In this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson interviews Laura Richard from Level 5 Strategy about the importance of customer experience and how it can drive business success.

1. Create emotional connections: Laura emphasises that emotions account for 50% of consumer behaviour, although customers may not always express these feelings explicitly. Understanding the emotional benefits customers derive from products or services can help businesses craft experiences and messages that resonate on a deeper level, leading to stronger customer loyalty and satisfaction. 
2. Engage everyone in strategy development: A major reason why strategies fail is the lack of involvement from the team and customers during the development process. Laura highlights the importance of engaging stakeholders, including employees and customers, early and often in strategy formation. Businesses can leverage customer panels and feedback loops to ensure that strategies align with customer needs and expectations. 
3. Create authenticity in the customer experience: To stand out against competitors, particularly large players like Amazon, eCommerce businesses need to focus on authenticity and unique customer experiences. This includes creating personalised experiences on websites and aligning with causes that reflect the brand’s values. Differentiation can also come from addressing specific unmet needs within a niche market, which helps build stronger connections with customers.

If this episode of the eCommerce Podcast piqued your interest make sure to check out everything that gets done over here on the eCommerce Podcast, a space dedicated to eCommerce Wow! 

[EP] - Laura Richard | How Customer-Centric Strategies Can Transform Your Business

I'm really excited to be here and chatting with our guest today, Laura Richard from Level 5 Strategy. You know what, we're talking about the customer, oh yes, we're going to get into all that side of things. So don't go anywhere, unless it's to grab your notebooks and your pens if you can because you're going to want to take notebooks.

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Okay, uh, and tune in to hear her innovative ideas, uh, for building exceptional customer experiences and taking your business to the next level. Laura, welcome to the show. It's great to have you, uh, it's great to have you here. What is, uh, if you, uh, that's great, uh, forgive my ignorance, but what is participation?

Did I pronounce that right or did I butcher it wrong? You

Matt Edmundson: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. So, uh, do you do a lot of charity work or is this just sort of the one thing you're involved with? I do a fair

Laura Richards: bit. I do a fair bit, but, um, this is my primary, uh, primary organization currently. Um, I'm chair of the board. I've been on the board for five years. Um, and it's, it's actually an organization I'm really passionate about because my background's in sport and physical health and activity, and somehow I'm, I'm Made my way into business and strategy, but I managed to marry vocation and advocation through my work with participation.

Matt Edmundson: Wow, that's, um, that's a pretty big deal. I used to be on the, um, I've been on a few charity boards, uh, in my time and I've been members, uh, I've been an advocate for quite a few charities and I find it quite, it's quite, it's quite an interesting thing when you, um, when you You entrepreneur, you get the opportunity, I think, to do things like this.

And I get caught up in it all, only to realize that actually it's me that probably needs the most help.

Laura Richards: Well, and you know what, it's so hard, and I find sometimes it's difficult because you think, my gosh, like, couldn't we do this or that or the other thing? And so much comes down to governance, it comes down to the way the organizations are funded, what their donors are looking for, what their stakeholders need, and so it's a complex environment.

Um, I was actually having this conversation with my husband last week, where he's, uh, he's an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, and he has, uh, recognized that, for him, Finding his way onto boards is not necessarily the best use of this skill. It's on the outside

Matt Edmundson: of specific

And you can create great impact whether you're on the board or, or creating value by coming up with new ideas that benefit charity.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, absolutely. But I think, you know, if you're listening to the show, and you're involved in eCommerce, you obviously know digital, you're, you're getting into it. And I think actually, figuring out a way to support and get involved with charity is a good thing to do, even if it's just promoting that charity on your website.

You know, some of our websites, like our supplement website, we partner with Vitamin Angels, there's a whole bunch of things that we sort of, We do. And I think actually, it's not a bad thing. And I don't want to stay in my soapbox too much longer. But I think as entrepreneurs, we've got a responsibility there a little bit to help make the world a better place, you know?

