the compliance and risk division of that business and then we've got regulatory frameworks. So we have open engagement with the regulators because regulation is a really good thing because it protects everybody. Protects citizens and customers and protects us an organization and protects the company, so why wouldn't you embrace it? So you might not like it because it might not be able to do everything that you want, but actually it's been reached because it's a form of mutuality.
Richard (33:19):
And if it's done well, it levels the playing field. Everybody has the same limits, the same restrictions.
Jez (33:26):
Well this is it. That essentially there's competitive advantage with, I suppose, smartness. But if that smartness is negatively distorted to one party, then it isn't fair. And one of our values at Cowry is about integrity. Happy to play by the rules of the game. So essentially, because this game is often quite serious, there's a lot of people's lives and money's involved. So yeah, I mean people often say do you practice and do you do, and I just say look, I think this is true, the world is so badly designed. There is so much work to do before you even get to the place of doing that.
Richard (34:05):
But I do like this side of, if I'm not willing to apply these approaches to my employees, I shouldn't apply them to my customers.
Jez (34:12):
But this is it. Because yeah, essentially it is a very, very simple rule of thumb. Practice what you preach.
Richard (34:20):
Yeah. It should work inside the company and outside.
Jez (34:23):
Yeah, absolutely. Because there are positive forces. Because some of the behaviors that we need to adopt are pretty difficult. And these things can really work. I mean, there's something that we've seen this week so it's very, very topical, which is around about kind of like the power of nudges and efficacy of nudges. And so there's a meta-analysis recently been done and essentially it's come up with the finding that nudges, kind of incremental changes, there's high volatility, there's things that don't work and things that work really, really well. But I think quite a lot of people who are actually in the business, no one's saying, look, that's a poor report and it doesn't tell the truth and let's ignore it. No one's said that. They've all said, yeah. I think if you essentially regress to the mean and average things out, then that is the case. That essentially no one said nudges are always going to change behavior in transformational ways all of the time. No one said that. And in isolation sometimes, yeah. The context isn't quite right and they don't quite work.
Jez (35:32):
But what we are finding is yeah, when you bring together a lot of these kind of simple sort of factors that change behavior and put them into kind of a fluent experience, you can get to some really good places internally and externally. So yeah, I just think it is quite interesting that as you know, behavioral science starts to stress test itself, it just gets better and better. So I actually think it's been, it was in the Economist I think, it's been in a few places. And yeah, the clickbait of the headlines, therefore we'd like to say that nudge theory doesn't work because it's had some real big successes. So there's always the naysayers and the knockers and it's quite libertarian as well. So I think sometimes it gets politicized in a way by certain factions that would like to maybe I suppose govern in a particular type of way. But yeah, I'm really, really optimistic about designing companies and organizations in ways that just make it easier for people to make better decisions for everyone and do that.
Richard (36:41):
Well, that stress test is a great way to do that. You know, we started this conversation talking about service and the funny thing about service is that character moment. How we act in times of stress tells us about whether we're doing the right thing or the wrong thing. And the fact that good behavioral science under stress tends to thrive because it does have a good intent says a lot about it. That's really what you want to see. Everything's easy when it's easy, but when it's not, the good things come to the surface.
Jez (37:11):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it'll be interesting to see, I think when Netflix goes. So I think Netflix has had a lot of very, very powerful, positive forces in its favor.
Richard (37:25):
But it's got that first mover thing. I think you're seeing across all the streaming services the pressure of the product demands and the space. We know it's going to shake itself out, but that's the normal evolution and I think we are seeing this in a lot of other fields as well. I'm excited about it and I like the coherence of this. It gives me more confidence that learning behavioral science is worthwhile. It's good for your business and when you do it holistically, you'll do a better job of it.
Jez (37:56):
Yeah. And we're seeing now the rise and rise of behavioral science kind of units or hubs, or we call them behavioral science centers of excellence within organizations. That's the next evolution. So we've seen them pop up in places like Netflix, but also Spotify and Uber. Some of them have come and gone. Some of them intentionally have moved into a different part of the organization, but the financial services organizations are the leading in this field because there is regulated behavioral science usage by the regulators. So it's not a case of let's outwit the regulators. It's like, we need to know this stuff because if we do some things that unknowingly, that is advantageous to our business utilizing behavioral science and actually that's not a good thing, then we need to off offset that and prevent that.
Jez (38:46):
So yes, I think we're seeing more and more and more, and we are really driving this at Cowry, is to say, look, we think there should be common practice within your business. Let's help you build that capability so that you can do it yourselves. And sometimes that's in combination with a chief behavioral officer that's been brought in, or it might be somebody from within the organization and that's on that journey. And there's going to be more and more of it. I always remember, because you've had Rory on the show, Rory used to talk about a director of detail.
