| Psychology and the Customer Experience |
| Enlighten Series: |
| Having an understanding about why people behave, think and feel in a certain a manner can help companies reach out to their customers better. Perceptions of a product/service or company are based on the nature of customer experiences and the thoughts, feelings and values attached to these experiences.Some of the aspects that companies can look at are how do customers get information about their product, how do they make their choice and how does their personal experience with the product influence them: |
 Taking in information: Perception of a product/service starts with information gathering. Do customers prefer to research a product by themselves and make their own choice? In that case, an informative website about product characteristics and uses may help them. Or do they prefer to take opinions from friends/relatives or even perhaps the company salesman at the point of sale? Perception of credibility about the source of information is then important. Even blogs and tweets and the opinion expressed by them has become important to customers. |
| Decision Making: Customers use different yardsticks to make the choice in buying a product/service. What weightages do they give to make that choice? Is a fact based approach more appealing e.g. Car A gives more mileage than Car B; or does an emotional approach appeal more e.g. Company A provides better interior styling and has better colour options than company B? We use both, but companies need to figure out what is the right combination of approaches to help target customer make the choice. |
| Personal experience: Positive or negative experiences with the product/service and company personnel can influence peoples perception. The service engineers willingness to go out of his way to service a machine may lead to a positive perception of not only the engineer, but the engineers company as well. Or customers who find that the interactive menu on a repeat purchase (like a machine or a mobile phone) has been changed entirely by the manufacturer may not find the experience with the product as pleasant as they thought it would be. |
The most important question is then: what do customers want and what kind of customers do companies want to attract?
And using simple principles of Psychologycan help companies figure it out. |
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