Chris Handy

Those are the words I heard tonight coming from the monitor in my 2 year old girl's room just as the opening song "Frozen Heart" started to play from her Echo Dot. But that's the end of the story. Let's back up.

My daughter has been trying to get the Amazon devices to recognize her voice for a few months now. It hadn't always worked for her, as the words she had been speaking just weren't pronounced clearly enough.

Every now and then lately, she had been able to make a connection. Usually with music. A few days ago she had success with “Alexa, Play Bob Marley”.

But tonight, I heard her take this to the next level.

My wife, Bethany and I were downstairs. Through the baby monitor, we heard:

Alexa, Drop in Downstairs

It was at this time, that our Living room echo came on, and we heard her say through the echo to echo intercom system, "Mommy, will you come up here?"

Bethany said, “Sure, I’ll be up there in a minute!”

As I heard her say…

OK, Bye!

...I flipped on the Nest Cam in her room just in time to watch her say...

Alexa... um.. Stop.

...at which point the intercom stopped, and both echo's lights went out.

Now, as I watched from my Nest App (thats the fuzzy image above), she closed it out with the finale…

Alexa, Play Frozen Music

[open.spotify.com/track/3xD...](https://open.spotify.com/track/3xDVJcvcKedshWlT3qGSHk)

And it did. Her first complex, multi-step interaction with Alexa.

So what does this all mean and why should you care?

This is a girl who is not yet three. She will likely not ever remember a time without this voice assistant in her life.

As a student of both human and consumer behavior, this is all a game changer. In less than three years of life, she mastered the interaction with this new computing technology. That time to value is unbelievable for her.

She can now turn on lights in our connected home that she would otherwise be unable to reach. She can now “Call Chris Handy” and have my phone ring anywhere I happen to be. All she has to do is call out.

If you think the Apple HomePod speaker (which will ship in February) or Siri has a fighting chance to enter the mindshare of this girl, they have a long way to go, and are way behind in the race for this new omnipresent computer assistant. I won’t count them out, but man.

There is a lot to learn from Amazon. They have reduced the friction so much that a two year old can operate this device in very complex ways. How can you look at your own business and reduce or eliminate one point of friction per week? How long would it take you to improve the customer experience?

Lyrics by Jamie Cullum

Next year, Things are gonna change, Gonna drink less beer And start all over again Gonna pull up my socks Gonna clean my shower Not gonna live by the clock But get up at a decent hour Gonna read more books Gonna keep up with the news Gonna learn how to cook And spend less money on shoes Pay my bills on time File my mail away, everyday Only drink the finest wine And call my Gran every Sunday Resolutions Well baby they come and go Will I do any of these things? The answers probably no But if there’s one thing, I must do, Despite my greatest fears I’m gonna say to you How I’ve felt all of these years Next year, next year, next year I gonna tell you, how I feel Well, resolutions Baby they come and go Will I do any of these things? The answers probably no But if there’s one thing, I must do, Despite my greatest fears I’m gonna say to you How I’ve felt all of these years Next year, next year, next year

youtu.be/L3jeb46xh…

Songwriter: Jamie Cullum Next Year Baby lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

Now don't get me wrong, I love Slack. But do I need to be on 22 teams?

I have to admit that I am guilty of some of this. I have participated in creating a few communities on Slack. I suppose I just didn't realize how many other folks were making similar choices and further siloing the discussions.

Can we get back to having some decent forums online, or will we be reduced to hiding valuable information and knowledge behind non-crawl-able walls and making it harder to find?‬

Must be subject ourselves to answering the same questions over and over again in an IRC chat, or can we have an epic thread that stays updated with the latest info in a forum.

Do we have to watch our veterans in the community leave because the conversation always reverts to basics? Or can we find a way to have community and value that people of various tenure find value in?

Can we for once lose the @everyone tag? We don’t all need to know that you haven’t looked at the pinned messages.

There has got to be a return to sanity.

The reason people feel compelled to share their help and expertise (and continue to do so over a long period of time), has to do with karma. We feel like if we help someone, we may get some help in the long run. But it isn’t pure altruism. I think there is a part of each of us that hopes that when we help another person, that those folks, and others will remember that and recognize that and we will gain a little bit of “street cred”.

