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How to make you shop 'til you drop and shop again
By Wu Jiayin |
January 24, 2009, Saturday
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"PEOPLE buy emotionally and then justify it with logic,'' said Buck Rodgers, IBM's former vice president of marketing.
That's the reason to build a great "customer experience,'' which is vital to a successful company, according to Colin Shaw in "The DNA of Customer Experience.'' Shaw is CEO of a market research and training company.
Research shows that emotion counts for up to 50 percent of the customer experience, says Shaw.
Using stories from his own consulting experience, Shaw makes the case that it is in a company's best interest to provide customers a good experience, rather than just treating them as a transaction.
He provides useful tips to control and enhance their customers' experience.
It is usually assumed that customer experience begins when customers walk through the door and ends when they make a purchase and leave.
It's true that customers are more likely to buy from a store with a comfortable layout and amiable, professional assistants.
When people enter your store, Shaw advises, you must engage them in terms of who they are and what they are feeling right then. If you project indifference and passivity, or foist your priorities on your customers, you can drive them away.
Starbucks, for example, works hard on creating a comfortable atmosphere and providing good coffee. It succeeds in getting more business from person-to-person marketing than from advertising.
Customer experience is much broader, however, and begins long before buyers walk through the door - it lasts long after they buy the products or services and depart.
"Organizations need to consider how they deal with the post-experience and define where the end of the experience is,'' says Shaw.
Even if customers are satisfied with their purchase experience, they can still develop negative attitudes toward a company if it doesn't provide satisfactory after-sales services.
When customers call the company for support after buying its products, they are already frustrated and likely embarrassed or angry about having to call, says Shaw.
Smart companies turn that around and give them an experience that makes the customers appreciate them.
Remember, he advises, customers who like you are your least expensive, most effective form of advertising.
The author identifies four clusters of emotions that either destroy or drive added value.
While the "Destroying Cluster'' drives customers away by evoking negative emotions and lowers a firm's value, the "Attention,'' "Recommendation'' and "Advocacy Clusters'' add different values to the firm.
The attention cluster directly determines how much customers will spend in the short-term. But people won't start building loyalty until they feel recommendation cluster emotions. They become the company's active promoters when they fall into the advocacy cluster.
"There is an obvious interconnection between an emotionally engaging experience, the strength and duration of resultant recommendations, and revenue generation,'' observes Shaw.
So it makes sense to reduce the number of customers in the destroying cluster as much as possible while increasing the number of loyal customers.
To achieve this, ensure that customers always feel "valued, cared for, trusted, focused and safe'' instead of "stressed, neglected, unsatisfied, frustrated, disappointed, unhappy, hurried or irritated.''
As achieving this requires support of top management, Shaw gives practical advice on educating executives who fail to see the importance of customer experience.
Having such executives approach the company as a customer is a good idea. Arranging meetings between them and real customers also helps.
In short, only when all levels of the company reach the consensus that creating great customer experience is vital to their business will they take pains to improve their customer service and reap the rewards.
That's the reason to build a great "customer experience,'' which is vital to a successful company, according to Colin Shaw in "The DNA of Customer Experience.'' Shaw is CEO of a market research and training company.
Research shows that emotion counts for up to 50 percent of the customer experience, says Shaw.
Using stories from his own consulting experience, Shaw makes the case that it is in a company's best interest to provide customers a good experience, rather than just treating them as a transaction.
He provides useful tips to control and enhance their customers' experience.
It is usually assumed that customer experience begins when customers walk through the door and ends when they make a purchase and leave.
It's true that customers are more likely to buy from a store with a comfortable layout and amiable, professional assistants.
When people enter your store, Shaw advises, you must engage them in terms of who they are and what they are feeling right then. If you project indifference and passivity, or foist your priorities on your customers, you can drive them away.
Starbucks, for example, works hard on creating a comfortable atmosphere and providing good coffee. It succeeds in getting more business from person-to-person marketing than from advertising.
Customer experience is much broader, however, and begins long before buyers walk through the door - it lasts long after they buy the products or services and depart.
"Organizations need to consider how they deal with the post-experience and define where the end of the experience is,'' says Shaw.
Even if customers are satisfied with their purchase experience, they can still develop negative attitudes toward a company if it doesn't provide satisfactory after-sales services.
When customers call the company for support after buying its products, they are already frustrated and likely embarrassed or angry about having to call, says Shaw.
Smart companies turn that around and give them an experience that makes the customers appreciate them.
Remember, he advises, customers who like you are your least expensive, most effective form of advertising.
The author identifies four clusters of emotions that either destroy or drive added value.
While the "Destroying Cluster'' drives customers away by evoking negative emotions and lowers a firm's value, the "Attention,'' "Recommendation'' and "Advocacy Clusters'' add different values to the firm.
The attention cluster directly determines how much customers will spend in the short-term. But people won't start building loyalty until they feel recommendation cluster emotions. They become the company's active promoters when they fall into the advocacy cluster.
"There is an obvious interconnection between an emotionally engaging experience, the strength and duration of resultant recommendations, and revenue generation,'' observes Shaw.
So it makes sense to reduce the number of customers in the destroying cluster as much as possible while increasing the number of loyal customers.
To achieve this, ensure that customers always feel "valued, cared for, trusted, focused and safe'' instead of "stressed, neglected, unsatisfied, frustrated, disappointed, unhappy, hurried or irritated.''
As achieving this requires support of top management, Shaw gives practical advice on educating executives who fail to see the importance of customer experience.
Having such executives approach the company as a customer is a good idea. Arranging meetings between them and real customers also helps.
In short, only when all levels of the company reach the consensus that creating great customer experience is vital to their business will they take pains to improve their customer service and reap the rewards.
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