Richard (39:15):
I love that. That's a great title.
Jez (39:17):
Very Rory-type phrase. And so I think people still like chief rather than director, director of detail's got two Ds and our brains like that. But yeah, I really do think this kind of forensic approach to these multitude of interactions with inside organizations and how they interact with external sort of stakeholders, it is a key part of, and you need to understand the science underpins it to drive that business success.
Jez (39:49):
And as you say that people like Netflix have had first mover advantage. I mean, one of the things that I am intrigued, because get your perspective, just ask you a question, Rich. So one of the things that I'm just sort of pondering now is kind of like the ethical nature of next episode on a streaming service. And I actually think it's now unethical. Because I think the data exists to help people manage essentially their usage of content. Because people talk about binge TV, right? Binge television. And that is a Netflix phenomena.
Richard (40:25):
They invented it. Yep.
Jez (40:26):
Yeah. And if you think about the word binge, I can't think of in any other context where binges are positive, right? You binge on food, you binge on alcohol. It's not a good thing. But in TV for some reason, I don't know why, it seems to be okay.
Richard (40:43):
But that seems to be fading, too. It almost seemed like a fad now. You know, the argument against binging is the social construct that not everybody can binge at the same time. That it's better for us to release a six-show series one show a week and build that momentum versus the here's your six episodes, go.
Jez (41:02):
Yeah. Go. Exactly. And it's good. Yeah, it's good for social construct, but it's also good for maybe your own individual health. Because it can't be good watching six hours of sedentary TV all in one go. Our bodies weren't designed to do that. And so yeah, I think next episode, it would be better if those were kind of more responsible. Obviously you can have the default set that you get an episode on Friday and you've got to wait till the next Friday. That's been in the TV since I suppose the '60s and '70s. But yeah, it might be kind of more reminders. So in gaming and I think in streaming now, essentially the data exists, like Jez, you've been watching two and a half hours worth of TV today. The average for you and for normal people is four hours. Maybe you should take a break. You'd be like, yeah. Okay. And the TV schedules had that. So essentially the TV programs are half an hour, 60 minutes, or maybe 90 minutes for a movie. No one said, look, it's six hours worth of Sopranos, you know?
Richard (42:06):
Yeah. I wonder if that's just a Netflix-tied thing.
Jez (42:11):
Yeah, I think. Because I think Apple TV have changed that, haven't they with releases?
Richard (42:17):
They've switched over. Disney as well. Like I think about hit shows like it was House of Cards that did the binge thing, dropped a whole season at once, like 20 episodes. But Mandalorian was one show a week.
Jez (42:32):
Yeah. Obi-Wan. No, honestly, yeah. I mean, like WeWork. I mean, I was following the WeWork Apple TV and I knew this, it's just funny how the brain works. I know the story, I work in a WeWork, I lived through the IPO. We were worried about what was going to happen with our deposit, all these things. But the anticipation. And you process things.
Richard (42:56):
It's time to digest, yeah.
Jez (42:57):
Like sometimes in these, yeah. I mean, some of these shows are so highly, highly sophisticated and articulate and like you have those moments sometimes where you go, oh right, so Obi-Wan is connected to that person and then there's that. And they're quite fun. They are those sort of moments.
Richard (43:16):
I think that's very fair. And it also thinks, remember when you first had your own place and you finally had some money and you bought too much food and binge that. And then you quickly figured out, this is a dumb thing to do. And I wonder if we just went through that same period with content, with media content. We've gone through our binging period and figured out it's not as good this way. We're going to do it a different way.
Jez (43:37):
Yeah. I mean, I suppose we've maybe gone from one extreme to the other because it did feel at one point, I suppose, still maybe propagating through is short-form content. So we had 140 characters and then we've got small, small, I suppose, vignettes with TikTok. And then yeah, you've got these long binges and yeah, I imagine it's going to settle in between. I mean, yeah, I'm interested. I love media.
Richard (44:06):
And it is great to see it is evolving. We're trying different formats. We're seeing some reward and then we see the value of other things. You only value things that are scarce. When the long-form content becomes rarer, you suddenly start to appreciate that long form has a value and now you seek it out. Jez, this is such a fun conversation and really interesting to see all the elements evolving. It definitely helps me think more firmly about using these techniques we're learning to do the right things. Thanks so much for coming on.
Jez (44:39):
Cool. No, thank you. It's been a wonderful conversation. I always like conversations that I just looked at the time, I was like, wow, that has flown by.
Richard (44:47):
It goes by quickly.
Jez (44:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Richard (44:49):
And thanks for listening to Understanding Consumer Neuroscience.