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Roger Dooley: 

If you've made the decision to call your bank on the phone, you've probably exhausted whatever other alternatives are, you've tried their app or their website to solve whatever it is he wants, you can't find it. So you're calling in to finally talk to a human. And when you end up having to deal with computers for the next five minutes, and that's very frustrating. Your people know where your customers are experiencing friction. You know, if you have a call center, or people who are supporting the customers of the branch, people interact on a one to one basis. If you ask them what annoys our customers, they'll tell you.

 

James Robert Lay: 

Greetings, and Hello, I am James Robert Lay, and welcome to episode 297 of the banking on digital growth podcast. Today's episode is part of the exponential insights series, and I'm excited to welcome Roger Dooley to the show. Roger is the author of brain fluence 100 ways to persuade and convince consumers with neuro marketing. And he also wrote friction, the untapped force that can be your most powerful advantage, which was named a top three management book and best business book and strategy and business annuals list. Both are important Reads and today we're going to explore Rogers insights and thinking from these books to guide you, dear listener, so that you can maximize future growth at your bank, at your credit union, or at your fintech. Welcome to the show. Roger, it is good to share time with you today.

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, thanks so much for having me on. James. Robert. Absolutely. And

 

James Robert Lay: 

Before we get into talking about these two very important subjects, particularly today, in a world that some might feel a little confused about, they might feel the crisis, the perceived banking crisis, what is good in your world, positive personal professional is your pick to get started on a positive note, as always,

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, positive. Now I know there's so much to be excited about, for me, one, very positive and paths and possibly negative to be have to look at the bright side, rather than the dark side is the amazing rapid advance in artificial intelligence we've all seen explode in the last couple of months. And right now, it's certainly finding application for content creation and such. But I think that the implications for a better, more personalized, and maybe more frictionless customer service are there too. Well, let's start there.

 

James Robert Lay: 

Because I have a question about that. When we think about the age of AI, that we're moving into friction, communication, content creation, how important is it for financial brand leaders to study what I view is still one of the most complex sheen machines on planet Earth, which is the human mind?

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, clearly, businesses depend on an understanding of how our brains work to be successful. Just about every large business, including I'm sure the biggest banks now have a Behavioral Science Unit team of people who focus on okay, how do our customers how do our employees brains processes information? What are their biases? How are they going to react? If we want them to do something? How can we do that in an ethically persuasive way? So I think that leaders do acknowledge it. But at the same time, there's also a lack of empathy for just the human side of business. I don't know about you, but I've had difficulty in communicating with some big banks lately, where before you could call up your local branch, you would talk to a human who was physically in that little building. Now you get into some kind of voice menu, hell, where you know, you can get all your questions answered, you can check your balances and all these things that you don't want to do. That's wasn't why you call in the first place, because you could do that online. Yes. And really, it's it's a very frustrating experience. Not true of all banks, though.

 

James Robert Lay: 

Why is that because you bring up a very important word that has been a pattern on this podcast, empathy. And particularly, I would say empathy in today's age of AI is a an advantage. Why is that? A challenge for some? Well,

 

Roger Dooley: 

I think that some people just aren't very good. Some people are very empathetic, others aren't and I think often to rise to the highest levels of business management. Empathy isn't necessarily the key driver of that in some cases, it is some managers succeed because of their great empathy. Others may be because of their tremendous analytical ability, their ability To focus on tasks to motivate others via by various means. So, generally, I think it's been an overlooked characteristic and overlooked skill. And it's not something that typically we test for I don't know, if I've ever seen a company say, Okay, we've got our empathy test to determine who gets promoted, I haven't seen that. I would love

 

James Robert Lay: 

To get your take on this, because I've been thinking a lot about this and actually looking for ways to quantify empathy. You know, testing against it to see if we can measure a baseline or a benchmark and then coach against it and prove it optimize a quantify it. But if we think about intelligence, IQ, EQ, being emotional intelligence, and then you also have AQ, which is adaptability quotient, thinking about EQ, emotional intelligence, when combined with AQ, adaptability has the potential to be greater than IQ alone. Coming back to your thoughts about AI? Where might there be opportunities, because this all comes back to the brain, it comes back to the mind to level up our capabilities on the EQ and the AQ side thinking that well, IQ, it's important, but maybe these other two areas, that's our unique human differentiation in the age of AI.

