Rick Denton (00:22)
Welcome back CX Passport listeners. Welcome to today's episode. My guest is Dr. Laura Bevin-Yates, PhD and SVP of Partnerships and Marketing at Immersion Neuroscience. Now hang on to that word for a bit, neuroscience. That's something we talk about a lot in CX and yet that's what we're going to be doing today and I am so excited about this one. Laura has spent years at Ipsos running their Neuro and Behavioral Science Center, working with brands like Google, P &G and Mars to understand

Well, not just what customers say, but what they actually feel. She now leads growth and marketing and immersion, a platform that measures emotional response to experiences in real time using a smart watch. No lab, no needles, just a watch on your wrist and data that tells you what your customer actually felt. I mean, how stinking cool is that? Laura, welcome to CX Passport.

Laura Beavin-Yates (01:19)
Thank you so much, Rick. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited for the conversation today.

Rick Denton (01:22)
Yeah, well, clearly you can hear my tone that

I, this is so out of my normal realm and I can't wait to learn from you. ⁓ In fact, I may be having some oxytocin spikes right now and you have told me that oxytocin spikes when people have a meaningful, deep experience. How is that showing up in the way when customers connect with a brand?

Laura Beavin-Yates (01:34)
you

Yeah, it's exactly the same as when customers connect with humans, actually, Rick. So, you know, the way that the brain works is that we want to anthropomorphize things, we want to feel a connection. And, you know, many of the brands that we interact with become household names, they become things that we use throughout our day. And we do develop a connection, an emotional connection to those things. And so brands, experiences can absolutely create these spikes in oxytocin, which

demonstrate that that was a meaningful interaction, just like interacting with a person, a family member, ⁓ a customer service interaction. So yeah, absolutely. Oxytocin can show up and create these meaningful experiences that are deep, memorable, and drive action in unique ways other than just human interaction.

Rick Denton (02:31)
Can I, I want to ask, well, first of all, I wish I could say the word anthropo-phys- see, I can't even, like, I know, I know the word. I just am not going to, well, I tried and I can't possibly pull it off. And I totally, like I tried, I do the same thing. Heck, I do it with not just brands, my desk, heck, the cat probably gets some of that element too. When we talk about meaningful experiences with oxytocin, you know, you and I are laughing and we're smiling, but is the definition of meaningful both a-

Laura Beavin-Yates (02:36)
I was a little nervous trying that one.

you

Yes.

Rick Denton (03:00)
hyper positive one and does it include that hyper negative one? Because I'm thinking of a brand that has really disappointed me.

Laura Beavin-Yates (03:08)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Rick, ⁓ you know, lot of the my life I've spent studying oxytocin, I started academically. And that's originally how I originally we were measuring oxytocin release when it came to ⁓ via blood draws. And it's interesting, because originally, oxytocin was only known for its role in mother infant bonding, ⁓ in, you know, maybe pair bonding. However, what we discovered when I was working in graduate school through the Center for neuroeconomic studies is that

Rick Denton (03:22)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (03:37)
Oxytocin is a meaningful neurochemical that is released when we have experiences that we're fully connected to, that our brain is getting value from and that we're all in on. When I say our brain getting value from something, that means our brain is like a resource allocator and budgeter, honestly. So our brain actually weighs only 3 % of our body's weight, but it uses 30 % of our body's resources. That's a lot, right? And that's not an equal distribution. So the brain is always trying to think about how do I conserve resources?

Rick Denton (04:03)
No.

Laura Beavin-Yates (04:06)
And if I'm expending those resources, I want to stop doing it if I'm not getting something meaningful from it. So the release of oxytocin, it happens when we have a meaningful experience, something that we're fully connected to, our brain is fully dedicated to. And that absolutely can happen in negative experiences. So for example, ⁓ you know, when we have something like 9-11 that occurred, everyone remembers where they were at at 9-11 or any other significant negative experience.

