Emotional Value: Creating Strong Bonds with Your Customers

Society is rapidly moving from a service economy to an experience economy. As a result, today's more sophisticated consumers not only demand services and products that are of the highest quality; they also want positive, emotionally satisfying experiences. The companies and institutions that learn how to add emotional value to their customers' experiences will leave their competitors behind.

This book details a practice for adding emotional value to customers' experiences and to those of staff. The practices show that by understanding the critical role emotions play in creating customer experiences, organizations can take their service to new levels.

Today s consumers demand not only services and products that are of the highest quality, but also positive, memorable experiences. This essential guide shows how organizations can leapfrog their competitors by learning how to add emotional value —the economic value of customers feelings when they positively experience products and services —to their customers experiences. Janelle Barlow and Dianna Maul, with more than forty years combined experience in the service industry, detail five practices for adding emotional value to customer and staff experiences. They show how to:

Build an emotion-friendly service culture
Choose emotional competence as your organization s service model
Maximize customer experiences with empathy
View complaints as emotional opportunities
Use emotional connections to increase customer loyalty

The authors reveal that by understanding the critical role emotions play in creating positive customer experiences, organizations can take their customer service to new levels of refinement, compete more effectively and—most importantly—retain both customers and staff.

Barlow is president of Time Manager International, a consulting firm that specializes in time management.