The Reason Marketers Shouldn't Design For Emotion in Customer Experience

Experience is subjective. Data are indicative. JL

Adrian Swinscoe reports in Forbes:

Experience is both subjective and contextual. Instead of trying to design emotion into their customer experience, companies should focus on making their customer experience easy, pleasant, consistent, proactive, surprising, valuable and useful. (Marketers) should pay close attention to how their customers are feeling and what they are saying by using research and tools like surveys and voice analytics. They can use insights to gauge what is working (which) gives the best chance of generating the positive emotions, loyalty and advocacy they desire.
There is a lot of talk about emotion in the customer experience arena right now.
A lot of it concerns the tracking, measuring and monitoring of customer emotions throughout their experience with a firm or brand. However, more recently, a number of firms, vendors, analysts and commentators have started talking about designing emotion into customer experience.
I think that is a mistake and, potentially, a waste of time and effort.
Why?
Well, consider these two scenarios:
Scenario 1:

Imagine two customers check in at a hotel at the same time. One customer has had a really bad day….their plane or train was cancelled, delayed or disrupted and, as a result, they have arrived at the hotel very tired and very late. Meanwhile, the other customer arrives at the hotel after a very smooth and uneventful journey.

Scenario 2:

• Imagine two customers enter a shoe shop just as it is closing. One customer has been casually out shopping and whilst walking by they happen to spot a pair of shoes that they really like in the window. They go into the shop, try them on, really like how they feel and decide to buy them. The other customer does exactly the same thing but they have been out shopping all day looking for a pair of shoes for a special event they have to go to in the morning.

Now, assuming that the staff in the hotel and the shoe shop have no way of knowing about the different experiences of their customers and that both customers receive the exact same level of service, how do the customers feel about their experience?
I would suggest that the customers will all feel very differently about their experience.
The reason being is that their experience is both subjective and contextual.
Therefore, instead of trying to design emotion into their customer experience, companies should focus on making their customer experience easy, pleasant, consistent, proactive, surprising (in a good way), valuable and useful etc etc and, in doing so, they will give themselves the best chance of generating the positive emotions, loyalty and advocacy that they desire.
That is not to say that companies should ignore the role of emotion in customer experience or how their customers feel about their service or experience.
Not at all.
In fact, they should pay close attention to how their customers are feeling, what they are telling them and what they are saying publicly. But, they should do so by using research and feedback tools like surveys and speech and voice analytics where they can use insights from these tools to gauge what is working well, what is not working so well and what needs changing.
It is only right that companies should try and do their utmost to generate positive emotions as how a customer feels about their service, process or transaction is hugely important when it comes to their propensity to purchase, re-purchase and advocate on their behalf.
But, to try and design emotions into the customer experience ignores the fact that all customers are different, have different requirements, characters, experiences and contexts. And, much of the time, companies won’t know any of these things.