Chapter 3

Emotions or how you feel and the customer experience

The ‘E’ word is of course ‘emotions’ – a word with which we are all familiar, and to greater or lesser degrees comfortable either acknowledging or talking about. This is true in our private lives and this difficulty we feel in talking about emotions transfers into the business world. While it is undeniable that emotions play a part in our experiences they are too often seen as too difficult to address or just a by-product of an experience rather than the critical driver. It is much easier to design processes around rational behaviour – if we do this the rationally thinking customer will do this. The reality is that we need to think not only about the rational but also the irrational customer – one who enters an experience in a particular state of mind or whose state of mind changes during the interaction, and we need to recognise, plan for and respond to that. So we will consider:

• How do emotions impact your business results and bottom line?
• How can we connect emotions into experiences?
• How do emotions impact on your ability to achieve your aims in experiential terms?

The ‘E’ word is one often glossed over in corporate life as something too fluffy and unmeasurable to be considered. Yet it is emotion that drives significant activity. Put simply, while companies are generally uncomfortable trying to build in and understand the impact of emotions, so much of what happens is about how customers ‘feel’ and, hard as it is, emotions have to be considered seriously.

Processes seek to tell us that we should design for the rational customer – however, it is when we are at our most emotional and least rational that we make some of our biggest decisions. Understanding the emotional state of mind of a customer should change the way the company acts and behaves, and recognising this is a huge area of opportunity. This challenges some of the lean process thinking and is illustrated through real-life examples that all readers will be able to associate with.

Emotion in the automotive industry

We all know that car companies spend an incredible amount of money designing their vehicles. According to a Germany Trade & Invest report, Germany alone spent €17.6 billion in 2014 just on automotive research and development (R&D) – 93,000 (full-time equivalent) researchers are employed in the automotive R&D section in Germany alone. The issue is that the investment is in the design, manufacture and production of the physical vehicle – no doubt there is much love and attention and emotion built into those vehicles, but the same level of investment is not made in translating this into the experience of the end customer. You need to be confident that your experience is every bit as great as your product.

With this scale of investment and the incredible range of features and nuances built in to make the car stand out in a crowded market it is a challenge to convey these messages to the potential customer.

As an example, consider an engagement with a major car manufacturer in which you ask how many messages you would like to convey to a customer throughout the purchase life cycle.

As a team we brainstormed the list and it ran to over 100 different messages, from the price to the hook that holds the filler cap when you fill up, to the dashboard indicator light that shows which side of the car the fuel cap is (yes, most cars have that indicator light today and even some of the manufacturer’s own team didn’t know it!).

We then listed the opportunities to communicate them; through the website/media when the potential customer researches independently; when they arrive on the forecourt; when they have a test drive; when they buy the car and then when they collect and drive away. That gives around five opportunities to transmit the messages:

1. Visit the website
2. Read media/brochure
3. First forecourt visit
4. Test drive
5. Collect car.

Some messages are more important than others so we then ranked them and began to work out where it was best to give the messages.

We then checked this against what actually happens today. One thing the team had in the current experience was a checklist at the point of vehicle handover that was used by the forecourt team to ensure they had passed on what was deemed to be critical information. This was literally ticked off and then the customer was asked to sign to say they understood – completion of these tick lists was also a key metric and created a notional ‘green light’ on the individual scorecard.

This approach is not unique and will be being mirrored around the world as we speak. The process of a checklist makes perfect sense if you discard the emotional state of the customer, a fact reinforced by my own experience with another car brand weeks later when I acquired a new car. In this case the checklist at opportunity 5 above (collect car) had around 30 items on it from how the in-car computer works, through to how to change the clock and use the electric tow bar – and finally, yes, the lamp that tells me which side the filler cap is and how to open it! As he attempted to force feed me this information, as part of the process, all I wanted to do was escape the forecourt and drive my new car. As the minutes dragged by, my frustration levels grew. I was excited about my new car and not in receive mode at that moment – in the end he was hanging through the driver’s door window trying to explain more and more until I said, ‘Where do I need to sign?’ He rather sadly indicated a line at the bottom of the page that I immediately signed without reading and cheerily waved him goodbye. The simple fact is that I was not in the right ‘state of mind’ to listen to what he wanted me to, even though it was helpful. No doubt someone else has experienced the same thing and then rather embarrassingly gone to fill up the car and not been able to open the filler cap! The challenge at that point is to impart the minimum information for me to be safe and not embarrassed at the filling station, so basic controls like lights, windscreen wipers/washers, brakes and of course the filler cap release!

In experiential terms that also means that a really important interaction was not maximised in terms of creating a positive memory of the dealership experience. What should have been a celebration of the purchase turned into an exercise in escape.

If you look at experiences through the emotional lens and consider the mental state of your customer as part of that, then you design a very different experience. If you actively design the end-to-end experience of that segment of the journey you will end up with a differentiated experience that works for the customer and the employee.