Laura Richards: Well, I think you're right. And I think the other thing to think about, especially in the eCommerce space is creating relationships with customers. With consumers is paramount and, and consumers are looking for organizations for brands that are giving back that have a purpose beyond the products and services that they sell.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I, again, super, I mean, don't just do it for the sake of doing it. I think you've got to be a bit authentic in it. But I, I do think that consumers now, because this is how you differentiate, I think, from Amazon, you know, talking about the whole digital David thing, which is a big passion of mine, you know, how do you take on the big giants?

And I think it's not a bad thing to distinguish yourself. It's not a bad thing to, to sort of put your flag in the ground and say, this is what we stand for. And we, we're looking for customers that like that and sort of have the same values set.

Laura Richards: Absolutely. I think you're spot on in that, and especially for eCommerce brands that are going up against the Goliaths.

So having an authentic story, whether that's through charity alignment or through a founder's story or through some type of an authentic storytelling is really critical to creating relationship and emotional connection with consumers.

Matt Edmundson: Yes, right. And we've only just started, Laura. I mean, we just had a conversation.

Starting right

Laura Richards: into it, Matt.

Um, what is, I mean, if you've seen the video, ladies and gentlemen, which I know 99. 98 percent of you don't, it's all audio. So you have no idea what, what's behind, uh, Laura's head, but there's a lot of well known logos. So tell me about level five strategy and what it is you, you do.

Laura Richards: Yeah, so Level 5 Strategy is a boutique management consulting firm.

We are a strategy firm, and what differentiates us is we help companies create strategies that actually stick. One of the problems in strategy is that 75 percent of them fail. And so So we really pride ourselves in helping our clients develop strategies that stand the test of time that can be implemented and that their teams can really rally behind and implement.

Laura Richards: I think that the biggest thing is not actually getting their team involved in the strategy forming and so stakeholder engagement and alignment to what's actually going to be done.

Um, and therefore it gets just rolled out as the, you know, the indoctrination of where are we going and people don't necessarily believe it or buy in and they don't know how they're going to implement it and so getting engagement early and often with your teams is what we have found to be one of the most critical success factors to getting a strategy developed that will actually roll out and be implemented successfully.

Um, So, I, I, I sort of see the benefit of that, given that we're talking about consumer stuff a little bit. Have you come across brands that have got consumers and customers involved in their strategy, almost like a stakeholder and seen that work well?

Laura Richards: Yeah, we do that a lot, actually, with clients when we're developing their strategies, actually understanding what does the consumer, the customer want.

One of our clients, um, Canadian Tire has an incredible consumer customer panel. It's hundreds of thousands of people large, and they go to their customers all the time for input on new products, for feedback on strategy. You know, they're, they're looking for input constantly in order to shape what they're doing next.

Uh, and we just, we email them out, you know, just little updates, getting their thoughts, feedbacks and stuff like that. We certainly don't have a hundred thousand people on it. Um, but I think. Actually, how do you do that? Well, how do you do that kind of consumer panel? Well,

Laura Richards: yeah, so not necessarily specific to that client.

But in general, one of the pieces that I think companies really miss on is giving the customers feedback on what have you've done with the information that they have provided you, excuse me, so often, um, you know, you ask for input, but do you actually close the loop? Do you follow up with them to say, here's what we've done with this information, here's what we've found, and here's what we're going to do next?

Matt Edmundson: That's really interesting. Would you ever have, um, I'm just trying to think, just sort of the old co op theology, wasn't it? I've been going back from, for years, from years. It's not so much these days. But would you ever have it where, as a brand, you kind of go, well listen, I want to take some of our most important clients.

Um, or the ones maybe that are biggest brand advocates and I want to turn them into some kind of shareholder or stakeholder in the business. Um, for whatever that means, you know, that they kind of have these sort of pseudo board meetings that you get them involved with and they, they drive the company in some respects like that.

Um, Does that work? Have you come across anything like that?

Shaping your strategy based on the needs of a small segment. And that's where really understanding the breadth of your customers and who are the different segments, what are they looking for is equally as important as playing to what your high value customers are looking for.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's really, it's, it's something that, um, brilliant advice, but it's something that I've been thinking about off and on over the last few years, like how could you get customers more involved with the company?

