The Hindu Business Line : Work on your emotional signature bookmark

What is the big issue that businesses face today? “That everything is the same,” says Colin Shaw in The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value ( www.landmarkonthenet.com). “Organisations are selling similar products and services to the same people. This, along with massive improvements in technology and more efficient offshore manufacturing, enables price reduction, which drive s commoditisation which in turn drives down profits and ultimately shareholder value.” The next battleground, therefore, is ‘customer experience,’ declares Shaw. He defines customer experience as an interaction between an organisation and a customer. “It is a blend of an organisation’s physical performance, the senses stimulated and emotions evoked, each intuitively measured against customer expectations across all moments of contact.”

Research cited in the book says that 50 per cent of customer experience is about emotions. Yet, companies ignore this fact and go about working on the physical aspects of the experience, such as “delivery timescales, lead times, range of products, the time it takes to answer a phone call, the cost of the mailer going to customers, bill inserts, and so on.” Begin to work on your emotional signature, urges Shaw. He draws a chart to explain ‘emotional signature of value’, with value on the x-axis and loyalty on the y-axis. Low on both axes are ‘value destroyers’, which leave customers ‘irritated, hurried, unhappy, disappointed, frustrated, unsatisfied, neglected, or stressed,’ predominantly due to organisational actions that are ‘fixated and blinkered, looking solely from the internal side of the equation and not from the customers’ perspective.’

Value drivers are three — attention, recommendation, and advocacy, in the ascending order of importance. The ‘attention cluster’ incorporates emotions of being interested, indulgent, stimulated, exploratory, and energetic. This cluster can have a direct impact on short-term spend, says the author. It can give you “a temporary high and attract customers to your organisation.” For example, Hamleys, ‘the finest toy shop in the world’, has interesting and engaging demonstrators throughout its store. “They do not try the hard sell but, instead, entertain the customers and make them laugh to gain their attention. They undertake intriguing magic tricks that are unusual and exciting, making the experience very memorable.”

The ‘recommendation cluster’ has customers who feel valued, cared for, trusted, focused, and safe. Safety is a basic requirement in many experiences, emphasises Shaw. For instance, a manger holding a meeting in a hotel in a rough area may end the meeting early. Safety is not just about physical safety, but of anything that you value, such as “an important document, customer data, personal details, financial details, intellectual property rights …”

The ‘advocacy cluster’ is about happy and pleased customers who would ‘proactively tell people about your organisation without prompting’. Feeling pleased is above satisfaction; and happiness is a state of contented joy, says Shaw. He describes the case of a couple that visits a hotel and asks for the same room they had stayed in on their honeymoon 10 years ago. A common reaction may be to provide them the room they want, and deal with the transaction like any other, and thus lose a golden opportunity to turn the couple into advocates. An enlightened organisation would instead be treating such couples differently: with a congratulatory welcome on arrival, a bottle of champagne in the room plus a personal message of the hotel manager, “as well as a copy of the newspaper from that day 10 years ago …”

Unputdownable.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali