The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Release Date: 06/21/2025
Most People Think They Use AI Well; Many Are Mistaken! Are You?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
How are you really using AI — and how does that compare to others? In this episode, Colin Shaw introduces a simple behavioural framework for understanding how people are actually using AI today — not in theory, but in practice — and why this matters enormously for the future of Customer Experience. Rather than treating AI as a technology maturity model, Colin reframes it as a behavioural curve, shaped by confidence, trust, intent, and the consequences of being wrong. Drawing on real usage examples, ChatGPT analytics, and current research, Colin outlines four AI usage patterns that people...
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Uncomfortable Truth: The Focus on Customer Experience Hasn’t Paid Off, Why?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Customer satisfaction has barely moved in over 30 years — despite enormous investment in Customer Experience. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton and Morgan Ward speak with Forrest Morgeson from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). ACSI has tracked customer satisfaction continuously since 1994 using the same questions and methodology across the entire US economy. And the long-term data tells a story that challenges many comfortable CX assumptions. Rather than steadily improving as CX practices mature, customer satisfaction rises and falls in cycles...
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The Rise of Synthetic Audiences: Fast, Cheap… but Believable?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by Ben Shaw, seasoned brand strategist, to unpack the promises and pitfalls of synthetic audiences - AI-driven research used for faster, cheaper market research. Synthetic audiences, powered by large language models (LLMs), can replicate customer segments and respond to creative concepts or product questions at scale cutting the time and cost of traditional surveys. But does it come with trade-offs? Expect lively debate on the AI vs. LLM naming debate, the enduring value of ethnography and nuance, and practical...
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Are Your Salespeople Sabotaging Your Customer Experience?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Sales and Customer Experience—two critical functions that should work together, but too often operate at odds. This week, Colin and Ryan explore how traditional sales tactics can undermine long-term loyalty and create organisational silos. They share personal stories (including Colin’s car-buying nightmare) and practical advice for aligning sales with your desired customer experience. If you want to sell AND build trust, this episode is for you. Best Quote of the Episode: "If you can’t proudly stand behind the experience you’re creating, you’ve got a problem." — Colin Shaw Key...
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The New Currency of Customer Experience: 'People Like Me'
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Trust in traditional institutions is eroding. As customers lose faith in advertising, government and even online reviews, they’re turning to voices that feel most relatable: peers and communities. Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer shows the most credible spokesperson for a company is now “people like me.” Ben Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton explore the decline of influencer credibility, the rise of community-driven word-of-mouth, the tension between authenticity and control, and why attention + trust will be the “coins of the realm” for brands in the decade ahead. 🔑 Key...
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Good Friction, Bad Friction: Why a Little Effort Makes Customers Care
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Episode Overview When everything is one-click easy, do we lose something meaningful? Guest host Dr. Morgan Ward joins Dr. Ryan Hamilton to explore how the right amount of friction in the consumption experience can boost connection, meaning, and long-term use of the product—while the wrong kind just gets in the way. Quote of the Episode “Consumption, in some ways, has just gotten too easy.” — Dr. Morgan Ward 🔑 Key Takeaways Easier isn’t always better. Ultra-frictionless buying can strip away the identity, discovery, and accomplishment that make buying feel meaningful....
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I Signed a ‘Gag Order’. Here’s What It Taught Me About Organizations
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this episode, Colin Shaw shares a recent personal experience with a major brand that imposed a 'gag order' (NDA) after a poor service experience — and how this reflects a deeper organizational issue: silos. Together with Professor Ryan Hamilton, Colin explores why siloed thinking leads to incoherent customer experiences, how internal motivations can conflict with CX goals, and what leaders must do to ensure learning, trust, and advocacy remain priorities. A must-listen for CX professionals and senior leaders alike. Best Quote: "Who decides? That is the question every leadership team...
