In this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, Matt Edmundson has an engaging conversation with Peter Murphy Lewis from Strategic Pete. Peter, an entrepreneur with a rich background in media and marketing, shares his insights on the importance of understanding the customer journey through qualitative and quantitative research. This episode dives deep into practical strategies for improving customer engagement and driving business success.
Key Takeaways:
(03:02) Introduction to Peter Murphy Lewis: Peter discusses his background, including his unique living situation inside a zoo in Wichita, Kansas, and his experiences in South America.
(07:54) Early Career Insights: Peter talks about his first job creating surveys on religion and values, highlighting the importance of asking the right questions to understand people’s beliefs and behaviors.
(10:16) Defining the Customer Journey: Peter provides his personal definition of the customer journey, emphasizing the importance of the first impression and continuous engagement with the customer.
(15:03) Practical Application: Peter explains his approach to joining new companies and immediately focusing on understanding the customer by being involved in customer support calls.
(19:35) Enhancing Product Value: A case study is discussed where Peter helped a membership company increase its product price from $49 to $299 by understanding customer needs and adding valuable features.
(26:35) Removing Unnecessary Elements: The importance of identifying and removing unnecessary elements in a product or service to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.
(31:10) Emotional and Subconscious Drivers: Peter highlights the significance of understanding the emotional and subconscious drivers behind customer behavior to make informed business decisions.
(36:26) Setting Objectives and Anti-Objectives: Peter emphasizes the importance of setting clear objectives and identifying potential negative outcomes (anti-objectives) when making business decisions.
RAPID-FIRE Q&A
What inspired your journey into marketing and customer research?
My journey began with a background in sociology and early career experiences in creating surveys and working with diverse populations. This foundation helped me understand the importance of asking the right questions to uncover deeper insights into human behavior.
How do you define the customer journey?
For me, the customer journey is the process where someone comes in touch with your brand and you follow them from the first time they hear about you until they decide they’re done with you. It’s about creating a lasting positive impression and continuously engaging with the customer.
Why should businesses care about the customer journey?
Businesses should care about the customer journey because understanding and improving it can lead to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. This ultimately reduces the need for extensive advertising and boosts profitability.
How can small businesses implement customer journey research?
Small businesses can start by engaging directly with their customers, asking open-ended questions about their experiences and needs. This can be done through phone calls, surveys, or even casual conversations, focusing on gathering actionable insights to enhance their offerings.
What impact do you aim to make with your work in customer research?
I aspire to help businesses understand their customers better, make informed decisions, and create products and services that truly meet customer needs. The goal is to drive transformative change and elevate the overall customer experience.
We appreciate you listening. Visit strategicpete.com to learn more about us, and head to our blog page to learn more about marketing and customer research. We look forward to connecting with you!
Transcript
Matt Edmundson [00:00:10]:
Well, hello, and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. This podcast is all about helping you deliver ecommerce wow. And to help us do just that, today, I am chatting with my very Special guest, Peter Murphy Lewis from Strategic Pete, which is one of the most memorable names we’ve had for a little while, Strategic Pete. We’re gonna be talking about decoding the customer journey through research. And of course, before we get into that, Let me tell you about the newsletter which we send out every week. If you’re a regular listener to the show, just go sign up. Go to ecommercepodcast.net. Oh, even if you’re a new listener, go check it out.
Matt Edmundson [00:00:51]:
Just sign up. You get the newsletter every week with all the links and stuff. They come straight to your inbox Automagically. No hassle. No drama. You never miss anything then. So it’s worth doing. Go check it out at ecommercepodcast.net.
Matt Edmundson [00:01:04]:
And of course, this show is brought to you by the wonderful ecommerce cohort. This is a membership group for, group, A membership group for all you ecommerce’s out there. If you’re like me and you’re involved in the world of ecommerce, I do this podcast, which is awesome, but I also run ecommerce business because that’s awesome as well. Do a bit of ecommerce coaching. And so we decided, you know what? We should set up a little, little group for all of ecommerce’s called ecommerce cohort. Come and join in. We have expert workshops every month delivered by experts, which is always which is why we call them expert workshops, suppose, which is great all around the topics of ecommerce. Plus, one of the key bonuses, you get to watch me Recall these podcasts live.
Matt Edmundson [00:01:47]:
We live stream them into the cohort. So we’ll tell you in the newsletter who’s coming up. You get to come in, watch, and ask the guests your questions, which is just wonderful. Well, I asked them. You put it in the comments, and I asked them. You don’t actually come on to the show. Let’s just be super clear. But you get the chance to ask the guest So check that out atecomercohort.com.
Matt Edmundson [00:02:08]:
Be great to see you in there. Okay. So Let’s talk about today’s guest. This dynamic entrepreneur took a leap into the South American business world, conquering The media landscape with notable achievements like working at CNN, no less, and hosting its very own TV show. Now as a highly successful marketing consultant and podcast host, always nice to talk to a fellow podcaster, he brings his expertise to the forefront, Shedding light on the captivating realm of the customer journey and the transformative power of qualitative and quantitative research. Yes. There’s there’s 2 words not easy to say together. I’ve just realized.
Matt Edmundson [00:02:50]:
Qualitative and quantitative research. Peter, great to have you on the show, man. Been looking forward to this one. How are we doing today, good sir?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:02:58]:
Wonderful. Really excited to, chat about customer journey and Quantitative and qualitative also a challenge where it’s, it
Matt Edmundson [00:03:08]:
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s funny, isn’t it? We’ll just call it the Q and Q, data. QQ data. We’ll show you what abbreviated maybe. So how did you, well, let let me ask you a little, more obvious question. Question first, whereabouts in the world are you?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:03:22]:
Today, I’m in Wichita, Kansas in the middle of the US. I spend about 4 to 6 months out of the year in South America and the rest of the time somewhere in the US, but my home base is inside of a zoo, and I’m not joking. I live inside of a zoo in Wichita, Kansas.
