Nature abhors a vacuum

Grant Leboff: So, Adrian, one of the things you talk about in the book which I really liked was that nature abhors a vacuum. Maybe you want to explain what that means in terms of wowing customers. Adrian Swinscoe: Okay, so I really like this one because it's one of those ideas you just go, "Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Okay, I get that." This idea is that in the absence of other information, we make stuff up. It's a bit like however annoying it might be, you go and visit your mum, and your mum tells you can you text her or can you call when you get her just to make sure that you've got home safely. Now, you might have seen your mum for two or three weeks or so forth and then you just come around to visit one day and then you've got to give her some information because otherwise she'll worry. I think that's kind of the point of it and if we apply it to our businesses, sometimes we make the assumption that if we've got nothing to tell the customer, then we've got nothing to tell the customer and therefore we don't do anything. What we don't do is we don't see it from the customers perspective and actually no information or no new information is still information in of itself. Sometimes, a customer will be waiting going, " ... ," waiting for news, and actually if they have no news, their mind and their anxieties and their insecurities all start to kind of go into overdrive and they start getting a bit anxious. Even if you don't have anything to share with the customer, nothing of any substantial progress, actually to tell them that everything is on track. You should receive the end of the project or the delivery of something or new information or whatever it might be in due course and you expect to then to receive it, that could make a huge difference to the customer. But the thing is, companies see that with extra efforts and it's actually effort that has no value to them, but it has huge value to the customers because they're actually not seeing it from a customer's perspective. Grant Leboff: I understand. So, I mean, I suppose one of those examples that perhaps many people can relate to is Amazon. Adrian Swinscoe: Yeah. Grant Leboff: They're very good, aren't they, at saying, "Yeah, we've got your order. Yes, we're preparing your order. Now your order is going to be dispatched." In essence, it doesn't really matter because they've already told me it's going to come on Friday and I kind of ... It will be here Friday, but the fact they keep you informed through the process delivers a different level of satisfaction. Is that ... ? Adrian Swinscoe: Absolutely. I think it's just those little incremental sort of things, therefore you don't drop into that sort of abyss of, "Oh, what's going on?" Actually, you're left feeling confident, "Oh yeah, it's on its way, its on its way, its on its way, its coming. Oh, it's dispatched. I can even track its progress. Oh, brilliant, brilliant." Then I feel good about it and I also feel good about them because they've kept me informed and it's particular important around times of the year when it's a birthday gift or it's Christmas or it's this or that. Everybody's going, "Oh, is it going to arrive in time?" If you get these little updates, these little bits of incremental effort from the company, just makes a huge difference to the customer in terms of how the customer feels about the process and also how they feel about the company. There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order make it more readable.