Emotions Model
The age of serving only customers’ rational needs is over. Serving emotional needs is the future of customer experience. Those who seek to derive outsized value through a focus on CX must understand the nature of customer emotions and how they drive customer behaviors, decisions, and actions.
WideOpen has been studying human emotions in the context of customer experience because it is not enough to declare that customer emotions are important. CX practitioners must also be armed with more detailed information about which emotions occur when in the customer lifecycle so we can all design and execute CX with greater purpose and intention.
While customer lifecycles are different for various industries, companies, and brands, we have developed a Universal Customer Experience Map (UCEM) that applies to all situations (B2C and B2B) conceptually. All customer lifecycles – from consumers of ballpoint pens to customers of commercial aircraft – go through similar stages, albeit at different durations and levels of intensity. For the purposes of our baseline Human Emotions Model, our UCEM serves as a workable context.
Working with Dr. Craig Smith at Vanderbilt University, a leading expert on human emotions, we have built a model that identifies a) the range of emotions in the UCEM, and b) the positive and negative emotions most prevalent in each UCEM stage. Through this model we hope to make more tangible and pervasive the work of creating customer experiences that acknowledge and address these emotions.
Contact us to learn more about emotions in the context of the end-to-end customer experience.