 

Roger Dooley: 

Right? Well, obviously, I think, James, Robert, all of these things are important. You know, you can't have a manager who's just good at one thing, high IQ, and lack of other skills is not going to survive very long in business. But, you know, how can we integrate those? I think it's a great question. Companies need to be thinking more about that, because often, the metrics they use for performance measurement for promotion aren't geared to those softer variables. And I think that sometimes to business people associate empathy or EQ, as being almost like, well, this person is too squishy, you know, they can't make that hard call. I think that highly empathetic person can still fire people if they have to, but they will do it in a more empathetic and ethical way than you know, sending somebody an email in the middle of the night or doing it by voicemail.

 

James Robert Lay: 

And think about Blair ends, who I spent a lot of time with, he mentored me for a few years. And he wrote the book called Wind without pitching. And one of his ideas is to be ruthlessly kind. And it's the idea that yes, you can be empathetic but still make the tough decisions still have the tough conversations. And I want to guide this conversation into brain fluence. It was written back in 2011, I think it's still relevant today highly recommend the dear listener, grab a copy. And something I've shared before on this podcast is 95% of our decision making is rooted at a subconscious level. And when we think about marketing, and sales and communication, particularly through the lens of financial services, a lot of the narrative is around facts and figures, logic, if you will, the 5% the conscious mind, and you know, that for brands that want to level up future growth, they must stop marketing must stop selling to just 5% of the mind and look at the other 95% Why is this?

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, I think the first one, we talked about that 95% number that's for a month Gerald's Altman of Harvard. And nobody knows for sure exactly what that percentage is, it's really not quantifiable. But basically, the point is that most of our decision making processes are non conscious. And to that statistic, I'd also add the insights of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, who says that we have two kinds of thinking he wrote his famous book Thinking Fast and Slow, which represents system one and system two thinking system one being fast and energy efficient, automatic, emotional, sometimes rule based. And then system two Is that logical sort of rational grind through a thought process. And his key insight is that our brains don't like to be in system two, they don't like actually thinking hard about things. That's why, you know, we made most of our decisions in system one, if you go to the supermarket, you don't agonize over every purchase, you bought the same brand you bought last time, that's a rule that you're using, or you buy the cheapest one, because you don't really care about the product that much, or you buy the biggest one because you know, you're wanting to buy it for a while, you know, all these things are mostly non conscious. It's only occasionally when you get to some rather challenging decision about, gee, I'm going to buy this new nutrition supplement, then you start reading labels and comparing the ingredients and such but most of the time, you don't do that you couldn't you couldn't survive the day if you didn't do most of your decision making in system one. And the point is, if you're persuading your customers with rational logical arguments, you're pushing them into this uncomfortable mode of thinking. Now, that's not to say that you can't use logic you do need those rational reasons to do business with you or to choose this particular product. Because well, there's the old saying, people, buy with emotion, justify with logic, so they're going to make the decision Based on their feeling, but then they will explain it in terms of, well, this interest rate was better, the terms of this deal were better and so on.

 

James Robert Lay: 

Yeah, that's a great point. And you're thinking about the idea of Thinking Fast and Slow logic versus emotion. When we consider financial brand leaders. One of the things that I wrote about in my book banking on digital growth was the bankers brain. It's a very smart brain, very logical, very rational. But back to your point, people buy with the heart. How might there be a disconnect, if you will, between the bankers, mind and the consumers mind? And could that create some unintended conflict of just the way that we naturally communicate to the world from our own perspective? And another point is maybe we project our worldview on other people that they think just like we think?