Matt Edmundson [00:03:38]:
My mom used to say my bedroom was like a zoo, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean. I think you mean a proper zoo.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:03:44]:
It’s true. I have zebras that are about, 20 meters from my kitchen window.
Matt Edmundson [00:03:49]:
No way. That’s awesome. So you’re like, what was that movie, So We Bought A Zoo with Matt Damon? You’re like the personification of that guy. Right?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:03:57]:
I’m like the fat version of that.
Matt Edmundson [00:04:03]:
How did you end up owning a Zoom?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:04:06]:
I didn’t actually buy it. I, the story’s interesting. In 2019, I was running a pretty successful travel Online business in South America, and, there was some civil unrest that happened in October of 2019. And that was so powerful that they burned down 43 subway stations in 1 night. And I called my business partner on day 2, and I said, you need to get back to Santiago. I think we’re gonna have to close down our 4 offices in 4 different cities, close down all of our brands, sell our inventory, and lay off about 50 teammates. Wow. And he came back, and we made that decision.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:04:42]:
And then about 3 weeks Later, my wife and my son and I, left that country and moved back to the US. And when I was backpacking around around the United States with my 3 year old at the time. I visited the zoo and the owner of the zoo called me a month later and said, will you come take over the marketing tar department for 6 months as an interim director. So I created the marketing team and helped scale that.
Matt Edmundson [00:05:05]:
Wow. Wow. And That’s amazing you guys
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:08]:
did everything. Give me a and they give me a house.
Matt Edmundson [00:05:10]:
Well, thank you very much. Absolutely. That’s awesome. And what amazing memories for your son. I mean, that’s not special.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:20]:
In the middle of COVID.
Matt Edmundson [00:05:21]:
Oh, yeah. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s not a usual thing to do as a kid, but that’s awesome. That’s really cool. So do are you enjoying living at the zoo, I take it?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:30]:
Yeah. It’s fantastic. I can’t imagine leaving whenever my wife’s like, maybe we should buy a house. And I said, is the house gonna have zebras in yard. I said, let’s hold off on that mortgage. I mean, I’m fine here.
Matt Edmundson [00:05:42]:
What do I need to do that? Why do I need a mortgage? That’s incredible. So you’re sort of split between the states and between South America. South America. You’re currently in Wichita, Kansas, And, which is right in the middle, isn’t it, from memory? I’ve not actually been to Wichita. I have been to Kansas a couple of times, but I I remember seeing it on a map. So I’ve got a some vague idea of where it is. And so you’ve obviously been in marketing a little while. I mean, you’ve been marketing zoos and companies in South America.
Matt Edmundson [00:06:13]:
So you’ve you’ve had a few things that you’ve have you always been involved in that sort of thing?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:06:18]:
You know, my first company was in 2007, And my business partner and I didn’t have any previous experience. I’d never worked in marketing, and he he neither. So we just kinda fell into what was natural. You know? He did the he did the website. I created, you know, kind of the customer journey and our marketing and our and our copy and then our products and so forth, and then he eventually took over operations and HR, and I stayed in marketing and sales. And, we grew that quickly, into 3 different brands and then kind of got into my got into TV and then got into fractional CMO work. And since, Basically, since 2007, I kind of built my career around marketing with having it without any experience. And I I attribute that to the topic that I think we’re gonna talk about, which is understanding your customer.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:07:07]:
And that goes back, Matt, to the fact that I studied sociology in undergrad. My first job out of college was creating surveys for a national survey. I believe it’s around religion and values. And so, I wasn’t a particularly religious person, but I had to learn how to ask questions in semi structured interviews to determine how belief systems were changing in the US, and this is 2002. Wow. And I really think that that fundamental kind of, 101 into how to understand how people think when they don’t know how to say what they think and believe helps me today in the ecom space.
Matt Edmundson [00:07:50]:
No doubt. I mean, how old were you when you were doing those sort of surveys? So this was 20 years ago.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:07:55]:
See, I was 2021, 22. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson [00:07:57]:
Yep. What an introduction to sort of the I mean, it’s it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because you’re just you’re you’re a young lad starting out in the in the workforce. The same age as my son, ironically. And there are certain things that I think are good things to do at that sort of age. Sales would be one of them, but this is all because you’re learning how to talk to people. You’re learning how to draw information out of them. And they’re sort of life skills you don’t really get taught, in school. And so I imagine, this was quite quite eye opening in a lot of ways.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:08:31]:
Very much so. Very much so. And and I think what was, what was eye opening about it is walking into the job, You think that coming up with questions is gonna be easy, but coming up with questions that people don’t know even how to answer, and you then have to interpret those answers into something that is close to, qualitative Evidence that you could at least form a hypothesis around was a challenge. And then my my my my second job isn’t much further than that, although people be like, You know, that social work, that social work. My next job was I worked with the homeless population Mhmm. Speaking Spanish, so Spanish speaking homeless population that had AIDS in Boston, and I had to help them help themselves. And does that so Understanding homeless people’s different for me. I’ve never been homeless.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:09:25]:
Understanding Latino illegal nondocumented Immigrants is not my background and then understanding people with AIDS. So learning how to ask questions was, you know, kind of my the 1st 3 years of my professional life before I became a marketer.
