Susan Abbott
MBA, CMRP
ON, CANADAAs a consultant, clients value Susan’s creative thinking, and executive perspective. As a speaker, Susan brings these strengths into high-energy, content-rich and engaging sessions that leave attendees inspired to try new approaches.
Topic: Hate Selling? Build Profile Instead
Her newest material, Hate Selling? Build Profile Instead, helps individual professionals learn how to create their Golden Chain of Profile using tools ranging from networking to writing an e-book. This high-energy 90 minute workshop can also be presented as a 45 minute keynote.
Topic: Getting the Scoop: Research Tools for Consultants
A workshop initially created for CAPS, this three-hour session has an excellent workbook and interactive examples. Shorter sessions focusing on only part of the material are possible.
Topic: Managing the Customer Experience
- 5 P's and a C of customer experience
- Chain of value creation
- Mapping the customer journey
- How B2B experience is (and is not) different from B2C
- The role of expectations, surprise and delight
- Peak-end rule, and how to use it (behavioral economics)
- Why bad things feel worse than good things feel good
- Tools to use: onboarding and service recovery
This session has been customized for many different groups, including parks and recreation managers, entrepreneurial business owners, and service quality professionals. Highly interactive options are available, including having small groups build a "target customer profile", collage a future state vision, and similar hands-on activities.
Facilitation
Susan is a skilled facilitator with both small and large groups, and has designed high-engagement activities that help organizations refocus on the customer. She brings tools from her insights and innovation practice into the room, leading to energizing events such as collage building for a large group.
Writing
Susan was an early social media adopter, and has been publishing theIdeaStudio blog (formerly CustomerCrossroads) since 2004. In addition to numerous published articles in marketing industry magazines, Susan collaborated with Schulich Executive Education on a research-based book, The Innovative Organization.
Career Background
Prior to forming Abbott Research & Consulting in 2001, Susan was a Vice-President of the TD Bank Financial Group, one of North America’s leading financial services firms, where she held diverse general management positions. She holds and MBA from Ivey, and a BA in Psychology. In addition, she has extensive professional education in qualitative research, in creativity and innovation, and is qualified in Myers-Briggs.
Susan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, where she speaks to business people on topics related to designing the customer experience, gathering customer insights for innovation, innovative methods in qualitative research.
Facilitiation work for clients often involves a customer immersion element or creative homework exercises that help bring the customer/consumer "in the room". These projects can also include customer/consumer panels to further stimulate the thinking of workshop participants.
Susan is a professional member of CAPS, and a graduate of the ProTrack speaker development program. She is also an elected member of the board of the Qualitative Research Consultant's Association, the leading global organization for professionals in qualitative insights.
As a consultant, clients value Susan’s creative thinking, and executive perspective. As a speaker, Susan brings these strengths into high-energy, content-rich and engaging sessions that leave attendees inspired to try new approaches.
Topic: Hate Selling? Build Profile Instead
Her newest material, Hate Selling? Build Profile Instead, helps individual professionals learn how to create their Golden Chain of Profile using tools ranging from networking to writing an e-book. This high-energy 90 minute workshop can also be presented as a 45 minute keynote.
Topic: Getting the Scoop: Research Tools for Consultants
A workshop initially created for CAPS, this three-hour session has an excellent workbook and interactive examples. Shorter sessions focusing on only part of the material are possible.
Topic: Managing the Customer Experience
- 5 P's and a C of customer experience
- Chain of value creation
- Mapping the customer journey
- How B2B experience is (and is not) different from B2C
- The role of expectations, surprise and delight
- Peak-end rule, and how to use it (behavioral economics)
- Why bad things feel worse than good things feel good
- Tools to use: onboarding and service recovery
This session has been customized for many different groups, including parks and recreation managers, entrepreneurial business owners, and service quality professionals. Highly interactive options are available, including having small groups build a "target customer profile", collage a future state vision, and similar hands-on activities.
Facilitation
Susan is a skilled facilitator with both small and large groups, and has designed high-engagement activities that help organizations refocus on the customer. She brings tools from her insights and innovation practice into the room, leading to energizing events such as collage building for a large group.
Writing
Susan was an early social media adopter, and has been publishing theIdeaStudio blog (formerly CustomerCrossroads) since 2004. In addition to numerous published articles in marketing industry magazines, Susan collaborated with Schulich Executive Education on a research-based book, The Innovative Organization.
Career Background
Prior to forming Abbott Research & Consulting in 2001, Susan was a Vice-President of the TD Bank Financial Group, one of North America’s leading financial services firms, where she held diverse general management positions. She holds and MBA from Ivey, and a BA in Psychology. In addition, she has extensive professional education in qualitative research, in creativity and innovation, and is qualified in Myers-Briggs.
Susan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, where she speaks to business people on topics related to designing the customer experience, gathering customer insights for innovation, innovative methods in qualitative research.
Facilitiation work for clients often involves a customer immersion element or creative homework exercises that help bring the customer/consumer "in the room". These projects can also include customer/consumer panels to further stimulate the thinking of workshop participants.
Susan is a professional member of CAPS, and a graduate of the ProTrack speaker development program. She is also an elected member of the board of the Qualitative Research Consultant's Association, the leading global organization for professionals in qualitative insights.
Finding Nuggets When It All Looks Like Gravel: Bringing Insight into Innovation
Insight is the power source for the most successful businesses today, in every industry. If you innovate without insight, you will launch marketing that misses the target, products that aren’t quite right, and technology that frustrates instead of delights. You’re probably drowning in data -- but what you need is genuine nuggets of insight to make sense of it all.
Whether you are operating on a big budget or a shoe-string, you can bring nuggets of customer insight into your...
Designing the Customer Experience
There’s buzz everywhere about customer experience for a good reason – it’s one of the few ways to differentiate your services an build lasting success. You need an experience that is distinctive, memorable and communicates value at every step. But many B2B experiences feel flabby, unfocused, endless and expensive. What does experience really mean, and where do you begin? It’s not just the moment of purchase and/or use, it’s about the whole interaction. It seems like a tall...
Getting the Scoop: Research Tools For Consultants
Highlights:
- How to use online survey tools for advance planning and feedback
- Top dumb mistakes to avoid in survey questions
- How to find free resources that will make you look well informed and current
- How to use paid resources effectively when you need them
- What you can do with online community and discussion forum tools
- Tips for interviewing and managing group discussions
Visioning the Future with Images
Highlights:
- Why images are more powerful than words
- Explanations of simple exercises that consultants can learn and use
- Real world outputs shown for all exercises
- Product Box and Service Folder: Create a new product or service
- Picture the Future: Compare a present situation to a desired future situation
- Picture the Team: A better way to kick off your next team project
- Bullseye Customer: How to capture the target customer...
