Genuine Emotion is the Key to Customer Experience and Loyalty

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” is one of my favorite quotes.1 It has applications for all of the relationships in our lives, and as a CX practitioner, it is particularly relevant because it reflects the true essence of customer experience and the key to driving customer loyalty and creating lifelong customer relationships. And its value is especially worth remembering in an age where, in the interest of money and time, businesses are choosing artificial intelligence and robots over fostering genuine emotion through human interaction.

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"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"

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Think about your favorite customer experiences. Unless the interaction was very recent, it is unlikely that you remember exactly what was done or said. But the reason these experiences stick in your memory is because of the emotional response you had to the experience – because of how it made you feel. And, of course, the same is true in reverse – you will remember your worst experiences because of the anger and frustration you felt. An emotional connection—whether positive or negative – often translates into an indelible memory and perspective about a product or experience that affects consumer outlook and, as a result, a company’s bottom line.

There is much discussion in the customer experience field about creating exceptional experiences or “Wow” moments. Seeing Diagon Alley in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios was one of these moments for me. They did such a good job of recreating what I saw in my own imagination when reading the books as well as the sets from the various movies. Every time I see it, I still remember the magic I felt when I read the books as well as when I experienced the magic through my children’s eyes as we watched the movies together.

But not all great emotional experiences have to be this exceptional. There’s just an indescribable feeling you get when you go to your favorite restaurant with your favorite host or server who always remembers exactly what you like and how you like it. Remember the theme song from Cheers that captures the comfort of going to a place “where everybody knows your name”? There is a reliability, warmth and safety in those memories and it's why you go back again and again.

When I led customer experience in the rental car business, one of the regional VPs I worked with at Avis Budget used to say: “Hire the smile. We have to teach them the rest anyway.” What he was really saying was find people who have an innate predisposition toward customer service and the ability to build emotional relationships with customers. Rental car experiences are not generally regarded for eliciting strong (positive) emotional responses, but I would often see comments in our voice of the customer program from frequent business travelers about how our staff in certain locations felt like a second family and about how our team members always knew their car preferences and had them ready and waiting.

Creating this emotional attachment is what branding and advertising have been about for more than a century. A CMO I once worked for asked me one day, “How do we get people to tattoo our brand on themselves like Harley-Davidson?” I bet if I asked you the top brands people get tattooed on their body, it wouldn’t take you long to come up with: Disney, Harley-Davidson, LEGO, and Nike.2 But why are people willing to go so far as to permanently emblazon these brand logos on their bodies? The answer lies in the emotional attachment they have to the experience, and therefore the brand.

As we come out of the turmoil of the last few years and brands really struggle to have enough front-line staff to run their business and service their existing customers, we see numerous examples of brands testing robots to replace front line workers. Hilton famously rolled out “Connie,” a Watson-enabled robotic concierge, in 2016. When I Googled how that experiment is going, I can find no articles later than the announcement back in March and April of 2016. I certainly don’t see them when I travel. Even worse, a Japanese hotel had to “lay off” nearly half of its robots.3

With advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, these experiments will continue, partly to fill labor shortages and partly to chase lower labor costs. But I would encourage brands to think about the experience they really want to deliver and whether these robots can make the emotional connection needed to drive long-term customer loyalty. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting we turn our backs on technology, but I am suggesting we are more thoughtful and strategic about how and where we deploy AI or robots. Customers and brands alike would be better served if businesses spend time figuring out the ideal blend between technology and humans to deliver the optimal customer experience.

1 This quote is frequently circulated on the internet and attributed to Maya Angelou, our former poet laureate. But there’s apparently no evidence that Angelou penned or uttered these words. Though given the wisdom the quote encapsulates, the Angelou attribution is not surprising. The earliest variation of this sentiment has been credited to Carl W. Buehner in 1971: See https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/06/they-feel/ or https://www.bbc.com/news/41913640

2 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1304229/most-tattooed-brands-worldwide/#:~:text=Disney%20was%20the%20most%20tattooed,Instagram%20mentioning%20the%20entertainment%20colossus

3 https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/15/18184198/japans-robot-hotel-lay-off-work-for-humans