There’s no doubt that our emotions have a large effect on our buying behavior. There’s the pride of ownership, the desire for comfort, the fear of “missing out,” and many other customer emotions that a marketer or salesperson would recognize.
And there are emotional connections to a brand or a company as well. Emotions from previous, related customer experiences color our judgments, especially when it comes to value. That means every customer experience lays the groundwork for how a customer will react when it comes time to interact with your company again.
When companies can connect with customers through emotion, they can reap huge returns. And those returns don’t just come from purchases; when companies manage to make an emotional connection, they usually see an increase in customer loyalty, overall customer spend, and referrals. In fact, fully connected customers are 52 percent more valuable, on average, than those who are just highly satisfied.
So how can we cultivate those kinds of personal connections? Old-fashioned “relationship selling” had the right idea, but it could not scale effectively. The next generation of customer connection professionals will find ways to leverage technology to bring personal, meaningful gestures to scale.
Connecting With Customers: The Issue of Scale
The main challenge businesses face when trying to connect with customers is the paradox of scale: creating positive emotions requires personal relationships, and those are hard to maintain at large scales.
In truth, there are a lot of businesses that try to cultivate deep personal relationships. Companies try to create memorable feelings, but struggle because traditional methods of relationship building are out-of-date, or simply don’t scale with the size of the prospect or customer pool. So their efforts end up being inconsistent, shallow, or so out of touch as to be forgettable.
Let’s look at the shallowness of interactions, to use an example. We might be prompted by social media, say, to wish a client happy birthday, or congratulate them on a promotion. So we send off a brief default message, or click “like” on the announcement. Or, if it’s the holiday season, we might even give them a default gift, like a bottle of wine or a pre-packaged gift basket. While it’s nice to be thinking of someone, all of these gestures are generic and impersonal.
Keeping track of, say, a couple dozen customers and clients, and reaching out to them regularly in a personal way, is manageable for most of us. But when we try to do it for a larger network, it’s only natural that our interactions become more infrequent and impersonal. So the inconsistent, shallow, forgettable nature of customer interactions stems from the fact that most current methods for making personal connections just do not scale.
How to Manage Personal Connections at Scale
At the 50,000-foot-level, companies need to empower front line employees and account managers – rally, anyone who interacts with customers – to do things that go above and beyond. Going above and beyond helps create memorable experiences, what marketers are calling “WOW!” experiences.
They don’t need to be big, or expensive gestures. Here’s an example:
You’ve been working with a customer; let’s call him Chris. Chris heads up the inside sales group for a large financial services company in the Northeast. Based on conversations you’ve had with Chris, you know he has four children ranging in age from 14 to 23. You know that he and his wife both scuba dive, and they enjoy taking vacations where they can explore new dive sites. You’ve decided that you will reach out to Chris twice a month to WOW him.
You know that Chris takes vacations in April when his kids are out of school, so you want to send him a few links to dive vacations you’ve heard about. You also know that his birthday is in February and you want to send him something (beyond the expected birthday card) that he’ll remember. You find the latest business book that you know he’ll enjoy – Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. Both of these interactions are simple and personal. They will go a long way to reinforcing your relationship with Chris and strengthening his trust in you and your company—and, eventually, his loyalty. You have, in essence, created a series of smaller “WOW!” experiences.
In order to scale these kinds of “WOW!” experiences, you need both a plan and the tools for executing that plan. Consistency is key, so you will want to make such experiences a daily habit that you can incorporate into your routine. This will require you to:
- Set goals. We have goals for everything else in life – weight loss, revenue, customer satisfaction, etc.—so why not set personal relationship goals? Small, frequent communications are a good start. So plan to connect with people on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis.
- Identify moments that matter to them. People have their own unique passions. Focus on moments that are meaningful to them. For example, did their son or daughter just play an important game? Did their favorite football team win? Do they have an important anniversary coming up?
- Think simple and personal. With our spouses, friends, and family not every gesture has to be big. Breakfast in bed can be just as meaningful as a large, lavish dinner—sometimes even more so. So share things that are simple and personal: a local event, a piece of relevant, high-quality content, a joke, a nice video, etc.
- Refine. You won’t have an instant hit with every action you take. Try several things, then see what they like based on your actions. Then adapt your approach.
- Be consistent. Do these things frequently. Keep doing them. Time is the most important ingredient.
It takes time to build these habits. But those WOW! experiences are worth it. Each one brings a set of powerful positive emotions which will impact your brand and your bottom line for the better.
Baker Nanduru is founder and CEO of Delighterr inc, a next-generation client engagement software company. He has 15-plus years of B2B strategy and marketing experience at Symantec, Veritas and Oracle.
