Opinions/notes on CX, AI, and marketing.
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Simplified CX retweeted
Remember these predictions?
“Software engineering will be dead because of AI” —> we’re seeing more demand for sw engineering (good part thanks to AI)
“SaaS will be dead because of AI” —> SaaS businesses growing massively (in part thanks to AI)
Be careful what you believe
Simplified CX retweeted
If you've ever been to a Five Guys location, then you know that regardless of what size you order, there's always a “topper” an extra scoop of fries piled into the bottom of the bag.
Five Guys intentionally adds extra fries so customers feel like they are getting a good deal, even though the cost is already factored into the menu price.
Founder Jerry Murrell has said it is better for customers to feel that their serving of fries was too large.
Simplified CX retweeted
The main benefit of your product should be explainable in one sentence or phrase. How is it different and why should I buy it? ONE sentence or phrase, folks. Apple did an excellent job of this with the iPod. Instead of using the usual industry jargon with GB, bandwidth, and so forth, they simply said, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Done deal. Keep it simple and do not move ahead with a product until you can do this without confusing people.
Simplified CX retweeted
Sometimes customers buy.
Sometimes they don’t.
(Which is kind of annoying when you’ve spent six weeks building 60+ ads, 4 listicles, and 20 email flows… 😅)
Why does this happen? Why do two visitors from seemingly identical traffic sources, landing on the same page, looking at the same product, behave so differently?
According to behavioral science, it almost always comes down to one of three things…
BJ Fogg, a renowned behavioral scientist at Stanford University, spent 20 years studying what actually causes humans to take action. He found that every single behavior (from buying an $8 latte to signing a mortgage) is the product of three factors converging at the same moment:
1. Motivation (I want to fix my problem)
2. Ability (I’m capable of fixing my problem)
3. Prompt (I feel a nudge to fix my problem *right this second*)
All three of these things have to show up *together* for a behavior to happen. If even one is missing, the behavior doesn’t happen at all.
Fogg wrote this behavior equation as a formula: B = MAP
B = behavior
M = motivation
A = ability
P = prompt
Knowing which piece of the equation you’re experiencing can help you solve all sorts of things - from CPA to CTR to CVR:
🚦 High ability + a clear prompt, but low motivation → no behavior.
In this situation, the customer *could* do what you want them to, they were *told* to do it, they just didn’t *want* to do it badly enough.
🚦 High motivation + a clear prompt, but low ability → no behavior.
Here, the customer wanted to do what you asked, they were nudged to do something about it, but something in the experience was too hard, too confusing, or too risky to push through.
🚦 High motivation + high ability, but no prompt → no behavior.
In this situation the customer was ready and capable of doing what you wanted. You just never asked them to do anything about it.
(This is why most CRO advice is pretty much useless and why a lot of creative “strategies” fail after about 6 weeks. 😬 you have have to know *which* lever is broken before you start pulling.)
Here’s how to diagnose this for your brand:
Say you launch a gorgeous landing page. Traffic is solid. Product is genuinely great. But your conversion rate is super low. Before you blow up the whole funnel, run it through the model:
😐 Low Motivation → Do they feel a real emotional pull toward your offer, or are you just describing what you think is great? If your page is informative but not *emotional*, you’ve basically built a brochure, not an offer. Beautiful design ≠ desire.
🫨 Low Ability → Are you making it too hard to see how they’ll get the result? This is a sneakier issue than people think. Ability isn’t just “is the checkout fast.” It’s also:
- Too many SKUs to choose from
- An overwhelming quiz
- A vague value prop
- A price that requires too much justification
- A return policy that signals risk.
Every cognitive tax you charge eats into ability. (Behavioral scientists call this “friction,” and it builds up way faster than you’d think.)
😵💫 Weak Prompt → Did you actually tell them what to do, when to do it, and what happens next?
A prompt isn’t just a CTA button, it’s the clock that tells them why they should do something right *now*. Buried CTAs, vague urgency (“Shop now!” I’m looking at you), no clear next step after add-to-cart…these are all weak prompts.