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, yeah, I think I can go back to my original example of the difficulty sometimes in contacting a human in your local bank branch. There, there is a disconnect, obviously, people made rational decisions that, hey, this is going to make us more efficient, it's going to reduce the staff we need, it's going to reduce other issues where people waiting on hold, for example, because there's only one staff person available, there's multiple callers. And in some cases, I mean, they may say, Well, this is good for the customer, because they're getting dealt with immediately, even though they're having to listen to these tedious menus. But there is a one local bank here in the Austin area that advertises a human in I think it's 20 seconds. Now just compare that to going into voice menu hell to a bank that says, hey, you call us you're gonna be talking to a human right away. You know, I mean, that, to me is a very empathetic understanding of what many customers want. You know, if if you've made the decision to call your bank on the phone, you've probably exhausted whatever other alternatives are, you've tried their app or their website to solve whatever it is you want, you can't find it. So you're calling in to finally talk to a human. And when you end up having to deal with computers for the next five minutes. That's very frustrating.

 

James Robert Lay: 

That's a great point. And it's a good transition to your other book, friction, I think about what we have been doing a lot of teaching and education around, particularly in the age of AI in a digital world is using digital channels to get people in touch with people as quickly as you know, quote, unquote, humanly or digitally possible. And if my memory serves, correct, I think that's Frost Bank out of the Austin San Antonio. And I love that positioning. And in fact, we have done studies with our own financial brands that we've been working with. For example, if someone is in the consideration stage of a buying journey, right next to a call to action to apply, there's a secondary call to action, request a call back, and around 30% of people that request a call back end up converting for a loan product or for the deposit product because they had questions, but they needed a little bit more reassurance, they needed that little bit extra confidence to get to the other side of that experience. And then I think about some recent work from Jay Baer, and what he has been riding around, is the idea that speed is key to the overall experience in connecting people with people. Let's talk about friction here. When you think about friction, and the writings that you did in this book, Why write friction. And I think that's such a great title, particularly through what we're seeing in the digital services in the in the in the banking space, right now, there's a lot of friction that's upsetting a lot of people.

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, I thought it was important. And I it focuses first and foremost on customer experience, but it gets into employee experience, it gets into citizen experience. So even personal experience, our lives as humans are filled with unnecessary effort that we have to go through. And sometimes it's unavoidable. But in many cases, it is an unavoidable it's it's a choice by somebody, you know, when you go to checkout at the supermarket, and you see that either you have the choice of waiting in a lengthy line for human cashier, or you can go to a checkout an automated checkout, and do all the work yourself and figure out how to weigh things and put in codes for tomatoes and such. You know, to me, that is unnecessary friction. I think it's great to have that option for a very quick checkout. But at the same time, don't make it difficult to give people that the service that they want. And it's just absolutely everywhere. You know, we think of something like the Department of Motor Vehicles as being the classic example of a high friction experience where they really don't care about the customers. They just are doing their bureaucratic thing. And if you have to wait you have to wait. But you know, a lot of companies they are quite that bad. But what I've seen is the companies that focus on the positive side, I Making things frictionless. They are the ones that disrupt industries. I mean, example from the financial space. Who was the biggest consumer lender Rocket Mortgage? Right. And, you know,

 

James Robert Lay: 

What and get mortgage? I think. I mean, it's,

 

Roger Dooley: 

