Building Emotional Bonds with Customers: Beyond Generic Advice to True Personalisation

I recently discussed a report I had prepared for a client, thoroughly analysing their customer insights after a long campaign involving feedback and analysis of customer behaviours. At one point, we were talking about the group of customers that fall under what we call 'Mercenaries' — those with high satisfaction but low loyalty. These customers are ready to switch to a competitor offering a better deal. I explained to my client that the appropriate action with this group would be to build an emotional connection so that they feel compelled to come back to us rather than looking at competitors. (For more on customer segmentation, see Revisiting the Apostles Model.)

From then on, the presentation was completely put to one side and we focused on one question: how do we build a bond with our customers? How do we build a bond with our customers? This is not a small question.

In fact, if you do some quick research, you will find numerous articles and keynote speakers travelling the world talking about this very issue. You can even pay for courses to learn the answer. However, all of this may be nonsense. The reason I say that is because, while the tips and logic of the guru on stage may be valid and sensible, they may still not apply to your particular case, industry, products and services, or customer base.

We live in a world that is moving towards personalisation, more pull and less push. So we can't pretend to have a magic wand that creates an emotional connection between a given company and its customers. It doesn't work like that. The arguments presented by the keynote speaker on their fancy slides may not be suitable for you. More often than not, they won't be.

So How Do We Do It in Our Particular Case?

As I mentioned earlier: Personalisation. Bonds will be created on a personal basis, one customer at a time, one experience at a time.

Jan Carlzon¹ emphasised the importance of 'moments of truth', when we must ensure that our customers have the best possible experience, as this could determine whether they come back or not. (This concept is also explored in Is the Customer Always Right?.)

As Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Most of us have a mental blacklist of companies, shops and bars where we've had a bad experience and don't intend to go back. It's definitely emotional.

To create a bond, we need to consider the personal and emotional aspects and how customers feel.

Let's explore this further.

The Human Touch: Becoming Friends with Your Customers

The most effective way to create an emotional connection with customers is to be their friend. All our customer-facing teams, including our Customer Service, Customer Onboarding and Engagement teams, need to focus on the same thing: connecting with customers on an emotional level. Modern training schemes focus on this, spending hours in workshops teaching people to be empathetic and acquire important soft skills for connecting with customers.

This means that next time a customer needs to visit a restaurant, clothes shop or financial firm, they will think of us first. That's where we want to be. Which supermarket comes to mind first when I need to go shopping? Which hairdresser do I go to if I need a haircut? It's probably not because of the price or the service. Not exclusively, anyway. It's how I feel when I'm sitting there, telling the hairdresser everything about my life and revealing all my secrets.

So that's the human touch. Whenever we have the opportunity to speak to our customers directly, we have a golden opportunity to create a bond with them and turn them into customers for life.

Previous Experiences: Building White Lists, Avoiding Blacklists

As I said, everyone has their own blacklists and whitelists of options to avoid and consider. To ensure that we are included in the right lists, we must deliver consistently, at every moment of truth throughout the customer experience. Good experiences create good memories, and good memories create loyalty.

Being Relevant and Relatable: The Power of Personalisation

Thirdly, and in a way, returning to the point about personalisation, we need to be relevant and relatable to our customers. This means using their language and jargon and tailoring offers to them. Gerry McGovern's 'Top Tasks'³ highlights the importance of ensuring that our customers can find exactly what they are looking for as soon as they reach our website or shop. When I visit my bank's website, I want to see the login button immediately. Once I'm logged in, I expect to see the tasks I often perform presented in the most visible and obvious place. There's no need to distract me with irrelevant information about pensions or mortgages.

Personas are also a great way to personalise experiences because they allow us to design different customer journeys with different steps for customers with different needs and motivations. For example, when I go to a clothes shop, I might just browse, looking for something to wear to a wedding I've been invited to. I should be treated differently from someone who goes to the same shop knowing exactly what they want, such as a blue shirt and a pair of trousers. In this case, the shop assistant doesn't need to bombard me with suggestions about belts or cardigans, since I came in knowing exactly what I wanted. In this case, upselling is not about pushing the customer to buy something they are not looking for; it's about understanding and emphasising their needs and motivations.

In a coffee shop, for example, the first obvious differentiator is time. If a customer is in a rush and knows exactly what they want to take away, they will have the best experience if they get exactly that as soon as possible. It's as simple as that. On the other hand, someone with more time may prefer to sit in a corner, enjoying the smell of coffee, and may be open to suggestions about cakes or other treats.

The Bottom Line: It's All About Feelings

Everything counts. Creating a bond is about creating memories. It's about moments of truth. It's about pulling and not pushing. It's all about one thing: feelings.

If you're dealing with Mercenary customers in your business, start by identifying those personal moments and training your teams to establish connections. The emotional payoff will be evident in loyalty that no discount can buy.

References

¹ Carlzon, Jan. Moments of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing. 1987.

² Angelou, Maya. (attributed). Quote on emotional impact.

³ McGovern, Gerry. Top Tasks: A How-to Guide. Silver Beach Publishing. 2018.