Emotion Curves. The Circus Experience.

It’s Marketing & Communications that define a company’s Brand Values. But it’s really the current customers that own the Brand. Odd!?

Really? Let’s take a look on how to link Brand Values and Staging the Experience with customers. Also, it may be cheaper than you think!

At the end we’ll end up in the Circus together.

One Night in Paris

In the Spring of 2009 the guys from G-CEM (Global Customer Experience Management) did a marvelous 2-day-training-job and introduced me to their concept of Emotion Curves on day one. I don’t remember much from the second day, because the Emotion Curves got me thinking.

These were the questions that kept me up all night, and were at the origin for what has by now become a standard approach when it comes to Customer Experience Design at Swisscom:

1. Who owns your Brand?

A case from the training: “Dr. Martens” loved the fact, that their shoes had become hugely popular in the highly fashion conscious gay community in San Francisco. On the other hand they struggled with the situation that the exact same products found many followers among neo-fascists in England. The product (shoes with toe-protective steel caps) was highly functional for kicking.

It’s tough, to realize that it is actually – and always! – the customers that own the brand – not you with your Branding and Communications people. Customers resonate with their values and project them onto your offering, the interactions with you. Hence, they choose who you are (to them).

2. How do you stage your brand values?

Dr. Marten had to work hard and smart to get out of this “brand hijacking”. Here are my key take-aways on how to.

Look at all the interactions a customer has with you along the whole Customer Experience. (More on Customer Experiences in my post The Amtrak Acela Customer Experience. Hair on my Seat.).

These interactions all take place at your touchpoints with customers. A touchpoint can be a website, a billboard, a commercial, a bill, a sales person, a customer care representative, a company car, a meeting room, the product, a manual, an IVR voice, a company building, etc. OK?

To create an “Emotion Curve”, map each interaction along a customer’s experience from beginning to end. Then, have the customer rate each interaction on a scale from “felt great” (+) to “was awful” (-). Not numerical, just relative to each other (higher/lower).

3. How to use Brand Values to prioritize?

As a reflex, you might now want to improve everything that wasn’t rated well by the customer. Don’t!

First, use your Brand Values and mark the interactions where your Brand Values are staged. That is both: where you bring them across the way you want and also the way you’d rather not. (It’s like looking into the mirror, really.)

Then consider these 2 basic rules

1) A human being wants a “pleasure-pain-gap” in an Experience. Contrast. Good and Bad. Ups and Downs. It shouldn’t be too low, though. Still acceptable. But it doesn’t all have to be good! That’s just boring……….

2) Peak and End by staging your Brand Values. Show effort, finesse, cleverness, thorougness to make sure you do your best where it really matters. Finally, you want to achieve touchpoint interactions that as a whole make up the branded experience for your customer. The challenge really is: How to achieve this constistently across your touchpoints?

4. What are the costs to provide these excellent, branded experiences?

Design Rule 2) was pretty obvious, really. Also, not extra costly to implement.

It’s rule 1) that is a paradigm shift.

Y0u might stop picking on the poor colleague from Billing with that consistently low Customer Satisfaction score. And you’ll hesitate throwing more resources into it to at least pull even with Customer Care, Sales and your Offerings.

Think about re-allocating these resources to activities that bring your Brand Values to the top! Because in my experience the number of customers, that will turn to you because your billing rocks, is rather small.

Think even further. Draw resources from where your CSAT score is high, but where it doesn’t really pay off to stage your Brand Values. All of a sudden you have resources to work with. It maybe that overall you’ll need less resources!

5. Who are your customers now, and tomorrow?

Generally speaking, your customers will connect with you to cover their critical needs. If you fulfill them best, they’ll turn to you (of course, only as long as they are aware of you).

So, as in the case with Dr. Martens, if you want to shift your customer base, or if you want to bind them, upsell to them, learn from them, connect and interact more intensively with them, consider driving your Brand Values into your interactions across the whole of your organization.

This is the way to primarily influence who our customers are, and will be in the future. With the strongest bond.

After that night in Paris

On my way home from Paris I wrote a basic implementation concept that we have pursued ever since.

Here’s an anonymized example from a B2B contract negotiation.

In the negoation debriefing with the customer we mapped this customer’s journey with sticky notes on the wall, and then visualized it using Excel.

Back in the office we marked out our Brand Values and – where valid for more than this client – we got active, e.g. improving that Contract (Draft) in the end that looked like one document, but in fact had 14 attachments in lawyer language embedded.

Also, we made good practices like the Personal COM known to other sales colleagues.

A reflection on getting Coffee

Why do we go to Starbucks?
(or, for us experience fanatics: What are our critical needs, that we wish to be fulfilled by Starbucks?)

My critical needs are:

– I want to lay back and get a treat. (Some great coffee, please.)

– I want to have good conversation. (In a classy ambiente.)

– I want to finish typing this blog post. (I want good and free wifi.)

Relaxing in front of a Starbucks
(c) breakfastadventures.wordpress.com

Now, what if I need a coffee just before boarding my train early in the morning?

– It’s got to be quick. (I need to catch that train!)

– I don’t want to fumble with change and coins. (I have my hands full…)

– I want to be able to run and still have a hot coffee once I sit down. (Put a lid on it!).

Some opinionated observations

1) It’s two totally different situations, but the same person! Possibly even on the same day.
That makes it even trickier for us that try to bind that person (or maybe only the morning person?) and make them a loyal fan of our brand and offerings!

2) The average waiting time at a Starbucks is probably 3-4 minutes.
It would be stupid for Starbucks (and very costly) to lower that time significantly, as this is not a critical need. It may even be in strong conflict with “getting a treat, lay back.”

3) Sorry to say so, but whether the coffee is really good, or the girl selling it to me is smiling at the train station – it’s not critical. It must only be acceptable.

4) Already in 2009 I came to the conclusion that Starbucks should not open their restaurants at a train station. I don’t see a match between my critical needs when running to the train in the morning.
I was wrong. The morning waiting lines in Berne are impressively long. So I wonder, maybe they’re having their coffee after getting off the train; or the take-away coffee at the other places is unacceptably bad.
Both, room for innovation.

Take That at the Circus

I promised you the Circus in the beginning.

Here’s the training video we made. I contains a lot. Emotion Curve introduction, CX managers. All in Swiss German and French subtitles again.

It ends with my reflecting on why we go to the Circus.
And you’ll even get some “Take That” (the UK band) with it. They were the key inspiration for this part of the video.

Why do we go to the Circus?

Let’s look at this from a grand parent’s perspective!

Does it really matter that they bring the horses around the third time, already?

That the ice cream is expensive and slipped off to the floor before the grand child could eat it?

That the chairs or benches are so uncomfortable that your behind is fast asleep even before the break?

That the parking cost you 10 bucks and was in a 3-inch-deep mud puddle?

That the penguins stink terribly out of their beak when they parade right past to you?

Not really!

Simply put, all that matters are these 2 critical needs:

1) I want to have my grand child sit on my lap during the whole time.
So, I can feel the excitment, the laughter right there, first hand.

2) I want to see the sparkle in my grand child’s eyes.
So, don’t you even think about offering them first row seats that they can sit with the other kids and see better.

Why do you go to the Circus?

Do you drink Coffee?

Are you the Billing responsible?

Have I offended the Penguins?

I’d love to read your thoughts! Please comment and share.

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