Rick Denton (04:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (04:34)
And I absolutely guarantee that the brain released oxytocin during that time because that is a learning moment. It's a moment that the brain needs to store and remember. Now, having said that, typically what we see is oxytocin will release to create that memory. However, we don't continue to lean into that negative experience because our brain wants to get back to homeostasis, right? So when you think of something like a negative brand experience, usually what we'll see is if it's something really significant. ⁓ I remember back when Volkswagen... ⁓

Rick Denton (04:43)
Hey.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (05:02)
My dad was a hippie and he always had great stories about Volkswagen. But then there was that case in time where they had made false claims about the steps that they had taken. Yeah, absolutely. I distinctly remember that happening because that completely shifted my view at the time of Volkswagen as a brand. That was a negative experience and it's something that carried over. Now, I still have this weird, if I were considering buying Volkswagen, I would have to go do my research.

Rick Denton (05:05)
Hehehehehe

The emissions. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

My gosh.

Laura Beavin-Yates (05:32)
So yeah, so it can happen in these negative moments.

However, what we tend to see, especially in the way that we're measuring experiences, is you don't see this consistent high release. It happens, it's a peak. But then the brain starts to look for other things to put those attentional resources toward because it wants to get back to homeostasis and to that kind of medium.

Rick Denton (05:51)
I'm like, I'm

the fact that it hits both the highs and the lows, I can see a real...

path towards measuring. this is what brands want to know. Like we talked about in the introduction, what a customer wants to feel. What I'm really intrigued by is, okay, how do you measure this without a needle stick? Because that seems like that is the barrier. No one's going to go walk around for a brand and go, yeah, jab me when I walk in the store, but without a needle stick, how is that possible?

Laura Beavin-Yates (06:17)
Right, absolutely.

Yeah, so I mean, when we originally were researching this and discovered the relationship between oxytocin and meaning, we were doing blood draws. And so oxytocin is a neurochemical, but it also circulates as a hormone in the body. Now, ultimately, the reason, the way in which we're able now to be able to measure the further release of oxytocin without a needle stick is we did 20 years of neuroscience research to get there. So, you we were looking at blood draws, but then we realized, and actually we were

Rick Denton (06:43)
Yeah

Laura Beavin-Yates (06:47)
given a grant by the US government who challenged us to see, is there a way that we could do this? And we tested everything that we could. We looked at breath analysis, we looked at lasers pointed at the forehead to see if we could detect change in blood in the forehead. And what we ultimately discovered from all of this research is you can actually listen to small, nuanced changes in heart rhythm over time. It's not about your heart rate. It's not about faster or slower. It's actually a distinct pattern of change in your heart rhythm.

that then can be a signal that is a signal that tells us that oxytocin release has likely occurred. And the reason that this makes sense is the brain, when it releases oxytocin, oxytocin binds to the vagus nerve, which then innervates the heart. So when that binding happens, it literally changes the footprint or patterns of the heart's rhythm over time. And we are able to listen to that through smartwatches by grabbing second level heart rate and then processing those through algorithms, looking for that distinct.

rhythmic change signaling oxytocin release.

Rick Denton (08:12)
Holy crap. it makes me now realize that the fact that I'm a polypsi major, the word psi just simply doesn't belong in that major. What you're describing is so beyond, and I'm loving every bit of it. And it's that, like this act, this concept of real time measurement. You talked about this, you're listening, you're absorbing this information and.

When we think about companies and customer experience observations, so much of what they're doing is derived by looking into the past. Post experience surveys, which are dying away, and NPS and scores and looking backwards. So what are those tools fundamentally missing that neuroscience actually gets to see?