I don't know if you ever come across anything. Let me know, Laura, because I

Laura Richards: will be following up with you, Matt. If I come across, you're bang on and looking at that because like, how do you combat the Amazons of the world? What can you do? That's unique and different. Like that is a space that you might have the opportunity to create some value for customers that Amazon can't.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? We know that, um, we know that eCommerce is good. We know that subscription commerce is better usually, um, and we know that membership commerce is even better than that, right, because people feel like a sense of belonging and It's a bit like, you know, I'm paying the membership to be in the gym.

Um, but there has to be some, there has to be some skin in the game. I'm not quite sure what it is or what it looks like, but, um, yeah, it's, it's one of those because I think the, the more your customers, and I mean, maybe you can speak to this, um, I mean, it's an obvious statement to make, the more that your customers feel part of your community, the more likely you are to retain them and keep them coming back, right?

Decisions. So these are just some of the dimensions of what makes extremely customer-centric organizations. And those are organizations that are proven time and again to retain customers more, to drive loyalty to, you know, increase, uh, purchase. Uh, value and, uh, and, and that loyalty is what returns results financially.

Matt Edmundson: So, uh, do you, can I ask you a question? Do you run an e-commerce business, or is it just the agency that you have?

Laura Richards: So, no, I do not run an e-commerce business. No. It's the That's good

Matt Edmundson: form that I

Laura Richards: am. Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: that's good. That's exactly where I need you, you to be right now for my next question. Yeah. So let's assume you were gonna start an eCom business, right?

Questions, but I'm kind of curious, where would you start to build this customer centricity into your own eCommerce business? What would be foundational for you just starting out?

Laura Richards: I think the number one thing for me would be to understand, to have a well defined problem. To have a problem that hasn't been, been solved for, or is not being solved for well, uh, for a specific target audience, and especially starting out, I would be a small eCommerce business initially, I'd want to be focused on a niche.

And so for, uh, for a small target audience, a well defined target audience, what is an unmet problem that they have?

Matt Edmundson: And how would you go about them finding out what that unmet problem is? I

I need a massage tomorrow. How am I going to find one? It was impossible for me to find a masseuse that was qualified, that had availability the next day. And so I thought, oh man, like I could, I could really. So for this, by creating an aggregator, like that would be a pretty good business, it would be a business that solves the problem.

I think often it comes from personal experience, whether that's you as an individual or those within your circle, having, having seen and heard, um, what is problematic in people's lives. And that you, you feel the inspiration and you have the skillset and capabilities to go and solve for.

Matt Edmundson: It's a really interesting thing isn't it?

Laura Richards: fix it. Exactly. It's, you know, you can't, I don't think you can really think you're going to be successful if you start a business going, Oh, we're going to just do this cheaper or do this better.

You have to see something and go, we have a unique way of addressing this problem.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, absolutely. So how do you do, I'm kind of curious in a lot of ways, you know, you see the problem, the big. What I tend to find is, certainly with me and certainly with a bunch of people that I speak to, you see the problem and you start to think, Oh, I think I could solve this, and you start to create a solution.

Laura Richards: I think outside in is so important and so along the way as you're designing the solution, having checkpoints where you're going back and testing with your target group to understand, you know, are we actually designing this in a way that is meeting the problem effectively, that's going to be designed in a way that it It meets the needs and is the right, the right pricing.

Do we have everything in place that is going to be palatable to our target audience? And so through focus groups, through customer research, and then being open to change is, is really important for entrepreneurs, for organizations who can get tunnel vision and think their way is the best way, is the right way, you know, really designing from an outside in standpoint and having the humility.

Matt Edmundson: really, really powerful. It's, it fascinates me, isn't it? Because you're being open to changes is perhaps one thing that people are not very good at as you know, as we, we think we are, but I think in reality we, we, we're also not at the same time.

So you, you've got, you obviously, so you define in the problem, which Immediately, I think, starts to create that customer focus, doesn't it? Because you're understanding life from the customer's point of view and you're given a solution which solves the pain point, which people are instantly going to buy.

