Emotional Caveats of Customer Experience
BY STEVEN ROSSON – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGIST
We’ve all had them: excellent customer experiences that turn us into brand fanatics—writing glowing reviews and shouting a company’s praises from the rooftops—and poor experiences that leave us warning everyone we know to stay away. I’ve been on both sides of this more times than I can remember! But the vast majority of experiences fall in between: a company does a great (or not so great) job at taking care of us, but does not evoke either response. For customer-centric brands that want to delight customers every time, this raises a fascinating question: is something deeper at play than simply the quality of our product or delivery that affects how customers feel and behave after the interaction?
One might logically assume a linear relationship between the quality of a customer experience and the response it triggers—that is, the better you treat me, the more likely I am to love and talk about your brand—but this is only true to a limited extent and reaches a point of diminishing returns once the customer’s needs are met. Something more subtle—something we may not even consciously recognize, but can explain scientifically—plays a vital role in elevating a good experience to the level of excellence, or making an otherwise average experience terrible.
I found my favorite articulation of this “missing link” in Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine’s Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. Expanding on concepts from an academic paper by Dr. Elizabeth B. N. Sanders, they coined a “Customer Experience Pyramid” that looks at experiences through the lens of 3 levels on which customers judge their experiences: “meets needs,” “easy,” and “enjoyable” as depicted below.
This resonated with me not only relative to my own experiences as a consumer, but also as a customer scientist who strives to understand the “how” and “why” behind customer behavior. To do that, let’s first have a brief refresher in neuroscience. Neuroscientists often talk about the human forebrain in three distinct parts:
THE “OLD” BRAIN
Our most basic thinking takes place in the brain stem and cerebellum; these are responsible for our basic survival instincts and innate avoidance of friction or pain.
THE “MIDDLE” BRAIN
The limbic system is responsible for regulating our moods and emotions and is also where long-term memory is encoded.
THE “NEW” BRAIN
The neocortex enables our higher-order thinking and is responsible for logic, learning, reason, conscious thought, and personality.
Most of our journeys as customers begin with the old brain subconsciously identifying an unmet need; it partners with the new brain to find and implement a solution with as little friction as possible. Looking back at the Customer Experience Pyramid, we might say that these functions make up the base and center of the experience: “Did I accomplish my goal?” and “Did I have to work hard to do it?” But where most experiences fall short, and what truly sets the excellent apart from the good (and the terrible from the poor), is their emotional impact. How did the experience make the customer feel? That is what the tip of the Customer Experience Pyramid represents, but “enjoyable” is only the beginning.
Establishing a true emotional touchpoint is your brand’s chance to tap into that sacred middle brain and activate the limbic system—getting your customers to create positive feelings, associate them with your brand, and then commit that association into their long-term memories—and it’s easier (and less awkward) than you might think. While it can mean actually forging a direct emotional link in communications with the customer, this is both difficult and risky. An emotional touchpoint can also mean simply piggybacking off an existing emotional gateway to associate your brand with either something the customer already feels good about or, in the case of negative emotions, the cessation of discomfort: essentially hacking into the hippocampus.
Jimmy Egeland, Elicit’s Creative Director, summed this concept up nicely in sharing his experience from Mind Meld, Elicit’s semiannual company brain-share and retreat. “Wait a second—work stuff mixing with precious memories? Come on, brain! Where are the sirens and intruder alerts?” Jimmy observed this “hippocampus hacking” first hand as his fond memories from the trip (and, consequently, the Elicit brand) took up residence in his brain’s most sacred space.
Elicit Data Scientist Kat Morgan experienced a similar phenomenon when ordering clothes from her online personal stylist; curious as to whether someone actually reads the notes customers write on their orders, she put them to the test by letting them know she was looking for something to wear to her mom’s Air Force Promotion. To Kat’s surprise, a stylist responded with specific recommendations that she said would be appropriate both for Kat’s business travel and the promotion ceremony, then congratulated her mom on the milestone. Although there was nothing particularly emotional or intricate about the exchange—the response was only a single sentence, and its absence wouldn’t have affected the ease of the experience or the extent to which it met Kat’s needs—the brand successfully leveraged what it knew about Kat to create an emotional touchpoint that built a positive brand association and allowed them to sneak into her long-term memory.
The same also holds true in the inverse and can make a bad experience even worse. When Jimmy ordered custom koozies for his annual backyard live music event and the company messed up his order not once, but twice in a row, his disappointment was palpable and didn’t stop at “they stretched my design.” He had invested significant time and energy in meticulously planning his event and designing the perfect koozie for it, giving the company a convenient ticket into his limbic system. Rather than leveraging this to commit a positive brand association into Jimmy’s long-term memory, they inadvertently used it to ensure he would never buy from them again (and would even go on to blog about the terrible experience). Jimmy explains why this was such a big deal to him and, not surprisingly, he does it in terms of emotion (emphasis mine): “Partygoers did not gasp at the distorted design, nor cringe at the touch of the cheap foam as I had feared, but I was certainly less proud to give them out than I wanted to be.”
Executing on this principle is not complicated; it hinges simply on being able to identify these emotional touchpoints within parts of the customer experience, and putting in place the processes and technology to leverage them. For brands that want to truly delight customers in today’s customer-centric landscape, simply providing a great product or service is no longer enough.
