The Inside & Out of Emotions & Operations Management

Spanish Version

Operations Management is tasked with transforming an idea into a happy customer. For manufacturers, it’s turning supplies & raw material into finished products.

For service-based companies, it’s implementing processes to render services.

Operations Management is one of the more technical company departments. Therein, in some instances, it can become very in-ward facing, i.e. away from customers.

This can pose quite an issue.

My good friend and customer experience expert Juan Carlos Alcaide has a mantra that always stuck with me: operations & emotions win over hearts.

It hits home and serves as a reminder of the importance of equipping operations teams with a customer-focus mentality.

Also, it serves to align operations and company departments in order to render loyal and happy customers who trust in products and/or services. 

Now, let’s get into some definitions in order to link emotions & operations management.

The Royal Spanish Academy defines emotions as the following:

·      An intense or passing mood change, pleasant or difficult, along with a bodily sensation

·      An expectant interest in taking part in something that is occurring

Consider the definition from a business standpoint: businesses want to evoke emotions, generally positive & pleasant, in customers, and also spark their interest.

Now that we’ve linked, let’s delve into the world of emotion in order to better understand how operations management evoke emotions for customers.

A bit of the inside & out if you will.

Like a colour-palette, there are 6 basic emotions: joy (happiness), sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise.

Like colours, emotions blend, creating an array of secondary emotions we feel at any given time, similar to customer interactions with a company and experience.

If we're able to design processes and operations to win over customers hearts, steering them to feel certain emotions for products and/or services, we're on the right path, and surely, they’ll return for more.

Joy (Happiness): Customer Value, Road to Satisfaction

The Spanish Royal Academy defines joy as a nice and alive feeling which tends to manifest externally.

Again, from a business standpoint, this definition is quite valuable given companies want to evoke joy in customers.

But, the bigger question is, how can joy be evoked for customers exactly?

Without a doubt, joy is inexplicably linked to value and satisfaction. Therefore, by pinpointing customer value and aligning products, services, and experience, we might just manifest some joy indeed.

Pinpointing customer value is a tremendously complex task and can entail differences between real value, as in, what customers want, and what companies interpret as value.

On the latter, companies tend to define value based on market research, competitor analysis, consumer-behaviour studies, and customer segmentation.

Given value is intrinsically subjective, it’s quite impossible to generate value for everyone – what works for one won’t necessarily work for the next.

I see value as something that creates satisfied and happy customers. Here, it’s worth mentioning the first rule of services: Satisfaction = Perception - Expectation.

Following our equation, customers are satisfied when perception is greater than customer expectation in regard to products/services & experience.

Back to the definition: joy tends to manifest externally.

Therein, a great deal of direct feedback can be captured by observing customer interaction.

Companies over attempt to measure customer satisfaction & happiness with an array of evaluation tools: surveys, mystery shoppers, audits, focus groups, 'happy or not' panels, etc.

But what they forget is direct feedback’s potential to serve as a tool to determine generated customer value. 

Companies with non-engaged staff and silo mentality clog up direct feedback, impeding its flow upward to identify dissatisfied customers in order to quickly deal with the root cause of customer dissatisfaction.

Directly observing customers is without a doubt a great funnel of information allowing companies to swiftly rectify customer dissatisfaction. 

Once again, however, we are faced with a gap between real customer satisfaction and what companies may directly observe.

Remember, customers are human too, meaning they won’t always tell the truth, nor verbalize emotional reactions, or simply won’t be interested in providing feedback.

Operations Management must create products, services, and experiences which generate value, joy, and satisfied customers through designing processes and full-proof customer-centric interactions.

On that note, customer centricity is key, and all supply chains must be designed under its premise.

I want to make a special remark on aligning Marketing & Operations as well given they play an essential role in generating customer value and happiness.

 Mass Customization which tailors products & services is also key in generating customer value & happiness. 

Sadness: Dissatisfied Customers, Disappointed

According to the Royal Spanish Academy, sadness is a state of being attuned to being afflicted, troubled, painful, irritated, and difficult to bear.

This definition is closely linked to anger (think, irritated), however, we'll try to separate the two.

Sadness can pop up at several customer experience moments. Dissatisfaction, as above, instigates an array of emotions for customers, sadness being one.

Customers who feel cheated at any one step of their experience will naturally feel sad.

Therefore, creating a Customer Journey Map is helpful.

These show all customer experience interaction points, highlighting pain points, i.e. moments customers may feel fear, anger, or sadness.

Pain points can include paying, waiting in line, repeating steps, filing a claim, exerting physical effort, unnecessary moving around, complex protocols, etc.

By pinpointing pain points, companies can attempt to reduce them through an appropriate touch point design.

Operations Management plays an essential role in mapping out customer experience and its corresponding procedures.