Matt Edmundson [00:09:40]:
Wow. What a foundation. I mean, I sound they both sound like pretty tough, hard jobs, but, I mean, almost what a gift, you know, in terms of, the the stuff that you would have learned from that. So let’s fast forward then 20 years. Let’s take all the learning that you’ve you’ve had, and what an introduction. And let’s sort of throw this into the the topic of ecommerce, if we can. Let’s start at the top, customer journey. Just explain what it is, what you mean by that, and and why we should care.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:10:12]:
You know, I thought about the the definition before we jumped on, and I said, should I Google it, Or should I just go what comes from the gut? And and I didn’t Google it even though I’ve never formally been trained. I said, for me, It’s basically the process where someone comes in touch with your brand And you follow them from the 1st time they hear about you or they need you or think about you until they decide they’re done with you. And That may never end if they’re a happy customer. The customer journey never ends. And it may end really quickly if Your first impression is bad if you’re bad at ads, if you spend all your money on ads instead of thinking about your brand, if you don’t listen to them and they walk away. So, it’s kind of it’s kind of the 1st impression until they’re done with you is the way that I would describe it too, like my dad.
Matt Edmundson [00:11:10]:
That’s a really that’s a very I mean, I I can get my head around that. I understand that. It’s not complex. And what I like about it, Peter, is there’s no three letter acronyms, in the middle of it, which we we love in in ecommerce, really.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:11:22]:
Yeah. We overuse those.
Matt Edmundson [00:11:24]:
Okay. That’s way too many. So the customer journey then from first impressions until the grave fall into a better expression, that whole time that they spend with you. And, obviously, different customers have different lengths of journeys with you, different experiences, and so on and so forth. And, I mean, it’s an obvious statement to make. And I I guess, in some respects, this is a a silly question. But, again, I don’t wanna make any assumptions here. Why should I care about that as an ecommerce entrepreneur? Sure.
Matt Edmundson [00:11:57]:
And I I I have been asked this question many times, so it’s the reason why I’m asking. Because there is a belief in some circles where it’s just like, I don’t care about the customer journey. I want them in. I wanna sell them stuff, and I want them gone because it’s a high volume business. You know? The customers come and go.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:12:12]:
Mhmm. I think that I think that, you know, any founder or CTO or Customer support or VP of revenue should care about this because, one, the more advocates you have of your brand, Your product, your service, the less you spend on ads. So right away, there’s a ROI, there’s a return on investment. That’s just basic understanding. You can maximize profits, even just with that 1 person. Right? So if you’re paying attention to what they want more of and what they’re willing to pay more for, you’re you’re making more. And, you know, like, I usually Usually, the the thing that I walk into as a consultant, the first thing that I see that’s kind of a blind spot For founders or CEOs or executives is they haven’t talked to their customer in a long time. As you grow, you get 2, 3, 4, unfortunately, sometimes 5 steps or layers away from your customer.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:13:16]:
And And people often think your customer once they’ve purchased. So, like, you wanna see the survey afterwards. I’m talking about the survey when that you asked them how they first heard about you. So like I have, I have a, a new client that I’m working with today and, you know, he says, what’s, what’s the first thing that you wanna do. Do you wanna interview my team? Do you wanna, you know, look at my, profit my profit and loss? I said no. No. No. Just Every single new customer you have that purchases, whether it’s their $49 product or their 4.99 product, I said, I want to be on the phone call, and we’re gonna act like it’s a chargeback service or we’re gonna act like it’s customer support.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:13:57]:
And then I just wanna ask them 2 or 3 questions. And then you gotta do that every stage along the way with the person who refunds, the person who returns and so forth. And I just think if you set that system up, you’re you’re you’re setting your system your your company up for success in the long term. After you do it for, you know, the 1st 3 months, I think you can go back to doing it once a year. It’s not any different than you know, I’ve I’ve heard the story that Jeff Bezos, makes every single customer every single employee work 1 week out of the year in customer service. I don’t really think it’s any different than that. You should think about your customer journey at least once a year.
Matt Edmundson [00:14:31]:
So I I couldn’t agree more, on the whole customer journey thing for for a number of reasons, which I’m sure we’re gonna get into. I’m intrigued by this is your you’re going into a new company. Your first response is not to talk to the staff. It’s talk to the customers, which I I actually quite like. That’s quite nice. Did I understand it right that you’re doing those calls with the CEO or you’re you’re doing them solely?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:14:59]:
If the CEO has time, I would love to have them join. Normally, they’re too busy. If they’re bringing they’re bringing me in to help with something, You know, they’re either putting out fires or they’re letting people go or they’re trying to scale a team and they don’t have time. If they will, I would love them to. But I do record them and then I highlight those options and I go through their case studies and do new case studies. But, like, right now with this new client, I’m just doing it essentially with their their customer support rep to make sure that we’re not getting chargebacks and so forth.
Matt Edmundson [00:15:26]:
Okay. What do you mean by a chargeback?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:15:30]:
You know, like, people who will sign up for the product, And then they’ll use it for 7 days. They’ll download, free data or download the service and then, they’ll tell their Their American Express card, hey. I didn’t pay for this. I didn’t want this. So they’ll they’ll they’ll fight it.
Matt Edmundson [00:15:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. So You’re calling new customers. So you get 5 new customers that day. You’re on the phone with them regardless of what they purchased, and then you said you’re asking them 2 or 3 questions.