Laura Beavin-Yates (08:56)
Yeah, that's a great question. They measure different things. So when we look at something like a post experience survey, and I will say, you know, I've spent years, ⁓ you know, kind of poopy, poopooing, post, you know, self report will say, however, that it can give context. So that can be important. However, the challenge is, if you're only using a survey that is sent to, you know, a visitor three days a week after an experience, first of all, you're not measuring their

actual experience that the brain is having. And the actual experience the brain is having is actually different than the feelings that we reflect on and are consciously aware of after. So one thing that's important to kind of distinguish is our real time emotions are something that happens automatically, unconsciously, and that's something that is happening through the brain. Our feelings are actually after the fact, they are subjective, they are conscious.

and they are based on the context of our life, what's around us, what's happening today. If I went to a Cleveland Cavaliers game, you know, a week ago, and then you send me a survey and you want me to fill out that survey and actually give you an accurate reflection of my real-time experience or how that experience impacted me, you're just not gonna get it because I'm going to be responding based on the fact that the dog is barking in the background, I had a stressful day, all these other elements that come in.

So the challenge is, again, self-report can add some context, but if you're making decisions based on someone telling you what they plan to do, like an NPS score, we are very bad as humans. There's tons of academic research that shows we are horrible at actually telling you what we are going to do in the future. But our brain knows, because our brain actually in real time releases these neurochemicals that then mark an experience as significant, meaningful, and worth saving for later.

Rick Denton (10:33)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (10:43)
just like me learning that news with Volkswagen. It wasn't about how I felt. It was about this moment that triggered in my brain to say, hold on, this doesn't make sense with the narrative that I have in my head. This is something you need to remember because this is meaningful and new and this could actually help you navigate the world. And that is something that is very difficult, again, to self-report on. I understand those things happen as somebody who has a background in neuroscience, but that's something that most people aren't thinking about. They're simply...

Rick Denton (11:06)
Yeah, right.

Laura Beavin-Yates (11:10)
doing their best to remember what was happening a week ago, you know, halfway through the game, and you're going to get a mistaken interpretation of that, which is exactly why these surveys do not predict whether or not people actually go and buy your product, return for tickets, tell somebody about your experience, recommend it, et cetera.

Rick Denton (11:29)
I'm thinking about is a guest that I had on two or three years ago, almost at this point. And if you're watching the YouTube, I'll put the card up of the episode. can click to it. And she's had a fan experience for the Orlando Magic. And I'm thinking about when you mentioned the Cavaliers, she immediately came to mind. was like, imagine if, and then there some way that the team could gamify it to where people opted into this during the game or something along those lines and made it fun.

for the fan and the experience of the fan having there and then all of the information that that team could derive from that fan's experience that the fan doesn't even know that they're really experiencing, they're just feeling it.

Laura Beavin-Yates (11:56)
yeah.

Right?

Right? Absolutely. Because that's the thing. mean, you don't, you know, it's difficult. You don't want to interrupt a person in real time when they're in a game and say, hey, tell me how your experience is going. Right? Or if I'm at a resort, if you come and you stop me and say, hey, would you fill out a survey? No, no, because I'm here to enjoy the experience. It's the worst, right? So if you want to understand what's happening in real time, you should do it passively. You should do it in a way that is unbiased, that removes all of the other noise, because the brain doesn't lie. No better am I able to

Rick Denton (12:22)
⁓ I'd be so pissed. my gosh.

Yeah.

Ha.

my gosh. Yeah.

Laura Beavin-Yates (12:36)
A, know what's happening in my brain than I am to know what's happening in my liver, processing lunch, but I also can't control those things, you know? And I mean, imagine thinking about like fan experiences. Imagine if you could also help curate what's happened before or after the game. I mean, if you have this kind of data that your fans have opted in to share, you can create surprisingly awesome experiences heading into the stadium before they even get there, when they're in the parking lot.

Rick Denton (12:41)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

my gosh, absolutely.

And the resort one made a lot of sense because heck, know, think about the, go to the Mexican all-inclusive from time to time, you're wearing a wristband, there's all sorts of elements that the, the, the guest wouldn't even have to really change their resort experience, just the willingness to opt into that. So actually let's, let's do that. Let's talk about it. So this is cool. Like this is the stuff that makes for incredible National Geographic episodes. It's something that's fun to talk about.

Laura Beavin-Yates (13:18)
Right.

