How Emotional Response Drives Customer Trust and Loyalty
As one of the partners in The Rational Heart, a company that measures emotional response to almost any imaginable stimulus, I often find myself thinking about how best to communicate emotionally with my clients’ customers. How do I tell potential buyers of products or services that they can Trust my client to deliver insurance coverage when their car has been in a crash, or feel the Joy of sipping a flavorful latte in a client’s coffee shop down the road? It is absolutely a challenge to speak an emotional language.
Emotional Communication Is Possible
But it’s not impossible, and I know this because I’ve learned quite a lot about emotional language from engagements with my dog, Cooper. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first let me just tell you that The Rational Heart (TRH) uses the principles of Robert Plutchik’s psycho-evolutionary theory to understand how emotions are structured and interrelated. And from Plutchik’s work, we have learned that there are a limited number of basic emotions that emerge from our limbic brain system, and that these emotions often combine to form what we call complex emotions.
People of all walks of life feel these emotions all the time, whether we want them or not. They just happen to us. Furthermore, emotions also happen to all animals. So, dogs and cats and squirrels and bears and monkeys and so on – they all feel emotional responses to various stimuli all the time.
Lessons in Emotional Response From My Dog, Cooper
And the aforementioned dog, Cooper, is a veritable bundle of emotions. He is at times Joyful, or Angry, or Guilty. What? -- Guilty, you say? For sure. You come back into the kitchen, and find that Cooper has reached up to the countertop, and grabbed that sausage right off the plate. It’s already half gone. And Coop gives you that “hang-dog” look that says, “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself.”
Cooper also understands the emotions I am feeling. He knows when I am feeling Joy or Anger or even Anticipation. And he responds with actions or with emotional responses of his own that demonstrate his awareness. I have realized over time that if I want Cooper to feel certain emotions, I can use emotional response to get the reactions I want.
Creating Emotional Connections in Business
Let’s say, for instance, that I want Cooper to Love me. We know from Plutchik’s structure that Love is the combination of Joy and Trust. I would start by giving Cooper something that brings him Joy. Easy enough, that would be food. Dogs are hungry much of the time and Cooper is certainly no exception. Two meals a day, with the occasional snack, will suffice. And how do we add Trust? Make those meals occur, right out of the dish you have prepared, at the same time each day. So, he can count on being fed. Cooper will come to Love me as a provider. It is very straightforward with animals.
Applying Emotional Response to Business
And it can be very straightforward with humans, as well. If you are the owner of that coffee shop or that insurance company I mentioned earlier, you can follow the same principles to get customers to Love you. Not only that, you also know from psycho-evolutionary theory that Delight = Joy + Surprise. You can treat your customers to a surprise benefit occasionally, and the resulting Delight will cement the Love for your brand.
Measuring Emotional Response to Improve Your Brand
Of course, all of this is made possible only if you can measure how customers are feeling. That is possible today because TRH has built a system to do just that. If you find that Love for your brand seems to have diminished, you’ll know whether it is the Joy or Trust component that is not pulling its weight. And that, in turn, informs your strategic initiatives to correct the imbalance.
Using Emotional Response for Long-Term Success
There are many, many ways you can use emotional response measurement to improve the performance of your brand. And if you speak the universal emotional language, you will be well equipped for the journey.
At The Rational Heart, we understand that emotions are at the core of successful business strategies. Consumers make decisions influenced by both logic and emotion. By quantifying emotional responses through our proprietary behavioral economics approach, we provide your business with a strategic advantage. Trust in The Rational Heart to turn emotional insights into impactful business strategies. Contact us today to discover how we can help your business thrive!