Speeding up payment, adequate wait-time, and implementing a quick & reliable claims system, etc. are key in reducing customer sadness.

Sadness is also inextricably linked to Lean Management.

Lean, developed by Toyota, aims to create maximum customer value at minimal waste. Waste is anything not generating customer value and something customers are not willing to pay for. 

Lean pinpoints 8 wastes in a manufacturing setting: inventory, waiting, transport, motion, overproduction, defects, over-processing, and unused talent. 

Equivalents exist in a service-based context.

By reducing and eliminating waste, we can turn emotions like sadness, anger, and fear into joy (happiness) or at least increased customer value.

Sadness incites passivity and a negative spiral downward.

Companies provoking customer sadness through negative experiences should attempt to implement gestures to win customers back and recover from the spiral downward.

The element of surprise can serve as a strategy to do just that.

But, we’ll get to that a bit later.

Anger: Sad Customer Turned Angry

 

The Spanish Royal Academy defines anger as a feeling of indignation causing anger.

Sadness can carry a lot of anger, and anger can lead to sadness, inextricably linking these emotions, which can occur simultaneously at times.

 There is a second services rule: it's difficult to play catch-up.

This means it's difficult to serve a customer we've let down at one point by annoying or causing them anger.

An impeccable job may have been done throughout 98% of the customer experience but letting the customer down just once might turn them angry and all of a sudden, the whole journey turns bad.

Let’s take flying as an example. It can be made up of 50 different interaction points.

• Pre-flight: on-line search, e-mail, phone call, issuing tickets, getting to the airport, checking in luggage, going through security, etc.
• On-board: getting to the departure gate, boarding, showing ID, stowing hand-luggage, interacting with in-flight staff, etc.
• Post-flight: arriving at the destination airport, getting off the plane, saying goodbye to crew, picking up luggage, leaving the airport.

If during the process, there are flight delays or lost luggage, even impeccable service throughout won’t bar off angry customers that might rate their overall experience as negative.

When customers are angry, it’s important to contain it and not let them down two times in a row.

According to numerous studies, it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one bad one, meaning letting a customer down just once translates to serious economic repercussions to win them back and rid their anger.

Companies generally have a client recovery fund to avoid losing customers. It can include discounts, vouchers, gifts, free or half off services, etc.

Although well intended, client recovery doesn’t get to the root of things. The goal is to not let the customer down in the first place, which means implementing measures to quickly pinpoint what generates customer anger and training personnel accordingly. 

Perhaps if companies had a ‘do it right the first time’ instead of a ‘recovery’ fund, the problem could surely be tackled at the root level.

Nowadays, we’re in a so-called customer revolution. Customers are well-informed, internet-savvy, on social media, impatient, and less loyal given their range of choices far & beyond.

This means empowered customers, translating to bad experiences as gun powder to their pistol on social media. Brands can take a serious blow if no action is taken.

Claims systems are one of the biggest sources of customer anger. To that end, it's important to implement bi-directional communication channels with customers allowing them to quickly bring forward a claim and receive a rapid response.

Companies without omni-channel retailing can also incite customer anger. Omni-channel companies can provide solid service across customer interaction points be it in-person, online, on a chat-box, or through a call center.

Regardless of the channel, nothing angers customers more than having to repeat the same thing twice, going unacknowledged, or being treated without the human touch.

Disgust: Losing Customer, Leaving a Bad Mark

The Spanish Royal Academy defines disgust as an unpleasant impression caused by something disgusting.

It goes without saying that if a customer feels disgust for products, services, or experiences – it’s not a good sign.

Disgust isn’t necessarily linked to taste as is in the restaurant industry, where a customer can be disgusted by a low-quality meal, an over-salted dish, or ‘disgusting’ ingredients.

While considering disgust, we mustn’t fail to touch on the senses.

An unkept and disorganized store, hotel, or restaurant can certainly paint a ‘disgusting’ visual for customers.

On that point, I can't help but allude to the 5S of workplace organization management in Lean: Sort, Set-in-Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain.

By applying the 5S, the resultant visual effect can be quite positive for customers.

Smell is indeed a sense to be taken as priority when mitigating disgust.

This certainty doesn't just mean avoiding bad smells (although important), but also providing pleasant smells in customer and employee spaces.

Some businesses have begun working with fragrance companies given that it's been proven that pleasant smells have a positive effect on intent to purchase, enhancing perceived product & service value.

Customers perceptions are important and the senses, in many senses, are key.

Disgust can also be caused by social factors such as the use of child labour, poor employee working conditions, ‘not-so-nice’ statements directed to certain social groups from management, or company cases involving corruption & scam.

Another disgust ‘angle’ is naturally the environment: pollution caused by the manufacturing process; low-quality materials; materials harming the environment; no sustainable & reputable environmental policy in place, etc.