The best prompts answer three questions in order: what do I do, what happens after I do it, and what happens after *that*?
( 🤩 I freaking LOVE the Fogg model because instead of staring at your analytics dashboard at 11pm wondering why your CVR is down three months in a row, you can systematically rule out one of these three things. Genius.)
TLDR: when something underperforms, ask yourself the three Fogg questions:
- Did I make them *want* it? (Motivation)
- Did I make it *easy*? (Ability)
- Did I tell them *exactly* what to do next? (Prompt)
If you can’t answer yes to all three, you’ve found your problem.
Simplified CX retweeted
The fastest way to improve conversions:
Say less.
Make it clearer.
That’s it.
Simplified CX retweeted
In 2004, LEGO was on the brink of bankruptcy.
A $230 million loss the year before. Global sales had fallen 29% in a year.
The board brought in a 34-year-old to save it.
His first move was not a strategy deck. It was something most CEOs would never do.
Simplified CX retweeted
A new survey shows that European consumers are using AI to shape what they buy, but not how they buy—at least not yet. mck.co/4dcpXIZ
ALT 84% of European consumers use AI tools daily, showing AI's mainstream role in their decision-making journey.
Simplified CX retweeted
Costco revealed how it controls the prices of almost everything you buy.
This is one of the most important things you will hear about how consumer prices actually get set (Save this).
Kirkland is an $80 billion brand that strikes genuine fear into some of the largest companies in the world.
When Costco announces it is entering your product category with a Kirkland version, national brand suppliers immediately cut their prices because they have no choice.
Some suppliers would rather Costco never entered their category at all.
Costco caps its own profit margin at 14% on every single product in the store, with Kirkland being the only exception at 15%.
That one internal rule forces Costco buyers to compete on volume instead of squeezing the last dollar of margin out of every transaction.
Their buyers are not rewarded for being greedy, they are rewarded for moving as many units as possible at the lowest price.
That is the complete opposite of how almost every other major retailer in America operates.
Costco buyers also monitor raw commodity markets, coffee prices, protein costs, ingredient inputs and they launch Kirkland products precisely when national brands are raising prices while their own costs are actually falling.
They are hunting windows of opportunity to expose price gaps being exploited by the biggest brands in the world.
The executive gave one specific example that tells the whole story.
Costco was developing a bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich to compete with the national brand equivalent.
The initial version matched the national brand on protein content, and the executive rejected it.
The team went back, renegotiated the supplier deal, added 40% more protein to the sandwich, held the exact same price, and launched it successfully.
Every time a Kirkland product enters a category, the national brand sitting next to it on the shelf receives a signal, match our quality or justify your price premium publicly.
The brands that cannot do either slowly lose their customers.
The executive called it a halo effect, but the pressure it creates on suppliers is anything but gentle.
National brands are essentially forced to stay competitive just to earn the right to sit on the same shelf as a Kirkland product.
For 30 years, Walmart and Target have watched this exact model and have not been able to replicate it at the same scale.
Simplified CX retweeted
AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity are changing how content gets discovered. But what makes one piece of content get cited while another gets ignored?
To answer this, we analyzed thousands of citations and compared them to similar pages ranking in Google. Our goal was to identify which text-only qualities most strongly correlate with AI citation behavior, and whether these patterns differ from traditional SEO signals.
Based on our research, we found five content qualities that showed a strong positive correlation with AI citations, plus one that showed a negative correlation:
• Clarity and summarization: +32.83%
• EEAT signals: +30.64%
• Q&A format: +25.45%
• Section structure: +22.91%
• Structured data elements: +21.60%
• Non-promotional tone: -26.19%
In short: content that delivers clear answers, demonstrates expertise, and uses structured formatting is more likely to be cited.
Full breakdown: social.semrush.com/4d9aSbg.
Simplified CX retweeted
Sam Altman on why you shouldn’t track absolute user growth in the early days of a startup
“It is more important to have a small number of users that love you than a lot of users that like you. And almost all startups get this wrong. Eventually what you want of course is a lot of users that really love your product, but that’s almost impossible to do.”
