Customer Experience Podcast

What Customer Emotions Drive the Most Value

15 years ago, in Munich, I was asked a question I couldn’t answer when presenting to an insurance company. The person asking understood what I was saying about evoking the proper emotions in a Customer Experience. No, he wanted to know how much money he would get back by investing in my idea.

I didn’t know.

That was in 2004. For the next two years and in partnership with the London Business School, we undertook research to answer that question. After millions of answers from thousands of respondents in hundreds of countries, we discovered the answer. We discuss what we found in our research on this episode of The Intuitive Customer.

We learned there are 20 emotions that either drive or destroy value in a Customer Experience. When I say value, what I mean is whatever an organization is trying to do with the business, whether that is increasing revenue or minimizing costs or increasing loyalty. The value part of this statement is a bit like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books.

The twenty emotions are each part of one of four clusters. These clusters include:

• The Destroying Cluster: Evoke these emotions, and you will not increase value for your bottom line, but instead lose it.
• The Attention Cluster: These are the emotions your marketing department is responsible for, meaning they get the customers interested in what you have to offer.
• The Recommendation Cluster: The recommendation cluster has the emotions that satisfy customers and are also the foundational elements of a trust relationship, which can lead to a recommendation when the customer is asked for one.
• The Advocacy Cluster: These are the emotions that not only create loyalty but also make your customers your active advocates to their friends and family.

Here’s a funny story about the Advocacy Cluster. When the statistician was revealing the results of the study to the group, he referred to the Advocacy Cluster emotions as the “big daddies” of Customer Experience. They are because they deliver big daddy results.

Many organizations have made progress about emotions in business. That is to say, they recognize that emotions play a part in business. However, we still have some work to do on being specific. To that end, in our global Customer Experience consultancy, we recommend knowing the answers to the following two questions:

1. What is the emotion you want to evoke?
2. Which emotions drive the most value for your organization?

Without the answers to these two questions, you can’t move forward to the Advocacy Cluster, at least not on purpose. You could luck into it, I suppose. However, I always heard that luck favors the prepared.

Listen to the podcast in its entirety to learn more about what customer emotions drive the most value for your Customer Experience.

The Intuitive Customer podcasts are designed to explain the psychological concepts behind customer behavior.

If you would like to find out from one of our CX consultants how you can implement the concepts we discussed in your organization’s marketing to improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.

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