Us humans like to think we’re a logical bunch. But when you dig deep into what really drives us, it becomes apparent there’s only one major factor in our decision-making process – and that’s emotion. So, it makes sense to emphasise the importance of this in the customer experience, because the way your customers feel is likely to have a huge impact on their brand loyalty.
In fact, research by Forrester found that emotion is more important to customer loyalty than effectiveness or ease. Which – given they surveyed 45,000 people – is a pretty irrefutable claim.
If you really want to attract, impress and retain a satisfied customer base, creating emotional engagement is key. Succeed at doing so and you’re set for CX success. Better yet, you’ll be generating a great emotional dialogue in your day-to-day interactions. Which means you’ll be the happy recipient of plenty of accurate, emotive and actionable insight – the sort of feedback that helps you strive for greatness. Or maybe even start a Raveolution.
But you can’t do it alone.
Get some employee satisfaction action
Want to create brilliant engagement with your customers? Before you rush off to devour our guide to creating an emotional engagement strategy, remember your plan has to start long before your customers first interact with your brand. Employees (and specifically contact agents) have a major impact on customer emotion. In fact, a 1-point increase in employee engagement results in a 0.4 point increase in customer satisfaction. Your employees are the Frontline Heroes of your brand, after all – so it makes perfect sense that emotional engagement begins with employee engagement.
Want to build a CX strategy that emotionally engages your customers? Then grab our eBook: The Essential Guide to Emotional Engagement, showing you the secret to true CX success! 👌
Culture club
You might be feeling pretty confident about employee motivation and general happiness, but it’s worth considering an action plan to improve employee engagement nonetheless. Your starting point should always be to create a culture your staff will Rave about.
How this culture looks will vary from place to place, but suffice to say it requires daily habits and behaviours that nurture employees in the workplace. As a starting point, ask your staff for feedback, just like your customers. Although definitely not with a lengthy (and productivity busting) annual satisfaction survey. This is where the Rant & Rave platform really shines – our always-on Listening Posts allow your employees to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas whenever they want to. If you're looking for a way to engage employees, then listening to them is a great place to start.
Engage the troops: that’s the way to get them Raving
Once you’ve nailed your culture, it’s time to make sure your staff have the tools they need to get (and stay!) engaged. The next step of your action plan to improve employee engagement is all about feedback, freedom and fun.
Access to feedback is essential for employee motivation. Your contact agents should be able to see how they’re doing in real-time, enjoying the warm buzz of great comments or being spurred on by advice on how to improve.
This also provides the freedom to grow – being given the opportunity to self-manage and strive for greatness is key to staying engaged at work. We had all of this in mind when we designed Frontline Engagement, which allows your staff to see all their customer feedback in one place, on a personal profile.
Fun speaks for itself, which is why we’ve gamified our dashboard to keep things fresh and interesting. If you like, Frontline Engagement even lets staff compare their performances with their colleagues – watch out for the competitive ones in your midst! Offer all this, and your team will be engaged and Raving before you know it.
The next (1-2-3) steps
Whatever your goal is – improving your CX, generating better feedback, or even improving your sales – you need to put emotion right where it belongs: at the heart of your business strategy. But that means nothing without employee engagement. If you really want to empower your team to emotionally engage with customers, it’s time to take all of the above into account.
Give it a whirl – you might be amazed by what you find. Ready to harness the power of emotion? Head over to our Three Step Guide to Creating an Emotional Engagement Strategy.