So you've done that, you've done that well, but how do you, what kind of experiences would you create on your website, maybe, that wouldn't be available if you were just selling that product on Amazon as a commodity?

Laura Richards: Hmm. That's a great question. I think it really comes down to how have you created differentiation in what your brand promises?

Do you have, the, front and center on your, on your website, uh, configurator that allows customers to, uh, really personalize what their, their product, their own product experience is going to be. And so it, it starts from what is your differentiated promise. And then you need to design the experiences in order to reinforce what you're telling customers you're going to deliver for them.

Matt Edmundson: Who do you see doing this well? Curiously, at the moment, do you see, does anything sort of spring to mind where you see companies doing this well?

You know, the product experience. That's a, that's a really good example. Um, but other examples would be like of Zappos in terms of how they provide exceptional customer service. And so there's a few unique, um, unique brands that have really done a great job of defining a promise that is. Differentiated for themselves and then delivering on that, uh, through the types of experiences they create.

A friend of mine from Dallas, Texas, I was talking to him about the business and just sort of one or two of the things that I was thinking through and he, he drew on a piece of paper for me. You may have seen this kind of thing before, but he drew on a piece of paper on, it was actually on a napkin in a coffee shop, I think.

He drew a triangle. And in each corner of the triangle, he wrote a different word. So in one corner, he wrote price and another corner, he wrote quality. And another one, he wrote service. And he said, these are the three things you can have, um, a quality product. So the quality of the product could be high or low.

You could take a quality product. You could sell it at a low price and focus on those two points of the triangle. What you can't do is have a quality product, sell it at a low price and deliver exceptional customer service. It just can't be done, right? And so he's like, Pick the two which makes the most sense to you.

And so we thought, well, the only way that we're going to win this, because other sites were selling the same product, the only, the only thing that we could do was really make our customer service so much better than everybody else's. And so that's what we tried to do. Now, within a year, Of doing that. Our sale the first year our sales fell, um, mm-Hmm.

And so as our customer experience got better, the second year that we were trading, our sales increased by Massively. And the massive increase came from returning customers, which I thought was really interesting. So it took between 12 and 24 months to really see the impact of this sort of big shift, uh, in our business.

Laura Richards: You've changed your value proposition, right? And so you had to really find the customers and deliver. Deliver for the customers a different value proposition than some aligned to that and others didn't. But what you saw was that that was a better, long-term strategy for the business.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. By the end of the second year, we were 20% higher than our highest ever year previously.

It was our story, our proposition, what we could deliver, what we could do better than no one else. Um, you know, it was that question Jim Collins always used to ask him, good, great, you know, what can you do better than anyone else can do in the world sort of thing. And so we just decided to settle on customer service, especially for a commodity website, really helped us.

Um, and so I'm really intrigued by this, this whole customer thing. I'm even more intrigued, Laura. Uh, why, uh, Sadaf, who is the show's producer, um, again, listeners, I don't know how much you know about this, but what happens with our show is there's always something called the prequel. So when a guest comes on the show, uh, like Laura, you met with Sadaf, right?

But Sadaf just wrote in my notes, prequel, Matt, talk about emotions. Talk about emotions? We haven't talked about that yet, Matt. We haven't talked about emotions. Why would Sadaf write in my prenotes to talk about emotions?

Laura Richards: Yes, let's talk about that. So I think it comes down to Um, how we at Level 5 define brand, um, and also what we see as motivating customers.

And so over 20 years of researching what motivates customers, what drives their behavior, what we've seen is that it is equally rational benefits and emotional benefits. And when you ask a customer, why did they buy a product? They are unlikely to be able to tell you about the emotional benefits that they, they received through that experience or the purchase.

And it's the feelings of trendiness. It's the feelings of being creative. It's feelings of connection with their peers that they can't express, but emotions drive 50 percent of consumer behavior. And that's really important to understand, um, when you are. Defining a brand, when you're defining what the promise is, what, what emotional benefits do you want to, to communicate, deliver, extract for, for your customers?

