The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value [Hardcover]

Colin Shaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0230500005 | ISBN-13: 978-0230500006 | Edition: First Edition

Show me the money! This is the frantic cry of the "old guard" of senior executives as they desperately struggle to deal with commoditizing markets, the loss of their differentiator and the inevitable impact on profitability.

At the same time the new breed of enlightened, customer-focused executives knowingly smile, seeing the answer is simple: focus on the customer rather than the organization, provide customers with an emotionally engaging experience, and the rest will take care of itself. They understand that the customer experience is the next competitive battleground and that emotions account for over 50% of an experience.

In one case study in this book, an organization adopting this philosophy dealing in a mature market, enjoyed 100% growth in revenues, doubled their customer base, substantially reduced customer churn, increased the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by 20% and reduced employee attrition by 13%.

As the world thought leaders on customer experience, Colin Shaw and the team at Beyond Philosophy have undertaken more than 18 months of groundbreaking research to discovering the emotions that drive and destroy value in an organization and can now disclose the empirical link between evoking these emotions and substantial financial returns.

By the end of the book you will understand:
* The four clusters of emotions that increase customers' short term spend and drive and destroy customer loyalty
* How to prove that improving your customer experience provides considerable financial returns
* How to evoke these emotions in your customers
* How these emotions affect your "Net Promoter" score and how to use them to improve it
* Why every organization has an Emotional Signature

This book is littered with examples of organizations who already understand the DNA of customer experience and know the power of emotions to gain a competitive edge.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'We have used Colin's principles to guide our thinking on how to create a great experience for Harley-Davidson customers. This book takes the thinking on the Customer Experience to the next level. Read it; learn from it, do it!' - Steve Phillips - Vice President - Quality, Reliability & Technical Service. Harley- Davidson Motor Company

'At The Ritz-Carlton we are focused on enhancing the overall experience for our guests which ultimately results in creating Ritz-Carlton ambassadors for life. To do this we strive to remain relevant and up to date on the latest thinking. We have always been great supporters of Colin's thinking on Customer Experience. His insights are extremely valuable and the advice in this book is no exception.' - Diana Oreck - Vice President, Global Learning and Leadership Center Ritz Carlton.

'Learning how you can make significant new profits by evoking customer emotions is something that all CEO's should be paying attention to. Now supported by thought-leading research, backed by leading academics, Colin Shaw shows how this can be achieved in his new book. Through an exhaustive and detailed research and practical work with many clients he can now prove how emotions drive and destroy value and how they can increase or decrease your Net Promoter® score.' - Chuck Kavitsky - President of Allianz of America

'Customer Experience Management is a revolution that has swept the business world in the last few years. Yet, as Colin Shaw shows us, too often we may neglect understanding how our Customers truly feel towards us. Quantifying customer feelings is a breakthrough concept that puts monetary value on this "emotional signature" - and can help transform the relationship a business has with its customers!' - Barry Herstein - Chief Marketing Officer. American Express International

'All business leaders should read this book. For too long firms have ignored the emotional impact of their actions and failed to measure how customers feel. Well no more...in this thought leading book, Colin outlines how you can measure the emotional impact of the Customer Experience and use this to impact your bottom line.' - Txemaa Arnedo - World Wide Small Business & MidMarket Customer Experience Director. Microsoft Corporation

'Once again Colin Shaw shows us the future. As with 'Building Great Customer Experiences' and 'Revolutionize your Customer Experience', ' the DNA of the Customer Experience' develops and grows our knowledge of Customer Experience Management further and at the same time introduces a practical and revolutionary technique to get value from it.' - Simon Fox - Chief Executive. HMV Group Plc.

'The Customer Experience revolution continues as Colin Shaw and his new book again pushes the boundaries of our understanding. Using case studies and leading business research Colin demonstrates the true value of emotions against the bottom-line. This book pulls no punches. It tells you how much you can lose or gain in revenue by evoking the right emotions in your customers.' - Stuart Roberts - Customer Services Director. Barclaycard.

