by Noah Fleming
Traditional efforts suggest we need to provide more materials, more features, and more benefits, but by using the Customer Loyalty Loop, we can create experiences with impact by stimulating the mind and the senses.
Unbox This
There’s a phenomenon happening on YouTube. People are making millions of dollars each year unboxing products and showing them off. According to Martin Lindstrom in his fantastic book Buyology,7 the online unboxing craze began when a kid named Nick Baily filmed himself unboxing his brand-new Nintendo Wii. Lindstrom writes that the video had received over 70,000 views in just a few short hours. In his book, Lindstrom explains why unboxing has taken off as an Internet sensation. He attributes the desire to watch others unbox to mirror neurons. These are neurons inside our brains that, in laymen’s terms, cause us to mirror other people’s behaviors. My children likely find joy in watching the excitement in the other kids unwrap their treats, and as Lindstrom explains, mirror neurons are the reason why we smile when we see others smile, and we wince when we see others in pain. It’s the reason laughter is contagious. But beyond that, unboxing is a massively underestimated part of the customer’s experience.
I think many of us would agree that this phenomenon started with Apple, who seemed to care as much about the packaging for its latest gadget as the products themselves. My children are particularly fond of the people who unbox chocolate Kinder Eggs and then put together the toys inside. How does unboxing fit into the Customer Loyalty Loop, and how can you best understand the ramifications of this? It fits in just the same as everything else fits in. Unboxing a product is part of the customer experience. This section is relevant to those in retail or who deliver physical products, but it is equally valuable to those who wish to perk customers with unexpected gifts or bonuses.
When a prospect has made the decision to convert and become a customer, if you’ve done things right up until now, then the customer should not feel a lot of buyer’s remorse or anxiety about the decision. Instead, the buyer should be excited and eagerly anticipating the product’s delivery. I still get excited when I get a new iPhone or a MacBook Pro. Apple has paid such careful attention to this part of the experience, and you’re foolish not to treat it as such. Think about it this way: getting the product on your doorstep is part of the experience. Opening the package once it’s inside your house is also part of the experience. Almost everyone has ordered a product only to be immensely disappointed once it arrives. Perhaps the box is damaged, or it’s packaged poorly. Either way, we’re left with a feeling of, “I spent all that money, and this is all I got!?” Or it’s impossible to get it out of the packaging, which means that on the arrival of the package the customer is feeling total frustration rather than anticipated pleasure.
What products do you ship?
What items do you deliver to customers and clients?
Think about proposal or quote delivery, for example. Many companies e-mail these as quickly as they can. The more we can quote, the more we can close the typical mindset. But are you giving away undue and easily earned value in the mind of the potential customer by not couriering your proposal or a quote? When I work with clients, this is part of standard policy. I will typically ask the prospective client how they would like to receive the proposal. If they say they would prefer e-mail, I’ll do that, but then I’ll also send two signed copies via FedEx—one for them and one for me, but in reality, it’s just another opportunity for me to give some value and treat this as part of the process of the overall customer experience.
If you’re a retailer who physically ships products to customers, what can you do to add additional value to this part of the experience? Think about the entire experience as mentioned above. From getting the package, to opening the package, are your products carefully packaged? Is there joy in opening your package, or do you ship them as quickly and as cheaply as possible? If so, are you also giving away easily earned value? What little extras can you put into your packaging? Sometimes this is referred to as box candy.
Start thinking about every part of doing business with your company as an experience for the customer, and an experience to be had by the customer. Nearly all of this is about the emotional feelings your experiences create. Remember the old sales adage that “logic makes people think, but their emotions make them act.” The entire customer experience is about the feelings and emotions you invoke in your customer’s mind. Don’t waste such a precious opportunity.
I think about Casper.com,8 the company that disrupted the mattress industry selling over $75 million in mattresses in 2015. I can’t think of a worse customer experience than buying a mattress. For years, we were expected to visit a store and spend 30 seconds to 5 minutes laying on a mattress. We were then asked to choose one, and days later a large moving truck would show up to deliver your mattress. The truck’s drivers (no offense to them) were often gruff, burly guys just looking to unload the truck and punch out for the day. You had to ask them to take their shoes off, which was awkward, but they relented. The mattress was delivered into your bedroom, and three weeks later you woke to the realization that you bought a terrible mattress, your back was aching, and there was almost no easy way to return the product. Then, along comes Casper, who claims they’ve perfected the mattress. They’re so sure, that they offer you the ability to try the mattress risk-free, in your home, for 100 days. We’ll talk more about the psychology of guarantees and risk-reversal later, but Casper says, “Try it for 100 days, and if you’re not convinced, call us and we’ll pick up the mattress.” The mattress is ordered online and within 5–7 days a great-looking blue box arrives at your door. You look at the box and say to yourself, surely there can’t be a mattress in there. The box is a rectangle about the size of the small bar fridge you had in college. It’s exciting. And then you lift the top of the box open to find a small plastic razor and some clever instructions that tell you to slide the mattress out of the box and only slice open the plastic when the mattress is in the room you’ll use it in. The whole time, the customer is experiencing something that has never, in the history of buying, been exciting before—buying a mattress. Next, you slice open the plastic, and slowly the mattress expands to full size. It’s really like magic, or perhaps a bit like a teenage boy finally getting his chance to dance with the head cheerleader.
