The Feeling Economy and Customer Empathy

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Artificial Intelligence|The Feeling Economy and Customer EmpathyArtificial intelligence (AI) and automation as a workforce disruptor is a genie out of the bottle. The Brookings Institute, a little more than a year ago projected about 25% disruption of the U.S. workforce – about 36 million jobs – in the coming decades. But at the same time, the needle also is moving on A.I.’s transformation of how businesses and their customers interact.

To give this collective shift more context, AI has moved from replacing jobs associated with inspecting equipment, manufacturing goods, repairing things to replacing humans in thinking tasks–the likes of data dives and calculations. The shift originated in the Industrial Revolution and gave rise to the current “Thinking Economy.” Just as the industrial revolution automated physical tasks by decreasing the value of human strength and increasing the value of human cognition, AI taking over thinking tasks is further reshaping the landscape and ushering in a “Feeling Economy.”

AI in this Feeling Economy is doing more of the ‘brain’ work. Subsequently, humans increasingly are handling the ‘heart’ work, including social interaction, emotion recognition, nuanced communication and genuine care for customers. In the workplace, the feeling tasks of jobs – communicating with co-workers and clients, selling to or persuading others, and building and maintaining interpersonal relationships – are more important than the thinking tasks of jobs.

The rapid proliferation of “thinking AI” also is significantly transforming the goods and services marketplace. The consumer interface to the business often is AI-driven.

Online-connected consumers with smartphones can tap digital assistants — from Apple’s Siri, to Google Assistant, to Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung’s Bixby, and Microsoft’s Cortana — to answer questions, order supplies and control home electronics among other capabilities, some of which have not even been thought of yet. As time goes by, as digital assistants become more understanding of such things as context and can do a better job of personalization. GPS navigation systems, such as Waze and Google Maps, simplify the difficult navigation task of finding destinations, even if the consumer has never been to those destinations before.

The machine-to-machine transactions — consumers purchasing via the likes of Amazon Prime through Amazon’s website or app, for example — leaves the emotional connection largely to humans. To match the emotionality of the consumer, the customer-facing personnel must become more empathetic, which in turn makes the consumer even more emotionally driven – requiring greater feeling intelligence on the part of the business.

Further consider the case of the customer service representative, whose easy, repetitive tasks like providing information and making appointments are being taken over by A.I. In this context, a consumer with a non-routine problem is much more likely to be emotionally involved, and the service person to whom AI escalates the problem will need to be much more empathetic than the traditional customer service person. The emotionality of the consumer forms a feedback loop: the consumer is more emotional, so the business must become more emotional, which makes the consumer even more emotional, and so on.

In our new book, The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy, we describe a real-life scenario reflecting the thinking-to-feeling transition happening in customer service:

A recent doctoral graduate, an African-American man named Jared, was trying to buy a car. He started out with one salesperson, who took a more thinking-oriented approach. This was a good match for Jared, because PhDs are among the most thinking-oriented people on Earth. The salesperson, being good at his job, was trying to match Jared’s interaction preferences. Unfortunately, Jared was then passed off to an African American salesperson, no doubt to try to match Jared’s cultural background and ethnicity. This salesperson, knowing that business needs to be more emotional as time goes by, tried an emotional approach with Jared, calling him “my Black brother,” and using other emotional appeals. Such an approach will work the vast majority of the time as consumers become more emotionally driven. For Jared, though, it was not what he needed. The one thing we know, however, is that there will be fewer and fewer thinking-oriented consumers like Jared.

As thinking AI is making consumers more feeling-oriented—from their product expectations to their everyday life—companies can take advantage of this trend by tailoring sales, marketing and service to meet the needs of these increasingly emotionally-driven buyers.

About the Authors

Roland T. Rust is Distinguished University Professor, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, and founder and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. An award-winning scholar, he has edited several major journals and consulted with American Airlines, AT&T, Dupont, Eli Lilly, FedEx, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, NASA, and Sony, among many companies worldwide. Ming-Hui Huang is Distinguished Professor in the College of Management at National Taiwan University. A Fellow of the European Marketing Academy, she also is International Research Fellow of the Centre for Corporate Reputation at the University of Oxford, UK, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Center for Excellence in Service at Maryland Smith and incoming Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Service Research. Their book, The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy (Springer International Publishing; January 2021), can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Economy-Artificial-Intelligence-Creating/dp/3030529762.