In this case, particularly with higher-end sales, the innovation in terms of the experience solution was to offer a follow-up visit by one of the experts to answer any questions that you might have – two weeks in you have tried the basics – both to reinforce knowledge and to add in a couple of things that you wouldn’t otherwise have known. The silver lining being that there is another legitimate opportunity to engage with the customer post sale and reinforce that positive brand memory.

Remember the old ones are the best when it comes to quotes and here is a classic from the late great Maya Angelou, who said: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’

Recognising the value of emotions

The Maya Angelou quote goes with me everywhere and it plays absolutely to the heart of the customer experience. It is a principle that can be used to drive decision making in terms of customer experience – we are in the memories business.

In customer experience terms we need to take account of emotions at two levels, one of which is reactive and the other proactive.

On the one hand we need to be aware and predict how customers are likely to be feeling at particular interaction points. This will be outside the control of the company but will be key to how the experience is delivered. If the customer is likely to be nervous, the experience should be set out to reassure; if the customer is going to be excited, we need to build on that excitement; if the customer is going to be agitated, we need to be calm, collected and confident.

On the other hand we plan to create an emotional reaction from the customer – which could be positive surprise: ‘that was much easier than I thought it was going to be’; or it could be joy or fun; or perhaps it could be relief. The point is that we can do this by recognising the likely emotional state of the customer as they begin the interaction and we can plan for a positive outcome.

In both cases we need to understand and react to or create emotional reactions from customers. In order to do this we have to actively design that experience with an emotional outcome in mind and then equip people to deliver on that outcome through training, skills, access to data and systems, and then measure the results.

It is through this approach that customer experience professionals can show their company that experiences that are designed are not necessarily more expensive, and in most cases can be executed at little or no cost and be connected to the bottom line.

Emotion in financial services

When considering the practicality and value of how to input emotional understanding into actively designing an experience, consider the following example.

An insurance company was selling general insurance to small retail businesses and wanted to sell in a rider to the core policy in the form of ‘continuity insurance’– award yourself a gold star if you have any idea what this actually is! (If not, the answer is: ‘it covers the loss of income that a business suffers after a disaster. The income loss covered may be due to disaster-related closing of the business facility or due to the rebuilding process after a disaster.’)

The sales of the rider were not as good as the company expected and they couldn’t quite understand why such a valuable additional cover was so often rejected by customers? The calls were largely scripted so by listening to call recordings and reading the script it was possible to identify where the call was failing both the customer and the company.

Most customers contacting an insurance company are in defensive mindset – the industry seems to almost pride itself on impenetrable language and confusion. Who would ever call the price of the service a ‘premium’, suggesting it is higher priced than normal? In this situation the customer wants to feel they have some form of control and does not want to appear stupid or naive.

With this emotional context it was clear that when an agent, after selling the basic package, asked ‘would you like to buy continuity insurance?’ the customers rejected the opportunity not because it was a bad idea, but because rather than appear stupid by asking what it was they simply defaulted to ‘no thanks’. Listening to the calls both the slight momentary hesitation and the way people said ‘errr, no thanks’ told you they didn’t actually know what they were turning down but were too embarrassed to ask. The agents faced a further problem because they were working on the standard call centre measure of call duration, meaning that they just took the first answer and moved on in order not to exceed the allotted call time.

Working with the agents, removing the internal barriers around key performance indicators (KPIs) and putting the customer emotion of potential embarrassment into the mix, the call was redesigned. The agents were asked to describe what was meant by ‘continuity insurance’ using a story to illustrate how it helped a customer. Using these anecdotes, instead of ‘would you like to buy continuity insurance?’, the call was redesigned to take away the customer embarrassment. Now it went more along the lines of: ‘Would you like to buy continuity insurance? Before you decide can I just take a moment to explain what continuity insurance actually means as I found it a little confusing when I started . . . [insert your favourite customer example].’ The call duration was extended which was a negative in terms of lean process, but the potential for conversion was significantly improved.

Cost to the business was low: implementation was easy and quick, staff felt more engaged and listened to, the customers were more informed, and the overall experience improved.

Financial services provides a perfect environment for customer experience to thrive as a positive driver of brand loyalty. However, in countless surveys they appear at the lower end of the customer experience league tables, with the exception of the US insurer USAA, which has consistently bucked the trend and shown that you can create really positive experiences in the sector.

Of all companies, in customer experience terms you could say that ironically insurance companies are truly blessed. An industry that is run by accountants and actuaries and talks non-stop about numbers and risk profiles actually has an amazing emotional proposition to deliver.

Insurance companies have what many businesses would love to have – their customers calling them at a real time of need, of heightened emotions driven by pain, worry, vulnerability. When you have an accident or a problem with damage to your property or have lost a valuable item, often you will call the insurer before even your family. You are in a heightened emotional state and what happens over those first few minutes and then beyond will truly shape your decision making about loyalty (or not) to the company, and beyond that your advocacy to friends and family.

