Big Ideas: Emotional Design in Business.

You would probably recognise your own signature on a piece of paper (or maybe less so electronically) but do you know your own emotional signature?

You would probably recognise your own signature on a piece of paper (or maybe less so electronically) but do you know your own emotional signature? We all have one. It’s our own predictable way of reacting to situations. Our inner programming that we believe does not control our emotions. Your friends and family will know what your emotional signature is (probably better than you) and can usually accurately predict your reaction to any given situation. What about your company’s emotional signature? Is it consistent and delivered across all platforms with passion and clarity?

Many business leaders currently face a massive problem: trying to understand their niche, their reason for being and their own Emotional Signature. Not just in hospitality but across all sectors the old model of assuming that customers act rationally in their decision-making is no longer enough to explain their attitudes and behaviour towards companies. To quote neuroscientist Antonio Damasio,

Emotion is in the loop of reason.

Let me tell you a true story about a hospitality (Hotel) business that is locked into the ‘old way’ of thinking about the ‘customer experience paradigm’. I walked into a well-known global Hotel chain on Friday with a client of mine. I successful predicted (by writing the answers in advance, putting them in an envelope and handing it to my client) that:

How long it would take for someone to approach us at reception? [We were 3 metres away from the desk standing still. It took a mind numbing 2 minutes 32 seconds. Urgent?]
Will open body language be used to engage us? [Closed NVC with no eye contact; no engagement. I accurately predicted how my client felt: We were ‘in the way’ of their job – gosh where do I start?]
What would be the first question we would be asked? [‘Excuse me, are you waiting for some one?’ Really]
What was the emotional experience (smell and feel) of the foyer / reception? [The 5 words I predicted in his paragraph describing the feeling (including smell, visual and auditory)were old, stale, dated, cleaning product smell, dull]
How would describe the experience to someone else? [He used my predicted emotional descriptors: unwelcoming and uninspiring].

He opened the envelope. He was amazed and thought I had somehow ‘cheated’, or manipulated the situation. I had been completely truthful; I had not been there before and not manipulated or hypnotised him. I had of course visited many branches of this particular chain of hotels and recorded a detailed assessment of their emotions signature and the responses I felt to their service (or lack of it). My predictions were nearly 100% in line with his experiences (within 12 seconds for question number 1) and consistent with all the thick data from my multiple visits elsewhere.

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. – Peter Drucker

It’s not difficult to find support for what appears to be the ‘ultimate truth’ in hospitality: the customer experience is everything and key to business success. Since virtually every business leader espouses this truth, it must be great to be a customer.Except we know it is not the case. Colin Shaw writing in my now favourite bedside book, The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value(www.landmarkonthenet.com) talks about the challenges ahead for all businesses. They are all so conformist, so dull and so boring. He says,

Organisations are selling similar products and services to the same people. This, along with massive improvements in technology and more efficient offshore manufacturing, enables price reduction, which drives commoditization, which in turn drives down profits and ultimately shareholder value.

Emotions guide our every thought, transaction and deed. The next battleground, therefore, is not the customer experience, but the emotional signature and it’s delivery. What can business leaders do to drive their organisations into these winning emotional positions? They need to look at developing a Emotional Signature Delivery process:

1. The Emotional Discovery. Most of what companies know about their customers tends to be descriptive and data driven: who they are, where they live, what they’ve purchased and their customer history. There may have undertaken a segmentation analysis that groups customers by attitudes and emotional drivers. But there is little or no work (certainly in the hospitality industry) to determine what the emotional signature is of the product or how the customer really feels about their experience. Far beyond an out-dated feedback form (post experience) or a text survey (so annoying it makes me scream).

2. The Emotional Design. Emotional design leverages emotional discovery in order to create products and services that allow customers to more easily accomplish the goals that are important to them. This includes designing products and services that customers love because they’re meaningful and make them feel good.

3. The Emotional Delivery. Customer service is a monologue; it’s about technical delivery, standards, and execution. The company decides what to do and how to do it. Well-designed and executed customer service usually does a good job of meeting customers’ baseline needs and expectations.

These create what Shaw describes as the ‘attention clusters’ which are (he believes) the new value drivers. In order of importance they are attention, recommendation and advocacy. The ‘attention cluster’ incorporates emotions of being interested, indulgent, stimulated, exploratory, and energetic. The emotional marketing components are diverse and need to relate to the 27+ senses we have and the emotional triggers they require. Hotels are already looking at:

Creating a Visual Impact. People everywhere are visual creatures. Imagery is a smart, subliminal way to sell. According to the Travel Industry Association, most online reservations are still made from the picture gallery, or one click later. Yet, most guests think their decision was intellectual, not an emotional; cold facts aren’t nearly as compelling. The emotions response is being subconsciously aware of every aspect of the visual. This includes dull reception areas.
The Sweet Scent of Success. Among all the basic (old school) five senses, smell is one of the most powerful trigger of emotions and memories. Hotel ‘scent-vertising’ could be the stimulation of jasmine at a boutique, or the relaxation of lavender in the lobby. These scents should be barely perceptible, almost subliminal. They are meant to lull guests into a serene state, prompting them to relax, buy more and, ideally, remember the brand. Or in the case of my visit the smell of bleach.
The Sound and Audio. Some hotels have misused sound for many years. Fine-tuning the sound of products satisfies the consumer while subtly ingraining a brand’s intrinsic quality, is the ultimate quest. For years, major department stores used soothing music to slow down shoppers and induce them to look at all the merchandise displayed around them. Those oh so predictable hypnotic, dull, lift-music sounds. Specialty boutiques may play anything from old French jazz to soundscapes such as laughing children, birdsongs or lapping water. Understanding this emotional signature for a hotel or restaurant is a real science.
The Haptic Response (Feel & Touch). If customers handle merchandise or take pleasure from simple things like cool buttons and switches; they tend to develop a liking for the product or hotel. That makes them much more likely to buy other products. Natural décor, featuring tactile, green elements, seems to be the way forward in interior innovation. Botanical facades are not just artistic installations anymore. They are suitable for growing, and even eating. An outstanding way to link the brand with green, organic and health foods. A real emotional nudge for potential clients.
Chemotaxis and Taste. Taste is a chemical response at the molecular level, in the nose and on the surface of the tongue. It is a incredibly powerful emotional driver. Marketers are constantly using taste to differentiate their brands. Starting in the 1980s, DoubleTree Hotels began building a welcoming reputation with their signature cookies. Warm chocolate-chip cookies were handed out with room cards at check-in, while travel agents received cookies with their commissions. Now the passion for these cookies is global.

Identifying true emotional drivers for your customers includes structured ways to embed these emotional experiences in the core processes of customer discovery, design and delivery. Unfortunately (and fortunately for their competitors), Emotion Signature Delivery is rare in the hospitality and business world. Rules, processes, policies, metrics, resource constraints, as well as more deeply entrenched beliefs often get in the way.

If good customer experience makes for good business sense, then business programmes that strive to deliver really memorable positive emotional customer experiences promise to take organisations into high-performing and high-profit market niches. The very important message and guidance for business leaders across sectors is clear: measure your emotional experience, drive the emotional change from the results and track these emotional changes over time.

It’s been emotional.

Be Amazing Every Day.

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