Today, businesses spend a ton of resources attracting new
customers without an understanding of what it takes to sustain a positive
customer experience (CX). In fact, surveys reveal 80 percent of companies
believe they deliver superior CX, yet only eight percent of their customers
agree. If you take your significant other out on a date, do you dress like a
slob and ignore them? Not if you want the relationship to continue – just as
you do with your customer.
According to Daryl Travis, author, "How Does It Make
You Feel?" and CEO, Brandtrust, in order to create a great CX it’s
essential to have an understanding of experiences that trigger the emotions that
drive your customer’s brand preference. Travis recently shared some tips with Retail
Customer Experience on how business can use emotion to create a better CX.
How Your Customers Feel
According to psychologists, what people remember about a CX
is determined by the intensity of emotions created in specific moments—not the
overall experience. “This is true for most experiences throughout our lives.
Our non-conscious mind categorizes and catalogues experiences according to the
nature and intensity of emotions,” writes Travis.
When processing new stimuli, the non-conscious mind
associates past memories and responds emotionally before rational thought
occurs. When neurologists discovered that 95 percent of thought, emotion and
learning occur this way, behavioral economists realized non-consious emotional
responses shaped by past memories determine customer attitudes and behavior—not
conscious, rational decisions.
Leverage Emotional Insights
to Build Trust
Travis says that when considering CX, it’s important to be
mindful that trust and faith are essential emotions. When customers perceive
your company as trustworthy, they buy your products. Demonstrating
trustworthiness can be done when a situation is negative as well. Trustworthiness is demonstrated by being
reliable and concerned for your customer’s needs. The company must demonstrate
that it will always act in a caring way toward the customer, no matter the
circumstances.
Build empathy
Even though budgets are limited, it’s important to invest in
a deep understanding of your customer. With this clarity, teams are able to
focus, certain that what they are doing matters to their customers. This is
where empathy building can help. It’s also important for senior leadership to
understand what customers experience throughout their daily lives. This often
shifts how they look at their business, sparking fresh thinking in an
empathetic understanding of customers.
Internalize the CX
For an initiative to succeed in improving the CX, senior
leadership needs to “live” the brand. This involves articulating the brand
promise internally so that people understand what is expected. Each aspect of
delivering a positive CX needs to be “caught, not taught,” according to Travis.
Leaders intent on changing employee behavior must do so by exemplifying the
vision for how the brand is to be experienced. By sharing an understanding of
the emotional drivers for a positive CX, it’s possible to refocus employees around
what works. Applied social science research has demonstrated that emphasizing
the positive rather than trying to eliminate the negative is effective in
improving an organization’s capacity for change.
Implement a Plan
Finally, it’s necessary for a work plan to be undertaken to
facilitate acceptance and adoption of the behaviors necessary to bring the
vision and values of the new CX to life throughout the organization. This
process will help to transcend ambiguities and inspire colleagues to
internalize and live the new experience promise.
Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist at IIR USA in New York City, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the tech industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.
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