How can an emotive experience influence customer behaviour?

Research shows that "we always need emotion to nudge us into making a decision", as NewVoiceMedia (NVM) observes. In their recent whitepaper, the company teamed up with industry thought leader Martin Hill-Wilson to gauge how important emotive CX is in the enterprise.

The importance of emotion

As the report points out, Forrester recently found that how an experience made customers feel influenced loyalty. In fact, this influenced customers more than a product's effectiveness and ease of use. NVM's 2018 report into UK consumer brand switching also found that 63% of people are more likely to buy from a brand or customer service agent they had a positive emotional connection to. On the other hand, 42% of customers said that they would switch brands due to unacceptable service experiences. "Marketing campaigns with purely emotional content perform twice as well as ads with only rational content," the whitepaper states. Indeed, "a great deal of this emotional influence takes place at a subconscious level."

Emotive CX for customer interaction

Emotive CX "begins by knowing what you want the customer to feel at the end of the journey", according to the whitepaper. In order to do so, companies should undertake research to determine the common emotions associated with particular CX journeys. Speech and analytics tools are excellent at identifying "the common emotional language used in a sales or service journey." Advisor or inside sales team sessions can then validate these tools with the "aim of recalling certain journeys and recalling their associated emotions." In addition to these, the report stresses the importance of customer input regarding Voice of Customer (VoC) technology. As a result, companies can benefit from insights into how customers were feeling after particular interactions. However, the whitepaper also stresses that the "best" outcome does not mean nudging customers into a "pre-determined" set of emotions. Rather, authentic CX involves maintaining an "inquiring, open mind" when choosing metrics and the method of measuring CX.

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