Operations Management is tasked to guarantee the use of sustainable materials through design and of course SRM (Supplier Relationship Management).

In Lean, SRM aims to reduce waste and strategically manage third-party relationships to enhance exerted energies in processes.

A circular economy is a nice alternative as it’s a regenerative system prompting the use of biodegradable materials and reduction in plastics in packing.

A circular model can certainty reduce ‘disgust’.

Fear in Customer Experience Moments 

Master Yoda said:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I see much fear in you”

 Customers mustn’t see fear in brands nor in products or services.

 

The Spanish Royal Academy splits the meaning of fear in two.

Let’s consider both, given the importance of each: 

1.    Anxiety due to a real or imagined harm or risk  

2.    One’s distrust or apprehension of something happening contrary to one’s desire

 From a business standpoint, a few remarks can be made.

On the first:

·     Customers flee from harm or risk, looking for secure transactions with no risk of physical or mental harm

·     Harm and risk can be real, but also imagined. Given the current information overload & newsreel (real or not), companies must have defense mechanisms in place and be resilient & quick in mediating any harm & risk, real or imagined, customers may feel

On the second:

·   Let’s refresh on the first rule of services: Satisfaction = Perception - Expectation. Expectations are customer desires, therefore, providing contrary to desires holds a high chance of generating customer fear

Fear paralyzes customers, making them flee from fear-inducing situations. But, fear can also show its face at any given customer experience moment. 

Let’s consider a customer booking a hotel room.

Fear? Well, here’s where it comes knocking:

not finding what they want; high prices; not meeting expectations; no vacancy; not being like ‘in the pictures’; running into surcharges; hotel staff not speaking their language; having a bad view or facing noise…and the list goes on.

Indeed, fear points are more often than not pain points, companies must pinpoint them.

Also, customer fears towards products & services must be considered in designing adequate processes & protocols.

Analyzing customer complaints can serve as a good strategy in pinpointing fears as they lay out fears and even ‘disgust’ quite clearly.

Surprise: Wow Factor, Steering to Joy

 In Disney’s Inside Out we meet 5 characters reflecting 5 basic emotions, but according to psychologists, there’s a 6th, drum roll - surprise!

The movie’s screenplay writers decided against adding surprise to the mix in order to avoid overcomplicating things.

Essentially, the idea is surprise is the initial reaction, which leads to one of 5 basic emotions.

But, let’s add surprise to the mix!

The Spanish Royal Academy defines surprise as an action or effect of surprising or catching someone off-guard.

In business, we call this the wow factor, i.e. how companies wow their customers, VIP in many instances.

Surprises can include gifts, flight or hotel upgrades, discounts, and thoughtful tokens.

The wow factor induces high levels of satisfaction, as customer expectation is at 0, and rises pretty fast given their well, surprise.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company are wow factor masters. They study customers in-depth before, during, and after their stay. Through observation & keeping record of customer experience, they know how to surprise.

 Remember, surprise doesn’t necessarily carry a hefty price-tag. It can be as simple as learning a customer’s name, recognizing them, or leaving a note reading “Getting you what you ordered yesterday” etc.

Naturally, if we seek to steer surprise to joy (happiness), the wow factor must be mastered, and protocols implemented to that end.

However, the wow factor must be carefully used & implemented, one that is too invasive may steer to fear, anger or disgust.

Also, the wow factor can be a double-edged sword. Customers might come to expect a surprise every time, meaning operations must make it clear when a ‘surprise’ is a one-time deal.

 Conclusions

Like the colour-palette, all emotions play an essential role in business and customer experience.

To feel joy (happiness), sadness must be understood.

To surprise after a bad experience, anger, fear, and disgust must come before.

The goal isn’t to keep customers in a constant state of joy as it would turn into monotony & boredom quite quickly.

 Rather, the goal is to understand the emotional reaction products, services, and experiences generate for customers. 

This renders companies capable of properly designing operations to steer customers to feel, that ‘feeling’ being their marker of difference.

Exploring the inside & out of emotions is complex and exhilarating because emotions are subjective, personal, and difficult to control.

This article has considered the 5 basic emotions, however, there exists an array of secondary emotions when the basics mix like on a colour-palette; euphoria, hate, melancholy, sorrow, mistrust, etc.

To render experiences evoking pleasant emotional states, companies must be customer-centered and omit silo mentality, the latter tending to transfer weight onto customers through waste and pain points, steering to those unwanted emotions.

On a more personal note:

This piece has been on my mind for some time and I took much joy in writing it. My goal was to turn Operations Management, a technical-leaning department, a bit inside & out in order to incorporate the human element and unveil the power of emotions to make customers feel.

Our mantra again: operations & emotions win over hearts

Translated by Mahboobeh Melody Tabatabaian

Director & FR/ES > EN Translator

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