Ken Hughes

As we emerge from the pandemic, consumers and employees are looking to reconnect, as indeed is society as a whole. The values around vulnerability, honesty, transparency, trust, empathy and connection are all strong driving forces for brand relevance today, and ones we need to reflect to our customers and prospects.

We speak a lot about Customer Lifetime Value, Brand Loyalty or the Customer/Employee Experience, but we have to start asking ourselves some hard questions relating to how we intend to build relationships deep enough to deliver.

In our new ‘digital first’ world (where most product/service interactions start digitally), it can all get very transactional. While digital convenience continues to accelerate (get everything you need in one-click, one-swipe, instantly) it can be very two-dimensional, and often lacks any depth, empathy or connection. 

This speech takes the psychology of human relationship and maps it on to the customer experience. How can we expect customer lifetime value or brand loyalty unless we put the effort into building and maintaining a relationship? Brands claim to have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, but what they actually have are Customer DATA Management (CDM) systems. Data doesn’t build relationships, actions do. Love is a Verb; it is something you show. 

This customer experience keynote takes 10 of the key attributes necessary for successful human relationships and maps them on to our customer interactions.

We look at love & commitment, quality time together, intimacy, trust & honesty, effective communication, conflict resolution, acts of kindness & gift giving, personal responsibility, personal space, and humour. Applying these and activating them as love languages builds deeper, authentic relationships. 

Love is a Verb is designed as a speech to inspire and engage, to entertain and to challenge how we think about the nature of relationship and connection. It has been sculpted to tug at the heart-strings of an audience, to connect with them personally as well as professionally.

If we are serious about deepening our customer and employee relationships, we have to invest in emotional intelligence. It starts here.

How do we best inspire and motivate employees in today’s society? How do we manage their expectations about wanting to be the CEO within 24-months without crushing their desire to lead? How do we cope with their need for immediate continuous feedback? Simultaneously, they are a generation reared on collaboration (what is social media but a shared platform of Ideas and Information), and they will look for such collaborative opportunities in their everyday work. This may be great Inside your organization, but you might get upset when you see them at lunch with your competitors, eager to solve Industry issues.

This speech looks at the new values these employees now hold dear and how the workplace of the future needs to deliver. 

Work has changed. From the way we work, the hours we work, to the places we work. Yes, technology has driven a lot of these changes, but the actual expectations of the employee is now the step-change. In a post Covid-19 world, the new employee demands more from their work. They want an experience, not a set of tasks or goals. They want to be motivated and nurtured, regardless of if they are in the office or working from home.

Organizations now have to focus on giving an employee a truly authentic experience, one that is genuine and talks to these new social values. In this entertaining and high-octane speech, we explore what each new value shift means for talent development and how emerging technology like AI will further change the game. Why work needs to stay relevant to those we seek to recruit and retain, and what relevance means in the new economy.

This is work 3.0. It Is both exciting and scary, but then most worthwhile things are.

Every corporate organisation recognises that creativity and innovation are the fuel that will drive their engine to success. The problem is that most organisations fail in catalysing this creativity, and so the innovation funnel runs dry. If we are to push established boundaries, challenge norms and solve problems in new ways then we have to change our approach. We have to avoid routine thinking, and it has to start with the individual.

Habit & Routine are the enemy of creativity, but yet most of us sit at the same desk, in the same role, surrounded by the same people every day. If we are to truly engage with problems in new ways, to surpass our personal and professional capabilities, we need to learn to break the routine.

This unique speech challenges delegates at an individual level to rewire how they think and act, to build a culture of creativity from the ground up. There will always be personal and professional disruption. The difference between being a victim and victor of these changes is in your response and attitude.

This talk is highly entertaining, motivating and inspiring. It has lit a fuse under hundreds of thousands globally who have heard its message, either live or through Ken’s TED Talk on the subject.

The central message is that by rewiring yourself to look for opportunity, by stepping up and out on a daily basis, creativity and success follow. How do you expect to be creative or succeed if you do the same things every day? Do more, be more.

There is a reason everyone is talking about CX. Every article you read on Linked In, every congress you attend, every branding podcast you listen to. The Customer Experience is paramount to success. OK, we get it. Or do we?

