Managing The Behaviour Of Customers And Potential Customers
Empathy is a key to understanding and engaging customers and potential customer. It can also be a key to managing their behaviour to drive the lifetime value of each customer.
- Walk a mile in their shoes – then you can communicate WITH them.
At US airline JetBlue genuine empathy for a customer starts when the staff (providing the service) start to think as the customer thinks, acknowledging what they struggle with and the pain points when flying and in their lives more broadly. Empathy, according to JetBlue, involves knowing what the customer is going through and how the brand might be disappointing them – if indeed it is.
Developing this empathy involves listening to customers and potential customers and then responding based on what is heard. JetBlue achieved the required empathy by closely monitoring social media threads to determine what customers were talking about and, indeed, complaining about. Instead of responding to comments made and attempting to defend the airline by setting the record straight, Jet Blue just listened, focusing on:
- Why are they upset?
- What is disappointing them?
- What were they hoping for that they didn’t get? How can you fix this?
In other words, rather than using social media as a communication or PR tool, JetBlue used Reddit and Twitter, in particular, as research tools. They used social media to develop an understanding of their customers.
Using the data gathers, JetBlue, in addition to educating their staff, produced a series of light-hearted videos, each one addressing an annoyance of air travel or indeed JetBlue – and then made those videos available to customers through social media and other channels. This had the effect of demonstrating to customers that JetBlue understood their pain – the very definition of empathy. It also enabled JetBlue to develop stronger relationships with customers.
Social media can represent a powerful research tool. Gathering insights rather than engaging customers can provide valuable data that can then be used to get closer to customers and potential customers.
- Leverage empathy to personalise your marketing.
It is a gross overstatement to suggest that mass marketing is dead. As indeed many have suggested. What is clear, however, is that personalised marketing is becoming increasingly prevalent – and almost always produces superior results to mass marketing. Personalisation has been facilitated, at least in part, by marketing automation – and the availability of technology that enables personalisation.
This is reflected in the increasing emphasis on maximising the lifetime value of customers – where the focus shifts from individual sales to the customer.
The other trend gaining in popularity among marketers is empathy-based marketing – whereby marketers are using one or more of a range of tools to talk in the shoes of their customers and potential customers to truly understand how they think and feel, and respond to and why.
There is an increasing recognition that to realise their potential, brands need to go one step further than simply understanding their customers and start feeling what the customer feels and reflecting that in product development, the customer experience, and every other aspect of marketing.
Increasingly empathy-based marketing and personalised marketing are working hand in hand to revolutionise marketing – driving costs down and returns up – often reducing the reliance on advertising. Both the demonstration of empathy and the personalisation of marketing drive trust – a key determinate of brand success. Some 81% of consumers believe trusting a brand is essential before a purchase, let alone loyalty can occur.
Build trust in your brand with empathy-based and personalised marketing.
- Leverage empathy-driven insights to humanise your marketing.
Have you ever had the experience of cringing when you hear a fellow countryman say something in a different way to you? I cringe whenever I hear a Victorian say ‘basic’, ‘gross’ or ‘Castlemaine’. I also cringe when I hear someone talk about being ‘vulnerable or ‘vulnerable to a disease when the word is spelt ‘vulnerable’. At least on a B2B level, I am not sure I would engage a consultant who said ‘vonerable’ or ‘vulnerable – as it suggests a lack of education and sophistication.
These might seem like small things to most readers, and they are – at least on one level. They are, however, more important in marketing – because empathy is central to your trusting a brand or the representative of a brand. Research demonstrates that it is maximised when you think the person or brand you are dealing with represents or is a part of a tribe you relate to – or indeed – your tribe. Certainly, one of the criticisms of decision making based on empathy is that it is less rational because we have greater empathy for people of our own colour, nationality, religion and political leaning.
The more someone seems to be like us – the more we humans tend to empathise with them. As such, the more a representative of a brand (a saleswoman in B2B or a presenter in a B2C commercial or an influencer on social media) appears to be a member of our tribe – or at least like us, talking the same language and thinking the same way, the more we are likely to trust them – and given that 81% of consumers want to trust a brand before purchasing – this can be important.
