Examining 10 Emotions, 8 Interactions, and Resulting Loyalty

March 16, 2017 Leave a comment

Any regular reader of this blog likely knows that emotion is a key topic for Temkin Group. We labelled 2016 as The Year of Emotion and operationalizing emotion is one of our 2017 CX trends.

As part of our push to drive more detailed discussions about emotion, we examined the emotions that consumers feel after specific interactions. It turns out that different interactions lead to a variety of emotions which have differing loyalty effects.

The chart below shows 10 emotions that 10,000 consumers selected to describe how they felt after completing eight interactions.

As you can see above:

  • Most interactions lead to positive emotions, as the four most prevalent emotions on our list are Happy, Excited, Relieved, and Confident.
  • Happy and Excited are the most common emotions.
  • Purchasing a new pair of shoes leads to the most frequent emotion, Happy.
  • Researching a health insurance plan doesn’t create any consistent emotional response, as the most common emotion (Relieved) was selected by less than one-third of consumers.
  • Investigating a mistake in a monthly bill is the interaction that most frequently leads to Angry and Frustrated.
  • Filing a claim with a home or auto insurance company is the interaction that most frequently leads to Appreciated and Worried.
  • Researching a hotel or rental car for a trip is the interaction that most frequently leads to Confident.
  • Researching a health plan is the interaction that most frequently leads to Confused and Disappointed.
  • Using a new mobile phone or tablet for the first time is the interaction that most frequently leads to Excited.
  • Reaching out for technical support for a computer is the interaction that most frequently leads to Relieved.

We also looked at the loyalty that consumers have to companies based on the emotions that they’ve experienced. The chart below examines the loyalty for each of the 10 emotions averaged across all eight interactions (I’ll examine interaction-specific data in a future post):

As you can see:

  • Excited and Appreciated lead to the most loyalty.
  • Disappointed leads to the worst loyalty profile.
  • The lack of any of these emotions leads to less of both loyalty and disloyalty.

The bottom line: Focus on the specific customer emotions you’re creating.

Filed under Customer experience, Emotion

About Bruce Temkin, CCXP
I'm an experience (XM) management catalyst; helping organizations improve results by engaging the hearts and minds of their employees, customers, and partners. I enjoy researching and speaking about these topics. I lead the Qualtrics XM Institute, which is the world's best job. We're igniting a global community of XM Professionals who are inspired and empowered to radically improve the human experience. To achieve this goal, my team focuses on thought leadership, training, and community building. My work is driven by a set of fundamental beliefs: 1) Everything starts and ends with human beings, so you need to understand how people think, feel, and behave; 2) XM is a discipline that needs to be woven throughout an organization's entire operating fabric; and 3) Building the XM discipline requires a combination of culture, competency, and technology.

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