'Thought-leadership at its best. The DNA of the Customer Experience gets to the real heart of what it is that makes Customer Experience Management so valuable as a means to increased profitability and differentiation in the over commoditized world we live in today.' - Rhonda Dishongh - Director, Customer Experience. Memorial Hermann Hospital System

'Truly excellent thought leadership. This book builds on the previous two and deals directly with the core issue that many executives struggle with, "Intuitively I believe it but how can I make a compelling business case to convince others and justify the investment?" Essential reading for all those committed to created great customer experiences in their organisations.' - Gary Price - Director of Customer Experience Implementation. Norwich Union

'How many of us thought that life was just about price and product, well after reading this book you'll all be wondering why you ever thought that was the only thing. As surely as mariners came back from their ventures and said the earth is not flat, you will come away from this enthused and surprised by the true power of emotions.' - Liam Lambert - Operations Director, Europe. Mandarin Oriental

'Truly enlightening, you will never think of the Customer Experience in the same way again.' - Darren Cornish - Head of Customer Experience. Norwich Union

'Do you think your customers just make decision rationally without consideration of their emotions? Well think again. In this new ground-breaking book, Colin Shaw opens our eyes to the world of emotions and how to manage them for profit.' - Steve Hurst - Managing Editor of Customer Management

'What is the customer experience? While it may be difficult to define, you can be sure that its DNA lies in the way a customer feels - just as this book describes. The real triumph of Colin Shaw's latest title, though, is revealing how unlocking the secrets behind customer emotions can boost your bottom line.' - Claudia Hathaway -Editor. CCF & eCCF

'Positive emotions play a huge but secretive role in retail. The next time your Chief Financial Office says emotions are unimportant, show them this book! Far from being of no value their influence is immense; ignore them at your peril or use them for profit the choice is yours' - Mark Campbell - Hamleys Entertainment Manager. Hamleys

'We are so used to dealing with physical things like price and quality and forget that our customers have emotions. But what should we do about it! Well my congratulations to Colin Shaw for finally enlightening us all with a book that ventures into this new territory and shows us how to make a profit at the same time.' - Alan Gordon - Route Director. Stena Line

'At last there is a business book that tells us the value of emotions and a means of unlocking their potential. For too long now business-leaders have ignored this vital aspect of the customer experience at their peril, but not anymore.' - David West - Senior Vice President. Aspect Software

About the Author

COLIN SHAW is author of two best selling books “Building Great Customer Experiences”and “Revolutionise your Customer Experience. He is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, the worlds leading thought leader in the Customer Experience. They provide Strategic Guidance, Market Research and Education services from their offices in London, England and Atlanta, USA. Beyond Philosophy™ boasts a number of the worlds largest organisations as clients including Microsoft, T-Mobile, FedEx, IBM and Her Majesty’s Cabinet office to name a few.

Due to his expertise Colin has appeared many times on CNN, BBC TV, Sky News & various Radio stations. He has also appeared in most of the National Press in the UK and many other trade publications. He is a sought-after and accomplished speaker, delivering key note speeches around the globe, and is a member of both the International Federation for Professional Speakers and the UK Professional Speakers Association.
www.beyondphilosophy.com

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230500005
• ISBN-13: 978-0230500006
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #731,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I liked what this book had to say, but disliked the metaphor of the title, November 8, 2007

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value (Hardcover)

This book talks about the importance of creating a Customer Experience in very interesting and helpful ways. For example, Colin Shaw notes that each company has a unique Emotional Signature(tm), that is, the pattern of emotions your company and products create in the customer. Shaw notes that there are four clusters of emotions that are statistically significant in creating loyal customers. The author notes that his research shows that 50% of a customer's purchase experience is emotional. Other people claim that people purchase based on their emotions and use reason to justify their purchase. Whatever the fraction and balance of emotion and reasons, it is to your benefit to manage the emotions your customers feel as they walk in your door and after they take your product home.

Oh, and by the way, it is very important that you understand your customer segments, why they come to your store, and what they are using your products to get done. That way you can prepare the experience to handle them as they walk in the door rather than making them seek you out to get them what they think they want. You have a golden opportunity to show them you not only understand them, but have expertise in what they are trying to get done. This way you can not only push them to a higher emotional cluster, but possibly sell them additional items that improve their experience.

