How do positive and negative emotions impact your Customer Experience?

Elevation, Gratitude and Admiration.

These are the three distinct “other praising” emotions separate from Happiness that have been found to elicit different positive behavioral responses, a recent study shows.

Daniel R. Hawes blogs over at Evolved Primate that Positive emotions: “broaden one’s perspective and motivate one to do things that will build skills or resources for the future”.

In contrast, negative emotions generally: “narrow and focus one’s attention on the matter at hand to solve a problem”.

Think of the impact of these descriptions in regards to your organizations Customer Experience. Someone has a poor customer experience, their emotions influence their behaviour and they “narrow and focus” their attention on solving the problem – their altered emotional state. They may complain to the manager, moan to a friend or blog about it online. Whatever result, your brand is part of a negative story that extends beyond the initial poor customer experience.

Compare this to creating a positive Customer Experience, “broadening ones perspective and motivating one to do things that will build skills or resources for the future”. Provide customers with the tools and touch points to interact with your brand, and given a positive customer experience, they can express their improved emotional state. Coke’s Facebook Fan Page is possibly the best example of this. Their Facebook wall is an open book, anyone can write anything they want, yet 99% of comments are positive.

Is it no surprise that Coke’s brand message of recent years has been ‘Open Happiness’?

By Colin Shaw | Published: February 8, 2010