Matt Edmundson [00:15:59]:
Everybody listening to this is gone. What are those 2 or 3 questions you’re asking them?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:16:04]:
Yeah. So I usually go in with an a a bigger objective. So I I try to ask The the executive team, I said, how certain on a scale of 1 to a 100 are you that you are charging the right price for a product, b product, c product, you know, d product. And generally, you know, they’ll say 80 or 90% on one, 50%, confident on another. So I’ll go into especially the products where they aren’t confident, And I will assume that they are undercharging Right. Right away. That there’s something that the customer would be willing to pay 2, 3, 4 x 4. And so my first questions will seem pretty basic kind of 101 sociology, but about my 5th question is going towards the pricing.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:16:56]:
So my first question would be like, you know, how did you first hear about us? And then I’ll shut up and don’t give them options. You know, like, this is this is this is something that HubSpot will teach you over and over. Don’t force your new customers to tell you, how they heard about you so you could put it into an Excel. Yeah. Take an open ended answer, and I do that. And then the next question is, why did you decide To reach out, either contact us or buy us. What was the decision? What what what was the number one reason? You have to use the word, What was the number one reason that you decided to buy? And then then from there, it becomes a lot more, loose ended. And from there, I’ll ask why, why, why, and what was it about? How did you hear about that feature? Where did who do you compare us against? But my last question would be like, what is one thing that’s inside of our product that you’ve seen so far that you wish you either that that you wish you had or that you wish that it was better that would make your job easier.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:17:57]:
And then they say they usually have something in mind. Mhmm. And then I’ll say, How much more would you be willing to pay for that? And then they’ll tell you right there. They’ll tell you right there. And then the very next thing you do is you take that information. You test it in ads. You test it in cold email. You test it on your e com platform.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:18:15]:
You create a different name of a product for the exact same thing, charge the price, but include that new element. Now you have also ideas for tiers for pricing. Yeah. So, Matt, I I I did this with with, A membership client that I have that sells memberships, annual memberships for a product that’s about $49 a year, and I walked in and I said, You know, like your NPS score is through the roof. Like everybody loves everything. You’re you’re definitely undercharged. They said, no, you, if you do that, we’re gonna have churn, then we’re gonna have people complaining online. People are gonna complain in our community.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:18:49]:
And I said, now I have a feeling that, you know, 20% of your customers, 10% of your customers be willing to pay more. We did this process that I’m explaining with you. Then we we did it with about 20 calls, 15 calls. And then we turned it into a survey on Google Forms. We didn’t have to pay for anything expensive. We didn’t go Typeform. We just did simple Google Forms following the exact same system. And now we have a VIP subscription service that sells for $299 one day out of the year, and it sells out.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:19:24]:
Wow. And those were people that we were charging $49 for 2, you know, 2 years ago.
Matt Edmundson [00:19:31]:
That’s incredible, isn’t it? So this is you you $299. So you’ve 6 6 fold increase on the price just because you called the customers and asked questions. And I assume that the difference between the 2 memberships was pretty straightforward to deliver.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:19:46]:
Other deliverability is essentially the same because especially because about 50% of the people don’t even use their membership. They don’t log in. They don’t ask for calls. So, I mean, you you you just You just went from 49 to 299 and still half your people don’t use your product.
Matt Edmundson [00:20:02]:
Wow. That’s incredible. Yeah. It’s fascinating. And all this stems because you’ve asked the customer the question rather than just assuming. Or rather I I think one of the cop outs that I guess I see a lot at the moment is people there’s a lot of conversation about interpreting data. Right. Letting data guide decisions.
Matt Edmundson [00:20:24]:
So you split test. You let data to guide decisions. So you start off with a hypothesis. You throw it out there. Did a beat b? Yes or no. If it did, great. Let’s win it. If it didn’t, let’s keep what we’ve got.
Matt Edmundson [00:20:34]:
And we like that because, 1, it’s quantitative. Yeah. It’s not working, is it? And 2, I think it requires, in some respects, less effort because I don’t have to talk to client. I think a lot of people get into ecommerce so they don’t actually have to talk to the end client.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:20:53]:
I agree a 100%.
Matt Edmundson [00:20:54]:
Yeah. So here you are telling people Talk to the end client. I just wonder how many people listening to the show are just breaking out into a cold sweat right now. But there’s there’s some very real benefits to doing that, one of which you’ve just highlighted with that membership company.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:21:08]:
Yeah. I would tell them if they’re terrified of doing that, don’t worry. Call a 20 year old sociologist who’s taken 2 years of sociology classes, and they can listen to this, transcribe it, and do it for you.
Matt Edmundson [00:21:24]:
Go get a student. That’s, that’s what we tend to we say that a lot in our office. We need someone to do this. I was good. Go get a student. We live in a student town, so, students are great, you know, and, well, most of the time, they’re great. So
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:21:39]:
I like that.
Matt Edmundson [00:21:39]:
I got a 20 year old sociologist in. Is this so let’s take a few different companies, and let’s think about how this could work practically, Peter. So the companies you’re going into, like that membership company, are gonna be what I would call an SMB, a small medium sized business. Right? They’re gonna have anywhere, I guess, from 5 to 20 employees, something around that. They’re gonna be turning over, I guess half a1000000 up to sort of 5,000,000 online. Right? So, in those size companies you’re you’re talking to and you’re training The customer service staff. Is that right?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:22:13]:
I’m not really training. I’m just joining the 1st phone calls with them, and then I’m taking that information, which is very qualitative. Right? Like, the I couldn’t prove anything on it. I couldn’t write a master’s thesis on it. But if if you’re intuitive, if you have some intelligence. You can take that information and take it back to the CEO and say, some changes need to be done. Like, if you take to him 10 calls where 5 of them say, hey, you know, I would pay 3 x for this feature. And then you say to him Then you say to him, like, how hard is it for you to deliver this feature? And he goes, not hard at all.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:22:49]:
Well, now you got his attention. Right? So and then customer service is can then be trained to take that, you know, that initial process into something that could be checked quarterly, or once a year type of thing. But you’ve run from there, and then you start designing new prices and programming around that initial customer journey, and then you go back and and you go back and you check it again.
