Customer experience with a brand is much more than just usage or habit, it is experience and experience implies emotion!
Emotion is an affective state that we experience, a subjective reaction to the environment accompanied by biological changes. Emotion is the more or less lasting adaptation of our body to the environment/circumstance that surrounds us.
From this point of view, the experience with a brand is an element that generates and influences our emotions, and emotions influence how we perceive and relate to the brand.
Studies on human behavior have revealed that decisions are made unconsciously, on “autopilot,” that is, influenced by emotions that activate our emotional memories and rewards.
Therefore, the most significant aspects in purchasing decisions are perceptions, attention, memory and, above all, emotions.
And how do we measure emotions?
From a psychological point of view, there are three different ways to measure emotions:
Through statements from customers themselves when creating surveys, in-depth interviews norway phone number other techniques focused on extracting the subjective experience of the customer. The important thing is that they make it possible to connect with the internal emotional state that has caused the experience in order to obtain good results.
The observation of physical/body changes such as breathing, heart rate, etc. This type of measurement requires specific technology such as galvanometers and other instruments.
Analysis of facial expression, according to some studies, the expression of emotions on the face is universal and generates empathy with personal emotions.
The challenge is how to adapt all these methodologies to include the emotional impact of the brand in customer satisfaction studies , as well as to investigate the best way to manage emotion to maintain loyalty and positive emotions with low research costs.
Adapting traditional data collection tools, taking into account the environment, format and time of validity, provides good results at affordable costs. In future posts I will present some examples of the adaptation of some data collection tools to include them in the measurement of emotion in the customer experience.
In terms of customer experience management, understanding experience as an experience means changing the concept that many companies have used up until now, which believe that managing customer experience means reducing the gap between customer expectations and the different channels they interact with. Experience as an experience implies that the company manages the emotions that the relationship with the brand (through whatever channel) can generate.