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The Thrill of the Chase: Why Anticipation Beats Ownership
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Episode Overview Ever buy something you couldn’t wait to get—and then let it sit in the box for days (or weeks)? You’re not alone. Guest host Morgan Ward joins Ryan Hamilton to explore why we often love the pursuit of products more than the possession of them. From unopened tools and “someday” sweaters to the viral Stanley Cup craze, they unpack the psychology of anticipation, dopamine, and why the thrill fades once the package arrives. This episode reveals what’s really driving that “add to cart” impulse—and how brands can design experiences that move customers from wanting...
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When Rebrands Go Wrong: Lessons for Customer Experience Leaders
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by guest host Ben Shaw to explore the high-stakes world of rebranding. From Cracker Barrel’s logo backlash to Jaguar’s radical design overhaul, they unpack what happens when brands chase new audiences at the expense of their loyal customers. The conversation dives into the tension between rebranding vs. repositioning, why heritage brands face special challenges, how politics and culture can hijack brand decisions, and practical lessons for leaders trying to grow without alienating their core base. Key Takeaways ...
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AI That Listens: Why Real-Time Feedback is the Future of Customer Experience
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Summary Traditional customer feedback is broken. Post-call surveys and quarterly reports are too slow, cumbersome, and overly focused on the company’s needs rather than the customer’s reality. By the time insights land on a dashboard, the customer has already left—or worse, lost trust. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, I (Colin Shaw) and Professor Ryan Hamilton sit down with Devidas Desai, SVP of Product Leader at ASAPP, to explore how AI that listens is reshaping the way organizations understand and respond to customers in the moment. We delve into why silence doesn’t mean...
info_outlineHow do you grow your revenues without upsetting your existing customers?
In this episode, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton dive into the new book he has written with Anne Wilson, Senior Lecturer at Wharton.
Published by Harvard Business Review Press, the book is called:
The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things
Available here: https://bit.ly/3ZCN2wD
Professor Ryan Hamilton reveal how brand growth often gets derailed not by bad strategy, but by insufficient attention to how your customer segments relate to each other. You may think your audiences are living on separate islands, but spoiler alert: they’re not. They're watching each other, seeing what the other does, and sometimes they don’t like it and will move elsewhere.
From Crocs to Prius to the Bud Light fiasco (and yes, even neo-Nazis in New Balance sneakers), this episode pulls no punches. It’s a fast-paced, funny, and brutally honest look at why many brands fail to grow—and how you can avoid becoming the following cautionary tale.
💥 Best Quote from the Episode:
"If your growth strategy relies on one customer segment not hearing what you're saying to another, it's already a bad strategy." — Prof. Ryan Hamilton
🧠 What You’ll Learn:
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Why growth isn’t just about what you offer—it’s about who sees you offering it
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The hidden relationships between customer segments and how they impact brand value
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Why Bud Light’s attempt to broaden its appeal led to a marketing meltdown
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How Crocs turned from a fashion joke to a fashion statement
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What to do when the wrong customer segments start adopting your brand
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How to spot leader–follower segment dynamics and use them to scale
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Practical questions to ask before you launch a growth strategy
📘 About the Book: The Growth Dilemma
Ryan’s new book with Annie Wilson is out now! Published by Harvard Business Review Press, The Growth Dilemma explores how inter-segment conflict affects brand growth and what to do about it. It’s innovative, practical, and unlike anything else out there.
Buy it now: https://bit.ly/3ZCN2wD
📣 Get Involved
If you're leading a brand, managing customer segments, or thinking about how to grow, this episode is for you.
Reach out to Ryan on LinkedIn if you're interested in:
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Workshops
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Keynotes
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Or just picking his brain over a coffee (virtual or otherwise)
📨 Connect with Ryan: https://bit.ly/3SvsqTh
About the Hosts:
Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 284,000 followers and 86,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.
Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book 'The Intuitive Customer'. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World’s Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and featured in major media outlets, including The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book called “The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things.” Harvard Business Press 2025.
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