Matt Edmundson [00:23:13]:
Okay. So let’s talk about then the small business. So What? A couple of the young married couple, they’re doing a side hustle. They’re working on the kitchen table, 2 hours of an evening before they crash out on the couch. How how would you how how should they approach this type of thing?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:23:38]:
I would I would start off if they don’t have much time. I would start off by asking them, Do you have an idea when you have a happy customer, a happy buyer, over your unhappy customers? Either They were on your page for 10 minutes and they purchased right away, or they added 2 things to their cart faster than anybody else. And everyone has, like, kind of a, yeah, I think that is. I said, okay. Are you then, are you willing to give them half of that product back if they’ll spend 20 minutes with you on the phone?
Matt Edmundson [00:24:11]:
Yeah, of
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:24:12]:
course, if that information is going to help you sell more, you know, either sell more volume, improve your margins, whatever that is, increase your revenue, whatever it is. And I would just start with that. If they have 2 hours on a Thursday and 2 hours on a Sunday, do 2 calls. And give that person something back that they put in their cart, and try to figure out why that person is hyper happy and why they came to you, And then find a way to uniquely creative creatively ask them what they would be willing to pay more for. Of course, those first questions. Right? How did they hear about you? Why did they choose you? Who else did they shop around with? How were they solving the problem before they met you?
Matt Edmundson [00:24:50]:
Yeah. No. It’s very critical questions.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:24:54]:
I’ve got one other thing that and this might not apply, you know, to your neck of the woods nor the US, Because Starbucks has been around long enough that we might not remember what life was like before Starbucks. But myself, coming from South America. When I first moved to South America in 2023, there was no Starbucks. Mhmm. So I lived in a world where I went and Sat at a coffee shop, sat down at a table. Someone brought a menu over to me, then left me for 15 minutes. Came back over, asked me when I wanted, then brought me back a coffee in 15 minutes. Never knew my name, charged me $4 for a coffee, and that and it took me 30 minutes.
Matt Edmundson [00:25:33]:
Mhmm.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:25:34]:
And It was loud, and there are people smoking around. The bathrooms weren’t clean. Starbucks, people complain about paying The $4 for a cup of water hot cup of water. But from what I think they did from the customer journey point of view is they thought about What is the most expensive ongoing cost that a coffee shop has? And it’s they’re real estate. People are sitting down and waiting for their coffee to be delivered be delivered for 30 minutes. And they’ve removed that, And they make you go stand at a counter, and then they and you’re still willing to pay the same amount of money. Mhmm. So you also need to ask in your question, What is the one thing that you you least care about in my service or my product that I’m giving you and determine how expensive it is and remove it.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:26:24]:
This is not just about adding things on the customer service. This is also removing.
Matt Edmundson [00:26:31]:
That’s really interesting. Because you’re right. I think if it’s not like you say, it’s not just about what you add. It’s what you can take away, is now and what you, what you’re doing that currents currently is not working. I think I’ve mentioned this before on on EP. I’ve definitely mentioned it on podcast before, and I’d I I I’ve been on so many. I just can’t remember who I’ve told this to. So if you’re if I’m repeating myself, dear, listen.
Matt Edmundson [00:26:54]:
I’m terribly sorry. But I’m I’m thinking of the The time when we had a at the time, we had a beauty company, and we sold beauty products, well known branded beauty products. And we we looked to what our competitors were doing, and they would send out the products in a Jiffy bag. Right? A padded envelope. I don’t know if you call them Jiffy bags. We call them Jiffy bags. But, in these sort of padded envelopes, they got they got sent out. And so we were like, well, let’s just do one better.
Matt Edmundson [00:27:26]:
Let’s send everything out in an actual box so that, you know, it just feels a bit more ostentatious, I suppose, with a bit more premium, a bit more, you know, like, I’ve I’ve cared. And actually, when you get your skincare products, the boxes themselves that they come in are much more likely not to get bashed up. Even though I know you’re gonna take them out of the box and just throw them straight in the bin, you still want them to look good before you throw them in the bin. Right? And so we send them out in the box. That was one of our sort of differentiation points. And then we started talking to clients, and we started asking them about why they bought skincare. Why? Because the the average order on our website was let let’s say it was about 80 books. Right? About $80.
Matt Edmundson [00:28:07]:
80, 90, maybe $90. It’s about $90. And I was kinda curious as to why people would be willing to spend that much money on a moisturizer and a cleanser. Right? And you understand I come from a very male sort of background that I’m I’m upset if I spend 2 quid on a bar of soap. Right? Let alone $80 on this good moisturizer and cleanser. And so I was very, very curious. And the more we talked to customers, the more Actually, what they were buying was a treat for themselves. They were they were buying themselves a gift.