Practicing the Spirit of the Law: Serve Your Customer Better

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Serve your Customer|Practicing the Spirit of the Law: Serve Your Customer BetterWhether through anecdotes or personal experience, we’re all familiar with business leaders who cut corners, inflate prices, make misleading product claims, slander the competition—and worse—yet sleep soundly at night. How can good people persist in bad business practices?

In conjunction with the spirit of the law is your business and personal ethics. Many people see ethics and business as separate entities. This belief is wrong. An individual’s business ethics and personal ethics must be aligned if one is to be a person of integrity. When a person of integrity does business, financial rewards follow.

When we build an ethical reputation, we will increase our profits.There is a positive relationship between business ethics and profitability. Our employees will be more dedicated to doing their jobs efficiently, and our customers will be more satisfied with our products and service. Loyal customers buy more products and give customer referrals.

Human beings are placed on Earth to grow spiritually, and honesty in business provides this challenge. The marketplace is a perfect testing ground for ethics. When this challenge is met, you can take satisfaction in your accomplishments and your legacy. You corrected your unethical behavior and embraced honest, transparent, and trustworthy business practices. Ethics is now taught to the next generation of businesspeople.

The Spirit of the Law

Of course, the letter of the law must always be met. But we should use a higher purpose in business decision-making—the guiding principle of the spirit of the law. A person may act in a way which is perfectly legal but not ethical. The key is to determine if a person’s deeds go beyond the letter of the law and reach the higher ethical standards of the spirit of the law.

After my salespeople learn the foundation of honest selling, I teach the higher levels of ethical selling, to go beyond the letter of the law. One of my favorite teaching examples is a time-honored story about the first offer.

Biblical and Contemporary Examples

It happened that a righteous businessman had some very fine wine for sale and a potential buyer came to him while he was in the middle of his morning prayers. The customer said, “Sell me this wine for such and such price.” The businessman did not answer, so as not to interrupt his prayers. The customer assumed that the businessman was unwilling to settle for the price offered, so the customer increased his original offer and said, “Sell me this wine for such and such price.” Still the businessman did not answer. This cycle was repeated with ever-escalating prices. Upon finishing his prayers, the businessman said, “From the time you made your first offer, I resolved in my mind to sell the wine to you. Therefore, I may take no greater amount than your first offer.”

The sages made this parable an example of proper ethical behavior, stating, “There would have been no question if he had said verbally, ‘I will sell you this for the price you offer,’ but even if he merely resolved silently in his mind to sell his product for the offered price, even if he did not articulate it, he must not go back on that resolution.”

This decision embodies the concept of ‘going beyond the letter of the law,’ to instead conduct your business within the greater spirit of the law, an ideal everyone should strive to emulate. The sages laud the righteous businessman for his exemplary behavior and proclaim the verse ‘speaks truth in his heart.’ The businessman ‘agreed in his heart’ to the original price; his silence was simply misconstrued by the buyer. Of course, making up one’s mind without verbalizing it does not constitute a binding agreement, but resolving to do so demonstrates an unusually high level of ethical behavior.

Two thousand years later in the twentieth century, the owner of a scrap metal business had a policy to always close his business for the Sabbath. The day after the Sabbath, he listened to numerous voice messages from a government agent offering to buy all the scrap metal in his possession for an urgent building project. Each of the buyer’s successive and obviously urgent messages increased the price because the government agent thought the initial offerings must have been too low. When the owner reviewed all the messages, he contacted the agent and explained that he would have accepted the first offer; he had neglected to answer the initial call, as well as all the subsequent calls, only because it was the Sabbath. He then indicated that he was prepared to let the government have all his scrap metal at the price of the first offer. The agent was so impressed by the owner’s ethical behavior that he made the firm extremely wealthy as the government’s main supplier of building materials.

Another example, what would you consider an advertorial? It’s an advertisement camouflaged to appear as a feature article. Is an advertorial legal—yes. But is it ethical?—no! By typesetting and carefully writing an advertisement as an unbiased opinion, the reader is misled, deceived into believing that the content is not commercial.