You

Rick Denton (13:32)
But where does it get practical? Like I'm imagining that, and we've got listeners that are customer experience leaders at a contact center or in a retail operation. They're saying that that's cool. That's nifty. But how do I actually use this? How does this become practical for businesses that really want to improve experience right now?

Laura Beavin-Yates (13:50)
there are a lot of different ways that you can do this and there are two sides to it. So there's of course measuring your customers, whether that be in a visitor experience, in a fan experience, you're at a resort. Again, because we actually connect with smartwatches,

And it's fully opt-in, but because we connect with smartwatches, it allows you again to passively have an understanding of your guest's experience, no matter where they're at. On the flip side, thinking about something like a contact center, obviously that's a little bit more challenging because already contact centers, I mean, I get spam calls all the time that I'm not answering.

Rick Denton (14:16)
Right.

Laura Beavin-Yates (14:20)
So when we think about contact centers, there's an element when it comes to also looking at the person who is making the calls. So if I am all in, if I am fully immersed and connected and deeply absorbed in this experience, the likelihood that you also are is much higher. So ultimately my comfort, my confidence in conversations and what I'm saying when I'm calling someone, that also is an important element to creating a fantastic customer experience because

Rick Denton (14:38)
Mmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (14:50)
Obviously, the happiness, the satisfaction, the commitment and investment of the people who are doing the calling matter just as much. Their ability to be able to connect with the person on the other end of the line. There is something in the brain called synchronicity. And actually, when my brain is releasing oxytocin in a conversation like this, Rick, I can almost guarantee that yours probably is too, because our brains understand when we're all in. Now, this is a little bit harder virtual, but of course, there are signals such as intonation of the voice, you know, such as

Rick Denton (15:03)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Laura Beavin-Yates (15:19)
my hand movements and the way that I'm leaning in in this visual conversation. So it's two-sided. And then when you also think about things like sales, again, the same thing applies. So if I am somebody who is responsible for selling vehicles or selling sweets for a fan experience like we were talking about, my ability to be deeply connected in conversation, in the pitch I'm making, ⁓ the presentation that I'm doing,

That is important and I can actually use my own data as a self-reflection element where I work and practice and become a better person for sales, a better person for a customer contact center.

Rick Denton (15:56)
Yeah.

Okay, so that, I wasn't thinking about going down this path today, but now you've opened up a new line for me and that is, we're talking about the customer's experience. And great, I'm the employee, being measured, and so the synchronicity and the things you're describing there, what about employee experience? Can the same approach be used for companies to understand their actual delivery of employee experience and work to improve on that employee experience?

Laura Beavin-Yates (16:24)
Absolutely, Rick. mean, honestly, we're measuring a human brain state that is a positive connected human brain state, right? And we actually, I mean, in addition to measuring experiences, we have an individual app for people to use for their own emotional wellness, because it turns out that when the brain is fully immersed and all in an experience, that's a positive thing. So absolutely, when you think about an employee experience, what we're talking about is an unbiased passive measure.

Rick Denton (16:32)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (16:50)
of the extent to which people are, again, fully immersed and present in an experience. And so if you're trying to understand how your employee experience is going, that could be looking at the employee experience over time. It could be looking at the employee feedback and seeing, this person giving me realistic feedback when they're reporting this? Now, of course, when it comes to looking at something like biometrics, we are anonymizing that data when it's sent out. However, when it comes to something like an employee experience, then the

Rick Denton (17:15)
Yeah

Laura Beavin-Yates (17:19)
the employees have to trust that aspect as well. So there is a little bit of a cultural thing. It makes me think back to when I was ⁓ working at a company where I was on a small team and it was at a very large company, small team, large company. They sent out an employee survey. I was not at all honest because there were only five people on the team. And it was very clear to me that my answers could obviously be tied to my person. So yes, the short answer, this absolutely can be used with employee experience.

Rick Denton (17:38)
Right, yeah.

Laura Beavin-Yates (17:47)
The kind of challenging aspect there is that oftentimes when you have a culture that lacks trust, where you need to improve the employee experience the most, there may be a little friction actually in bringing in something like this, just transparently.