Matt Edmundson [00:28:43]:
And this is how they saw their purchase. It was like, This is it’s good for me. I’m treating myself. These were the kind of words that we we were hearing. And so what we did was we thought We need to change our packaging because our our brown box, although it was better than our competitors, was still a brown box, and no one wants a gift in a brown box. And when you open it, you get those sort of plastic bubbles, and we, and we thought everyone’s getting we should definitely be more environmentally conscious than we are at the time, so we needed to apply game. Clients wanted us to be more, environmentally conscious, and so we’re like, right. Let’s kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
Matt Edmundson [00:29:20]:
And so what we did was we changed the box from being a standard box to, it had an extra flap on it. If you if you can kinda you had take lift bottom flap up and then the inside flap would also come up. But on this inside flap, we wrote this lovely message. We had it printed on there. Just text stolen the virtues of being human, for example. And as they open 1, it felt like they were unwrapping something. Do you see what I mean? It was just a simple thing that we did. We then wrapped the entire thing inside in tissue paper.
Matt Edmundson [00:29:50]:
So there’s some nice tissue paper inside that you had to unwrap as well. And then we took out the plastic bubbles, and we we actually we tried different things in there, but the thing that we sort of settled on was popcorn. We had this brainwave one day that we put popcorn in its packaging. And we tried 20 different types of corn, but we figured it out. We had popcorn machines in the warehouse going 10 to the dozen, you know, making popcorn. And Our return purchase rate shot through the roof when we did this. And when you think about what I did, I put a flap on a box, Added a bit of tissue paper, and I changed the plastic bubbles to popcorn. But our re our return purchase rate, I mean, it it went way higher than the industry average just from understanding, that the customers were buying a gift.
Matt Edmundson [00:30:40]:
So we took away something. We replaced it with something else which matched their values. And lo and behold, it it worked really well for us.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:30:49]:
I I like I like the example I like the example because it required, some testing. I’m wondering, Did you get that just from you guys playing around with it, or did you get it from talking to somebody?
Matt Edmundson [00:31:07]:
No. We talk to a lot of customers. I mean, the popcorn came. The popcorn idea was not a customer generated idea. That was, that came from a brainstorming session I was leading with the team when we were like, what can we use as an alternative? What came from the customers talking to them was not the tissue paper or the extra flap on the box. Was our understanding changed in terms of we understood a lot better why they were buying what they were buying. And it was this use of words gift and treat, treating myself. I’m buying a gift for myself, spoiling myself, you know, those kind of phrases.
Matt Edmundson [00:31:41]:
That I would never have got had we not spoke to the customer.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:31:45]:
You that makes me think of, how I think about adding things or taking things away when whenever I’m looking at Either Google My Business reviews for a restaurant or some type of service and or Amazon. I always look at the reviews and I look at the categories worries because Google and Amazon group reviews into categories. So let’s say you know, you know, you’re buying, beard cream. Well, it groups all of those reviews together and it says, you know, Breaks. Well, it might say that the bottle doesn’t break or that it’s firm or that it, the shoe fits too big, it’s too large. So I always pay attention to those categories, and you can think about what you’re focusing on from a branding point of view by the number of reviews in that category. Think of those categories, come up with synonyms around with it, and then package it in different ways. That’ll also tell you what you can take away.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:32:41]:
Right? Like, let’s say that the most expensive thing that you have in your beauty product, is the packaging and none of your reviews, you know, you got 5,000 reviews and none of them say packaging. Well then you need to think what, Maybe I need to do something a little bit more in-depth because my packaging is really expensive, and it’s not showing up in any of my reviews.
Matt Edmundson [00:33:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s an interesting point, isn’t it? You you reminded me of a chat we’ve had on the podcast, Norm, who Norm Ferra, we were talking about Amazon. And one of the things that he does is he goes through the Amazon reviews for a product. And I think he gave the example from memory of a kitchen knife, you know, like a chef’s knife. And he was like, you know, you could go on there and find 1 for, like, 20, $30. Look at the reviews. Look at what people are saying.
Matt Edmundson [00:33:26]:
Look at what’s missing. Look at how you can improve the product based on the reviews. He’ll go then and get a knife manufactured adding the the bits in the reviews and taking the bits away that they’re complaining about in the reviews. Or put it on Amazon for a $130, and they’ll clean up. Right? And that’s his whole thinking is is sort of going through the reviews like that and just taking that data, throwing a product on and seeing what happens. Alright. Yeah. Clever, isn’t it, in a in a lot of ways? Yep.
Matt Edmundson [00:33:53]:
So We’ve got some you you’ve given us some great questions to ask, people. What sort of workflow should we be thinking about, You know, in what sort of system I think you used the word system when we when you started talking about this. What sort of system should we be thinking about as a company setting up here to help us Do this, do it well, and do it continually.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:34:17]:
I would say if you’re, you know, a mom and pop company that has At least $1,000 a month coming in that you need to think about what your objective is and what is your Anti objective, right? So if your objective is revenue, what’s your, what, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you get that objective? You know, your review average goes down, you quit getting positive reviews, and then you need to create a semi structured interview process in that customer journey for you to determine how you’re going to get to that objective without actually doing the the the opposite as well. Right? That’s where I would start. If you’re a successful e com business, you know, and and you’re doing half a1000000 and and you’re you’re profitable, I think you this is even easier for you to do. You can you’re gonna get information more quickly. Your customer journey is much more Sophisticated. You have the analytics. You have the Google Analytics. You have the paid analytics.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:35:15]:
Right? You have the review analytics. And then you just as an executive or the owner, you need Come in and you need to get your hands dirty for a week and build out the pro build out the process before you jump in. Right, which is related to the objective. When I I I I I write about customer journey and I talk about customer journey enough at Conventions and so forth. People will reach out to me and they’ll send me their survey. And, and the very first thing that I’ll say is, what is your goal? And they haven’t prepared their semi structured survey with a goal in mind. They’ve asked a bunch of questions that they can already get from their existing data. Like, are you a happy customer? Well, I can tell from my churn data.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:36:01]:
Don’t waste a question. Are you a happy data customer? Right? Don’t ask if on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you gonna recommend? Like, use that for a different moment. Right? You only have a couple couple questions to get to it. Then once you have fine tuned that that process, now you need to turn it into something that you do at least once a year, almost like an MPS, review.
