Emotions drive loyalty, trust, connection and ultimately purchasing decisions more than anything else. Emotions cause businesses to grow. (Read Part 1 Here)
Emotionally satisfied customers are loyal
The devotion you get from your customer does not necessarily spring from your solution to them. Loyalties develop when your customers feel emotionally engaged in the outcome they attain in a transaction. Whether they buy a product, bank in XYZ bank, shop in a certain store, or use a salon.
When customers feel good about your product or service, they tell their friends about it.
They maintain their relationship with businesses that touch them emotionally. Someone called that ‘enlightened hospitality’.
You should consciously develop your emotional skills, and your ability to make customers feel that you love and care for them.
If you will ever track your customers’ loyalty, a large sum of them came from the emotional connection they have with you, more than the quality of your product or service. No one would care about your business that much; except they are emotionally connected to it.
Never stop working on whatever it is that draws people to do business with you. If you don’t know, you can ask your customers. And when they tell you what they want, also figure out how best to keep giving it to them in increasing measures. Remember, all that matters in business is what your customers care about.
How do your customers feel about you?
Everybody has a product or service; it is what you do beyond the product or service that makes all the difference in business. How your customers feel about you in the marketplace can be much more important than what you are selling.
Every business has to develop its own methods of establishing intimate customer relationships based on its particular circumstances, the nature of its business, and the types of customers it has. How much are you fulfilling your customer’s needs from an emotional standpoint?
Customers blend the facts about the quality of your product and delivery of your service with the feelings they have about the experiences of doing business with you.
The value of any business is measured by what it means to the customers. People prefer and refer to businesses that represent an amazing memory to them. Always remember that what people think about your business is not as important as what they feel about it.
Solve customers’ problems in a remarkable way
If you want your customers to love you, you will have to solve their high-valued problems remarkably well. You need to constantly meet their unmet need, scratch their itches, and leave them feeling more emotionally elated than they could get anywhere else.
Daniel Priestly was right when he wrote, ‘If a person leaves your business in the same or worse emotional state than they arrived, you didn’t deliver. And every time you let someone down, you put your business at risk.’
The primary mode of emotion is non-verbal. We can hardly conceal our true emotions. Our faces most times tell what’s going on in us.
Always look at the faces of your customers. Make it a habit and you will learn a lot about what they feel about your business.
You can turn your business into a tool kit for touching your customers’ emotions while you serve them, and watch your business grow. Nothing could be so interesting in business-like meeting the emotional needs of your customers. This, however, requires some skills. Let me give you some tips:
- Always see things from your customers’ private goggles. See what they see, and how they see.
- Learn to pay attention to their feelings more than you would to their money. For the money to come, the feelings must be richly touched.
- Leave your customers emotionally uplifted and better than when they came by demonstrating that they are special to you.
The bottom line is that your customers are going to have an emotional experience because of their contact with your organization, whether you like it or not. Your responsibility is to provide them with the kind of emotional connection that will inspire trust and loyalty. The more powerful the connection, the greater the success of your business.
About the Author:
Tony Ajah is a Business Growth Strategist, and the author of BUSINESS SENSE, and ON BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR.
He maintains a personal blog, where he shares proven business ideas and principles for SMEs.
