What the Placebo Effect Can Teach You About Customer Success

Up to 1 in 3 people report effects from a placebo.

You’ve heard of the placebo effect.

A placebo is specifically designed to look like real treatment — it might be a sugar pill or even a harmless injection — yet in reality, it is physically inactive. The person who receives the placebo believes that they are getting a real treatment, but it’s just a clever illusion.

The placebo effect happens when a person takes a placebo but reports an effect similar to if they had actually taken a real treatment. Usually, the reported effects are positive such as temporary pain relief. Sometimes the effects are negative such as disorientation or nausea.

Expectations Influence Experience

Psychologists refer to these effects as “expectation effects.” It turns out that our expectations are powerful influences on our actual experiences. In fact, as many as 1 in 3 people report effects from a placebo. The placebo doesn’t actually cause any effects; it is the person’s belief that creates the effect.

It turns out that simply providing care changes the way a person experiences their symptoms and can continue to influence their expectations in the future.

What the Placebo Effect Means for Customer Success Teams

No, I’m not suggesting that you provide your customers with placebos. There is no sense in providing customer implementation and support that just looks like it works when in fact it is meaningless. What I am suggesting is that you take advantage of expectation effects to positively influence important metrics in your business like adoption rates, net promoter scores, churn and usage rates.

Confidence in Experts

Sometimes a placebo effect happens before the placebo is even administered. Some people feel better just by going to a physician in whom they place a great deal of confidence.

You need to carefully think about the types of signals you are sending. I see this all the time with my clients’ service teams. There are so many subtle signals we send that can either reinforce confidence or chip away at it.

Here are some examples.

Avoid hedging language. Instead of saying, “do you think this part-swap will work for your contractor customers,” say, “contractors are loving this new part, I can’t wait to hear your feedback.”

Consciously convey nonverbal professionalism. A white lab coat can go a long way in conveying confidence. Dress the part of a successful industry leader, whatever that means in your industry. It might be a suit if you sell to Fortune 500, a black turtleneck if you create mobile apps or a Kohler-logo polo shirt if you sell to new builders. Show up early and over-prepare. Fake it if you have to.

Take written notes. You’d be surprised how important this can be. One of my clients was taking notes during meetings on their iPhone. Their clients suspected them of checking email during the meeting and thought they weren’t paying attention, when in fact they were taking detailed notes. One of my favorite methods is to take written notes in my Rocketbook then transcribe those later using voice recognition tools on my phone. 

No-cebo Effects

If a person expects negative side effects, they are more likely to report what is known as a “no-cebo,” effect, where the placebo is credited for negative effects.

Every new experience comes with some level of nervousness and discomfort. Your new clients have heard about problems people have and are on high alert in the first few weeks and months. Unfortunately, people who are looking for trouble will often find it, and when they do, they will pin it on you for the changes you caused.

A swimming pool contractor once told me about a strategy he stumbled on while trying to combat a no-cebo effect suffered by new pool owners. He would occasionally have a customer say something along the lines of, “my neighbor told me that it takes a while to get used to the smell of chlorine.” When he heard that, he new from experience that customer was going to be looking for some negative side effects. So he started telling every new client, “I just love that weekly smell of chlorine after my pool guy leaves, it’s like the smell of a clean kitchen or fresh laundry. I know my pool is safe and healthy for my family. It’s a happy smell.” He preconditioned their expectation of an unavoidable side effect from negative to positive. Speaking of preconditioning…

Prior Conditioning Affects Expectations

In one placebo study, participants who received a placebo were more likely to report pain relief if they had been given a real pain reliever earlier in the study compared to participants who received placebos for the whole study.

The take away here is that you don’t always get it right – but timing matters. Do everything you can to get it right out of the gate and you’ll earn some good will later. If you blow your first few experiences with a client, they will expect future missteps from you even when you succeed.

You’re Going To Be Blamed for Bad Luck, So Take Credit For Good Luck

Illnesses sometimes go away for no known reason. They ran their course or your immune system kicked into overdrive. In these cases, many people in a placebo group credited the placebo for the positive effects. Likewise, bad effects happen when you’re ill no matter what. Many placebo-takers blamed symptoms like headaches on the placebo when they would’ve have a headache anyway because they have the flu.

It’s the same in customer support. One of my clients released a new user interface recently. It happened at a time when one of their clients was servicing an unusually large order. There were shipping issues with that large order that were totally unrelated to the UI – but guess who got the blame for the shipment delays?

You’re going to get blamed for problems you have no control over. So you might as well go out of your way to reinforce any positive effects, too. It’s pretty simple to do. When a customer tells you that they surpassed a goal for the month, congratulate them and tack on a reminder like, “don’t you love how that new user interface make it easier to create multiple orders?”

Remind Your Clients of Your Successes

Customer success managers are often reluctant to seem like they are selling or promoting. They don’t want to give any appearance of bias because they think it might affect the trust customers put in them. The opposite is actually true. Bragging about your own products and services just builds more confidence with your clients.

It turns out that Alzheimer’s patients often need higher doses of a drug treatment than other patients. Some studies seem to indicate that this is the placebo effect in reverse. They don’t remember that they took their medicine, so they are more likely to feel any remaining symptoms.

Don’t let your customers forget the work you’ve done or take you for granted. One of my clients sends out monthly reports on the results their software has provided to executives that might otherwise not think about their software until it’s time to write another check.