Matt Edmundson [00:36:22]:
So this is not something you’re doing all the time or the team aren’t doing this on a regular basis. It’s just like, what, 1 week out of the year, I’m just Call in 20, 30 people.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:36:32]:
That’s what I would do. And I would mainly think about it when you have a, when you think that a product is either underperforming or that you have a new goal and you’re not certain about how to do it. Right? So if you have a new goal around a new territory about, modifying your product or lowering your prices or whatever it is, you need to talk to people first. You need to get over that, the, the fear factor, the analysis paralysis of too much data, not enough data just goes to the person. But the key is the questions, right? But I mean, I I I I feel like there there’s enough out there on Google that you can dissect what to do and what not to do based on what we’ve been chatting about today.
Matt Edmundson [00:37:11]:
Yeah. Totally. And ChatGPT will write them for you, to be fair. The, sure. I’m intrigued here actually because, one of my ecommerce companies is a supplement company, Right. Health supplement company. And we have been talking internally about the packaging that the supplements come in. Okay.
Matt Edmundson [00:37:30]:
And changing that packaging because, like everybody, we’re trying to be more, environmentally sustainable. We’re thinking about the environment a lot more. Now the packaging we have is very good in the sense that it is, It’s sort of like a plastic type product made from cane sugar, which makes it biodegradable in about 10 years. So it’s actually quite good. It’s also recyclable. So the packaging in itself has got some good credentials, and I think we tell the story well on the website. But When you look at a picture of it, it still looks like white plastic. And we’re kinda thinking, do we wanna change it? So I’ve thought about Glass, for example, and the guys in the fulfillment warehouse are like, there’s no way we’re sending stuff out in glass because it’s a nightmare internationally, etcetera, etcetera.
Matt Edmundson [00:38:16]:
So There’s all kinds of things going on, and we’ve been batting around tins and refill pouches and all kinds of things in the office. What I’m thinking here listening to you talk, is before I make any further decisions, I need to get on the phone to about 20, 30 customers over the next We can and get some feedback. Right?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:38:35]:
I would. I I don’t know. This this goes back to our very first thing that we talked about where I worked in surveys with people about their religious beliefs.
Matt Edmundson [00:38:45]:
Mhmm.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:38:46]:
I don’t know if people are going to be able to answer the question that is going to actually help you determine if it’s gonna impact their behavior after you make a decision. I think that I would probably go about your question in a roundabout way by asking, On a scale of 1 to 10, how ecological do they consider themselves? And then I would ask them If if they answer, you know, like 7, 8, 9, or 10, then I would ask them how that’s impact impacts you in your day to day. And I would ask them a couple more extended that would break out there because you’re going to get a lot of answers in the survey if you ask them up front that actually isn’t true based on it. You’re not gonna see an impact on the behavior. Right. And I think that that’s It’s because it’s trendy. It’s because sometimes we don’t even under under understand in our unconscious, and our conscious why we’re purchasing, what our behaviors are. Right? I mean, even you and I as marketers, we we we buy stuff on Black Friday, and we shouldn’t call for those, but we still do it.
Matt Edmundson [00:39:55]:
Every year. Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:39:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I still I still you know, like, I consider myself sustainable. I still buy, a styrofoam cup. And if you asked me why, I can’t answer why. There’s something deeper than that.
Matt Edmundson [00:40:12]:
Yeah. That’s interesting. And, yeah, I I think you’re right. I think there’s a real interesting one, isn’t there, our subconscious thinking and our actual conscious thinking. And our conscious thinking is what we say. Our subconscious thinking is what we do, how we act, how we behave. And so I like what you’re saying there because, actually, the questions are I’m asking you questions more about your subconscious about how you act and behave rather than What you so I think if I said to somebody, are you do you try and live a, you know, sustainable life? Well, they’re gonna say yes, aren’t they? Because why would they say no? Because they come across as the bad guy straight away, don’t they, if they if I ask a question like that? So I think I like what you say about the phrasing of it.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:40:56]:
In in at least in the US, where we’re not nearly as advanced, You know, from a sustainable point of view, you know, like, I would say we’re light years away from from Europe. For in the US, It’s it’s more about the image and how we feel from when people think we’re sustainable. Mhmm. So for example, like this, this brand, I think it’s called like love. Let me see real quick. Love Your Melon. K? Love Your Melon. Melon.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:41:26]:
Love Your Melon is a brand that, does not take any profits. It gives away it’s a charitable NGO that gives away all of its profits to kids with cancer. I’m 99% sure that’s it. Like, from so for me, wearing that is more about other people knowing That I’m buying that type of product. Yeah. So, and, and, and I don’t think that that’s, you know, I don’t think that that can’t translate across other countries. There’s all some there’s all some some imagery around it. So if that’s the path you’re gonna go because you believe in it, which is great for you, Matt, Also, make sure that it lines up for an emotional benefit for the person who might not truly be sustainable, but it makes them feel better that they’re supporting you.
Matt Edmundson [00:42:08]:
Yeah. That’s really powerful. Really powerful. I’ve gotta ponder that, Peter, and I’m gonna think that through a little bit. Like, how would I how would I phrase those questions? I guess one of the questions would be, I I’d have to test it out on a few people. I one of the things that’s come into my mind is, would you leave the The the bottle of the current bottle of the health supplement, would you leave it on your kitchen side, or would you put it in a cupboard? And what would your reasoning behind that be? Like, would you try and hide this, or would you be okay with it being out? I’m trying to understand that might be, quite an inter anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. We’re not trying to self my solve my, packaging issues for my health supplement company. They’ve been going a long time.
