Navigating the experience economy with emotional enagagement

We all have heard about industry studies demonstrating the power of emotions. Emotions define what it means to be human. Be it through spontaneous outpourings of emotion at a pivotal life event or gradual but vivid recollections. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that emotional engagement lies at the heart of customer experience. After all, customers are human beings and experience is both literally and figuratively about the impression or the emotional ride that brand interactions create.

Emotions create memories and often outlast the event in question. As such, good customer experience design should consider the emotional engagement that the firm has with customers at various touchpoints throughout the customer journey or lifecycle. This ensures that there is an effort to maximize a ‘wow’ experience for customers. Let us understand this with a few examples.

Examples of emotional engagement

A large firm decided to root its appeal in authenticity when rebranding itself. So, its emotional engagement story revolved around how the firm was focused on helping its customers to be at their best during the moments that really mattered to them.

While searching for other industry examples, I have witnessed many firms tapping into our inherent need to be good human beings. Brands do this by communicating how deals with the firm can help make the planet a better place to live in, via the allocation of a part of the proceedings to charitable acts.

Many firms have also leveraged gamification to take customers on an emotional ride and experience the product or service for real in a virtual setting, and thereby converting the emotional engagement into a successful handshake.

The point of inflection here is the ability to intertwine process data at touchpoints with the emotional engagement opportunities available. This can create meaningful experiences for customers. The playbook in this context revolves around the following three cornerstones:

Real-time feedback and resolution

Ensuring not just real-time feedback but real-time resolution at each touchpoint – in this day and age of instant gratification, nothing can satisfy a customer more than immediate fulfilment. Emotions are on full display on such occasions, with negative options likely to last much longer than positive ones. So, emotional engagement at every touchpoint is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to create a strong emotional connection with the brand.

Personalization at scale

Personalization at scale is precisely where the digital transformation drive of the last few years can help customers and firms across industries. Technology can help firms leverage data to create personalized, customized experiences at scale. For instance, a credit card company can highlight how a particular lunch expense was a birthday celebration event and convert a simple transaction into an emotional engagement opportunity via personalization, rather than just sending a bill.

Peak moments

While the mission for brands is to constantly maximize the emotional connections built with customers, it is important to offer peak experiences during the moments that really matter. For example, in health insurance, while the issuance of the policy is the core offering, it is when customers are hospitalized and are emotionally vulnerable that firms can really step up and offer empathy to customers. We at Bajaj Allianz offer a facility at select hospitals, wherein customers who are hospitalized can be supported by a virtual relationship manager, who helps them navigate the complex administrative landscape of the hospital. Thereby allowing the customer to focus on their primary reason for admission – the shift from illness to wellness.

We live in the experience economy today. Almost every aspect of our daily lives, be it booking a cab via a ride-sharing app, zeroing in on a villa for a vacation through a homestay platform or ordering a meal from a restaurant from an online service involves emotional engagement, instant fulfilment and ratings for every touchpoint. In this context, the need for emotional engagement cannot be reiterated enough.