Rick Denton (18:08)
Laura, I think we might get into some of that privacy aspect of this later because that's an interesting element of this. I though want to spend a little time releasing even more Oxytocin because for me, travel is an incredibly meaningful experience. And when I travel, it is such a treat when I get to have exposure to the First Class Lounge, which is what we're going to do today. So I invite you to join me here in the First Class Lounge, release a little Oxytocin. We'll quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Laura Beavin-Yates (18:36)
My dream is Barcelona. So I got the opportunity to go to Barcelona in, I think it was 2018. And it was incredible for so many reasons. The food is amazing. mean, you know, I love travel for food. I love travel for culture. I remember I got to see classical guitar, two people playing at the same time in this beautiful old church. And the best part is I'm a huge Salvador Dali fan. And he has a museum in Fugure, Spain, which I'm

Rick Denton (18:48)
Yay!

Laura Beavin-Yates (19:06)
totally butchering because my Spanish is still, or my Catalan is not up to par. But yes, if I could go back tomorrow, I would, or today, if I could just be in Barcelona on a beach enjoying, you know, delicious food, then I would absolutely be there.

Rick Denton (19:08)
You

I, well one off mic, we're gonna talk about some of your favorite places, cause the Denton family is heading to Spain this summer. And so I'm looking forward to hearing what you've got. What, so we're excited about that. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Laura Beavin-Yates (19:28)
Yes!

I was just chatting with somebody yesterday who's based in Italy. He's in Northern Italy. I would love to go to Italy. I'm a huge fan of anything Italian, food. I've got tons of Italian friends who I realized at a point in life, I was celebrating my 40th birthday in Los Angeles, and I happened to realize three of my favorite female friends were all Italian. So we've got a picture with them all doing the Italian. So yeah, I would love to go to Italy and it's not happened yet, but that's definitely high on my list.

Rick Denton (20:04)
that's awesome. man, okay. Now I'm hearing a recurring theme of food, and so you and I are very aligned there. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Laura Beavin-Yates (20:04)
make homemade pasta and just, yeah, cut around the countryside. Yeah.

⁓ You know, like I mentioned, I love Italian. I'm a huge lasagna fan, but I also, my husband and I both cook a lot. And I really love the challenge of creating dishes that are challenging. So, for example,

I've, you we make Pesole from scratch. We've made Mole from scratch. I love a lot of Latin cuisines. I'm trying to think there's, I love fried chicken. I love Southern cuisine. It's hard for me to actually just pin down one. We could probably have a whole podcast about my favorite foods. Yes. I love it.

Rick Denton (20:38)
Yeah.

Hey, the newest offshoot, CX Passport, the first class lounge edition. Absolutely, we'll get into that. Well, as much

as you love it, there may be something that you were forced to eat growing up, but you hated as a kid.

Laura Beavin-Yates (20:56)
Yeah, you know, it's actually funny because there I've always been a huge fan of food. ⁓ I think to Brussels sprouts because as a kid, I actually loved them and everyone around me hated them. I know I was the odd one. My parents always now my niece and nephew who are around all the time because they were close in age. My parents would require that you take one bite of everything. Right. And literally they had a standoff one night at the table where they would not. So

Rick Denton (21:23)
haha

Laura Beavin-Yates (21:24)
I am pretty easygoing. would say I didn't like coleslaw as a kid and now I've definitely come around to it. But yeah, you know, I'm the odd one out. I like almost everything. I'm sorry. I apologize.

Rick Denton (21:29)
Okay.

Well, I thought I was aligned with you with Brussels sprouts was super excited and then you led me astray. That's going to be

another meaningful moment there. Now where you live today, the coleslaw is pretty darn good on a pulled pork barbecue sandwich. So I'm glad that that's something you have learned to love. Laura, it's time for us to leave the first class lounge. What is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without?

Laura Beavin-Yates (21:46)
absolutely. Yes.

