TLF Gems Newsletter April 2025

Your monthly CX and insight newsletter from TLF Research

It’s not the numbers that are interesting. It’s what they tell us about the lives behind the numbers.

Hans Rosling

Do you have a library card

There's something nostalgically old-fashioned-seeming about them, and I bet a lot of you haven't used one in years...but it might be time to do something about that.

Aside from the obvious, a UK library card gives you access to free ebooks and audiobooks through Libby. With a Kobo reader you can even borrow them directly from your device.

Not only that, but with a library card you can sign up to Pressreader for free, giving you access to thousands of newspapers and magazines from across the world including The Economist, Science, Good Food, Rolling Stone, Wallpaper, Forbes, really almost anything you can think of.

Happy reading, and as always, feel free to get in touch with your thoughts or suggestions. I’d love to hear what’s caught your attention this month!

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

Here are 6 things we think are worth your time this month

VW Re-Introducing Physical Buttons

There's an entirely-predictable backlash coming against touchscreen controls, and Volkswagen is bowing to customer pressure to re-introduce physical controls for things like heating. Worth thinking about how your customers actually want to do things before you get seduced by the latest design trends! "Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car."

Read: VW Re-Introducing Physical Buttons

4 Elements of Strategy

Interesting and brilliantly concise post from Alex Smith on LinkedIn about the 4 elements of strategy: your new value, your key innovation, your customer story, and your company story. "Most businesses don’t even have ONE of these nailed."

Read: 4 Elements of Strategy

Low Cost Is Not About Cost-Cutting

Excellent article in Harvard Business Review outlining the rarely understood truth that "low cost" companies keep their costs low not by cost-cutting, but by investing in a clear customer proposition, efficient technology, and keeping their people happy. "Achieving the lowest-cost position is mainly about people and creativity. It almost always stems from some powerful customer-centric ideas that are exceptionally well executed."

Read: Low Cost Is Not About Cost-Cutting

The Future Of The Office

Well-designed interactive from McKinsey (you'll have to create a free account to read it) on the future of the office. Looking at changing demands for office, retail, and residential space they consider what the landscape may look like in 2030. "They need to be spaces with purpose, for connectivity, that are digitally enhanced, and that are oriented around sustainability."

Read: The Future Of The Office

Self Checkout Shrinkage & Growth

Intriguing stats from Kaiser Fung on the instinctively natural idea that people are more likely to steal (deliberately or accidentally) from self-checkouts. So why are retailers so keen to roll them out? Is it that the shrinkage costs are outweighed by lower staffing costs, or are they simply putting prices up to cover the losses? "44 percent intended to steal again using self-checkout kiosks."

Read: Self Checkout Shrinkage & Growth

What I'm Reading: Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer

This is not for everyone ("primer" is probably stretching it a bit!), but if you want to get to grips with causal inference this is a very good book, and a bit more accessible than Pearl's "Causality". The premise is that traditional statistical books/teaching focus on description of data when what we're really interested in is questions of cause and effect. "It is our strong belief that if one wants to move beyond mere description, statistical inference cannot be effectively carried out without thinking carefully about causal questions..."

What I'm Reading: Causal Inference in Statistics

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