Matt Edmundson: So the, I'm, I'm a, I always, I'm, I'm a bit old school. Uh, Laura, so I've, I've, I'm aware of the phrase that people buy with emotion and justify with fact, right? Mm-Hmm, , um, I've, I've, that phrase for me has been around since the dawn of time.

It feels like, uh, you know, in our sort of old, old traditional sales days, and I used to sit there and I think, well, this is. It's a great phrase to roll off the tongue, but I don't understand what that actually means on a day to day basis for me. Now, you have to understand I'm an emotional luddite in many ways.

Someone's annoyed me, you know, probably driving the car. I experienced that emotion more. So you haven't read

Laura Richards: a lot of Brene Brown then, have you Matt?

Matt Edmundson: I, I've, I've listened to her TED Talk and go Brene Brown, you're, you're a legend, but I just, I just, there are some things, you know, a bit old school. I'm, I'm, Like I say, a bit lud, it is probably made maybe the maybe emotionally constipated a little bit.

So I sit here and I listen to things like that and I go, this is great, and I get it. I, I get that from me, from my point of view, likely is not everything I've bought has been an emotional decision. Here I am saying that I only have three. The reality of is I just don't know what I'm doing really. Um, how do I, how do I bring that into my business?

How do I become emotionally aware of what motivates my customers and how do I. How do I bring that into my messaging, my marketing, my, how does that make a difference?

What do people want to get from a product? Um, there's ways at getting at. underneath that, how do they actually want to feel or how do they feel as a result of, of what they get? Um, and then it comes into the way that you design your product, the messaging that you, um, that you create, it comes into the experiences that you deliver.

One of the examples that's, it's not product, it's more service that I love is, um, working with an insurance company. A client, you know, the claim in making an insurance claim can be an incredibly stressful experience, right? Mm-Hmm, . Um, and the research that we did, uh, showed that you at the, the first notice of loss when you're initially calling in and saying, I've had a car act.

It's the entire experience that results in the emotional connection.

Matt Edmundson: And this is important, isn't it? Because I think I've seen a lot of websites will use emotive titles or headings, you know, as a way to draw you in. But then the rest of it kind of doesn't feel like it connects with that somehow. Like it's just a word.

Chat GPT is putting that in a title.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's interesting. Do you ever use AI to try and analyze how people might feel? I'm just kind of, in my head, I'm thinking if I went to chat GPT or Claude or, you know, whatever your chatbot of choice is these days, and said, listen, I serve this product to this market, how do they, you know, what kind of emotions would they be feeling in terms of why would they buy it?

I wonder if AI would be able to answer that. AI

Laura Richards: can start to answer it. Actually, we have a partner that's using large language models to analyze customer input, and that can be structured and unstructured feedback that comes from customers. And, and they're using models that get at what are the emotions that customers are feeling and what is the target.

So, State. And by linking, you know, the, the good outcome and how people felt during a good outcome to a bad outcome, you can actually understand what are the emotions that drive towards your target.

Um, but they talked, from an emotional point of view, they talked in copywriting about talking about the negative emotions being more powerful than the positive ones. and how, um, the phrase they used was, um, give them a headache and sell them the aspirin, uh, kind of a thing. Is that, is that right? Does that still work or is it a bit more nuanced than that?

Um, I think it's, it is more nuanced than saying, okay, we're going to create a problem and then solve the solution.

Matt Edmundson: It'd be nice if it was that simple. It would be really nice if it was that simple. So you're talking, you say that there are ways to understand, I like the word you use, gets, you know, to understand and dig into some of these gets.

What is a good key way for me to do that with my own customers?

Laura Richards: Uh, well, you can do primary research that looks at the ideal. What is the ideal brand or ideal experience in your category and what do they want to receive from that, from that brand? And so by looking at the ideal, you can decide where do you have the ability to differentiate, where are your capabilities best suited, and so that you can hone in then on those gets and feels and the way that you're designing, communicating, um, and delivering experiences.