I prefer not to leave home without my husband. He's a great travel partner. Honestly, it's funny because he is. He's a great travel partner. We have so much fun together. But realistically, I would say, I mean, it's got to be the fun earrings, right? Because I get so many compliments on earrings. And I feel like, ⁓ you know, being able to connect with other, find those little moments of connection. One of the things that I've really loved about traveling as I've gotten older is recognizing a single simple compliment to a person.

you know, a TSA agent, a person who's at the airport bar who's overwhelmed, that little compliment can go so far. And what I've noticed is when I wear my really crazy earrings, it encourages people to engage and say, Oh, I like those. then you have an open opportunity to kind of to, to feel more at ease and to kind of build those relationships. So again, husbands, number one, if I can bring in, but number two, if I can't, I gotta have the earrings.

Rick Denton (22:58)
Laura, I love that it was immediately husband, but you know, hang on. It's the earrings too. That's absolutely bright. And folks, you're listening to this as most of you do, but I'd encourage you flip over there to YouTube and have a look at Laura's earrings. They are fantastic today. They really are. Laura, back to neuroscience and not just neuroscience, you've got in this world where you are blending neuroscience, neuro marketing and customer experience. I got to tell you, those are words that I don't usually use in the same sense. Heck, most of those words, I don't even

Laura Beavin-Yates (23:00)
you

Thank you.

Rick Denton (23:27)
usually use. What do you see as the connective tissue between those worlds? And then how did that path shape how you think about experience?

Laura Beavin-Yates (23:38)
You know, I think that connective tissue is humans, right? I honestly, that's the... When I was... I I became fascinated by neuroscience when I was in high school. I heard a story about Phineas Gage, who had gotten a rod through his brain and survived, but had personality changes. And to me, that was fascinating that someone could sustain brain damage and still function and still, you know, exist in the world even with personality change.

Rick Denton (23:41)
Huh?

Laura Beavin-Yates (24:06)
It made me really innately curious about humans and understanding their backgrounds, where they came from, the context. And when you think about a customer experience, is everything, first of all, is an experience that we're having as humans. Our brain does not differentiate necessarily between this being a conversational experience. I mean, it does, but it is all experience.

The one thing that is consistent across all of us humans is that we have brains. And our brains, sure, there are differences. We have neurodiversity. There are all these kinds of things that make people unique. However, there are also core foundational elements in the brain that we can understand our kind of default modes and default ways by which humans operate. Again, we want to connect with people for the most part. We want to feel seen. We want to see ourselves when we're looking at marketing content, for example. So when I think about customer experience,

Rick Denton (24:45)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (24:57)
The importance of customer experience is trying to understand what is the customer's experience. But the methodologies and the tools that we've had to do that, as we talked about earlier, have been biased and challenging. And while they can tell us a small bit of the story, they're not telling us the full story. And that means that decisions about how to improve customer experiences have been made using the wrong data. We also look at things like past behavior, foot traffic, how many tickets were sold. Those were backward looking.

Rick Denton (25:20)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (25:26)
We look at other things that we think have succeeded around us, and we use that as a model for how we create a different experience. But then that just creates an echo chamber. So what we need to do is we need a way to actually truly understand how is the brain of a person, which is what drives us, what moves us to action, which changes behavior, which creates the memories and encourages us to come back to something. We need to know what's happening at that level in order to truly understand.

Rick Denton (25:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (25:54)
the customer experience, the human experience. And the challenge is that so many people who are creating experiences, whether it's a content experience, a customer experience, visitor, I could go on and on listing any kind of experience. Historically, we've been using the wrong data to try to improve things. And we need to go to the point of the brain to have the best possible data that we can to help make the world a better place, honestly, because we keep making mistakes.

Rick Denton (26:24)
my gosh Laura there is so much gold in what you just said there even like that idea of look we've been designing experiences with the wrong input but the idea that all of this feeds into this

this just creation of experience, whether that's the formal role or title or anything like that, just that's what does it. That's what is sort of manifesting us as humans and what that absolutely looks like. Laura, there's, I want to go back to that privacy element because I hadn't, and I hadn't anticipated talking about this, but as you were talking, I realized, yeah, some of this stuff gets a little sensitive when you really start talking about the biology of a human. How are,

you seeing practical applications balancing the wonderful treasure troves of

data with the need for people to maintain privacy. How do you see that balancing?