yeah, it's sort of over promising, it's a little bit more difficult than clicking the button. But that is their whole premise that we are going to make getting a mortgage, which I've been through multiple times. And it's always a tedious process with a million forms and confusing things, you usually need somebody to guide you through it, because it's that confusing. And for them to say, Okay, we're going to import all your data, we're going to autofill your forms for you, we're going to do this, we're going to do that and minimize your effort that has propelled them not just to being the highest value, but also the one who always leads in customer satisfaction surveys. So I mean, to me that that's one example. You know, another example we're doing this interview virtually, we have had, we've all been doing way too much virtual stuff in the last few years, it's good to see things are getting back in person. But during the pandemic, one brand became synonymous with any kind of video call or video conference. And that was, of course, zoom. Yes. You know, we were, we certainly we were all on a zoom call, we were wearing zoom shirts, yes, didn't matter what we were, if you're using WebEx or something else, everything became zoom. And that was because they were they were not just built during the pandemic, three years before the pandemic, they were already surpassing these much bigger, better brands, better finance brands like Cisco, Microsoft, Google, in your How did this startup do that? You know, what their company mission statement is make communications frictionless. I mean, and that provides such clarity to every single person who works there, it doesn't matter if they are a web designer or an app developer, or somebody in compliance or legal it, you name it, if they're going to do anything that changes the customer experience, they have to ask themselves, is this going to help the mission or hinder the mission? And if it's hinder, they're probably going to have to justify it to the CEO. So I mean, to me, Cisco's mission statements, some crazy thing about shaping the future of the Internet and creating unprecedented value for investors and employees and ecosystem partners and, like, no guidance at all, no clarity, right? You know, and what happened then, was the fact that for its history, Zoom had been focused on making things easy, when the pandemic hit, even corporate IT departments said, man, we're never gonna be able to get, you know, 300 users on WebEx, by Monday rocker, the big meeting, do zoom, they'll be able to figure it out.

 

James Robert Lay: 

Yes, and I think that right there a couple of key takeaways. The mission, the purpose, if you will, of zoom preceding the pandemic, that was a Northstar that everyone had clarity around. And I want to stick on this point of the internal aspect of friction or reducing or eliminating friction. Because if I look at 2010, to 2020, the kind of the overarching narrative in the ecosphere CX customer experience, I'm looking at 2020 to 2030, is maybe we're gonna start looking more internally at effects employee experience, because the customer experience can only be as good as the employee experience. And I think now when we're looking at what's going on with quiet quitting, and, you know, social media and you know, some recent layoffs, that's going to be a key factor. Now, when it comes to financial services, there's been a lot of change, there's been a lot of transformation as with almost every other vertical, but digital transformation, pandemic sped that up, change is hard change is scary. Change is painful. Change has a lot of friction. When it comes to building, frictionless corporate cultures, opportunities there from your perspective going forward.

 

Roger Dooley: 

Yeah, you know, I've been talking about this topic, practically since friction came out that your customer experience depends on your employee experience. I've had Tom Peters on my podcast a few times. And he's emphasized that your customers can never be happier than your employees. Yes. I don't think that all CEOs believe that. I think that even Jeff Bezos, who tremendously successful Yo built, one of the biggest companies on the planet, initially was solely focused on the customer and employees. He wasn't not caring about them. But they were basically there to serve the customer. And their interests were secondary. And I don't think there was a lot of empathy when you read some of the stories about what's going on in the warehouses and such with people being monitored continuously in the stock for 20 seconds and get called out for it. You know, that's not particularly empathetic or employee focused. And even now, Bezos himself has done it quite as quick turnaround and said, Now we want to be the most employee centric company to whether that's actually happening yet, I'm not sure. But at least I mean, he's made that verbal commitment to it, which is saying something, but not everybody realizes that. And you know, to me, first of all, your people know where your customers are experiencing friction, you know, if you have a call center, or people who are supporting the customers of the branch, people interact on a one to one basis, if you ask them, What annoys our customers, they'll tell you, but I think that either often nobody asked them that question, because they don't want the answer. Because they say, oh, yeah, well, we know that's not so great. But why they'll be very expensive to fix, you know, or man, that's legacy code. We can't touch that. A million excuses why. So they don't ask the question. Or if they asked, they just say, Well, okay, we can't deal this with this, and this, and this, because that's too expensive. Or she that's in the roadmap for two years from now, and so on. But at the same time, when people, your people see that you're committed to solving their own problems, to where, where's the friction? In your own experience? Where are you filling out forms that aren't really necessary? Are there approvals that you go through, that aren't really necessary? You know, often, businesses have a way of carrying forward processes and procedures that, you know, end up not really serving the company, they were put there at one point, because while we don't think that people are going to do this correctly, or they're going to do it, honestly. And it's become now part of the rigid, bureaucratic process, that wastes everybody's time. And these things need to be re examined. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, hey, here are two rules that we can get rid of. So by talking to your people, and asking them, what do our customers complain about? And then asking to how can we make your job easier? Now, that's kind of counterintuitive. You know, nobody thinks about making their employees jobs easier. They think about well, how can we make you more productive? How can we help you get more done? Right? But when you ask people, How can we make your jobs easier? They'll tell you about those stupid things that they have to do that waste their time they know it's not serving them, it's not serving the company or the customer?