Casper encourages you to sleep on it, to jump on it, to play on it, and to make sure it’s perfect for you. If not, you’re welcome to call them anytime in the first 100 days and request a refund. They promise to make that part of the experience as stress-free as possible. And what they do is pretty remarkable. They call the local Goodwill or Salvation Army to pick up the mattress, and it’s donated to a local group in need. That’s pretty amazing if you ask me. Meanwhile, your entire amount paid is refunded back to your credit card. It’s an incredible customer experience and one that has earned the company over $75 million in revenue in just a few short years of business. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Here are a few questions to consider:
How much attention are you paying to the delivery of your products and services?
What could you do to make this part of the experience more fulfilling and engaging for the customer?
Where are you looking for shortcuts when you could be offering additional value?
When you think of unboxing, don’t just think of products, think of the entire unboxing of your experience. What’s the first moment like when the customer checks into the hotel? Are they whisked off to a massage? Is there a fruit basket and handwritten note waiting in the room?
I know a company that sells a massive piece of machinery; the equipment can cost upwards to $1 million a unit.
Paying careful attention to the unboxing and delivery of your products and services could add millions of additional revenue to your bottom line. Oh, and before I forget, the Casper mattress is glorious, and hand’s down the best mattress I’ve ever slept on.
Maximizing Customer Value During the Experience
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br /> When it comes to creating frenzied buying behavior in the retail sector, we have to look no further than the iconic blue building with the giant yellow block-lettered sign that reads IKEA. It turns out that Ikea isn’t just remarkably clever when it comes to fitting an entire bedroom into three small boxes that fit into a Mini Cooper, but they’ve also mastered the art of using psychology to get us to buy, buy more, and buy again.
In 2011, on the popular site called Reddit, an Ikea employee started a thread known as an iAMA (Reddit terminology for I Am A..., and Ask Me Anything). In response to one question, he made reference to sections of the store known as “Open the Wallet” sections.9 This represents the cacophony of small, relatively cheap items that are scattered all over the popular Swedish store with the intent on making us open our wallets. If you’ve been to an Ikea store before, then you’ve seen them all over. For example, on a recent trip to an Ikea store, I noted a large yellow bin filled with small aluminum pots for $4.95 each. Another stairwell contained candle holders and tea lights, and little green stools for children to stand on in the bathroom. All three of these items came home with us.
What is it about these items that cause customers to open their wallets, and how can you do the same if your business is lacking a 300,000-square-foot retail operation? It’s quite simple, and a few powerful psychological things are going on. First, many of these items are found as you first enter the store, whether they’re in a stairway or bins next to the front entrance. Ikea knows that once you commit to buying, you are more likely to buy again. They’re taking advantage of recency and frequency, which we’ll talk about in the next stage. They’re also taking advantage of the commitment principle, which suggests you’re more likely to follow through on something after you’ve committed to it. Second, the items are all priced low enough but seem practical enough that if you’ve already spent this much, you might as well throw this in the cart. Who doesn’t need a green plastic toilet brush for 99 cents? Third, the items are placed repetitively throughout the store. You might not need a green plastic toilet brush yet, but after the third or fourth time seeing it, you might be convinced. Here are a few questions to consider: What are you doing throughout the third stage that creates opportunities to increase customer value? Without having loads of obnoxious upsells peppered throughout your business, how can you create no-brainer opportunities for the customer to buy, and buy again? That’s a question worth asking in during the third stage.
Peak-End Rule and the Psychology of Lasting Impressions
It is worth revisiting the way the mind works at this point to highlight the importance of creating the right experience. The binary brain would have us believe that there is a clear distinction between emotions and thoughts. One is about feelings, the other rationality. In the same way that economics had a view of the rational man who would always make the best financial decisions based on logical analysis, far too much emphasis has been placed on rationality in purchasing decisions and consumer behavior. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics by debunking the rational economic man myth. As you think about this dynamic between emotions and thought, it is easy to believe that emotions override logic or vice-versa, in a sort of wrestling match between different parts of the brain. However, there is the view in some quarters that rather than being opposites, emotions and thoughts are interdependent and that you can’t have one without the other. This is the view of Antonio Damasio, an esteemed neurologist and author of the best-selling book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.10 Part of the evidence for this view comes from cases where people have suffered neurological damage that impacts the emotional areas of the brain. Rather than turning into logical superstars who are freed from the tyranny of emotions, such people can’t make a decision. The implication, therefore, is that thought requires some emotional input. We certainly know from Elizabeth Loftus’ work, mentioned earlier, that the level of emotion influences perception and memory. So emotion and the experience are king because they have a major impact on memory, perception, and thought. Moreover, the value of this experience does not exist on a continuum. Rather, the more extreme the experience, the more it is overvalued and the less it is influenced by rationality. So just as we have incongruences negatively impacting perceptions, congruency with very positive expectations will turn a customer into a loyal and ardent supporter.