Emotional Caveats of Customer Experience
BY STEVEN ROSSON – CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGIST
We’ve all had them: excellent customer experiences that turn us into brand fanatics—writing glowing reviews and shouting a company’s praises from the rooftops—and poor experiences that leave us warning everyone we know to stay away. I’ve been on both sides of this more times than I can remember! But the vast majority of experiences fall in between: a company does a great (or not so great) job at taking care of us, but does not evoke either response. For customer-centric brands that want to delight customers every time, this raises a fascinating question: is something deeper at play than simply the quality of our product or delivery that affects how customers feel and behave after the interaction?
One might logically assume a linear relationship between the quality of a customer experience and the response it triggers—that is, the better you treat me, the more likely I am to love and talk about your brand—but this is only true to a limited extent and reaches a point of diminishing returns once the customer’s needs are met. Something more subtle—something we may not even consciously recognize, but can explain scientifically—plays a vital role in elevating a good experience to the level of excellence, or making an otherwise average experience terrible.
I found my favorite articulation of this “missing link” in Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine’s Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. Expanding on concepts from an academic paper by Dr. Elizabeth B. N. Sanders, they coined a “Customer Experience Pyramid” that looks at experiences through the lens of 3 levels on which customers judge their experiences: “meets needs,” “easy,” and “enjoyable” as depicted below.
This resonated with me not only relative to my own experiences as a consumer, but also as a customer scientist who strives to understand the “how” and “why” behind customer behavior. To do that, let’s first have a brief refresher in neuroscience. Neuroscientists often talk about the human forebrain in three distinct parts:
THE “OLD” BRAIN
Our most basic thinking takes place in the brain stem and cerebellum; these are responsible for our basic survival instincts and innate avoidance of friction or pain.
THE “MIDDLE” BRAIN
The limbic system is responsible for regulating our moods and emotions and is also where long-term memory is encoded.
THE “NEW” BRAIN
The neocortex enables our higher-order thinking and is responsible for logic, learning, reason, conscious thought, and personality.
Most of our journeys as customers begin with the old brain subconsciously identifying an unmet need; it partners with the new brain to find and implement a solution with as little friction as possible. Looking back at the Customer Experience Pyramid, we might say that these functions make up the base and center of the experience: “Did I accomplish my goal?” and “Did I have to work hard to do it?” But where most experiences fall short, and what truly sets the excellent apart from the good (and the terrible from the poor), is their emotional impact. How did the experience make the customer feel? That is what the tip of the Customer Experience Pyramid represents, but “enjoyable” is only the beginning.
Establishing a true emotional touchpoint is your brand’s chance to tap into that sacred middle brain and activate the limbic system—getting your customers to create positive feelings, associate them with your brand, and then commit that association into their long-term memories—and it’s easier (and less awkward) than you might think. While it can mean actually forging a direct emotional link in communications with the customer, this is both difficult and risky. An emotional touchpoint can also mean simply piggybacking off an existing emotional gateway to associate your brand with either something the customer already feels good about or, in the case of negative emotions, the cessation of discomfort: essentially hacking into the hippocampus.
Jimmy Egeland, Elicit’s Creative Director, summed this concept up nicely in sharing his experience from Mind Meld, Elicit’s semiannual company brain-share and retreat. “Wait a second—work stuff mixing with precious memories? Come on, brain! Where are the sirens and intruder alerts?” Jimmy observed this “hippocampus hacking” first hand as his fond memories from the trip (and, consequently, the Elicit brand) took up residence in his brain’s most sacred space.
Elicit Data Scientist Kat Morgan experienced a similar phenomenon when ordering clothes from her online personal stylist; curious as to whether someone actually reads the notes customers write on their orders, she put them to the test by letting them know she was looking for something to wear to her mom’s Air Force Promotion. To Kat’s surprise, a stylist responded with specific recommendations that she said would be appropriate both for Kat’s business travel and the promotion ceremony, then congratulated her mom on the milestone. Although there was nothing particularly emotional or intricate about the exchange—the response was only a single sentence, and its absence wouldn’t have affected the ease of the experience or the extent to which it met Kat’s needs—the brand successfully leveraged what it knew about Kat to create an emotional touchpoint that built a positive brand association and allowed them to sneak into her long-term memory.
The same also holds true in the inverse and can make a bad experience even worse. When Jimmy ordered custom koozies for his annual backyard live music event and the company messed up his order not once, but twice in a row, his disappointment was palpable and didn’t stop at “they stretched my design.” He had invested significant time and energy in meticulously planning his event and designing the perfect koozie for it, giving the company a convenient ticket into his limbic system. Rather than leveraging this to commit a positive brand association into Jimmy’s long-term memory, they inadvertently used it to ensure he would never buy from them again (and would even go on to blog about the terrible experience). Jimmy explains why this was such a big deal to him and, not surprisingly, he does it in terms of emotion (emphasis mine): “Partygoers did not gasp at the distorted design, nor cringe at the touch of the cheap foam as I had feared, but I was certainly less proud to give them out than I wanted to be.”
Executing on this principle is not complicated; it hinges simply on being able to identify these emotional touchpoints within parts of the customer experience, and putting in place the processes and technology to leverage them. For brands that want to truly delight customers in today’s customer-centric landscape, simply providing a great product or service is no longer enough.
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