What does Maratha Stewart, YouTuber sensation Mark Rober and Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian have in common?
They all profoundly understand the notion of “Full Emotional Connection”
Full Emotional Connection: the phrase coined by Ryan Smyth chairman of Qualtrics at the opening of Qualtrics X4, the annual customer and experience extravaganza, hosted in Salt Lake City, also the setting for Maratha, Mark and Ed’s keynotes.
In fact, Ryan was describing the key idea outlined in a Harvard Business Review article a decade ago called The New Science of Customer Emotions.
To quote: “Fully connected customers are 52% more valuable, on average, than those who are just highly satisfied. In fact, their relative value is striking across a variety of metrics, such as purchases and frequency of use.”
The idea is that customers who are emotionally connected to a brand are more valuable in terms of customer lifetime value than customers who are only very satisfied with the brand.
And it set the tone for the four day summit that businesses should focus on creating an emotional connection to the ‘Human Experience’ to maximise their customer and employee lifetime value.
So how have the speakers activated Full Emotional Connection with their audience? Importantly what are the takeaways for you on applying this today?
- Understand the value drivers of customers to differentiate: More seats, inflight entertainment or free WIFI – which would you pick? There are only so many places airlines can differentiate. After all they’re the same planes, use the same fuels and most serve chicken,beef or vegan food for dinner. For me anyway, I’d happily be curled up in a ball with access to WIFI. CEO Ed Bastian understood that for most people WIFI sits high in their needs. As a result Delta invested over $1billion in upgrading the fleet to include WIFI. So how did they differentiate? Not only have they provided WIFI that works, it’s free! The value exchange was that in order to access WIFI you had to sign up to the High Mile club. Valuable insights on customer preferences are now accessible to Delta. The result: Delta initial target for sign ups for 12 months exceeded in the first two weeks. Using Adoreboard to compare mentions to the @Delta customer support comparing before and after Free WiFI. Significantly, Anger Index has dropped by 17 points and a 1 point increase in Trust.
2. Evolve the experience for relevance: Maratha Stewart who is 81 years young is the epitome of adaptability. She is an example of how, no matter your age, you can stay relevant and appeal to new audiences. From cookery shows with Snoop Dog to internet breaking selfies – she remains ‘on trend’ by deeply understanding her target audience. So the key lessons for improving customer experience? Central to Maratha’s success is partnership. Martha’s Chard, a partnership with wine firm 19 Crimes saw explosive growth and has already been recognized in the top 5 dollar growth item (not sure what this is?). So the question for you is what partnerships could you create that elevate the experience and create emotional connections?
3. Align the business objective by elevating the experience: YouTuber Mark Rober’s objective is to educate young children about science, technology, engineering, and mathematical concepts. How he delivers this is through a fun and engaging way; from building a homemade hoverboard, making a giant slingshot to building a life-size replica of a T-Rex. This experience is fun and educational, resulting in 1.3billion views of his videos and 23.4 million subscribers. What are the key ways to deliver an experience that meets your business objectives?
So how can you as Customer and Employee experience deliver “Full Emotional Connection” in 3 simple steps:
A. Collect: You’re using Qualtrics to collect data and you can upgrade from textIQ by visiting Adoreboard on the Qualtrics marketplace
B. Analyse for Emotion: Adoreboard takes the Qualtrics data and can analyse 1000 rows in 30 secs, automatically linking drivers represented by themes to emotional intensity.
C. Predict and act: Adoreboard predicts then what is the emotional impact on customers by building or resolving the driver as well as the impact for increasing operational metrics like NPS or CSAT.
Results: Allstate using Adoreboard identified themes associated with its mobile app that were driving 55% more anger and by closing the emotional experience gap, Adoreboard predicted a 17% increase in CSAT. By improving the experience of the mobile app they increased Trust by 9%, reduced complaints by 47% and realised a 16.6% increase in CSAT.
In summary, creating emotional connections with customers and employees is essential to ensure long-term success. It’s all about understanding customer needs and providing experiences that meet expectations. The key to achieving this is to collect data, analyse for emotion and predict and act on the results. The success stories of Maratha Stewart, YouTuber sensation Mark Rober and Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian have shown that this approach can lead to increased customer lifetime value and business success.
