Introduction
A customer is a person who buys your product and services in return for certain needs and requirements. These certain requirements from customers involve a mix of some expectations, some concerns, some assumptions, etc. from the brands.
To a broader spectrum, there are emotions behind every purchase your customers make.
Harvard did research on customer emotions to drive profitability and growth. Here are some of the interesting finds below.
- Customers who are emotionally engaged shows 3X more recommendation for the products and services.
- Emotionally engaged customers are three times more likely to make repeat purchases.
Why customer emotions are not yet fully leveraged?
- Lack of advanced tools to study emotions and their direct impact on customers and business strategy. As a result, it difficult to bring the results to scalability.
- Regardless of the known importance of customer emotions, business strategies still don’t consider when and how to associate emotions with customer connection.
And that is why it’s important to understand customer emotions and how it helps in engagement and growth strategy. The four aspects of customer emotions are mentioned below.
The four important aspects of customer emotions
Brand Loyalty builds up with Emotional connections
Customer emotions are the key source that encourages brand loyalty and advocacy towards the products and services.
With time, the relationship between customers and brand grows and there are multiple factors that work behind it. Such as emotional thinking, rational thinking, and other external factors.
Building brand loyalty is not easy especially when there are numerous competitors in the market. One has to be ready with purpose driven marketing and business strategies. When a new customer shows a preference for a product or service, there are rational factors behind it. Such as the least pricing, more features, better support, etc. But once a customer makes a purchase, then it is the sole game of customer emotions to build brand loyalty.
According to a study, 44% of customers would prefer emotional criteria while recommending any product or service to others. Also, it’s important to know that 3% of customers recommend products to others based on the company’s values.
Some important questions a new user may consider before associating with your brand at an emotional level. Such questions could be as follows.
- Is the brand providing what was promised to customers?
- Are the features as simple as explained during the presentation or demo?
- Is the customer support active throughout the day as mentioned on the website?
- Is the new customer provided with the right guidance or not?
Some emotional parameters a customer might consider to become a loyal customer are as follows.
- Does the customer feel happy and satisfied with the product/ service?
- Does the customer find it complicated to use the product?
- Does the customer feel angry and sad for making a purchase?
Therefore, focus on building different aspects of emotional building with customers that increase the lifetime value. The above questions may shed light on the emotional responses, which grow with time, whereas the user’s rational perspective diminishes.
Maintaining customer emotions is a to-and-fro path
Many a time, brands assume that their work is accomplished in acquiring new customers and driving sales. However, the most important aspect that is ignored is to take care of your customers as your friends and family.
You take care of your close ones by knowing their interests, problems faced, possible solutions for them, and so on. The same goes for your customers.
To maintain two-way communication with your customers, you should keep in check for their requirements and concerns. Some of the possible ways to show this to your users are as follows.
- Take regular feedback from your customers. In fact, the study shows that 70% of your customers expect you to work on their feedback for better customer relationships.
- Work on that feedback and show it in your new product updates if possible. This will not only make your customers feel valued, but they will prefer your brand over others. The customer who is heard is likely to stay with your brand as loyal customers.
- Make new changes in your website design based on your customers’ suggestions. Some important questions that could be asked here are: Are your customers facing problems while navigating your website? Is your website design user-friendly and clean? Etc.
- Do regular surveys and polls and ask your customers what content they would like to consume. Whether it is an ebook they want? Or short blogs, case studies, and so on.
Knowing your limits to understand your customers
75% of customers expect a brand to know why they have chosen their brands. In addition to that, 52% of customers want their favorite brands to know how satisfied they are. Knowing your customers and gathering useful data is important. But, what more important is to make use of the data in the right and appropriate way.
Customers don’t expect brands to send them ads based on their browsing habits. Nor do they want to receive unnecessary sales calls regarding plans and other marketing events. Bothering users multiple times creates a poor brand experience. And, this would result in customers associating negative emotions with your brands.
Three emotional factors lead to good customer emotions.
Trustworthiness
Understand your customers with the intent of creating personalized experiences. Once users receive the experience they expect from your brand, it will build the trust factor among them.
Brand Integrity
Brand integrity refers to how your customers perceive your brand in terms of its products, services, authority, reputation, etc. It is easy for customers to know if your brand is failing to meet their requirements.
Imagine that you make a purchase from a brand based on its reputation. And what you receive after the purchase is not as promised as it sounded initially.
This would result in a decrease in brand integrity and trust.
Honesty
Customers relate to their favorite brand as honest. Honest brands make a genuine presence in the market. Some of the things through which you can show your brand honesty are as follows.
- Convey your product features in a genuine way.
- Mention your pricing as uniform across all the platforms.
- Tell about the right timelines of your new products that your customers are expecting.
- If your customer’s requirements can not be resolved with your products and services, then convey them clearly to them. Instead of keeping them waiting for long and preventing them from switching to the next brand.
Customer emotions through consistency
Customers trust their favorite brands. And, before trust, they expect your consistent presence everywhere.
Consistency is what drives your audience towards you. Your customers would expect the same and positive experience across all your touchpoints.
Your brand should communicate in a single manner and tone, be it from online engagement to retail store experience. Brand consistency builds higher expectations from customers and build customer loyalty.
A consistent brand experience deepens the customer relationship.
Just like developing yourself personally, a brand requires extra care and development. Carefully engaging your customers in the right brand character will always add to your brand reputation. And, no matter the place, your customers will always associate your brand as their favorite and most preferred.
So, a consistent brand should understand the below parameters.
- Brand voice is how your brand sounds, feels and looks while talking to your customers.
- Understand your brand both externally and internally to have a consistent voice and thought leadership.
- Providing regular and useful content to your customers increases the trust factor and makes you a popular brand.
Some important elements to building the right customer emotions
Customer emotions play crucial roles from the beginning and end of a customer journey.
Below are some of the elements that strengthen the customer emotions for your brand.
Be a good listener!
To make the right use of customer emotions, make your brand a good listener.
Being a good listener as a brand strikes at the right place in your customer’s heart. A customer has many requirements. At times it’s possible for them to be frustrated or building up a lot of hassle in mind to look for the right products and services.
Instead of start selling right away, listen to each and every aspect of the customer’s requirement. Once customers feel they are heard, it will create positive emotions with your brand.
Storytelling
Every brand has a story to tell. When users come to experience how your brands speaks and express common concerns and strategies. This is where the brand builds up the first impression. Storytelling evokes emotions from the customers and makes them trust the brands.
To become a storyteller, a business strategy should be well researched and understand the audience, the tone, the goal of the story, for example, helping small businesses in engagement, and others concerning aesthetics.
Airbnb is known as a popular brand worldwide with its storytelling approach. The brand connects various travelers to suitable destinations and experiences local hospitality. It is the actual user-generated content that creates a genuine story for the audience and brand to grow simultaneously.
Excitement
An exciting brand brings in positive energy among employees and customers. When every content asset educates users or creates awareness for different topics, it evokes excitement among customers.
When you create content like out-of-the-box infographics, a research study, etc. that is difficult to find somewhere else, it brings a sense of excitement. And your customers will always await your next social media post or next blog for continuous engagement.
