This week we get all emotional with the (now fortnightly) Start The Week, as we touch on how to measure your customers’ emotions…

CONTENTS

1) QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Get into their soul

2) STATISTIC OF THE WEEK: The value of emotional attachment (in dollars)

3) FAST GUIDE: Measuring customer emotion

Yes, of course the 10-second funny is still hiding at the bottom of this email, as is the return of the occasional What’s On Your Wall series.

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SPONSOR OUR CONFERENCE?

To enquire about sponsoring the European Conference on Customer Management, contact Edward Jones.

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BOOK LINK: INCONVENIENCE STORES

Some readers pointed out the Amazon delivery time for Mark Bradley’s book Inconvenience Stores, A Year in UK Customer Service, mentioned in the last Start The Week email, is 4-6 weeks. You can get it much faster from the publishers direct on this link:

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1) QUOTE OF THE WEEK: GET INTO THEIR SOUL

"Your job is to touch everyone and get into their soul. Every moment you are in your office, you are useless."

SOURCE: Jack Welch, legendary CEO of General Electric, speaking at one of our conferences on the importance of emotional attachment with your people as well as your customers

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2) STATISTIC OF THE WEEK: THE VALUE OF EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT (IN DOLLARS)

"One Gallup study demonstrated that a mid-sized bank could add $256 million to its total of customer balances on deposit by drawing higher (emotional) attachment scores from 50,000 customers."

SOURCE: Steve Simpson, a speaker at our European Conference on Customer Management.

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2a) BONUS STATISTIC OF THE WEEK: HEAD OR HEART?

Q: Head or Heart?

A: 60% follow their heart

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3) FAST GUIDE: MEASURING CUSTOMER EMOTION

This week’s Fast Guide draws from some secondary research (I guess that makes my effort third-hand research) by the ever-insightful Steve Simpson, author of UGRs, Cracking the Corporate Culture Code, and a speaker at our European Conference on Customer Management.

Steve points out that it is often said we cannot measure customer emotions, so they remain elusive and intangible as an aggregated indicator for overall customer loyalty. And as an indicator of individual propensity to defect, too, of course.

‘How satisfied are you on a scale of 1 to 5?’ doesn’t really cut it in the emotion measurement stakes. That’s head, not heart. Cognitive judgements use the front of your brain. Whereas it’s the sub-conscious where the emotions are lurking that provides a truer measure of the customer’s likelihood to be loyal or to defect.

Steve points to Gallup’s creation in 2001 of eight key measures of Customer Emotion in four constructs. Gallup’s emotional measurement instrument was devised to assess emotional attachment and therefore likelihood of the customer being loyal.

Gallup’s eight key measures are:

CONFIDENCE

XXX is a name I can always trust

XXX always deliver on what they promise

INTEGRITY

XXX always treats me fairly

If a problem arises, I can always count on XXX to reach a fair and satisfactory solution

PRIDE

I feel proud to be a XXX customer

XXX always treats me with respect

PASSION

XXX is a perfect company for people like me

I can’t imagine a world without XXX

The highest rung of the emotional ladder is passion, says Gallup, not surprisingly. You can instantly see how useful a tool an emotional thermometer like Gallup’s can be in assessing how warmly your customers feel towards you and in helping you focus on where you need to improve to heat the relationship up.

For example, put yourself in the customer’s shoes for a minute: how many of the eight would they/you tick? If you use the four categories as a ladder, with Confidence as the essential first rung, where on the ladder would your organisation be? What do you need to do to move up one rung?

SOURCE: Steve Simpson, one of our conference speakers from 2004, referring to a paper by Alec Applebaum, The Constant Customer, in The Gallup Management Journal. See also Amy Wong’s article ‘The role of emotional satisfaction in service encounters’, Managing Service Quality, Vol 14, Number 5, pp 365-376.

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LEARN MORE ON EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY? ONE-DAY SUMMIT ADDED TO CONFERENCE THIS YEAR

We’ve lined up some of the world’s leading experts in this field to help you move your customers up that emotional loyalty ladder at the one-day Customer Loyalty & Retention Summit, a new feature for our London conference in May.

At the conference, Fred Reichheld, the world’s greatest customer loyalty guru, will explain which strategies work to develop the emotional bond and loyalty, while Baronness Susan Greenfield, a leading expert on how the brain works, will offer you some unexpected insights into how your customers’ conscious and sub-conscious minds combine to dictate how they feel about you.

Other loyalty experts presenting at the conference include Clive Humby, the man behind Tesco’s enormously successful loyalty programme (so successful that Tesco CEO Terry Leahy bought Clive’s company to keep him away from Tesco’s competitors), Lou Carbone of Experience Engineering, Inc, one of the sharpest minds we know on how to get inside the heads and hearts of customers, and Ruud van Munster, Head of Loyalty & CRM for Shell Europe.

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SAVE WITH EARLY BIRD PRICING IF YOU BOOK SOON.

EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT, 16-19 MAY, 2005

The Loyalty Summit is part of our European Conference on Customer Management. Here’s the keynote line-up:

Ricardo Semler, CEO, Semler, SA, ‘the most unusual place to work in the world’

Ken Blanchard, co-author, One Minute Manager & Raving Fans

Stephen Covey, author, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (plus his new book, The 8^th Habit: From Highly Effective to Great)

Fred Reichheld, the world’s leading loyalty guru, Bain & Co fellow, author, The Loyalty Effect and Loyalty Rules

Lou Gerstner, IBM’s legendary turnaround CEO

Kjell Nordstrom, Swedish economist and electrifying speaker, co-author, Funky Business

Gordon Ramsay, the fiery Scottish chef, whose passion comes from an insistence on striving for the perfect customer experience

Sinclair Beecham, co-founder, Pret a Manger and

Ricardo Semler, CEO, SEMCO SA, the radical South American firm, and author of Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend.

Baronness Susan Greenfield, the renowned Neurobiologist (you’ve seen her on Question Time and that kind of thing), who will leave you thinking differently about how customers think.

DOWNLOAD THE CONFERENCE PROGRAMME HERE >>

http://www.ecsw.com/ecswuk2005

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WHAT’S ON YOUR WALL?

In this occasional series, we travel en masse (but virtually) to a fellow reader’s office so you can share the customer-centred tips and quotes they have on their wall. This week we head to Gateshead, in the UK’s North-East, to see what words of wisdom Peter Wright has on his wall…

From: Peter Wright
To: 'Phil@ecsw.com'
Subject: on my wall

Hi Phil

I believe that this quote is attributable to John Seddon (Editor’s note: John will be speaking at our conference in May. He’s the sharpest commentator we know on systems thinking – Toyota’s business methodology – and on how to breathe new life into your call centres by abandoning old command and control methods):

"It's always a mistake to do the wrong things righter.
It's better to do the right things wrong –

at least that way you're learning".

My favourite, and I'd love to thank whoever invented it;

"If you always do what you always did you'll always get what you always got."

Peter Wright
Environmental Health and Trading Standards Manager

Gateshead Council

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NEW BOOKS, FAST GUIDES AND ARTICLES

We’ve posted some new content on our website to help you become more customer-centred in 2005:

BOOKS: Rolf Jensen's book, The Dream Society is now in our book store. And I’ve added one of my favourite books to the store, Robert K. Cooper’s ‘The Other 90%: How to unlock your vast untapped potential for leadership and for life’ – some great motivational stuff in this book for your frontline people.

FAST GUIDES: We’ve also added a Fast Guide derived from Rolf Jensen’s Six Market Propositions. And a Fast Guide on why you should design to displease your customers (apparently it’s more profitable sometimes: I know it sounds paradoxical, but read the Fast Guide and you’ll find it’s true).

ARTICLES: The ever-insightful and readable Ron Kaufman offers us his thoughts on ‘Service Encounters of The Third Kind’, on how to increase emotional engagement to the third level. And The Customer Care Lady, JoAnna Brandi’s, latest article tells us how to Make 2005 The Year of The Customer.

To find these new resources, click on our Home Page link (below) and scroll down to the New Stuff panel.

> > >

http://www.ecsw.com

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THE TEN-SECOND FUNNY: THINGS DISCOVERED BY ACCIDENT

Not so much ‘funny ha, ha’ as ‘funny: makes you think’ this week. As your organisation comes up with all kinds of innovation processes for ‘industrialising’ innovation to keep ahead of customer wants, spare a thought for the role of randomness, as with these Things Discovered By Accident:

"The list of things created by accident is certainly impressive; Aspirin, Band-Aids, Diners Club, DNA finger printing, dynamite, inoculation, jelly, Lamborghini, microwave ovens, nylon, penicillin, velcro and Vodafone."

I’m not sure how Lamborghini was discovered as an accident: "Oh, look, we dropped the molten metal and it’s formed itself into a 500 brakehorsepower car by accident. Let’s call it a Lamborghini Diablo!." But, anyway…

As well as randomness, there’s the totally unexpected innovative opportunity if you watch how how customers use existing products. Gary Hamel, the strategy guru and a previous speaker at our European Conference on Customer Management, cites the example of the microwave manufacturer who put webcams in student dorms to see how the students used their product.

They discovered that their microwaves were being used by students to dry their pants after doing the laundry. And, yes, microwave clothes dryers are on the way as a result. Keep an eye on those customers: they’re a strange lot.

SOURCE: December’s Fast Company magazine is the source of the bit about happy accidents. Gary Hamel told our European Conference on Customer Management the true story about the students and their microwaves.

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WHY DO I RECEIVE THIS EMAIL?

Because at some point you signed up on our website as an associate member. This Start The Week email, designed to bring you customer-centred insights and tips and to raise a smile (which raises energy levels) on alternate Monday mornings, is a benefit of membership.