Emotion’s role 

Imagine your wedding or someone’s wedding you’re close to. The nostalgia of reliving that moment is palpable. The flowers. The music. The vows. Many heartfelt details and moments centered around love. The day was designed and engineered to elicit love and an emotion-filled response. Now, imagine if more experiences could be this memorable. Every detail engineered to work in harmony. How would it influence your feelings? 

Emotion. It’s a dynamic part of our existence as humans. It helps us to convey how we feel and interpret the people around us. Emotion is the binding agent that makes an experience memorable. In fact, research has shown 90% of the choices we make are based on emotion. It prompts us to recall more vivid and accurate memories, make confident decisions and build long-lasting relationships. We’re hard-wired to require emotion. Over thousands of years emotion assisted our survival, so we’d recall if something was dangerous or safe. We’d decide what food was safe to eat, what animals were dangerous to our safety, and which people were trustworthy.  

Fast forward to modern life and emotion is just as important. When interacting with companies, consumers use emotion to assess if the experience is reliable, trustworthy, and secure. As their interactions with a company accumulate, they develop feelings based on the company’s overall character. But as technology has improved, emotion hasn’t been used well. Some companies have diluted familiar and memorable connections to dispensable transactions while others have used algorithms to create biased echo chambers. According to a recent external study, 64% of U.S. consumers feel companies have lost touch with the human element of the experience. At times consumers can feel like they’ve been discarded by companies to navigate complex and unfamiliar systems and processes.  

Because companies are inherently focused on operational efficiencies, it’s no surprise customer experiences would lack emotion. As companies at large flocked to digital experiences they were inherently focused on efficiencies, transferring operational tasks from daily business functions to consumer self-service. Beyond this, providing service and the emotional connection achieved through it, was seen as dispensable.  

Despite emotion’s importance, current communication modes are largely sanitized of it. ALL CAPS, emoticons, memes and gifs are stand-in for the lack of visual and verbal cues like facial expressions, body language and tone. And the lack of emotion within digital experiences can lead to dehumanization, confirmation bias, desensitization, and compassion fatigue.  

Emotion’s future is reliant upon businesses adhering to the fundamental principles. Using emotion to design experiences that end with a residual memory of consumers feeling joyful, confident, or even inspired. To achieve this, it would require companies to move past designing consumer tasks for specific channels, like making a payment in an app, to designing the emotional outcome of an overall experience. 

Balancing and connecting experiences 

Over the last ten years or so, companies have increased the development of digital channels to replace human interactions and manual tasks. However, it is not always the experience consumers are looking for. According to recent research, 82% of consumers indicated “I’ll want to interact with a real person more as technology improves.” In fact, 86% of consumers would prefer a human when interacting with a company. Why is this? 

1. Type of interactions: There are two distinct types of interactions that exist when interacting with consumers– consultative and transactional. Consultative interactions are complex tasks that require personalized guidance. They exist because the consumers’ circumstances require specialized attention, the products are complex, and the process is complicated and nuanced. They want to feel known, valued and understood. Transactional interactions are routine tasks where consumers don’t require specialized attention to complete. But, even with these they value completing these easily. An imbalance has occurred where too many consultative interactions have been converted to transactional ones. It’s not only a problem because it doesn’t provide consumers with the reassurance they need, but it also eliminates opportunities for companies to make an emotional connection with the consumer. Even with this in mind, designing an emotional experience isn’t about placing emphasis on consultative interaction types over transactional. Instead, it’s about designing a consistent emotional experience that marries them all together. It’s less about “how do we get the customer to pay their bill online” to “how did the customer FEEL secure about the billing experience?” 

2. Accountability: When a consumer completes a digital task, they’ll often call in for reassurance that the request was received, completed correctly, and handled on time. That’s because the digital experience doesn’t provide the emotional reassurance they need. It’s lacking the accountability that consumers value. 

3. Advanced protection: As technology evolves, unfortunately fraud does, too. Bad actors find vulnerabilities within company’s complex infrastructures so they can access personal information and money. Companies have the capital and ability to combat this, but consumers are left unprotected. They don’t always know when an email, phone call or text is from the company they’ve interacted with. And as AI becomes more advanced, even images and voices can be replicated to confuse and swindle consumers. Interacting with a human feels more secure because it doesn’t introduce the communication channels that are too often misused by bad actors. 