Laura Beavin-Yates (27:15)
Yeah, it's, know, from my perspective ⁓ and from the point of neuroscience, it's always been really important to have that privacy aspect in mind. And at Immersion, that's something that we focused on very early on, whether it be through B2B applications where you're measuring other people's experiences or even when it comes to measuring my own experiences through the Six App, you know, measuring my own emotional fitness.

Rick Denton (27:24)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (27:38)
it has always been very important for us to make sure that we are anonymizing that data. So the way that our technology works is that your raw biometrics go to a mobile app that then converts over to our metrics and then is sent to the cloud in a fully anonymized manner. So it's really important for us to have that A, biometrics are not stored so that those are never traceable back to the individual and then the metrics themselves, unless a person agrees through paid research or something like that where they're...

Rick Denton (28:06)
yeah.

Laura Beavin-Yates (28:06)
where their information can be anchored to that demographics, et cetera. And even then companies are not like saying, this is Laura Bevin's data, for example. They're saying this is a ⁓ female who's within this age range, et cetera. So that aspect is really, really important. And even like I said, with something like the Six App, which is an emotional wellness app, that is something where if you connect with other people, that is fully up to you. We don't share that data anywhere. If you decide you wanna share.

For example, we're working with a group ⁓ who's creating a new program ⁓ that is focused on increasing confidence and communication. In that scenario, the choice to connect with other people in the cohort, for example, is fully on the users. The choice if you want to share the data with the people who have curated this program, that's fully your choice. It's a fully opt-in thing.

Rick Denton (28:58)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (28:58)
But

your data is always your data. And that's something that's really, really important to us. And I think that's equally important to anyone that we work with, because at the end of the day, the goal is again to make experiences better. And to do that, you have to have your consumer in mind. Now, the other aspect of that is also sharing that data back with the individuals. I joined a session yesterday about lived experience and the importance of inviting people who have lived experience into thinking about creating experience.

Rick Denton (29:12)
Right.

Laura Beavin-Yates (29:28)
experiences that others will have, or thinking about that when you're creating products, etc. And they were talking about the fact that it's so important to share data back to those people who are sharing with you. And that is also true when it comes to capturing neuroscience data. If you have a customer who is coming through your museum and they agree to opt in to share their data while they're in your museum, it's important for us through our app, we surface their own data back to them as well. But also you can do things like offering them

Rick Denton (29:53)
Yeah.

Laura Beavin-Yates (29:55)
insights into what you're learning and how you're improving based on their data. It's an exchange when you think about customer experience, or at least it should be.

Rick Denton (29:59)
Yeah. Well, and that's,

yeah. And I think that's what would cause me to be motivated to opt in is what am I getting out of it? Cause you had nifty brand that you're going to get everything out of me, but what am I getting back out of it? you and I have come to know each other that Michael

Laura Beavin-Yates (30:06)
Right. Of course. Right.

Yeah.

Rick Denton (30:14)
us.

Laura Beavin-Yates (30:15)
so and I'm super thankful. So Michael is from the EI Empowered team. ⁓ And so he and Sandra are working on a program called EI Empowered, which is focused on helping people become unshakable communicators. And I'm thankful for Michael for bringing me to you, Rick, because Michael and Sandra with their program are utilizing our app from immersion called six and six is an emotional wellness app and emotional fitness app. It's interesting because when immersion launches the company, our goal is to help

brands, creators, understand whether or not they were connecting with their end consumers. It could be conferences, it could be educators, there were a lot of different kind of realms, but the goal was you have someone who cares about measuring someone else. And for years, we heard people say, my gosh, I love participating in this, however, I am really excited about seeing my own data. Like, how do I measure myself all the time outside of this? And...