Matt Edmundson: priority gets and feels. I feel like I'm learning a whole new language here, Lori. It's, this is great . Uh, I, it is. I remember we, um, with one of our econ businesses, we sat down and we did some of this primary research.

We were like, Mm-Hmm. . I wonder, again we were looking how to differentiate, we were trying to understand how do we live up to our core brand values and all these sorts of things, you know, questions that we were asking. And so we did some market research, we talked to our customers and this was with the beauty brand and we were, we had an average order value of over 70 pounds, um, which is a lot of from a, you know, bearing in mind, again, Bloke happy with shower gel.

Laura Richards: Competitive category as well. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. I mean, amazingly competitive category. And so we were like, well, why were they doing it? And we, what we, after the research, we discovered that actually skincare was super important and it was ni 98% female, a client base, right? Mm-Hmm. Skincare was important. Brand was important.

Once somebody had found a brand of skincare that worked for them, it was almost impossible to get them to change brand. That was something that we discovered. They wanted to stick to that brand, but they were open to suggestions to add to it. Um, you know, depending on what kind of issue they had. What we quickly realized was that our customers weren't buying skincare.

So we changed the box that we sent stuff out in. We changed the packaging. We started to wrap things up in tissue paper. We used quite Gift orientated language, treat yourself, you know, and all that sort of type of language. We tapped into this concept of it being a gift. And this was another one of those pivot points in our history, where actually you can go back to that point and go that moved the needle much more than something else.

Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, the latest social media tool or whatever. Um, it made a phenomenal difference just understanding Emotionally, what was going on with our clients when they were buying the products?

And so you, you were delivering. Matt Edmundson, Diocese, Prayer, Conversation Street, Holcombe, Origin, Origins, Liverpool, Frontline, Frontline Church, Jesus, Jesus Christ, eCommerce Cohort, Aurion Media, Aurion Studio, Vegetology,

Matt Edmundson: eCommerce Cohort, Push To Be More, Sadaf Beynon, Diocese, Prayer, Origin, Origins, Liverpool, Frontline Church, Jesus, Jesus Christ, eCommerce Cohort, Origin, If I was, you know, again, it is different horses for different courses and at different markets and understanding what it is your customer is wanting to feel at that point in time when they're buying and it.

Laura Richards: Well, I think this is where, you know, AI can really help.

And I mentioned that we're working with a partner now who is using large language models to analyze these things, actually digging into like, well, what are customers saying It's all about being your voice not what you're saying. Um, and you can, you can analyze underneath that. What does that mean in terms of what they're feeling?

Because it's hard for them to communicate exactly what they're looking for. But what we found overall is when you ask about the ideal and what is an ideal experience, you do get a lot of value by asking the question. And so whether that's in quantitative research or by running focus groups, you can really get a lot by targeting once.

What's the ideal experience and what's the ideal brand that a consumer is looking for?

I'm just, it's just me, myself and I running this thing as a side hustle. Where, where, where do they start?

Laura Richards: You know what? I would start by asking questions on the channels that they own, right? Like various. Simply, often companies over rotate on surveys, and you're sending customers 10 minute long surveys and then not really doing much with the results, but even somebody on their own, like you can ask at the end of a purchase experience or if somebody drops off a.

One or two questions, then actually use that information. Mm-Hmm. and structuring well structured questions is going to get you a long way. So go beyond the standard satisfaction or NPS type of questions. Yeah. And actually ask things that's going to give you insight into where you're missing the boat or where you might, um, have a pain point on.

Explored or un unsolved for and, um, experiences that, that you haven't tapped into yet?

Um,

Laura Richards: so I think it is, you know, those, those MPS type questions are about gauging over time, but it's about going underneath that. And so again, using, um, AI and large language models, you can actually have surveys that, um, are, are, Very customized to the individual. So what went well today in your experience?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I've seen actually companies using the I can't remember the name of the platform, but there's I've seen them using the sort of single question on a page kind of ideas where you go through to page, they ask you a question and in effect, um, you answer that question, takes you to another page, which asks you another question, or it goes deeper on the previous one.

