How to Deal With Emotional Customers
"You're getting all emotional." I've heard people say this to others as a negative, but in business, it can be used as a positive. Forget sales stats, balance sheets, and inventory counts. All customers make decisions with their hearts, so the more you can understand their emotional state, the further you can go to build a strong customer relationship.
Today's issue of 1to1 Weekly tries to get at the heart of customers' emotion with an interview with Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics. Hill explains that it takes a deft combination of respectfulness, engagement, and reassurance to demonstrate to customers that the company is not their adversary.
What do you think is more powerful messaging: features or feelings?
Karla Winter asks an interesting question about reaching customers in a B2B environment, in this instance IT execs.
The question seems to suggest that, as shoppers, IT pros behave differently at work than they do at the mall. Short answer: they don't!
Businesses buy from suppliers who sell products they need. Sound familiar?
If your company sells a one-of-a-kind product with truly unique, easily discernible features and benefits that solves a chronic IT problem, you can forego the feelings in your advertising and just sell the specs.
However, since most companies sell products in this category with technical and service-oriented claims that are similar to their competitors' product claims, a little feeling goes a long way.
One approach is to let the IT execs know that you understand how they feel when confronted with the problem your company's product is designed to solve.
Rich Jachetti, Corinthian Media PSG, 646-277-7677
It's no contest, really. As Dr. Claude Rapaille always says, "The reptilian always wins."
We've all seen really bad advertising -- way too much of it -- that's chock full of wondrous special effects. Every conceivable gimmick in the book is employed by the brand stewards to make the spots memorable. The gimmicks are the substitute for, well, substance. More often than not what is missing in bad advertising is a sensibility, or message, that touches the HEART.
Good advertising moves people emotionally. Emotions connect us to feelings advertisers want the customer to associate with their brand. When you make a customer feel something, they respond: They laugh, they cry, they buy.
In the end, I always go with feelings over features. Features come first, but emotions are what last and are usually remembered. Your personal experience is what you remember. I have many examples over the years from both personal and business negotiations that validate what many people have said - it is 5% about the price and terms (features) and 95% how one feels when the deal is done. When starbucks started (know they are struggling a bit right now) they could charge $4 for a coffee because of the experience they created. My two cents.
Emotions are a big gear. First, you feel irrational, and then you start calculating. Sometimes, you don't, and you simply let it live with that good feeling. Goethe once said, "Feelings are above all." It works, it goes straight into your head. Advertising folks know about that pretty well when they position a brand like the old one, "Kodak sells memories, not films." But what works for brand ads, doesn't necessarily work for customer experiences and loyalty (btw, it can be calculated). This is the point where features right come into play. Because if your eye-n-soul catching car gets into trouble every other month, it isn't a good feeling after all. I bet, they are tied up.
All of the features you could stuff into an automobile would never equal the emotional affect of the music, fashion, icons, and issues that influenced and transformed the young person into the adult with today’s buying power. Our emotions rule and whatever reminds of us happier, more carefree days is priceless.
Karla, it's a very interesting question -- how do emotions play into a B2B relationship? Yesterday I spoke to Tom Insprucker, head of marketing operations at Schneider Electric (a B2B company). He admitted that there are different factors that come into play within a B2B relationship, but in the end it's people dealing with people. As a field rep, he's gotten kicked and spit at by angry customers, and from that experience he understands the value of working in the customer's best interests, no matter what type of customer it is.
I agree with much of what Dan Hill has said regarding the power of emotions
but also want to point out that often consumers don't really have any significant emotional stakes in the brand
and/or emotions come to the surface when the customer has either received exceptional (spontaneous acts of human kindness) or sub-par service. (see http://miroslodki.wordpress.com/articles/brand-affinity-dynamics-part-1-of-3/)
Advertisers will try to tap into the emotional pulse of its customers - as indeed the Michelin ad conveys
but elsewhere consumers will have other brand relationship motivations be it rational, emotional, transactional or mature/balanced (see http://miroslodki.wordpress.com/articles/the-anatomy-of-a-brand-purchase-part-1/)
I think understanding where the customer is and where they want the relationship to go is an important first step. From there the journey can begin toward creating a relationship based on mutual respect that will in time evolve into something that hopefully is emotional.
Because as they say - people remember their feelings long after the fact.
While I agree on the emotional issue coming into play for purcshing products, it seems like this is more of a play for consumers. How do you deal with emotions when you're trying to reach someone who works for a Fortune 1000 company in procurement or IT?