Rick Denton (31:06)
Right.

Laura Beavin-Yates (31:09)
You know, I might butcher it, but I know Steve Jobs is like, you don't just create something to create it. Like, you know, don't just create features you create for like a need. And this wasn't enough of a need to guarantee that we could deliver, you know, value to people. So we held off for years. And then back in 2022, we had some research where we were partnering with a telecom company who had brought some technology into a retirement living facility. And they wanted to understand, did that change the experience for the people living in the facility?

So we partnered with them to passively measure immersion, measure the extent to which people were having these moments of oxytocin release and engagement. And what we discovered from that research actually is that we were able to use our metrics to predict mood and energy up to two days in advance for individuals. Yeah, so at that point, that was unexpected outcomes for us. Now it makes sense given the way that the brain works because...

Rick Denton (31:55)
Whoa.

Laura Beavin-Yates (32:04)
Our brain does not want to live in the kind of world that we currently live in where we are being pulled eight million directions. That is not a happy state for the

Rick Denton (32:11)
Amen.

Laura Beavin-Yates (32:14)
that is the world we live in. Everything is vying for our attention. And that again is a resource problem for the brain. The brain's like, where do I put these resources? I'm not getting value back. The brain likes to be fully connected.

in an experience where it is absorbed and it is learning and it is getting value. And it turns out that if you have six of these moments a day, then that is actually a precursor for thriving, reporting thriving later. If you have four, you're doing well, but if you have six, then those people are more likely to report, yes, I'm feeling great, I'm energetic, I'm in a great mood consistently. So that learning and that peer-reviewed research led us to create six.

Rick Denton (32:47)
Huh. Yeah.

Laura Beavin-Yates (32:54)
called six because the goal is to get six of these key moments a day, six moments of full connection oxytocin release. But that was a catalyst for us where then we had the research that showed, in fact, this is an important thing for humans. And now it's not just, hey, cool, I can see my brain, but it's, you can have a tool that allows you, that's a passive measurement tool that allows you to see what are the things that personally create key moments and spikes in oxytocin for you so that you can think about

Rick Denton (33:22)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Beavin-Yates (33:23)
How do I recreate those in the future? And the beauty is these things change over time. What gives me key moments today may differ in a month based on my context in life. So that was really the catalyst. And the goal is to be a tool that helps people self-reflect on what's allowing them to be fully present versus scattered and stressed and yeah.

Rick Denton (33:43)
this is good.

This is really good. I'm glad that we, one, I'm glad that Michael introduced us and through the weaving together. And that's something that's really intriguing. I would imagine that folks might want to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to neuroscience, your approach to customer experience, maybe the six app in general. What's the best way for folks to get to know a little bit

Laura Beavin-Yates (33:49)
You too.

Hahaha!

Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn. So my LinkedIn is Laura Bevin Yates. And also certainly you can find information about immersion now by looking up immersion. As I mentioned, know, Michael and Sandra are creating also a great program where SIX will be an accompanying element to it to help individuals going through the unshakable communicator program to self-reflect. So also you can discover SIX through that program, which is also an incredible program designed to help people again, become more confident communicators, which I think is important for all of us in this world.

Rick Denton (34:34)
think so. I think so indeed. Well, I will get links to all of that down there in the show notes. Folks can have a look there, click there and get to know more about Laura, get to know more about six and get to learn, get to learn. See clearly I needed to learn how to be a better communicator. Woo, we'll get there. We will get there. Laura, this has been a lot of fun from the laughter, but also just the learning and not just the ivory tower.

Laura Beavin-Yates (34:47)
Hahaha!

Rick Denton (35:01)
collegiate level learning, really the practical application, how a company can use this and then ultimately how even we as individuals can use this has been incredibly valuable for me. And I know it's been incredibly valuable for the CX Passport traveler today as well. Laura, thank you for being on CX Passport.

Laura Beavin-Yates (35:17)
Thank you so much for having me, Rick. It's been such a fun conversation. I really appreciate the invite.