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Emotions have been "undiscussable" in business for a long time. "Feelings" is
"F" word of
business world. How many times have we heard that we are to keep our feelings out of it, keep our emotions away from our business decisions, and park our personal problems at
door? Sound familiar? Well, I’ve learned that you cannot expect your staff to bring their passion to work but not their feelings. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s time we developed an emotional literacy in business.
Employees and Customers are people. People have feelings. And as people, their decisions are effected by their feelings, whether they can identify
feelings or not. Any salesperson can tell you that while people make decisions that look logical, they are more often than not, based on emotion.
As people we are perceptive, conscious, sensitive, alive and feeling beings! It’s an essential part of our nature. When we recognize that in business, we’ll work harder at building
emotional equity with a customer that determines whether or not they become a loyal customer or a lost customer.
It is
perception,
feeling of being cared about that keeps
customers coming back. And it’s what we do to build and support and create that feeling that creates a positive experience for
customer.
Every customer has two sets of needs. The business needs are logical, rational, and practical. The personal needs are emotional, illogical and sometimes even irrational, but carry a lot of weight. The fulfillment of
customer’s business needs is usually what gets them in
door in
first place-you are selling what they need. But it’s
fulfillment of
customer’s personal needs that will keep them coming back. Once
business needs are met, they often take a back seat to
customer’s experiential needs.
It’s
quality of
emotional experience you have with a company that will determine whether or not you want to keep recreating that experience. We come back to companies that have what we want and create a positive experience for us. We leave companies that don’t have what we want or create a negative experience for us. Experience is emotional.
When a customer walks away from
whole experience (your greeting, interacting with your Web site,
dealing with people in your office...) of doing business with you with positive emotions like happiness, joy, delight, caring, security, welcome and appreciation - they will most likely want to come back (if you recreate
positive emotions consistently).
If they walk away from
experience with negative emotions like frustration, anger, disgust, fear, incompetence, indifference, if they leave with a lack of confidence, if they leave feeling stupid-and if that’s what’s delivered consistently - they usually don’t stay around unless they haven’t YET found some other place to go.
It’s
quality of
emotional experiences that customers have with you that will determine whether or not they will continue to do business with you over time.
What’s LOVE got to do with it? Maybe more than we thought!
Tim Sanders, Chief Solutions Officer, Yahoo writing in "Love is
Killer App," says "What do I mean by "love?" The best general definition that I've read comes from philosopher Milton Mayeroff's brilliant book, On Caring. Love, he writes, ‘is
selfless promotion of
growth of
other.’ When you help others grow to become
best people that they can be, you are being loving, and as a result, you grow."
What a great description for what we want to happen in our business relationships! I want to do business with a company that believes in
selfless promotion of
growth of ME and my business! I want to give my money to companies that want to help me be
best ME I can be - whether I’m buying cosmetics or computers or telephone service or food. I want to do business with someone who has my best interests in mind.
In lieu of that - I’ll do my own research, haul my own lumber and pump my own gas - but if I’m doing
service work - then I want
lowest price possible! I’m not loyal to companies that don’t care enough about me to make my experience with them easy, stress and hassle free, and pleasant. How about you?
What’s love got to do with it? A whole lot more than we ever thought. Let’s start doing a better job of creating experiences that
customer perceives as positive, caring, and yes, maybe even loving.

JoAnna Brandi is Publisher of JoAnna Brandi's Customer Care Coach TM, a weekly training program designed to teach managers "The Art and Science of Exquisite Customer Care." You can sign up to get her latest tips and get your personalized weekly coaching program at www.customercarecoach.com. You can reach her via email: joanna@customercarecoach.com.