If emotional valence is important in influencing, if not determining, thoughts then obviously a peak experience is the key to converting a customer into a fan. But what’s the opposite of a peak experience? One assumes that a negative emotional experience is the opposite of a peak experience. If you aggravate a customer so that she is angry and frustrated with you, you are obviously at serious risk of losing her as a customer. However, the experience and behavior of a psychologist friend of mine might have some bearing on this issue.
How do you get excellent service at a restaurant? My friend used what he called “post-conflict compensation”—I told you he was a psychologist—to get his great service. Here’s what he would do: When the server first came over to greet him, my friend expressed surly frustration at some aspect of the early dining experience. He might have complained about a spot on the tablecloth or dirty cutlery, just something that would create some conflict. Typically, the server would attend, often grudgingly, to the complaint. Then when the server came back again, my friend would apologize, often praising the server for behaving so professionally. Often he found the attention he got after that was sublime. The point is that even negative emotions can be turned into great experiences, sometimes precisely because they started out negative and then were reversed. Being moved from a negative emotional state to a positive one is a very motivating and rewarding experience, especially in an interaction or a relationship. It is how you can go from bad to exceptional pretty quickly. Think about the drive for “make-up sex.” It’s the same mechanism, where reversing negativity results in a disproportionate sense of closeness. I’ll talk more about this in Sage Four.
So we have considered experiences at both ends of the emotional spectrum. What can we say about experiences that have very little associated emotion? The customer who has little or no emotional experience when dealing with you is not engaged with you as a brand or business, or with your process. They don’t think especially highly of you or badly about you. That’s the problem: they don’t think about you at all—well, not in any meaningful way. They are the customers that can, and do, go elsewhere. They are not committed or loyal to you.
Take a look at how the traditional customer journey compares to the loyalty loop (see Figure 5.1). The traditional customer experience starts with attention, but then fades off quickly. Because resistance has not been removed, there’s a negative drip immediately after the sale. The experience is erratic and usually tapers off. Even a decent experience with a company is not often remembered that well because the company has gone back to chasing new customers. Contrast this to the loyalty loop, which maintains a strong start and continues to a point of happily ever after. In the loyalty loop, customer happiness and emotional engagement starts at a much higher level and is maintained throughout. The typical customer experience is a roller coaster of peaks and valleys, and that’s why so many companies fail to deliver a memorable and remarkable customer experience.
Figure 5.1: The Traditional Customer Experience vs. the Loyalty Loop Experience
Earlier in the book, we discussed the importance of how experiences end as having a dramatic impact on the likelihood that the customer is willing to reenter the relationship with your business and experience it again. You might guess from the above that it is your last experience that counts, because that is the one that is likely to be most prominent in your memory. If you like, it’s where you left off in your relationship. This raises one of the more widely used psychology findings known as the peak-end rule. It is important for us to remember and recognize how the main customer experience ends, and what we can do to set the
foundation for the fourth stage.
Early on we talked about Daniel Kahneman’s findings with the way people experience—the experiencing self and the remembering self. Kahneman is one of the central figures in proposing the peak-end rule theory. In a nutshell, the peak-end rule is a psychological finding that suggests people judge experiences not based on the entire experience, but how it was at its peak and how it was when it ended. An example we gave earlier on suggests that even a fantastic seven-day stay at a hotel can be ruined by a bad experience on checkout. A great restaurant experience can be ruined by an argument over the bill with the waitstaff. Or, as in the case of my psychologist friend, a bad experience can be turned into a great one. Are your experiences ending as positively as they should be? In Stage Three, we need to consider how the experience ends and how we can prime our customer for additional buying experiences to come. The main lesson in this section is you can’t be foolish and unaware about how the experience ends.
• How are the customers acknowledged and thanked when they leave?
• If required, how is the final invoice presented?
• In a B2B scenario, is there a final walk-through or project ending?
• In a consulting arrangement, is there an official project disengagement meeting?
• How can you make the endings as positive as possible, or are you just leaving them to change?
Don’t miss this fabulous opportunity to create a memory that lingers.
At first, many people in business assume once they’ve got the customer, the hard work is done. Now, we’ve effectively looked at all the important parts of the customer journey during the delivery of our products and services. It’s at this point that another large segment of people in business assume the work is done. They assume that if they’ve done a good job, the customer will likely return. If they’ve pleased the customer, then the customer will likely tell others. If they’ve delighted the customer and created Remarkable Moments, the customer is likely to go home and shout from the rooftops. They assume all of this happens without any work, effort, or process. And that’s an entirely false assumption. When working with clients, I’m always asking about follow-up process, and almost everyone looks at me with blank stares—sad but true. When we start to implement even a small chunk of what I often have to argue tooth and nail to get implemented, the results are mind-boggling. Let’s look at the final stage now and see how your business matches up.