 

James Robert Lay: 

Yes. And when we're talking about making the job easier for the the employee optimizing the E x the employee experience, the CX within continuously rise externally, I think about a conversation that I had with the CEO over at Apex score.ai. They're starting to measure this touchy feely emotional subject that I'm curious, because, you know, we touched on this before, the squishy stuff that we're talking about here internally. Do you think it is a from a business culture standpoint, we don't really talk a lot about feelings and emotions, make it feel easier, make it feel better? How How might that be a an unconscious roadblock, to unlocking future growth potential going forward into the future, if we're not aware of some of the things that are holding us back within our own internal selves, I always often say, you know, if we want to transform our organizations, we have to transform the self to transform the team, then we have to transform the team to transform the organization, but we try organizational transformation. And we don't never make it down to the individual transformation. And that's where I think the conflict comes from. So what's your take on that transforming the self to transform the team, transform the team and transform the organization?

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, I think first empathetically talking to people as a start, although people can't always explain or articulate everything about, you know, what, what's driving their feelings, their emotions. I mean, that's difficult. And, you know, for boy 15 plus years, I've been writing about neuro marketing, which some people call Consumer neuroscience. And that is, I use it in a very broad sense. So I encompass the use of behavioral science and marketing and such as part of that. But if you look at the sort of harder tools of consumer neuroscience, things like measuring a brainwaves with EEG, or measuring biometrics, like heart rate, skin conductance, breathing, rate, temperature, and so on. These things all give you clues as to how people are feeling how people are reacting to something. And for years, these were used mainly by big brands, BMW Coca Cola has to evaluate expensive adverts Rising, so you're going to do a Super Bowl ad. While he it's okay to dump 50k into a neuro marketing studies see which of three versions seems to produce better nonconscious responses from consumers but trying to employ those same tools for smaller businesses, or even smaller problems and big businesses just didn't work. But in the last few years have spurred ahead by the pandemic, there's been an explosion of new tools that I'll let any size company or even big companies look at any size problem, either with internally or small agencies can adopt these tools. And one thing that comes to mind in terms of measuring people's responses to their how the tools they're using, the training they're getting, and so on. There is now one company offering smartwatch door marketing basically use a smartwatch and a mobile phone app, Android or Apple. You can get second by second readouts. This company measures two variables that measure what they call immersion, which is how emotionally engaged the person is with whatever it is, is happening in front of them. And then the other is psychological safety, do they feel safe or threatened. And Accenture, for instance, is using this now to evaluate training? Now they can equip a few people to go into a training session with it app. And it's since it's so subtle, people forget it's there. You know, if you go in wearing a giant EEG headset, yeah, that's gonna feel pretty awkward. And it's gonna be awkward for the presenter and everybody else, but this is pretty much completely invisible and transparent. So you get those more natural reactions. And you can see how things are going, where are people engaged? Where are they starting to lose that engagement? Where do they feel maybe not safe? Suddenly, you know, if a presenter suddenly gets sort of in your space and ask you a question, you're probably gonna see that spike. So, you know, these tools, I think, can also be used for measuring other aspects of employee experience. Not just that, but other tools like eye tracking, maybe facial coding and others to see when people are interacting with the digital tools that we all use these days. You know, where are they getting confused? Where are they slowing down? Do they feel suddenly? Wow. Oh, that was a surprise. Yeah. And you can make the tools themselves better?

