Emotionally Connecting with Your Customers

Most brands want to connect emotionally with their customers but few actually do. What does it take to create that emotional connection?

Brands that create emotional connection are deliberate about achieving it. First, those brands and their brand owners often have a strong set of values, values that they ultimately share with their customers. For example, Patagonia's almost reverent love of the outdoors and a pristine environment. Or Tesla's and Elon Musk's dream of a post-fossil fuel world. Or FOX New's focus on a very specific view of the world.

Next, those brands need to really understand their customers. They need to possess deep customer insight. This usually happens through qualitative research, often using guided imagery and projective techniques.  They need to understand customer self-perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, values, hopes, fears and anxieties. We helped Footjoy do this to refocus its brand from superior functional attributes (keeps your feet dry on a wet course) to a self-expressive benefit - The Mark of a Player.

Next, one must carefully design the customer experience. This may include customer journey mapping and customer touch point design. Often these brands create customer experience or engagement manager positions to maintain focus on the customer experience.

Next comes building the customer experience into the culture. Disney does this well, as does Zappos, Nordstrom and Starbucks. One of my favorite examples of this is Ritz-Carlton's "Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen." If you are interested in creating a better customer experience,  I would encourage you to read Be Our Guest (Disney), The Zappos Experience, The Nordstrom Way - Customer Service Excellence, Leading the Starbucks Way and especially The New Gold Standard (Ritz-Carlton).

At Hallmark, we pursued a Legendary Service initiative, in which we encouraged customer facing employees to deliver service that is so unexpected and extraordinary that those service moments became the basis of widely told legendary stories.

This notion of emotional connection needs to work its way into the brand's essence, mission, vision, values, promise, unique value proposition, archetype and personality. That is, it needs to become part of the brand's DNA.

One way we work with our clients to do this is to create "We believe..." statements, statements which reflect their values and that will connect emotionally with their customers.

There are many tools and techniques to create deep emotional connection with customers. If your brand is not connecting emotionally with its customers, contact us. We can help you make that happen.

Other related blog posts:

• Fast Food and the Customer Experience
• Customer Service Comes of Age at Insurance Companies
• Branding from the Inside Out
• Creating the Total Brand Experience - Starbucks
• 10 Proven Steps to Align Your Organization with Its Brand Promise
• Mastering the Art of Brand Engagement
• Brands and Core Values
• Brand Personality as a Point of Difference
• Marketing and the Deep Understanding of Human Behavior
• Brands and Humans
• Brands and Authenticity
• The Reemergence of Authenticity
• Brands and Emotional Connection
• Brands and Their Emotional Appeal
• Purpose Driven Brands
• Brands and Positive Emotions
• How Do You Want Your Brand to Impact its Customers?
• Brands and Empathy
• Brands and the Emotions They Evoke
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Brands and Freedom
• Brands and Belonging
• Mind Blowing Brands
• Brands and Tribalism
• Tribal Branding
• Brands are People Too
• Customer-Centric Branding
• Differentiating on the Unexpected
• What do people want?
• States of Mind
• Customer Service and Brand Perceptions

Brands & System Design

How many times has a brand's computerized system made you frustrated or angry? Have you ever had to enter your user name and password more than once to get what you wanted either online or via the telephone? Have you been offered a price discount as a valued customer only to not receive it because the link on the push email sent you to the website without recognizing you? Have you ever encountered an automated customer service system that does not provide a choice for the issue you are trying to resolve? Or how about the automated system that keeps sending you in an infinite loop, never to reach your destination? How about when you have to explain your problem over and over again to each new person because they do not have a system of shared notes? My favorite is holding for say 30 minutes only to discover that the automated system sent me to the wrong department, resulting in another 30 minute hold. Once, I had this happen with four different telephone number transfers. I was really upset by the time that I finally reached the person who could help me. 

I encountered one website that only allowed me to buy one ticket at a time. (I wanted to purchase multiple tickets for the event.) I had to reenter all of my information including name, contact and credit card information for each individual ticket purchase. How ridiculous is that?

Most recently, I booked flights on Delta Airlines for my wife and I using Expedia's online platform. (I have been an elite status member of both Delta and Expedia for years.) Unbeknownst to me, the only Delta tickets that Expedia listed were Basic Economy fares. I booked my flights and discovered at the airport that we had no seat assignments. We were assigned separate middle seats in the back of the plane at the boarding gate, were boarded in the last boarding group and there was no room for our luggage in the passenger compartment. I politely inquired about this at the boarding gate, reminding the gate agent of my elite status, only to be told that I had purchased basic economy tickets with no frills. The gate agent even subtly implied that I was a cheapskate and that I got what I paid for. The only problem is that I did not know that I had purchased Basic Economy tickets and I was not given an option to purchase a better ticket. My wife kept asking me (sarcastically), "So, this is what you get for your years of loyalty and elite status?" I am definitely annoyed at both Delta and Expedia. 

The point of this blog post is to indicate how important system and process design is in creating and maintaining brand loyalty. 

On the flip side, I am a very loyal American Express customer. Why is that? Because their customer service systems work very well and I have always been treated very well by their customer service representatives. Ditto with Ritz-Carlton systems and employees. 

When designing your brand experience, don't forget about the role systems and process design play in customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Customer Service and Brand Perceptions

I travel a lot for business and pleasure. I have been to many countries around the world, including many third world countries, some dictatorships, a couple communist countries and some religion-based states. I just returned from Cuba. Staying at hotels and resorts and eating at restaurants throughout the world has led me to experience many different degrees of hospitality and service, including the complete lack thereof. 

In the USA, we have grown accustomed to a fairly high level of personal service when we interact with brands. Most people know the mantra, "Right or wrong, the customer is always right." Ghandi said, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." Going back more than thirty years, companies have hired consultants to help them create "legendary service" cultures and "aha! moments" for their customers. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Ritz-Carlton employees are empowered to offer each guest up to $2,000 per day to make things right with those guests.

We expect happy greetings, smiles, civility, politeness, deference and responsiveness in our interaction with service people. And we expect their patience and understanding when we are slow in our interactions with them. We even have grown to appreciate service people who anticipate our every need before we do ourselves - refilling water glasses, pulling a shade down to reduce the sun's glare in our eyes, replacing a dropped napkin, carrying our luggage for us, etc. We have grown accustomed to positive brand experiences delivered by well-trained and pleasant service people.

This is not the case everywhere. I am generally very civil, pleasant and perhaps even annoyingly cheerful in my interactions with others. Which is why it surprises me when I find that a service person completely ignores me or yells at me or tells me to do something myself. I have even had service people respond, "So what?" One waitress spilled wine on me and then started laughing. I recently witnessed a concierge shouting, cursing and shaking his fist at a customer. 

Don't take good service for granted. It is an important element of a positive brand experience.