How we transformed our organisation and our customer experience – Interview with Damian Thompson of Principality Building Society
August 19, 2015Customer experience failures are more likely to be remembered than successes – Interview with Paige O’Neill of SDL
August 28, 2015Over the past 15 years, digital marketing has exploded. With the expansion of social media, many businesses have had to change the way they interact and engage with their customers. Nowadays, people are looking to build a loyal relationship with the brands they love. To foster this relationship, successful businesses are turning towards empathy.
Empathy has recently become a widespread topic in popular media. When looking to apply empathy to your customer relationships, don’t mistake it with sympathy. Whereas sympathy is a feeling of compassion towards another (often misconstrued as pity), empathy is the act of putting yourself into another person’s thoughts, feelings, circumstances, and personality to better understand and meet their specific needs. When cultivating customer relationships, empathy will always win.
What does this customer empathy look like? Google Chrome used empathy perfectly in their Dear Sophie ad to connect with parents. In this video, Google Chrome creates an emotional connection with parents, as it conveys the bittersweet moments of watching children grow up and the desire to preserve memories. Through this commercial, Google was able to connect with their users on a deeper level than product features and updates. The key is to take time to identify with your customers, understand their dreams and concerns, and find a way to provide them with the best service possible based on this understanding.
When you empathize with your customers, everyone wins. You will win your target customers’ loyalty and create a lasting relationship with them as you gain a better understanding of their needs and wants. By actively listening and engaging with customers, companies will see a greater ROI all around. In turn, customers will feel that their needs are important and validated by your brand experience.
What steps can you take to take to cultivate this empathy for your customers? Creating an empathy map is a popular exercise designed to help you and your team brainstorm and find ways to better connect with your customers. In this exercise, you will look at four different aspects of customer experience: thinking, seeing, doing, and feeling. An empathy map will help you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, both in and outside of their experience with your company. Consider both positive experiences and pain points in each of these four categories.
As you implement this brainstorming session, gather key stakeholders to participate. You may want to consider printing out a copy of the empathy map for every member of the team or collaborating on a large whiteboard. Ask open-ended questions such as, “What are our customer’s daily habits and rituals?” “How do they feel after using our product?” and “What are they doing to change their lives?” and record each answer. After the brainstorming session, debrief as a group and compile a list of actionable insights. You’ll likely find that everything from product development to end-user experience can be improved by approaching your customers with empathy.
Take a moment to download the empathy map template to learn how to provide your customers with the best experience.
This is a guest post and has been provided by Bryan Phelps of InMoment (formerly Mindshare).
About InMoment – they help businesses improve customer retention and increase profits through listening, understanding, and sharing customer stories. Thier Voice of Customer (VoC) solutions arm brands with real-time, actionable insights for customer experience (CX) improvement at all organizational levels. InMoment works with more than 300 brands in 90 countries.
Photo Credit: Celestine Chua via Compfight cc
6 Comments
I think this is the key (cutting out a few words):
By actively listening and engaging with customers … customers will feel that their needs are important and validated by your brand experience.
Annette 🙂
Too true, Annette. A very human skill and desire.
Thanks, Adrian
Brands have been part of our lives for decades, but never to the extent that the internet and smartphones have allowed. It is now near impossible to escape brand messaging. Some moments with brands we begrudge, some we love, some we barely notice.
What does all this mean for your online store? There are a string of moments that make up a customer’s journey, and paying closer attention to these can do great things for your brand. And if you can create a ritual out of one or two?
Empathy is effective. It makes the customers feel understood and they appreciate your sensitivity and concern by trying your products or services.
The times have really changed. I love how branding have evolved and how businesses are more sensitive to the needs of its customers. I think that it is a must-have in this industry of robotic and impersonal actions.