 

James Robert Lay: 

Yes. In Yeah, I think about some of the work that we've been doing on the digital secret shopping side of things, websites, and loan and deposit applications, you know, being able to measure both quantitatively and qualitatively. But quantitatively, we can look at click rage or tap rage on a mobile device, like where, where people are getting frustrated without saying anything. And that's where I have an acronym, go all in on people ask good questions, listen to what they say. And then learn through observation. Because it's the, it's the unsaid that we ask often can get a lot of good insight into how they're feeling. Because back to your point, sometimes it's very hard for them to articulate that, they've never really given that any conscious thought it's more of that subconscious emotion. That is, it is difficult to get that into the conscious mind. And then to be able to say it verbally, I want to come back to what you're talking about here, like with the watch example, because to me, this is like that next step, this next level, you started the conversation talking about the chief behavioral officer and how we're bringing some of this into the financial services space. I think of a lot of financial brands, though, that they're they're not there yet. They might be having some conversations at the executive level at the board level, what are some of the other technologies that that we could be considering to build some of these practices internally, and then I'm gonna get really practical as we start to wrap up, but let's maybe one or two other technologies off the top of your head, practically speaking

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, okay, I think that clearly, there's a host of digital analytics tools, the right now can tell you a lot about customer behavior and employee behavior. If you just look at the metrics, I mean, even free tools like Google Analytics, I mean, there's so much data in there. But to get to some of the more interesting ones. Now for take eye tracking, eye tracking used to be something that had to be done in a laboratory setting with either very expensive glasses, or very expensive sensors to see where people were looking as they interacted with advertising or anything else any kind of content. Now, there are two much less expensive solutions, there is device, Cam eye tracking that can use webcams, phone cams, tablet cams, to do a not nearly as precise but usable form of eye tracking. So that has two advantages. First of all, you don't need the super expensive equipment. Second of all, you can get a very large sample size very quickly. It can be done remotely, you know, you could push it out to dozens or hundreds of people in the space of just a few minutes and get results back within 24 hours. Right. So and that's a huge difference versus scheduling laboratory seconds to bring people in one at a time and so on. So it's it's It has precise, if you look at a heat map doesn't look as burned in as the nice Toby glasses and such No, no, it doesn't. But it may be good enough for many problems. And even beyond that, now, at least three companies that I can think of are offering, basically AI simulation of human eye tracking. So what each of these companies did was feed 1000s and 1000s of human eye tracking studies into a machine learning process that then create an algorithm to predict where humans would look when they're presented with new content. And supposedly, they back tested these things. And they typically estimate an accuracy from 90 to 95%. And you know, what humans will look at? Again, is this as good as a real lab I test? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It's a prediction. It's not truth. But, you know, if you're trying to figure out, gee, I'm looking at two different versions of this particular page on our website, are you going to commission an eye tracking study? No. But can you run through this algorithm in five minutes or so? Yes. And get your answer back in, it's probably going to be good enough for that kind of question. And I think

 

James Robert Lay: 

That right, there is such a practical takeaway is like, when, when was the last time dear listener, you did take a look at your website, and how you're positioning product and copy on the page. I know for many, over 80 85%, within the vertical, they've never done any type of digital secret shopping testing are steady. And it's these small little changes that can have huge implications, I think about one, we were using a platform called mouse flow. And we are looking at how far the scroll would down on a page. And this one particular financial brand, they had their primary call to action to apply or open an account, very bottom of the page 0% of people never saw that. So no one ever saw the call to action. And so the simple, logical, next best step, move it up on the page. And when they did that, conversion start happening. So it's like when we must take time to break free from the doing to pause, to review, to reflect, to learn to then think about how we can do even better and go through this next iteration process, when we think about where someone can get started with this, and there's already plenty of practical takeaways. But like I said, I think this is a very new area of practice within financial services at a macro level, though some of the larger FIS are doing this. But for some of the smaller, maybe local community, financial brands, maybe even the regionals, what would be the next best step that you would recommend that they could take to just move forward and make progress because we know that all growth begins with a small simple step of commitment today, that creates momentum over time?