In Slack, the here and now is the only thing that most people will see. It might as well be a real-time chat room. If you aren’t in there live… then well… you missed the discussion.

I don’t think that innovation builds that way. We can only build on knowledge that is shared and documented. The Slack model for community experience for “user groups” and “industry groups” is flawed.

The Consumer Knowledgeability Index (CKI) represents a buyer’s access to purchase-relevant information for a particular company or in a particular industry.

It is the measure of access to industry or company level information that helps along a high-involvement (research driven) purchase

This could be as simple as how much something costs or who the customers are for a company.

I have danced around the idea of the consumer knowledgeability index over the course of many years, but the concept became fully clear to me while writing a paper for a masters degree I am pursuing. Before I get to more background, here is the definition I wrote in my paper that spawned the term.

The customer in 2017 has more information at their fingertips than ever in history about airline prices and about any other product for that matter. I call this the consumer knowledgeability index (or the “CKI”).

The CKI represents a buyer’s access to information in a particular industry. In the passenger airline industry, the prices of airline seats for multiple airlines are readily available online, as are consumer reviews of the experience using them. In other words, the consumer knowledgeability index for airline ticket buyers is very high and rising every day.

When you only have a couple of hours to write a long paper, sometimes you are forced to confront and realize ideas that have been brewing for a while.

What work played a role in inspiring the Index?

On further reflection, it acts in concert, and was partially inspired by a concept introduced to me by Marcus Sheridan. Marcus spoke of the Content Saturation Index (CSI), which represents the amount of blog posts, wiki entries, videos, and other content written by businesses in a given industry; that ranks in Google and dominates potential buyer's searches.

What is the difference between these two "scores" or "Indexes"?

In my view, Marcus's CSI Index shows how hard it could potentially be for a given business (in a given industry) to reach a consumer with content they create and make available for anyone with a laptop and a decent set of googling hands.

In contrast, the Consumer Knowledgeability Index I developed is a measure of how hard is for a given consumer to find information about a company or a purchase they are actively looking for in the moment; given a laptop and a decent set of googling hands.

This gives a business a gauge for how hard it will be to trudge through and create more relevant content over time to get found.

These scores are interconnected, and need to be acknowledged by business strategists.

It's not just a "Micro" Concept

Senior executive's should continually rate, and have a handle on the consumer knowledgeability index for:

1. Their Company
2. Their Fiercest Competitors
3. Their Industry at Large
4. A few adjacent "unrelated" industries.

There will be more to come on this section later, however I will briefly explain the breadth here for points three and four.

Point Three: If a competitor is “outinforming” the consumer, managers may find them “outperforming” their earnings per share.

Point Four: Did you ever have your best idea for your business while reading a non-fiction book about another industry, or even a fictional one that novel that just sparked something in your brain? Industries do not all move at the same pace, but most industries move toward the future sooner or later. Pay attention to other industries to keep pace with what is happening online.

What's next for the Consumer Knowledgeability Index?

The Consumer Knowledgeability Index is a multidimensional quality that can be scored in multiple dimensions. There is more work to be done, but the following are categories to be considered:

• Access to Pricing Information
• Access to Reviews & Customer Experience
• Access to Product Demos (whether you will show them or not!)
• Access to Case Studies
• Access to Alternatives to Your Plroduct
• Access to Information About Situations Where Your product May Not be a Fit

The above list is still being refined. This is a work in progress. please subscribe or email chris at closedwon * com to get access to the upcoming closedwon newsletter.

WTH is in my kitchen? What is Ghee?

Santa knows what you want. He's always known what you want.

People don’t want to write letters anymore. They also don’t want to wait in line. They want Santa to let them know when he’s ready for them, and he’s happy to deliver on this desire. Just as he is happy to deliver on what children want all over the world every December 25th. (How does he do it all in one night? 🤔)

Now why do you refuse to listen to what your customers want? They do not want to have to jump through hoops, wait in line, write letters, or really be inconvenienced to buy from you.

So do what Santa does, ease their pain.

Make the customer experience as painless as possible. Make it seamless. Reduce the barriers. It’ll be the best gift you give your business in 2018.