Members of our tribe talk like us, look like us and behave like us. It is, therefore, useful to get close enough to customers and potential customers to develop the empathy, which allows you to understand their tribe and expectations of that tribe.
Humanise your marketing – ensuring that advocates are seen to be from the right tribe.
- To see what your customers see – give yourself their beginning.
There is a wonderful book floating around, called – ‘Think Again’. Academic psychologist Adam Grant wrote it. In chapter six of the book, Grant talks about how followers of opposing sporting teams can dislike each other to an extreme level and, in so doing, develop stereotypes that lack any substance or foundation in fact. Apparently, this is most common with teams located close to each other – the West Coast Eagles and the Dockers in Perth.
Grant discusses this phenomenon, not because he or his readers are a sports fan, but because this phenomenon has implications beyond sport. Stereotypes about groups of people have consequences for all aspects of behaviour, including consumer behaviour and in all environments, including commercial environments. Grant looks at three approaches to eliminating or at least reducing this phenomenon.
The first approach discussed by Grant involved working with members of one or other or both groups to demonstrate to them how the two groups do not really differ. On all levels, other than the team, they flow in one sport – they are virtually the same. Research in which members of two groups were asked to reflect on their shared identity in this way was found to change attitudes not at all.
The second approach examined by Grant involved getting the two sides (in this case, Palestinians and Israelis) to study each other’s position, arguments, circumstances, and conditions – on the basis that this would create an empathy-based on a better understanding of the other side. In a sense, it was an approach based on the notion that people would feel differently about the other side after walking a mile in their shoes. As with the first approach, this one failed.
The second approach examined by Grant involved getting the fans of team A to write down what they thought made fans of team B become fans of team B; while fans of team B wrote down what they thought drive fans of team A to be followers of that team – and then consider their responses. This was found to significantly impact changing attitudes towards an opposing team – largely because it demonstrated the arbitrary nature of the process used by members of both teams to choose their team. Once they saw that choice of team was just about geography and that they would have been a fan of the opposing team if they were born in the other location – stereotypes fell away.
It would seem that understanding how you might behave in the ‘other man’s shoes’ impacts the perception of the other man. This creates an empathy that changes attitudes.
Embrace the power of empathy in changing attitudes.
- Beware the dangers of empathy in critical decisions.
Academic psychologist Paul Bloom from Yale University in the United States wrote a compelling book called ‘Against Empathy’ in which he articulated the dangers of empathy. While recognising its value in terms of understanding and connecting with human beings, Bloom highlighted the dangers associated with making decisions purely based on empathy. He described empathy as irrational.
Bloom cited the example of an altruistic person who is disposed towards donating money to causes where he can make a difference. He is motivated to make the biggest difference he can with the limited funds at his disposal. One day he is confronted with a choice – donate $100 and save a child’s life in his community or donate the same $100 and save five similar aged children in Ethiopia. This is not an unrealistic comparison given the cost of treatment in the US as compared to Ethiopia.
While the objective of getting the biggest possible ‘bang for his buck’ was directing our philanthropist to give the money to the five children in Ethiopia – the emotional ’empathetic” philanthropist in our hero was drawn to giving the money to the local child. Bloom’s research has shown quite clearly that human beings have significantly more empathy for people in their own community than people in other communities.
Bloom argued that if this fellow wanted to maximise the return on his donation, he would make the wrong decision if he acquiesced to his empathy – which most people do. He suggested that empathy drove this man to make the less good decision – given that one accepts that the value of every life is equal. I agree with him. Bloom suggest that this highlights that while important – empathy can, in some circumstances, inhibit optimum decision making.
To achieve the optimum outcome – apply empathy in conjunction with rational thinking.
Empathy is a powerful tool for developing the in-depth connection with customers required to develop and implement the optimum marketing strategy – including developing the optimum product and customer experience. Empathy-based marketing is a powerful approach to marketing that can bring a brand closer to a customer and, in so doing, help to maximise the lifetime value of that customer.
Marketing is entering an era where empathy-based marketing will become increasingly common. It is an approach to marketing that delivers superior outcomes and can be readily embraced by businesses of all sizes in most industries – both B2B and B2C.