Leandro Brandão is a Brazilian paediatrician who truly understands the nature of the customer relationship. Hospitals and surgeries are scary places for us all, but even more so for children. While the clinical care his patients receive is essential (the product), the actual environment and processes can be terrifying, for both parents and child.
Dr. Brandao does what he can to dissolve any customer journey pain point and to make his patients feel truly special. In healthcare, this is a significant challenge. It is an industry that is notoriously operational (pun intended) and procedurally driven. The ‘customer’ often feels invisible, reduced to a set of medical charts or a plastic wristband moving through the system.
Dr. Brandao started by investing some time and energy personalising his patients’ post-operative bandages with their favourite Disney characters. This made having a post-surgical bandage a lot more fun, something to be proud of and amused by.
To Infinity & Beyond
But his real contribution to Customer Experience (CX) is how he brings children to theatre (the surgical kind, not to Frozen the musical). Taking a 7-year-old away to surgery is traumatic for both parents and child. While it’s just another day at work for the surgeon (who has likely performed the pending surgery on countless occasions), for the patient and their parents, it can be terrifying. There can be tears of anxiety and fear, little hands refusing to let go.
Abandoning the traditional surgical gown (which he will change them into later when under anaesthesia), he buys a mini-superhero costume for each patient and runs/flies them in to theatre. Watch the video below to see their smiles and excitement as their little superhero selves go on their adventure.
@jaciegirl In Brazil ENT Dr. Leandro Brandão Guimarães thought of dressing his little patients as super heroes. He explains ‘the worst time is when children go to the surgery alone without their parents, a traumatic experience for everyone.’ We can all do small things with great love☀️❤️💫 #selfless #service #doctor #love
Gone is the difficult moment at the bedside for the child being separated from their parents. The child’s excitement and joy also help the separation anxiety of the parents who are left behind. This is CX as it should be. A customer delighted, supported, made to feel special with pain points recognised and dissolved. Then why don’t all brands act like Dr. Brandao?
The ROI for Customer Experience: An Unhealthy Perspective
Last week I was asked the “CX ROI” question on stage. It is a question I am often asked. How do we know our investment in CX strategies will result in higher sales/profits/market share? What are the measurable metrics? My answer is always the same. To ask the question means you are likely looking down the wrong end of the telescope.
‘Return on Investment’. The language alone gives away the issue. I want a return. What is my return? What is in it for me? To follow that train of thought forward, what we are saying is we are less likely to ‘invest’ unless there is going to be a decent ‘return’. That might make some sense if we are buying stocks or real estate, but it has little to contribute to the nature of a relationship.
I’ll Buy you a Mars Bar
When I was eleven, I told a neighbourhood girl I fancied that I’d promise to buy her a Mars Bar if she agreed to be my girlfriend. In my mind, this was a good deal. I’d get a girlfriend and she’d get a boyfriend and a Mars Bar. I reckoned the investment of most of my weekly pocket money would be worth it. She refused and I was devastated.
My little eleven your old self was yet to understand the nature of relationship. With pre-teen hormones raging, I was only thinking about what I wanted, the Mars bar a bribe to get just that. It is a lesson most corporations and brands could do with learning.
All companies want customer lifetime value and brand loyalty. We all want a deep and meaningful relationship with our customers, but most seem devoid of any understanding of what relationship means. Many brands are that 11-year-old boy, their corporate greed hormones raging and focusing only on themselves.
Say it out loud again. What is my Return on our Investment? Now ask your wife/husband/partner/lover (all four if you have them, I don’t judge) the same question. If I do the laundry, what will I get from you? If I hug you when you come in from a hard day at work, what exactly will I get in return? If I say ‘I love you’ what will I get? Aside from sounding like a needy psycho, what you are really saying is that unless you are happy with what you are going to get in return, you are not going to show your love in the first place.
I’ll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours
Can you hear how ridiculous that relationship sounds? Of course, we all want to be in a relationship where we are not taken advantage of, where we feel overall that we get something back for the effort we put in. But in a relationship, we don’t measure each individual action against some ledger of returns. We show our love knowing that the relationship deepens because of it. We don’t apply ROI measures to our personal relationships. So why do we insist on doing so for our brand: customer relationships?
Pictured above is Sadhguru. Follow him on Instagram @sadhguru. He is an amazing philosopher and spiritual explorer. He has a wonderful attitude to relationships, believing that as a human, our fulfilment lies in what we give to others in a relationship, not what we get. To focus only on what you want is a road to resentment, jealousy and discontentment. And he is right. It is a core precept in most religious texts. It is in giving that we receive (except Mars Bars, they don’t work).
Does This Tissue Smell Like Chloroform to You?
