Next steps towards emotions
Previously I wrote that customers', and in our case participants', emotions are in the center of my attention. Emotions are interesting yes, important, yes - but what next? 50% of customer experience consists of emotions, but how can we concretely do the measurement of the emotions itself and what is the impact of emotions to the business?
So, how does this make you feel?
Emotions are extremely personally felt and they can be difficult to measure. Basically, there are two different approach to emotion measurement, we can either measure the emotions while they are on, or retrospectively. We can either ask the customers how they evaluate their emotional state, or we can observe the behavior of customers', micro expressions or any physiological changes.
While simply asking how do you feel requires a bit of self-awareness from the customer, the more objective approach requires usually quite heavy equipment like EKG systems, facial expression capturing gear or good ethnographic approach observing customers' behavior.
In our measurement tool, we are focusing on real-time measurement (or at least as real-time as it is possible), relying on customers' own perceptions of their emotions. But we want to ensure that we will have all the adequate information needed, so we won't be relying on a plain survey. What we want to know is how is the customer feeling, how intensively, and most importantly why is that.
Our measurement tool is based on the scientific classification of different emotions and explanations behind them. During this year, we have developed and tested the tool together with Technological University of Tampere, and I have to say, we are quite happy with the results of our work at this stage!
Where's the business impact of all this?
It is said that customer experience actually is a memory of the experience, and stronger the emotions felt, stronger the memory - stronger the experience.
By detecting what emotion and in what state of the experience customers, or again in Funmedia's case participants, are feeling we can improve and design the experience not only to be positive, but also be evoking the emotions that have been proven to have the strongest correlation with the value aspects - making the participant experience better and better and gaining more and more loyal, enthusiastic or interested customers. Not forgetting to make it right for those who were disappointed or unhappy.
Loyal customer is, beside all the other emotions, satisfied and a happy one, and isn't that what ultimately, we all are trying to deliver in our experiences.