Customer Experience Podcast

Ep 178 5 Rules for Making Customers Feel ‘Cared For’ and ‘Valued’

A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science.

We know that the most significant influence on a Customer Experience outcome is how a customer feels about it, for good or ill. Therefore, it is essential that you are deliberate about which specific emotion you evoke (for example, we want more good than ill). In my experience the best emotion for facilitating customer-driven growth is making customers feel “Cared For” and “Valued.”

In this episode we share the five rules for Making Customers Feel Cared For and Valued. These five rules will help you deliver a Customer Experience that delivers the customer-driven growth you want and need for your bottom line.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

Here are the 5 Rules for Making Customers Feel Cared For and Valued:

1. Define which emotions drive value. My experience dictates that many organizations need customers to feel Cared For and Valued, but that might be different for you. Customer research will tell you for sure. 
2. Define the action that you need to take. Once you know what emotion you want customers to feel, you should determine what little things you can do all along the Customer Experience to evoke that specific emotion. We usually do that by reflection on our personal experiences when someone made us feel that way. 
3. Design that into your Customer Experience. Now that you know what makes people feel the way you want them to, you design those moments into the experience where you can.
4. Train your people on how to evoke these emotions.  It is critical that you teach people how to carry out these actions appropriately. Some people know naturally; many people don’t. However, with a little training, many people can learn how to do it well. 
5. Measure your results.  As in all things Customer Experience, it is paramount that you measure how your changes have yielded value to the bottom line. 

Here are some highlights of the discussion:

• 01:53   Colin explains why Valued and Cared For are such important emotions regarding Customer Experiences.
• 05:42   Colin uses Ryan’s life experiences to demonstrate how you find the specific actions that evoke emotions for people by examining your own. 
• 11:49   Colin shares how getting members of the team involved in the second rule activity helps solidify the concept throughout the organization.
• 15:52   Colin shares thoughts about why traditional Journey Mapping falls short for many organizations.
• 18:33   Colin reflects on his personal experience to demonstrate how you train teams to recognize customer emotions. 
• 25:28   We summarize the five rules and share our final thoughts on customer emotions in an experience.

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