And the, the more you're on it, the more, the deeper it's going to go. And it's just going to keep going, but it just says, listen, if you want to bail at any time, you know, feel the freedom. This is, you're not locked in for the next hour, but if you've got an hour to spare, I'm going to ask you an hour's worth of questions.

And it's just this, this perpetual. Consistent sort of drive with questions a bit. I'm bored now, I'm out. Um, I've seen companies start to use that a little bit where I decide as the customer when I bail on this questionnaire, I don't know if that's effective or not really, but I, I've seen it more and more.

And I think, you know, we're constantly refining now. We have so many new tools that are out. Yeah. And we're just going to continue to learn and optimize.

Matt Edmundson: So going back to your own e-commerce website, Laura, you know, you've set it up, you've, you've solved the problem. Um, you have got a differentiated promise that's affecting.

Laura Richards: Well, I think, you know, it's how you run meetings with your team. It's the stories that you tell. It's the training that you run. It's, it's every aspect of, of experience that ensures that this is not just words on a page, that you're actually able to deliver what you have promised. And so every single decision that you make has to be run through the lens of, is this reinforcing or eroding our promise to customers?

Matt Edmundson: It's as simple as that. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? But again, I think it's really interesting, isn't it? Do you find that with companies, their promise changes over time? Because this is, again, something that I think people struggle with in their thinking. It's like, well, I can set my customer values.

Laura Richards: They change over time. There are certain aspects that should be enduring though, because if you're constantly pivoting on your customers, then they don't know what to expect.

Expect from you, and I think you run a real risk of losing customers that way. And so, so your, your promise should be relatively enduring what you're actually trying to do. Like what is the purpose of your organization? Going back to what's the problem we're trying to solve? Well, that should be relatively enduring, and if there are better ways that we can solve this problem, then great, let's evolve that.

But you should have components that are certainly enduring over time and that you're not, you know. Constantly shifting the ground underneath your customers.

Matt Edmundson: So if there's one book or one YouTube video that you know, people listening should watch on this whole topic that's, you know, that you feel like has had a massive influence on you, what would it be?

Matt Edmundson: The brand driven CEO. What's the name of the author?

Laura Richards: David Kinkade.

Matt Edmundson: David Kinkade. Check it out. I assume it's available on Amazon and we're all good books all sold.

Laura Richards: Exactly.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Laura, listen, we've got to, it's amazing how quickly time goes. Um, we've got to that stage of the conversation where I'm going to ask you for the question for Matt.

This is where you get to ask me a question. I'm not going to answer it now. I'm going to answer it on my social media channel. So if you want to know how I'm going to answer this question. Follow me on the old gram the old Instagram to search Matt Edmundson, but here's the question Laura. What's it gonna be?

Matt Edmundson: Oh, okay. Very good. Well, I will answer that on my social media channels.

Come follow me on social media. You will find the answer. Laura, listen, thank you so much for coming on the show. If people want to find out more about you, find out more about Level 5, you're welcome. Want to connect, want to reach out, maybe they've got some questions, maybe they want to put that logo on the wall behind you, I do, uh, what's the best way to do that?

Laura Richards: Yeah, so, uh, you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, Laura Richard with, uh, Level 5 Strategy and, uh, also via email l r i c h a r d at level5strategy. com.

One can but hope, Laura, one can but hope. Uh, but listen, thank you so much for coming on the show. Genuinely really appreciated it. Enjoyed the conversation. Uh, and this whole thing about customer experience is just one of my, one of my, I just love it. I adore it. I'm going to go find the book and I'm going to read it just because I, I want to, and I think we all should go and find stuff like that.

But, um, yes, thank you, Laura. Thank you for coming on.

Laura Richards: Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure.

Matt Edmundson: So what a fantastic conversation. We will, of course, link to Laura's info in the show notes, which you can get along for free with the transcript at ecommercepodcast. net. Uh, or of course, if you sign up to the newsletter, it's going to come straight to your inbox so you can find all of that stuff there.

You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Laura's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by PodJunction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible, as I mentioned, is the just Just astounding, Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutzlack, our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson and as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, simply head over to the website eCommercePodcast.

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