It is your people who create that emotion and in consequence, a good or bad customer experience.

In today’s hyper-connected world, customer experience is critical to your business’s success. Global internet usage has moved from 24% to 63% since 2012 (Mary Meeker, 2022 Internet Trends) so there’s no longer a question that many customer interactions (if not all of them) are taking place through a digital channel. When it comes to digital customer experience (CX) it’s essential to understand the emotions that drive your customers’ behavior.

It’s been shown that, of the three critical components of CX — success, effort, and emotion — emotion has the greatest effect on loyalty. But despite that, only 28% of large companies say they consider Themselves ‘good’ at measuring customers’ emotional responses to their interactions. Is your company part of that 28%? Is your company doing something to be part of that 28%?

Without any doubt, your customers’ decisions are driven by how they feel.

Face-to-face interactions are somewhat simpler than digital — have a distinct advantage in that they’re controlled entirely by humans who are, by our very nature, empathetic. So, we’re able to respond and adapt based on the emotions we read, whether that’s frustration, anger, or joy, and react appropriately in the moment. Digital channels on the other hand have been designed to simply get out of the way, reduce friction and get customers from point A (putting an item in their online cart) to point B (completing checkout) as quickly as possible. People are inherently social. It’s been shown that when we interact with digital channels, like websites, apps, chatbots and smartphones, we have the same expectations as when dealing with real people. And when we don’t get what we expect, it elicits the same negative response as if you’d had that experience with a person.

So rather than take an entirely new approach to digital, if you want to play on your customers’ emotions and use those channels to drive customer acquisition and loyalty, it’s useful to apply the same principles as we do to human-human interactions.

Using the elements of a human conversational model, it’s easy to see how you can leverage your digital channels to create a similar emotional response:

1. Intent decoding: Anticipate what customers want to achieve when they visit your website or app.
2. Contextual Framing: Personalize the experience, whether they are a returning customer or a first-time visitor.
3. Empathetic Agility: Understand their emotions as they go through the customer journey and adapt accordingly.
4. Supportive Feedback: Let your customers know they’re on the right track to achieve their goal.
5. Basic Manners: Follow societal norms and basic design principles.
6. Self-Awareness: Design digital experiences that are an authentic representation of your brand.
7. Emotional Reflection: Apply your digital learnings to future interactions.

However, most importantly and beyond the channel customers decide to use is that your people are who will create or not the best customer experience in any step of the customer journey. Here is when the dots connect: To deliver the best customer experience, your people need to be willing to do it but also need the knowledge and skills to do it. The People Experience factor has become key for sustainable growth and the main driver for execution.

The people experience is the set of interactions an employee has with people, systems, policies, and the physical and virtual workspace. Both the small details of day-to-day work and the periodic events and transitions matter. People experience is subjective: It is the holistic impact of the job and the organization on the individual — how an employee feels, how they perceive their potential and abilities, and the effect on their well-being. Great people experience creates great customer experience.

Think about your people and try to answer the next questions:

• Do your people bring their whole selves to work every day?
• Do they feel part of an environment that helps them learn, grow, and reach their full potential?
• Do they feel part of a diverse workforce with inclusive leaders?
• Do they feel they can upskill and learn new things (including how to develop as professionals)?
• Do they find purpose and meaning in their career and overall career goals?
• Do they feel a deep sense of belonging, connection, and purpose?
• Do they feel valued and cared for?

If the answer to these questions was very positive, you can have peace of mind that you have or at least are in the process to have the corner stone for sustainable growth. If not, do not waste time and start as soon as possible before is too late.

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“Do not compete with others! Pick a high speed for yourself that suits high ideals and try to catch and surpass that speed!”

― Mehmet Murat ildan