The first cluster includes the Value Destroying emotions. You drive customers away and prevent others from ever becoming customers when your policies, procedures, and staff make them feel stressed, neglected, unsatisfied, frustrated, disappointed, unhappy, hurried, and/or irritated. It may seem obvious to you that you don't want these emotions being caused in your customers. However, this doesn't mean you aren't doing it. One valuable exercise is to use your company as a regular customer would and see how it really works. You might be shocked. Another is to actually read your customer mail and talk to real customers about how your company makes them feel. It is probably a very different picture than the one you currently hold in your mind.

There are three clusters of positive emotions, the Attention, Recommendation, and Advocacy clusters. While they are separate statistically, it is hard to imagine that you can actually get to the level of advocacy without passing through and maintaining the attention and recommendation emotions in your customers.

The Attention emotions are also the ones most directly related to short term spending by your customers. If you want them to buy today make them feel stimulated, interested, exploratory, energetic, and indulgent. Makes sense right? These are also the emotions most closely associated with store openings and product launches. However, the effect is also short term. You must work harder to maintain these emotions as time goes on and be ready to cycle through other new products to keep the attention of your customers.

When you help your customers feel the emotions in the Recommendation cluster you are laying the foundation of customer loyalty. They are willing to talk about your company and its products when your friends ask them for a advice and recommendations. If your customers are doing this for you, it is because you make them feel valued, cared for, trusted, focused, and safe. Good going!

The customers who feel the Advocacy emotions (and there are only two) will actively promote you because you have made them feel happy and pleased. Happiness is a peak emotion that causes memories and when people have happy memories they treasure the places and people that were a part of it. They even want to take pictures. The author asks if your customers want to take pictures of their experiences with your company. It is a telling point, I think.

The author also talks about the Net Promoter Score. You ask customers to mark a scale from zero (not at all likely) to ten (very likely) in response to the question "how likely are you to recommend (place your company, a product, or the experience they had with you here) to a friend? Then, total ALL the responses. Then figure the percent of the responses of one through six and write this down. Ignore the responses of seven and eight. Then calculate the percentage of total responses that were marked nine or ten. You get the Net Promoter Score by subtracting the percentage of scores marked 1 to 6 from the percentage of scores 9 and 10. This is your advocacy score and you want to get that number as high as you can.

Obviously, I can't go through the whole book. I think its points are good. However, I do NOT like the metaphor of DNA. It is all wrong for what they are talking about. When you read the talk about spreading the DNA to others and similar comments, the author seems to be talking about a virus or some such, but never using the metaphor for what DNA really is. However, customer virus is an unattractive metaphor. But this is a small complaint. This is a good book on an important topic.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new slant for marketing, March 12, 2008

By 

Cow Town Girl (Sheridan, WY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value (Hardcover)

If nothing else, this book is fascinating. Colin Shaw has disected transactions into measurable steps based on the emotions agents evoke during an experience. He uses examples that anyone can relate to, such as going out to dinner, breaks the experience into steps in charts and graphs them. He makes measuring an experience as scientific as anything about emotions could possibly be.

At the surface, when he started talking about planned emotional responses during customer interactions, I though his ideas seemed manipulative but reading on, I got it. Customer interactions have a sequence that at any point breaks down into a good or bad emotional experience. Managers who need to train workers to make customers happy now have a step by step method to show where any breakdown in the process may occur so they can fix it.

I have all three of Colin Shaw's experience books. They are all different and I recommend them all. Customer experience is the next wave in marketing. There is nothing new in the idea of making customers feel happy, but this book is a fresh look with a new angle.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great guide to turning customers into advocates for your company, December 11, 2008

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The DNA of Customer Experience: How Emotions Drive Value (Hardcover)

Colin Shaw demonstrates convincingly why building a great "Customer Experience" is important to your company. He relates it to important clusters of emotions that either destroy or drive added value, and create loyal customers. While the DNA metaphor is a bit strained (after all, talking about the virus of customer experience wouldn't be nearly as poetic, even if it might be a slightly more accurate metaphor), Shaw gets his ideas across well and the underlying principles he outlines are quite good. He provides stories and quotes from his own consulting experience to clarify his points. getAbstract finds this concisely written book valuable and instructive.