Print and Website Decision-making

Management should make business decisions based on delivering reader value. Beyond what is legal, does the magazine present promotional material as regular content? Is the ad-to-content ratio correct so the reader is delivered proper value? Does management investigate their advertisers to ensure that they have business integrity, and their product offerings are honest? Even an advertisement that has a negative reference to a competitor can harm your magazine’s or website’s reputation.

In today’s difficult financial times, is it wise to turn away companies willing to place expensive advertisements? Yes—if it is unethical.

When these types of questions factor into your decision-making, you are practicing the spirit of the law. Then, you will enjoy profitable long-term relationships with your readers and advertisers.

Ethical business is smart business. If you’re pondering what to do in difficult sales situation, and you’re unsure about whether it’s your responsibility to provide full disclosure by informing or warning the customer about a product’s limitations, then err on the side of caution, fairness, and goodness—go beyond the letter of the law. It may not be your responsibility legally, but it honors the spirit of the law.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |Joel MalkoffJoel Malkoff, a.k.a. the Ethics Giver, demonstrates that ethical business decision-making isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s the profitable thing to do. Over the course of his 45-year career as a business executive and entrepreneur, he has generated more than half a billion dollars in sales. A writer and speaker on ethical business practices and principles, he serves as general manager and vice president of a corporation that manufactures and sells medical and scientific research products worldwide. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lives in Avon, Connecticut, with his wife, Lynn. Selling Ethically: A Business Parable Connecting Integrity with Profits is his debut book. Learn more at https://theethicsgiver.com/selling-ethically and https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Ethically-Business-Connecting-Integrity-ebook/dp/B08KSB9HY3.

What Makes Customers Walk Away in Frustration

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Frustration is a feeling we can all relate to. It’s a sense of anger that feels hopeless because you can’t solve the issue. We’ve all been stuck in a traffic queue, nervously looking at the time while knowing that there is no other way to escape the traffic jam.

Frustration makes us feel powerless. There is nothing we can do but wait until the problem has resolved itself. Yet when a customer feels frustrated, it’s a strong indication that there’s room for improvement within your organization. A frustrated customer experiences a mixture of anger and hopelessness. They are in a heightened emotional state, which makes it tricky to win them over. You are more likely to lose customers who walk away in frustration. Here are 4 avoidable situations that could lead to negative emotions.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | What Makes Customers Walk Away in Frustration

No transparent communication

Transparency is a business buzzword when it comes to communication. But what does it mean? Business experts recommend thinking of transparency in relation to what your customers want to hear. Ideally, your customers want to know what to expect. They do not want nasty surprises, such as a vague pricing system or inaccurate promises. Maintaining a transport approach to your communication will significantly boost your brand reputation. In an open and honest communication, customers are more likely to forgive unavoidable errors and mishaps.

They bounce off the site

Your customers live in the 21st century. They are experienced users of digital technologies. Therefore, they expect your website to meet their expectations. An old-fashion design could slow down the experience and distract from the messaging. Additionally, unresponsive web design that isn’t mobile-friendly can affect navigation. It can be a good idea to reach out to a professional website design company to consider improving your online presence. The company can help identify some of the core issues, such as lack of accessibility or excessive popups and distractions on the page. Ultimately, your customers are digitally savvy. So they are not wasting time on websites that don’t deliver the performance they need.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | What Makes Customers Walk Away in Frustration

They don’t find your added value

Your added value is the differentiation your business delivers to customers. Buyers are willing to pay more if they feel the added value is worth the expense. For instance, Apple users argue that devices are expensive, but they are high-end designs that establish a sense of community within the audience group. What do you give to your customers that is unique to your brand, and more importantly, how can you make it more desirable? Failure to understand your audience group can backfire dramatically, as customers feel cheated by services or items whose price seems unjustifiable.

They find the VIP treatment unfair

What is your policy toward VIPs? Traditional organizations tend to be selective about their VIP customers, while others will treat every customer with the same respect and attention. Moving forward, the traditional model is less effective, especially in an environment where any user can damage a brand online. It can be helpful to transform your customer relationship strategy accordingly.

Are customers left frustrated by their interactions with your company? Whether they feel your communication lacks transparency or your website isn’t user-friendly, annoyed customers are quick to switch brands for a competitor. Therefore, every business needs to put their customers’ happiness first!