4. Data use: AI has introduced a media swirl as companies flock to the promise of greater operational efficiencies with its use. However, 70% of consumers think contact centers should prioritize agent training over adding more communication channels like chatbots. For AI to offer personalization it would require vast amounts of consumer data to craft a response that is tailored to the consumer’s individual circumstances, needs and preferences. Consumers are weary of companies obtaining so much data. It is sold as a commodity and data breaches occur. AI is not only limited, but in its current form consumers are only open to select experiences leveraging AI. Consumers worry about privacy breaches, data leaks, and invasive surveillance. Companies must strike a balance between personalization and privacy. 

Nationwide’s opportunity 

Emotions offer cues that shape our customers’ ability to make decisions. The emotional signals they take in from peoples’ facial expressions, body language and tone influence what they think and how they might respond. It also influences how much they might recall from the experience— both good and bad. Logically, a customer can assess a variety of product options and prices that could help them achieve their protection needs. But it’s emotion that influences a final decision. Do they trust the information that was shared? Do they trust the security of their investment? Do they trust the outcome? Customers rely on emotion more than we think. Our customers’ life events trigger their need to interact with Nationwide. A move shapes the need for home insurance. The opening of a business shapes the need for commercial insurance. A couple having their first child could shape the need for life insurance. The life event marks how the customer enters and navigates the experience with emotion. Their emotional response, and their expectations of the experience, influence how they perceive each interaction. It contributes to making decisions, building and sustaining long-term relationships.   

Let’s take an example like a claims experience for any number of Nationwide’s product offerings (Pet, Personal, Commercial, Life). Customers enter the claims experience emotionally charged. The customer has just experienced a loss, they’re simultaneously navigating many things outside of Nationwide, and they’re filing and navigating an unfamiliar process. They’ll evaluate if the experience makes them feel confident. In this instance, confidence stems from feeling understood, trusting the process and expected outcome. When it goes well, we’ve acknowledged their circumstances and how they feel. We’re transparent and honest, proactively setting expectations so they know what’s ahead. The experience translates to a positive brand perception, loyalty and retention. It means customers evaluate the brand on the experience, price and product. They’ll often stay loyal because the experience is superior. Plus, it fuels word-of mouth marketing as customers tell friends, family, coworkers and social media audiences about their great experience.   

Emotionally engaging experiences can significantly benefit our customers in several ways:

1. Enhanced satisfaction: Emotional connections make experiences more memorable and enjoyable. When our customers feel positive emotions during their interactions with Nationwide, they’re more satisfied.
2. Personalization: Emotional experiences often involve personalized interactions. When we understand our customers’ emotions, we can tailor our services which leads to better outcomes. Plus, a conversation is much easier than the cost and complexity of AI to deliver.
3. Trust and loyalty: Trust is built over time and its emotional bonds foster trust. Customers who feel emotionally connected are more likely to remain loyal to Nationwide, even when faced with alternatives.
4. Reduced stress: Positive emotions reduce stress and anxiety. A pleasant experience can alleviate their stress.
5. Sense of belonging: Emotional experiences create a sense of belonging like being a part of a community or family.
6. Word-of-mouth advocacy: Satisfied customers share their positive experiences with others. Emotionally engaged customers become brand advocates.

A punch list to reintroduce emotion 

• Design experiences to consistently deliver an emotional outcome: start with the emotion as a result and reverse engineer the journey to deliver that outcome. 
• End every customer journey on an emotional high note: a simple sentence or two can make a noticeable difference. 
• Acknowledge the customers’ emotions, good or bad: be straightforward and authentic 
• Uphold signature experiences where personalization matters more: focus on developing experiences to be seen as the most trusted and most caring 
• Employ subtractive innovation and reduce communication channels: reducing channels makes it easier to engineer intended emotion outcomes. It reduces variability and focuses on making a select number of channels great. Otherwise, our resources are spread thin, and the experience can suffer. 
• Reconnect with the customer: listen to real customer calls and revisit Mosaic for updates on emerging customer needs and behaviors 

Nationwide’s vision outlines a purpose to become the most trusted, most caring and most customer-focused protection company. To achieve this, it’s necessary to shape customer feelings so they see us as these qualities. Emotion is a critical part that will help us get there. Read more about emotion from the articles listed below.