Brands are no longer judged solely based on their products or services but by how they treat their clients. Customers, with time, are likely to forget the quality of the product or service, but their experience with the brand always stays with them.
Customer emotion refers to how people feel about a brand based on their experiences and interactions. It has been revealed in studies that over 90% of buying decisions are motivated by emotions not logic. Thus, in today’s interconnected world, businesses need to be careful about their customers’ feelings at every stage, as a positive customer experience will drive loyalty, whereas a negative experience will drive customers away. Businesses today are making use of data to understand their customer’ emotions, as this makes a difference between good and adverse results for a business.
The Emotional Side of the Customer Journey
An emotion is evoked every time customers interact with a brand, whether while browsing a website, navigating reviews to make a purchase, or interacting with the support team. Emotions are natural for customers at every step of dealing with a brand or business. Customers’ emotions toward a brand play a significant role in influencing purchase decisions, and hence, businesses should be aware of their customers’ feelings toward their brand.
This further helps businesses enhance their customer experience, build loyalty, and increase retention. However, businesses find it difficult to understand customers’ emotions through their intuitions or surveys, so they depend upon data and AI sentiment analysis to gain emotion-driven insight. With emotions playing a significant role in predicting customer behavior, businesses should make use of large-scale data analytics to measure and analyze the sentiments of their customers.
Decoding Customer Emotions through Data
Earlier, businesses and companies understood customer emotion through feedback forms or focus groups. However, today, businesses enjoy a huge online presence, from social media websites and product review sites to customer support chats, which make it possible to gain emotion-driven insights through data. Businesses can understand customer emotions through data in the following key ways:
- AI Sentiment Analysis: AI-powered sentiment analysis makes use of Natural Language Processing and machine learning algorithms to decode various text-based inputs, such as reviews, chats, and social posts, to identify customers ‘ tones, such as positive, negative, or neutral. The advanced tools can also identify feelings like anger, joy, or sadness. For instance, if a business finds any “anger” terms in their customer chats, they can immediately address the root cause to satisfy and please their customers.
- Voice and Speech Analytics: Call centers use voice analytics tools such as SBS AI Senti to gauge the pace and tone of their customers on calls. This allows them to not only identify whether their customers are positive, negative, or neutral but also detect joy, frustration, anger, excitement, and more, so that their support team can respond with empathy. This will further help them to immediately improve customer satisfaction.
- Facial Expression Recognition: To decode their customers ‘ emotions, businesses and brands also use AI-powered cameras to gauge the facial expressions of their customers while they interact with the customer support team regarding their products. The facial expressions of customers, such as smiles or frowns, provide hints and deep emotional insights that are hard to decode through words.
- Behavioral Data: Customers’ behavioral data is collected from how long they stay on a website, the links or tabs on which they click, and the reasons why they abandon a cart. Analysts use the data to map customers’ behavioral patterns with emotions like delight or hesitation. This further helps businesses and brands align their design and content according to customers’ emotion driven insights.
- Social Listening and Engagement Metrics: Customers’ emotions are well understood by brands through social media platforms, where customers openly share their views, comments, and reactions through messages, hashtags, and emojis. Brands take the help of SBS AI Senti to turn raw text into clear, actionable intelligence that allows them to decode customers ‘ sentiments related to their products or services and understand their emotions in real-time.
Why Customer Emotions Matter to Businesses?
Customer emotions hold great significance for businesses, as based on their emotions toward a brand, customers make purchasing decisions, build loyalty, and even make repeat purchases. Businesses make use of SBS AI Senti to pay attention to their customers’ emotions so that they are able to better connect with them and build stronger brand connections. Conversely, negative emotions toward a brand will damage its reputation, so businesses need to address these issues immediately to maintain healthy connections with customers.
- Influence Decision-Making – Customers’ emotions drive purchase decisions, especially since their initial decision is purely emotion-based. Customers prefer to buy from a brand that provides a sense of trust and reliability, and they immediately turn away when they sense doubt about a brand.
- Shape Brand Perception – Customers remember the positive emotional experiences created by brands that maintain their loyalty, whereas negative experiences agitate customers, causing them to avoid the brand in the future.
- Emotions Drive Customer Loyalty – Studies have proven that customers who are emotionally connected with brands are highly valuable, as they are more likely to remain loyal. Customers deriving value and importance from a brand are seen promoting and recommending it to their friends and relatives.
- Data Decodes Customer Emotions – Earlier, businesses used focus groups or feedback forms to understand their customers’ sentiments, but today, with huge digital footprints on social media posts, product review platforms, and website clicks, businesses can easily analyze customers’ emotions.
Conclusion
In the digital age, when an abundance of data is available to businesses, understanding customer emotions is not overly difficult. In the modern world, it has become a necessity for businesses to know the customers ‘ next move, as customers prefer brands that are quick to anticipate their needs and choices before they need to explain them. Studies have revealed that emotion is a significant factor affecting customer purchasing behavior. When businesses deal with customers with emotions and empathy, they are certain to build loyalty, create long-lasting relations, and inspire advocacy. Data today plays a vital role in helping businesses understand their customers ‘ emotions, allowing them to be proactive in their responses.