Most coffee shops are in a weird abusive relationship with their customers. Instead of developing genuine emotive relationships, they have a customer retention strategy akin to imprisonment. Buy nine cups of coffee and get your 10th free. They call it a loyalty program. They lock you in, hoping you won’t leave. This is not loyalty. It is entrapment.
@dadrespect Coffee store rolled out red carpet for everyone, their reactions will make your day 😊 #fd #trending #viraal #xyzbca #fy #interesting
♬ Funny video “Carmen Prelude” Arranging weakness(836530) – yo suzuki(akisai)
Above is a video from the Local Patriot Coffee Company, a coffee shop in North Carolina. They decided to actively share their love and appreciation with their customers, and as each customer entered, a staff member rolled out a red carpet for them. Click to watch their fun gesture, recognising that every customer is important, every customer a VIP. Every customer deserves to feel special.
Connect Emotively
While just a bit of fun that went viral, what is interesting is the customer’s own reactions. They respond to the set-up. They strut their stuff. Their surprise gives way to collaboration. This is how relationships are formed, from shared experiences. If we are solely focused on what we get from a relationship, we will never create these moments of connection.
The Queen of Connection is Taylor Swift. Her Swiftie army is one of the best examples of tribal brand fandom of our times (a previous blog covers her tribal fandom in detail – read it here). While for many, her rise to absolute global cultural iconography in 2023/2024 is hard to understand, what you are witnessing is an 18-year return on investment in CX. From the beginning, she has always sought to tear away the line between the brand and customer, to invite the fans into her life. She has intentionally given of herself, in her songwriting, videos, and in her fan interactions (if you also want to truly understand the Taylor Swift CX phenomenon, watch the full video of my new keynote ‘Taylormaking’).
Feel the Force
But if you get it right, what does true brand: customer connection look like? Back to that question, if we invest in CX, what do we get in return? Let me show you a simple video that personifies the power in emotive connection.
Taylor’s Eras tour continues to delight her fans. Remember for the 60,000-70,000 fans in the arena any given night, this is it. This is the moment for which they have waited for over a year. They took part in the Ticketmaster/Hunger Games and were one of the lucky 5% to get a ticket, the Willy Wonka golden ticket of our times. They’ve made the friendship bracelets, designed their concert attire, and counted down the days. For a Swiftie, a brand fan belonging to this tribe, this moment is everything.
The Eras Tour opening sequence features a huge on-screen countdown clock. The crowd is whipped into an anticipatory frenzy. Dancers emerge on stage with enormous peacock feathers/petals. They parade around as Taylor’s hit Miss Americana plays. They kneel on stage forming a feathery circle, and suddenly shot from beneath, on a rising hydraulic platform, Taylor appears.
For most fans, the emotional rollercoaster is overwhelming. But if you want to see what true brand: customer emotive connection looks like, take the time to watch the video link below.
Watch as the emotions play across this girl’s face. From excitement to awe, from smiles to tears, and on to complete overwhelm. Watch the body language. The tightening grip on her sister’s hand, the inability to let go. Watch as a multitude of emotions pass through her, changing by the second. At one point it looks like she is about to throw up into her hoodie sleeves, held over her fingers in a mixture of nerves, uncertainty and teen awkwardness. Her hand held at her mouth with nervous anticipation. Her inability to actually start singing along when the time comes, choking on her tears. The look she shares with her sister, nothing verbalised but everything said. We made it. This is happening. We are here, together.
What you have just witnessed is the raw emotion of connection. This is what Taylor has built for her brand through 18-years of investment in the customer connection. This is the return, but it was never her focus. Her focus was always the investment.
A Desire to Invest
Imagine if you could just have 10% of that emotive connection for your brand or business. Well, you can, but you have to learn to stop asking the ROI question and shift to a DTI model – a Desire to Invest (DTI).
It is not about the return. Stop using that word. Success lies in your desire to invest in the relationship you seek. The more you invest, the more you will get in return. Do it because it is right. Do it because it makes the customer feel good. If you have a high DTI, then you are likely to have a deep and meaningful relationship with your customers in the future, your own Swiftie army. If you continue to just focus on ROI, focus on the self, you will have a transactional one-night stand (which can be fun for a short while, but less so when you die, old and alone, eating cold beans straight from the can). Relationships are important.
So be like Dr Brandao and treat your customers like superheroes. Be like the Local Patriot Coffee Company and treat your customers like VIPs. Be like Taylor Swift and invest in emotive connection. Know that investing in emotive CX connection is the right thing to do. Stop looking for a Mars Bar as payment in return. As 11-year-old Ken can teach you, that never works out.
The sample content above is taken from ‘Taylormaking’, the powerful brand-new keynote from Ken Hughes, known internationally as The King of Customer Experience. Watch the full video of this new keynote here.
Ken offered Taylor Swift an entire box of Mars Bars to comment and appear in this blog, but she also refused. Story of his life.