In practice you have two choices:
1. Deep and Narrow: “You have a small number of users that really love you and then find out how to find more and more of those users and broaden the appeal of the product.”
2. Shallow and Wide: “You can have a lot of people that sort of use the product once or twice and kind of like it and try to figure out how to get them more engaged over time.”
“With high confidence, I can say that you want to start with a small number of users that really love you. Almost all great companies have products that start this way.”
A good indicator of users loving your product, Sam argues, is retention and frequency of use:
“In fact, I think this is so important that you actually shouldn’t track absolute growth in number of users in the early days of a startup. You should just track how often they’re using it… That’s a good early indicator of users that love you—better still is them spontaneously telling their friends to buy your product.”
Video source: @StanfordOnline (2017)
Simplified CX retweeted
Every CEO should do this exercise with their customers…
Put your best customers in a Slack chat and ask these 5 questions:
- "Walk me through the last time you hit this problem. What happened?"
- "What solutions have you already tried? Why weren't they good enough?"
- "If you could wave a magic wand, what would the perfect solution look like?"
- "What's at stake if this never gets solved?"
- "What would solving this unlock for you?"
Put them in a room together and you'll hear things about your product no NPS score will ever surface
Simplified CX retweeted
The era of volume-heavy outbound is over.
In 2026, success is governed by semantic relevance and intent-based filtering.
To scale, B2B tech founders must move from a "followers" mindset to one of community and signal ownership.
Signal stacking is the foundation of modern Account-Based Marketing.
By layering three types of data, you can predict engagement probability with surgical precision:
1st-Party (Owned): Your CRM, product analytics, and deanonymized web traffic are your most valuable assets. They tell you who is already in your ecosystem.
2nd-Party (Partner): Exclusive data from integration partners and champion tracking (job changes) allows you to leverage existing trust.
3rd-Party (Public): Technographics, job postings, and funding news help the Grok AI map your content to the right "SimClusters" of interested buyers.
The goal is to answer the fundamental question: who is problem-aware, and who is ready to buy?
Simplified CX retweeted
The best CEO advice I received throughout my career:
• customer service is not a department
• sales is the hardest job in any company
• customer focus > competitor focus
• trust is #1 core value
• agency (can do) > intelligence (IQ)
• adopt a beginner’s mindset - experts are lifelong learners
• tactics drive strategy - adapt faster
• always try to add value and be helpful
• own it and never point fingers
• influence > authority
• learn and use people’s names
• show up when it matters most to your customers
• earn a seat next to your customer, not across from her
• our job is to educate and inspire
• we are all in sales
• stay accessible, curious and humble
• people do business with people they trust, respect and like
• if you are waiting for a title to lead, you are not ready to lead
• the language of business is finance
• there are no IT projects, only business projects
• pay your best people the very best you can
• hire people based on their good judgment and high rate of learning
• in a celebration lead from the back, in a crisis lead from the front
• you are not a team because you work together - you are a team because you trust, respect and care for each other
• to improve the customer experience, start with the employee experience
• you are not taller by making others look smaller
• revenue growth ahead of expenses
• remove bad apples quickly
• leave your desk and spend time with customers
• culture is what happens when the managers leave the room
• tactics drive strategy
• there is nothing more important than our customers
• if you are waiting for a better title to lead, you are not ready to lead
• business is personal - you can be decisive and also be kind, graceful and empathetic
• recognize effort but reward outcomes
• your company is only as good as the company you keep
• your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room
• learn to speak your customer’s language
• often remind people that their work matters
• a zero sum mindset limits your growth
• your company is only as good as the company you keep
• innovation opportunities are found at the edges, not centers (how your customers serve their customers)
Simplified CX retweeted
Google is stealing your clicks
Last year, Google was already citing itself in almost half of AI Overview answers in the US. Now, in AI Mode, Google.com makes up 17% of all citations.
So when AI answers someone’s question, there’s a real chance that click never reaches your website. Instead, it goes right back to Google.
📌 Read the full study here: seranking.com/blog/google-li…
