Think about the last time you were really emotional about something. This can be either end of the scale – from utter devastation to complete elation. Did you keep these feelings to yourself?
How real-time emotion can lead to real-time results
Chances are that your thoughts and feelings on the subject were transmitted to at least one other person. You had a fist of pure emotion (…sing it), which you were wanting to share; this is the same for customers wanting to feedback to companies.
However, it’s not just The Very Good and The Very Bad which need conveying in order to generate results nowadays. That’s like asking an opinion on the ball from only the Ugly sisters and Cinderella when actually you could have potentially missed other key opinions about how the ball went.
Within the last 6 months, Sky has collated the engagements of 2 million of their customers. 2.2 million topics have been identified and 2.7 million actionable customer insights have been uncovered. These are not just sensational numbers they’re throwing out there to impress you (can you imagine if you had a pound for every person?), but they’ve also demonstrated how real-time results can come from real-time emotion. It is a stunning example of a company who is understanding its core customer values, in terms of delivering both personal and relevant communication.
So how is this done?
Sky worked with Rant & Rave to make it as easy as possible for its customers to share their thoughts. The customer has to undergo very little effort in order to provide real-time feedback on the service or interaction they received.
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Channels are varied; from the reliable SMS text message (studies have revealed that 98% of texts will be opened within 4 minutes of receipt) to email invitations for their thoughts.
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Convenience is key in order to connect with the consumer and generate feedback on a wide scale, the fast moving digital world we live in presents us with the challenge of keeping up with the culture and making sure we use all the options available to us in terms of customer touchpoints.
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In general it’s much easier to obtain emotion led feedback from a disgruntled customer, which also means it’s important to make sure the platform to provide feedback is quick and convenient - in real-time. By making sure this is the case you can ensure you hear from both your happy and unhappy customers.
Rant & Rave believe that it’s important to focus on those who are content with your service and those who are dissatisfied as both open different insights for business. The key however is to not dismiss the grey area inbetween where customer emotion can still breathe, the customer may be ‘generally satisfied’ with your service but also open up a new and deeper level of insight to help you enhance your customer experience.
An example of how this might work is - a customer may have had got a great deal on a product package and had a positive interaction with an agent but the product itself might have been confusing initially. They were still on the whole a happy customer but if we don’t ask for feedback in the moment and in their own words then we risk losing out on their emotion and insight. With these insights you can start to evaluate your business and improve your customer experience strategy and overall engagement.
Where can customer engagement go wrong?
When a brand becomes needy, the results aren’t quite as jaw-dropping. It can be over-done; emotional engagement requires a personal touch, and a lack of such can lead to feelings of intrusion and irritation. Think of questionnaires that go on and on, asking irrelevant questions and giving off a vibe more boring than having the dictionary read out to you in a monotone drone. You need your brand to be fun, to be appealing, to be stimulating – You want your customers to give feedback, and for them to feel like their feedback is relevant and matters.
It’s also important for brands to remember that when seeking real-time insight from customers they can often skip over the key ingredients; adopting great company culture, driving employee engagement and focusing on making the customer experience as simple as possible.
Real-time emotion leads to real time results. You don’t want to know the basics. You want to know The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Sister’s side of the story, and Cinderella’s, and the bloke at the buffet who wouldn’t get up to dance to Take That…)
We recommend you check out our full webinar with Sky if you're looking to find out more about how real time feedback is changing the game!
