Management and customer orientation: a necessary realignment

The Management Challenge: Cognitive Biases and Automatisms

The management of tomorrow will certainly have to take into account the cognitive biases and automatisms of employees. Too much training relies on employees’ ability to reason, learn and communicate… Yet we know, especially since Kahneman, that the majority of our behavior is dictated by automatisms that we have no control over. As a result, many managers are weary of investing in customer experience training programs. These programs often bring little return on investment for want of significant changes in behavior.

The key? To realize that the challenge of changing behavior will also involve changing attitudes (the state of mind). These attitudes are largely the result of automatisms that are difficult to change through traditional training techniques.

Experiential Learning: Influencing Type 1 Thinking

In the photo, we see nurses who have to put themselves in the place of their elderly patients. They wear a weighted vest to simulate lack of strength, random sight, and failing hearing to FEEL in their innermost being what their patients are LIVING. It’s hard to put your shoes on under these conditions! They’ll never behave the way they used to after this experience. Despite the dozens of training courses they’ve taken in the skills of the trade, they’ll take more care to help patients put on their slippers, for example. This technique influences Type 1 thoughts.

These are uncontrollable, but powerful in determining our decisions and behavior.

Programs to Transform Customer Perception and Bias

Based on the work of our in-house researchers, we have developed a program designed to change employees’ cognitive biases concerning customer concerns. Our aim is to ensure that they never perceive customers in the same way again. We maximize customer bias by activating specific automatisms. A new era in managerial practices is upon us. We urgently need to immerse ourselves in these techniques and educate ourselves in this still very recent field. We will succeed in making good customer sense widespread.

Nobel Prize in Economics 2002