The rational versus irrational

It was noted in the introduction to this chapter that rational and irrational are key components in the emotional debate. Traditionally, companies plan and ‘design’ processes that are linear, they make assumptions about how the rational person will respond and seek to minimise the number of steps to drive efficiency. Most business process mapping uses the company need as the key arbiter, and does not take into account how a customer might be ‘feeling’ at any one moment and how those feelings might need to be addressed.

For example, in process map terms having 10 days of ‘white space’ between making an application for credit or a mortgage is not a problem (I define ‘white space’ as a period when there is no communication with the customer – this could be measured in minutes, hours, days or weeks depending on the interaction; it could also be characterised as that awkward silence that we all recognise from day-to-day life). In process map terms it is represented by a straight line on a page between request and response, but in emotion terms the customer is desperate for contact. Even a holding note could have an exponential impact in terms of reducing stress and improving how the customer feels at this point of high stress and tension. Recognising this emotional vulnerability, one financial services company sent text messages informing the customer that their mortgage application had moved from Department X to Department Y, reassuring the customer that the application was progressing.

The other assumption that companies make when creating their customer-facing processes is that when we enter their company space, whether physically or virtually, we adopt a persona which means we are going to ‘act as a customer in their world would’. Suddenly I am thinking like a rational and perhaps knowledgeable mobile phone customer or logistics customer, but of course I don’t take on that persona: I am still Alan and still have all the other issues that I face, and other things on my mind which the company is never aware of.

Personas

One solution to this is to create personas which represent the customer, these are typically pen picture portraits of the customer group which describe in some detail the characteristics of that particular customer group. They can include pictures of the typical customer, details on their domestic and business life, age – however, once again they rarely include emotional content, how that particular person feels themselves in specific situations and relative to other customer groups. Personas should have a strong emotional overlay if they are going to truly reflect the customer. For example, how do they ‘feel’ about technology; are they time rich or time poor; and how does that impact on how they ‘feel’ about elements of the customer experience? And for an insurance example, considering how upset and even distraught a customer might be at the point of contact.

Remember a customer is not a ‘blank sheet of paper’ when they engage with your experience

Choosing where to focus on emotions

It is not possible, practical or necessary to design all experiences for all emotional eventualities. Viewing house details in a property search is not going to be a priority interaction when it comes to introducing emotions; the day of moving into a new home would be the right time.

By definition, a moment of truth or a pain point in the customer experience is characterised by a heightened emotional state and it is possible to predict the likely state of mind of the majority of customers at those trigger points and introduce that as a key driver of design and process at those points. When starting on this emotional journey, as we identified earlier it is relatively straightforward to isolate which interactions merit real focus on the emotional component – both what the customer is feeling and what you want them to feel during and post the interaction.

Customer experience disaster recovery

While the idea of getting inside the irrational mind of a customer may seem difficult, the reality is that it is not and once there we can rapidly create scenarios that will become trainable executions in the workplace. Recognising that failures will happen and preparing for the situation is not an organisational weakness, rather it should be seen as an organisational strength. In the same way that companies have ‘disaster recovery plans’ for everything from a computer meltdown to the offices being destroyed by fire, companies should have disaster recovery plans for bad experiences.

Not every experience needs a recovery plan but where there is a high risk to business of that failure then it is required. If a major IT system fails what will the front of house team do?

Back in my retail days when electronic till systems were relatively new we had a disaster recovery experience in case of power outage. An experience I was called on to use more than once! It was simple: we closed the doors, asked people to stop shopping and make their way to the tills – at that point the team at the checkouts would estimate the value of the shopping, always erring on the low side, and then agree that with the customer. Thankfully in those days it was always cash or cheque so payment was easy. The customers, while sometimes unhappy at not being able to complete their ‘shopping task’, were nevertheless delighted to have got what they always saw as a bargain. We turned what could have been a bad experience into something better and more memorable.

In companies today major project investments that will go through an investment appraisal should have a section covering the ‘customer experience what ifs’, which can cover both initial deployment and then ongoing operational.

All chief financial officers should be aware of the business risk of an adverse impact on customers when customers make decisions based on emotional reactions to a problem rather than necessarily logic. Just think about the issues facing the car manufacturer VW following the disclosures about cheating emission tests and the customer emotional reaction to this loss of trust.

When O2, the UK arm of the Telefónica mobile telephone company, had an outage on their mobile network that impacted huge numbers of customers, and garnered column inches in the media, they had a disaster to deal with. While the first issue was the technical fix, the second was the impact on customer trust in the reliability of their service and the potential for mass defection. In response and by way of apology, regardless of whether you were directly impacted the company issued all O2 customers with a credit for use against O2 products.

There will be executives that would see that kind of response as ‘avoidable cost’ or ‘high risk’ and would therefore never deliver on that unwritten aspect of a company promise. That emotional bond between customer and company that far exceeds any mission statement or values list or even regulatory ‘requirement to provide compensation’. While I am unaware of the redemption rate, from experience, it will have been low in reality but the gesture carried significant weight with customers. A company showing an emotion-based reaction and humility will linger in the memory.

Remember having customer experience defined as a key risk on the company risk register is a great way to raise the profile and secure budget approval for customer experience developments