Part two: the problem with being emotional

By Jennifer Kirkby, consulting editor

All of this leads to one very big problem for managing the experience – emotions. An experience has both rational and emotional factors, but the ultimate conveyor of value to the customer is emotional – and that is where the greatest financial rewards are to be found (see Bond your customers into an asset).

"Consumers are driven far less by tangible attributes of products and services than by subconscious sensory and emotional elements derived from the total experience surrounding a transaction" - Dr Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School, Laboratory of the Consumer Mind.

But emotions are hard to get at, difficult to keep a database record of, and not very conducive to bottom line forecasting. So a lot of thinking is being expended on how they can be measured. Norwich Union, for example, has created a ‘Care at the Heart’ programme which asks customers about specific feelings they have had during their experiences. Did they:

• have sufficient time to think, without feeling rushed
• feel appreciated as an individual
• think that dealing with the organisation was easy, convenient, and enjoyable
• genuinely feel Norwich Union cared about meeting their needs
• go away feeling they had had a good deal

Setting expectations

Emotions are not only relevant to touchpoint experiences. They also play into the setting of brand values and customer value propositions (CVP). When Apple launched iPod shuffle the proposition was ‘Life is Random’ – the emotion they wanted to strike was that of ‘serendipity’, where for some inexplicable reason the song playing is just the one you needed to hear, and you feel part of something bigger.

Marketing research for CVP’s has got very slapdash over the last decade. Too many studies are quantitative and ask people what they need by way of products and services. What they should be doing is trying to understand what customers are trying to achieve and how they themselves measure that achievement. Norwich Union doesn’t only measure the emotional outcomes in its programme, it also uses them in employee ‘innovation’ groups to find new ways of meeting them.

Jack Daniels, the drinks company, has even started to use MRI scanners to gauge the emotional power of different environments for male whiskey drinkers. Other forward looking companies have started exploring the emotional power of social responsibility (see Focus on CSR).

Customer journey maps

However, not everything in the world of CEM is nebulous and difficult to pin down. The logical objectivity of process design comes in very handy when designing the experience into customer journey maps. These maps break down a customer’s interaction with an organisation into a ‘story board’. At each key stage the organisation can look at what is delivered and how; the way customers react to it; how important it is to them, and what needs to be done to rectify any issues. Even the financial implication of the issues can be added. It is here that six sigma methods for process improvements start to come into their own.

Customer journey maps are the crucial links between the CVP in the customer strategy and the operational blueprint for delivering it; a vital tool in multi-channel (or touchpoint) integration. Without it, organisations struggle to build detailed customer experience requirement into business processes, organisational structures, IT requirements and measurement systems.

Business to business companies have found customer journey mapping very useful in aligning sales and marketing functions with the customer’s buying process; instead of having them fight over who achieves what in their sales process.

Part three, confusing CRM and CEM, click here.