Some companies still see CX as a necessary part of what they have to do, as opposed to a unique proposition where they can strongly differentiate. Some businesses see CX as something that is just for the customer service roles and not for their entire path-to-purchase and brand philosophy. Even smart organisations can still be reactive with CX as opposed to predictive and proactive.

The reason CX has become the fulcrum point around which every business needs to pivot is because of the changing nature of consumerism. The Millennial and particularly the Gen Z consumer are a more expectant breed than ever before, and the rest of us have also followed suit.

The expectation of frictionless, seamless and a ‘one-click world’ has been carried from our digital experiences into the real world. We expect the system to know who we are, predict what we want and deliver. We demand brands value to be custom and engage with us on a personal level. We are that Blue Dot Consumer, we are in the ‘middle of the screen’ and everything else revolves around us.

So, if CX is key, then why are some businesses so bad at it? Why do they still struggle to just meet basic satisfaction levels, not to mind going beyond customer expectations? Why don’t brands realise that delighting the customer is no longer a choice but a requirement, that exceeding expectations is a must to fuel peer-to- peer conversation and brand-storytelling?

Today every interaction we have with a customer, be it digital or in the real-world is an opportunity to build brand connections and invoke emotional response. Looking to optimise every touch point along the customer journey is key, as is identifying pain points and dissolving them.

This speech is an entertaining and informative look at the modern consumer and their expectations, how and why the bar has been set high for CX and what your brand and business should be considering. Don’t be caught scratching your head, wondering why your business has lost share, muttering ‘what the FUCX’?

Ken Hughes is Europa’s meest vooraanstaande klant en winkeliers gedragsanalist. Hij is een thought leader op wereldniveau binnen de consumentenpsychologie, consumentengedrag, de toekomst van de retail, winkelmarketing en omnichannel & digital strategie. De vraag waar hij steeds mee bezig is: waarom kopen consumenten en hoe kun je ze meer laten kopen? Hij heeft een pakkende en inspirerende spreekstijl met een hoog energieniveau en brengt zijn boodschap altijd met een ondeugende Ierse twist.

Artificial Intelligence is one of those wide terms that covers an enormous amount of activity, from natural language consumer-to-machine conversation (think Alexa and Siri) through to robotics, automation, algorithms and machine learning. The AI machine has buried its way into your everyday already. Just look at how our lives are influenced by the algorithms and machine learning all around us.

Netflix tells you what programmes you should watch, Spotify what songs and artists to listen to. Linked-In tells you where you should work and Amazon tells you what you should buy. Trust me, without knowing we have already handed over a good share of our decision making to the machines. ‘People like you also bought’ and ‘Recommended for You’ is AI whispering in our ear, selling us what it knows we like.

At some point along the path-to-purchase there is a real live consumer who makes a decision. As such they are open to influence. Using clever marketing techniques, an understanding of behavioural economics or consumer psychology, we manipulate and bend a consumer to consider and buy whatever we are selling. But what happens when there is no consumer involved? When we trust the algorithms and AI systems as much as we trust the payment systems we have built. When we hand over our purchase decision making to the machine. What then for consumerism and for marketing?

This speech looks at where we have come from, where we are and where it could all be going. AI isn’t about the machines. It is about how we keep our influence and consumer communications as the algorithms and robots step in.

Every company and industry is resourcing for disruption, bending rules, breaking moulds and challenging norms. Preparing for change is difficult as by its very nature, change can be uncertain – that’s why they call it DISRUPTION and not PREDICTIVE CHANGE.

The millennials were the warm up act, the generation that drove the switch from analog to everyday digital. Generation Z are now the main event, the tipping point of the first truly digital generation of consumers. Together, these two demographics have fundamentally reset consumer values for every business and brand globally.

Understanding the values of the new consumer safeguards us against fading in relevance. Reflecting these values back at the modern consumer ensures our success. The Blue Dot Consumer is all about placing the customer at the heart of the business, of the customer journey and of the brand experience.

This speech challenges any business to look at their future through the lens of their future consumer. We look at the social, cultural and cyber behavioural forces pressing on humanity, and how changes in consumer expectations have forever changed the game. Today’s consumer expects a frictionless and seamless experience at every touch-point, has little tolerance for failure but will become a tribal brand fan if you get it right.

Disruption is a positive force if you harness what is happening around you but an amazingly destructive one if you ignore the changing nature of consumer values.