 

Roger Dooley: 

You know, I'm going to go back to the questions that I mentioned. And this isn't necessarily the My recommendation for the best science to use or the best technology. But to me, if you want to make some very quick progress, ask your frontline people, what do our customers complain about? And listen carefully. And then secondly, ask how can we make your job easier? You know, if you do those two things, you're gonna get some actionable items. I guarantee it. Yes. And but it's important to listen to him. I one very quick story that I had. Years ago, I had my own little call center, we had a direct marketing company, it's very small, like maybe a dozen people in it or something. And people are always complaining about something with the order entry or order entry. Like, gee, if this happens, this is really difficult to do. And basically, whatever they brought to me said, Yeah, okay, but this is the software that we're using, you know, that's they designed it not me. And then one time, I sat on the phones for half a day, just to get that sort of firsthand customer experience. And I encountered that same situation. And suddenly, like my eyes were opened, said, Whoa, this is horrible. Why? Why is this like this? This is awful. And immediately after that session, I got on the phone with a software company and said, Hey, this is awful. You got to fix that. But in that, I will admit, it was my problem. I did not listen to what my people were telling me. I just dismissed it as well. Yeah, I understand. It's a little inconvenient for you. But that's the way it is. It was only when I experienced it firsthand, that I then saw how inconvenient it was. But I encourage everybody not to make that same mistake. Listen, and trust them that if they're telling you this, it's probably true.

 

James Robert Lay: 

That's a fantastic narrative and an example and it really is one that shows empathy, because it's the old adage, you can't really understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. And in this particular case, you couldn't really understand something until you set the call center seat for half a day and felt those experiences I can't tell you how many times I've worked with executive teams and boards of directors saying you know, we're thinking about FinTech and all of the Neo banks. Have you ever opened an account or applied for a loan with one of these other Neo banks or these fintechs? And like No, I said, then I I can sit here and tell you all day long about who they are and what they do. But until you feel it until you experience it yourself, it will not be real to you. The same is true. Take your example here, call into your call center, from the seat, not the CEO or the CFO or the CEO or the CMO, call in from the seat of the account holder and tell me how it feels. Once again, I think back to your point to use your words, your eyes were open because it helped you begin to see different and as a result, you begin to think different. You felt different and ultimately something new happened going forward into the future. This has been a great conversation today. Roger, thank you for sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, your perspective, if someone wants to continue the conversation with you, what's the best way that they can get in touch and where can they grab some copies of your books?

 

Roger Dooley: 

Well, the books, brain fluence and friction are available everywhere books are sold. As far as connecting with me, Roger dooley.com is the best place to start. I am most active on social media on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

James Robert Lay: 

Connect with Roger learn with Roger, grow with Roger. Roger, thank you so much for joining me for another episode of banking on digital growth. This has been a lot of fun today.

 

Roger Dooley: 

It has been I think we'd go for another hour. But thanks for the invite James Roberts.

 

James Robert Lay: 

As always, until next time, be well do good and make your bed

Brief Summary of Episode #297

Financial brands can seize an incredible opportunity to enhance customer satisfaction as we enter the Age of AI.

Friction points are the bane of the customer experience, but exciting neuroscientific applications that can help leaders understand their customers’ motives are gaining traction in the industry.

In this episode of our Exponential Insights series, Roger Dooley, author of the fantastic marketing books Brainfluence and Friction, shares his unique perspective on neuromarketing in finance.

As Roger pointed out, if financial leaders want to transform the customer experience, they must first transform their mode of thinking.

“Ask your frontline people, ‘What do our customers complain about?’ And listen carefully,” he said. “And then ask, ‘How can we make your job easier?’”

It’s not enough to improve your customers’ experience. By actively smoothing out your employees’ friction points, you’ll be taking care of both.

“Nobody thinks about making their employees’ jobs easier,” Roger argued. “But when you ask people, they’ll tell you those stupid things that waste their time.”

Tune in to learn how empathetic leadership can help businesses remove friction points and maximize the power of neuromarketing.

 

Key Insights and Takeaways

  • Measuring emotional variables in leadership performance (4:19)
  • Real-world examples of a frictionless customer experience (11:15)
  • Neuroscience and the pursuit of empathetic self-awareness (21:20)

Notable Quotables to Share


How to Connect With Roger Dooley

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