Matt Edmundson [00:42:52]:
They will carry on. I’m very sure. So this going back to what you said, having a clear objective and anti objective. I have to be honest with you. I’ve not heard this phrase, anti objective, that much, and I quite like that. So Just explain what you mean by the objective and anti objective a bit more. Let’s get super clear on that.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:43:13]:
So it’s the first time it’s ever come out of my mouth. So it’s gonna, it I’m gonna I’m
Matt Edmundson [00:43:18]:
gonna ladies and gentlemen.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:43:20]:
Bumble and jumble and and and scramble around to come up with it. I’m borrowing it from I’m borrowing it from a book that I read in the last year, and I’m not gonna be able to credit who it was. But these what they were talking about was your ideal client. And they said, what What would have to happen that’s so negative that you wouldn’t want to also work with that ideal client? So it’s basically thinking about who is your ideal spouse. Yeah. But what’s one pet peeve that you would have about that that there’s no way that you would wanna marry that ideal spouse? The exact same thing with a revenue goal And and and what’s the what would you not what would be a veto for you to go after that revenue goal? And you need to take that into consideration when you’re mapping out, you know, your your your objective in that customer journey. So let Mhmm. Let’s just say, you know, like, My my objective with selling more supplements and making them more sustainable, is that I’m making a bigger impact, in the world in in my carbon footprint.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:44:26]:
Right? But my my anti objective around that, let’s say that I still do that and my revenue goes up, it makes it less likely that people are going to recommend me, and that has to do with x, y, and z. Or, it creates a huge amount of operational stress stress on my manager, and that might make my manager leave. Right? Because my manager’s now gonna have to go, to China and visit 17 factories in the next year, and they’re gonna leave me.
Matt Edmundson [00:44:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. Fair enough. I like this bit. So for you, starting off with this clear objective and anti objective, understanding what it is that you want, what and what it is you’re not prepared to to lose, at you know, with at the beginning is is the critical part because that guides the questions. Mhmm.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:45:17]:
Well, in the in the example of the subscription service that I mentioned, right, you know, they went from $49 and they created a VIP product. Their one of their concerns is that they were gonna be they were gonna be seen as, as like an elitist brand. And, you know, this is this is a company that sells 15,000 subscriptions at the $49. So if they start playing around with something that’s 2.99, That could change their perception that they’re a blue collar, that they’re made for everybody, and you you need to think about that. Well, that didn’t happen. We achieved it, and we were able to map that out.
Matt Edmundson [00:45:56]:
Fantastic. Fantastic. Listen, Peter. I am aware of time. I’m aware that it is flying by at a 1000 miles an hour, as it always does when you talk to really interesting people. And I feel like, as always, I’m I’ve got a list of questions. My question list is longer now than when we started. Oh, she’s always good.
Matt Edmundson [00:46:14]:
But if people listening to the show wanna reach out, if they wanna connect with you, maybe hire you, or just maybe got some questions about questions, I suppose, What’s the best way for people to do that?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:46:24]:
LinkedIn’s the best place. Just, search Peter Murphy Lewis. I’m pretty sure you’re the only person you’re gonna find at least based in the US or in Chile. And you can also visit my website, strategicpete.com. If you wanna come see me with the zebras, just come to Wichita, Texas and ask for strategic Pete.
Matt Edmundson [00:46:42]:
Strategic Pete. Just go to Wichita and ask for and they’ll let you know. Just follow the light road down there. Next time I’m in Kansas, I’m gonna stop by because that just sounds like a I just wanna see the zoo. I genuinely do. I’m really curious. But listen, Pete, thank you, man, for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom, and telling us about the brand name of your hat and all that sort of stuff and about your zoo. It’s thoroughly enjoyable, and I I feel like I’ve learned a lot.
Matt Edmundson [00:47:08]:
And I I always enjoy learning. So thank you for coming on, and thank you for just being an absolute legend.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:47:14]:
My pleasure. Thank you, Matt.
Matt Edmundson [00:47:16]:
Well, we will, of course, link to Peter’s information in the show notes, which you can get along for free with the transcript at ecommerce podcast .net, or it’ll come straight to your inbox if you are signed up to the newsletter. And, of course, a huge thanks again to Peter for joining me today. Love, love, loved that conversation, and I hope you did too. Also, a big shout out to today’s show sponsor, the ecommerce cohort. Remember to check out their Free training online at ecommerce psych ecommerce site. That’s the old website. Try ecommercecohort.com. Let me get the right website.
Matt Edmundson [00:47:50]:
Come join the membership. Be good to see you in there. Also, be sure to follow e com, the e commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we’ve got some more great conversations lined up, And I don’t want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes. You are. Credit awesome.
Matt Edmundson [00:48:08]:
It’s Just a burden you have to bear. Peter’s gotta bear it. I’ve gotta bear it. You’ve gotta bear it as well. Now the ecommerce podcast is produced by Oria Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is the fabulous Sadaf Beynon, The beautiful Tanya Hertzalak and the legend, that is Josh Edmondson, who wrote the theme music. As I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, you know where to go.
Matt Edmundson [00:48:36]:
Ecommercepodcast.net. Sign up for the newsletter. Now that’s it from me. That’s it from Peter. Thank you so much for joining us. I’ll see you next week. That’s it for me. Bye for now.