Learn The Secrets To Impress Customers From Day One

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Are you interested in gaining more customers for your business? If so, then you need to work to ensure that you do impress them from the first day they find your company. This is always going to lead to higher conversions. Here are some of the boxes that you need to tick to get this right.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | Learn The Secrets To Impress Customers From Day One

A Killer Website

First, you need to think about your website. For most customers and clients, this is always going to be the first impression that they get of your business. You need to pay attention to load times. If it takes anywhere more than three seconds for a page on your site to load, then you’re going to have problems with your bounce rate. You need to think about the design too. It’s absolutely vital that your site stands out from all the other possibilities in the SERPs. A custom website programming solution is often the best way to ensure that’s the case.

A Fast Call Back

These days, customers don’t want to be waiting long for an answer they need. They want to get results immediately and this does tie back to ensuring that your website loads rapidly. If a customer makes an enquiry, you need to make sure that you are in a position to respond within at least 24 hours. If it’s anything more than this then you can bet that a customer will have turned their attention to the competition and potentially found the solution they were searching for before you could even pick up the phone.

Honesty And Transparency

Next, you need to make sure that you are both honest and transparent with customers. They value this more than most other things. They want to know that they can trust the company that they are buying from and this should always start with the quote that you offer for a product or service. The quoted price should be exactly what the customer is going to pay when the service is delivered. If you can’t quote a price, then you need to be honest about this as well. Don’t end up in a situation where they can catch you out further down the line.

Rave Reviews

Finally, you do need to think about reviews. The latest reports suggest that more than 80% of customers and clients will check reviews online before they even consider committing to a purchase. So, if there’s an issue with your reviews then you could lose a lot of buyers. This is often a matter of knowing how to approach reviews. For instance, you should respond to them publicly as this will send a positive message to any potential customers. You also need to watch out for bad reviews on social media that might be spreading like wildfire.

We hope this helps you understand some of the key steps that you do need to explore to get things right here and guarantee that your customers don’t leave you for a competitor. Impress them from day one and they’ll always come back for more.

How To Treat Your Customers Like Royalty

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Service|How To Treat Your Customers Like RoyaltyAs a business owner, you are undoubtedly looking for ideas to expand your customer base and increase your bottom line. One way to achieve that goal is by offering your customers a premium service beyond comparison.

In short, you should aim for excellence and provide nothing short of a first-class service to your customers. It might seem like an odd concept, but many customers feel fed up with poor customer service and sometimes getting treated like they aren’t important.

If you treat your customers like royalty, they’ll feel valued and respected by your company. What’s more, they are almost certainly going to keep spending their money with your business.

Here are some steps to illustrate how you can give your customers a premium service that’s both customized to their needs and solves their problems:

Offer a genuine 24/7 service

Everyone knows that an e-commerce website means a business is theoretically ‘open for business’ 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The thing is, while customers can order goods and services online, they can’t get out of hours help if they need it.

You can buck that trend by offering a genuine 24/7 service to all your customers. You could provide the right support they need at any time via email, instant messaging, social media, or telephone.

The way you can do that is by either employing staff to work in shifts to cover the full 24 hours or outsourcing your contact center operations. If you opt for the latter, it would be better if you did so to a team in the same country as you.

Offer an express delivery service as standard

If you only sell digital products and services, you can probably ignore this section as it’s something you likely do anyway. But, if you need to send physical goods to your customers, don’t make them wait a long time for their orders.
It’s no secret that companies like Amazon offer next-day and even same-day services to all their customers, irrespective of where they live. Nothing is stopping your business from providing fast delivery if it partners with an expedited freight company.

You might be wondering how you can employ such a concept with your company if you only have a small business. The good news is you can use outsourced fulfillment services to stock your goods in various locations across the country.
Expedited freight companies can quickly haul your stock to each warehouse, and you can use local delivery options that promise next-day or same-day services.

Provide exceptional customer care

Lastly, you should go beyond the call of duty to ensure your customers have an excellent buying experience with you. That starts from the moment they enquire about what you sell through to the delivery of their orders.
Of course, your first-class customer care shouldn’t end once your customers receive their orders. You should back up what you sell with an aftercare service that’s beyond compare. Doing so will tempt your audience away from your competitors, even if you charge more!