Tag: Engagement

Using Behavioral Psychology to Improve the Customer Experience 

When interacting with clients and customers, perception is reality!  By using principles from behavioral psychology, leaders can emphasize the positive to improve customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction can be greatly improved with behavioral psychology by segmenting experience, giving customers a sense of control, or even becoming part of their routines, in order to highlight the positive.

Perception is reality

In every customer encounter, perception is reality.  In fact, perception can be even more important than reality. We sometimes ignore reality, but we rarely ignore our perceptions. Whether your organization sells goods or provides professional services, the customer’s perceptions of your product or service matter.  A lot.  With a master’s degree in both psychology and in organizational development, I’d like to shed some light on the behavioral psychology aspect of customer perceptions.

In leadership coaching, I know many leaders invest time and effort to improve the quality, timeliness, and relevance of their offerings.  But unless you focus on how customers perceive their experiences, your offerings may not generate the hoped for customer satisfaction.  Of course, organizations should always pay attention to the quality of their products and services.  But to drive better customer impressions and higher customer satisfaction, leaders need to consider how the customer journey appears from the customer’s point of view, applying principles of behavioral psychology to achieve the best results.

This article will focus on using behavioral psychology to improve customer journeys and experiences.  Paying attention to the high and low points, or “pain points” of a customer’s journey, and how those experiences unfold in time, are keys to improving both perception and reality.

Pay attention to the sequence of events

People don’t remember all portions of an experience equally.  Research in behavioral psychology shows that they tend to remember a few high and low points and gloss over the rest.  The result is that just a fraction of the complete customer experience can have an outsized impact on perception.  

People are also sensitive to trends – whether an experience is moving from negative to positive, or the reverse.  Not surprisingly, people prefer that their experiences improve over time – and the ending is most important of all.  Even if an experience has been positive until the last interaction, a bad ending tends to overwhelm the customer’s memory.  

Knowing these quirks of behavioral psychology can help organizations maximize positive customer impressions.  Avoiding a “last bad experience” is one reason some hotels have eliminated the need to check out.  It’s also why cruise ships schedule the “captain’s dinner” at the end of the trip. Leaders should look at the customer journeys their organizations offer.  How can they emphasize positive experiences?  How can “pain points” be minimized or managed?  

Segmenting experiences to emphasize the positive

Another useful tool from the behavioral psychology toolkit is managing the sequence of experiences to minimize the impact of negative experiences while highlighting positive ones.  We’ve already seen that customers are sensitive to trends, such as whether the experience is improving or getting worse.  When the customer journey involves several different interactions, it’s useful to get the “bad stuff” out of the way at the beginning and to spread the “good stuff.”

If you’re a hotel or cruise line, that can mean getting all the payment and personal information in a single transaction.  Now the service provider is free to sprinkle perks and freebies into the rest of the journey.  Memory of the “pain point” will fade in comparison to the perks and freebies.  

If you offer professional services instead of hotel stays or cruises, think how segmenting might work for you.  

For example, you probably need to gather background information about the client and the project – that’s a “pain point” and will count against the customer‘s experience unless managed.  Try to gather all the information needed at one time and minimize having to ask follow up questions.  The “perks” in this case will be rolling out with deliverables smoothly and predictably.  

Giving customers control

A third way to improve customer satisfaction is to give customers control over their experience.  People want to feel that they have agency, or the ability to change events and outcomes in their lives. There are many ways to make customers feel empowered, engaged, and informed.  

For instance, offering a choice of service packages, B2B or B2C like airplane seats, or hotel rooms is a good way to start. Customers who have these feelings are less likely to blame the service provider when things go wrong.  

Proactively updating clients also gives them a sense of control.  Providing ways to engage with the organization and offering timely updates are good ways to boost engagement and information.  

Another way to promote feelings of control is to avoid making changes that could frustrate your customers.  If you have to change what customers or clients originally bought, you must apologize and explain.

Consistency in your offerings such as brand promises, messaging, even “look and feel”  reassures customers of a predictable experience and a sense of control. People become comfortable with routines and if your organization is lucky enough to become part of someone’s routine, that’s a bonus!  Take advantage of it!

Behavioral psychology can help organizations enhance the customer journey to maximize customer satisfaction. Strategic use of sequencing and segmenting will help accentuate the positive and ensure customers leave with a positive impression of their experience.  And don’t underestimate the power of giving customers control or agency.  Helping customers feel empowered, engaged, and informed is a pathway to success.  

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Rachel Burr is an executive and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience working with CEOs and the C-suite across all industries, in organizations of from 200 to 10,000 employees. Rachel holds dual master’s degrees in Organization Development and Clinical Psychology, and numerous certifications in the field of executive coaching. Rachel is a “people expert” who works with clients to unleash their leadership potential.  If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

Owning Your Executive Presence

Executive presence is crucial to effective leadership. Aspiring leaders may reject developing executive presence if they view it as inauthentic or an attempt to become someone they’re not. This perspective could not be farther from the truth. Executive presence is the observable result of stepping into our strengths, owning our depth of experience, and valuing what we bring to leadership to instill trust and confidence in the people around us. 

How Do We Develop Executive Presence?

We develop and hone our executive presence by focusing on the fundamentals. Let’s break it down into three key components:

  • Mindset
  • Communicating Competence
  • Engagement with Others

Mindset

Mindset is how we think about ourselves, the world around us, and interactions between the two: Do we see ourselves as a leader? Do we believe we bring value to our role? Do we secretly believe we’re “faking it,” and fear others will discover we have no idea what we’re doing?  Mindset impacts our confidence, and our level of confidence impacts our executive presence.

Confidence is something we can develop. It comes through successes and failures when we learn from those experiences: “Wow, I did a great job, and here’s what contributed to that success…” or “Huh! That failure didn’t kill me…I wonder what else won’t kill me?” Confidence is built through engaging in the world and running toward something we want, rather than running away from what scares us (unless what scares you is a charging alligator. Then run, run like the wind!).  When we seek the intersection of experiences that both excite and scare us, that is where growth happens, and through that growth we build confidence.

Communicating Competence

Competence is also critical to executive presence and to our overall leadership. Even with a powerful mindset, we will not have an executive presence if people do not have confidence in our skills and abilities. However, it’s not just about having competence, but how we communicate that competence. Regardless of our personal style, there are deeper fundamentals we can leverage to communicate competence, both explicitly and implicitly.

Explicitly, we communicate competence through the ideas we bring to the table, how we respond to questions, and how we engage in discussions about the business, industry, etc. Implicitly, we communicate competence through our behavior and delivery. Physically, people who are calm and grounded appear more competent. They have a clear, concise message and tailor that message to their audience. Leaders with a strong executive presence do not appear easily flustered or overwhelmed. This is not to say they don’t sometimes feel those things, but there is a difference between our internal experience and our outward behavior. It’s the metaphor of a duck gliding serenely across the water while paddling like mad beneath the surface. This does not mean we should take an artificial “Fake it ‘til you make it” approach. Instead, author Timothy R. Clark encourages a more authentic, “Behave until you believe.” ( “The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation,” by Timothy R. Clark.)   When we breathe, slow down, and calm our mind, we help our inside experience begin to align with our outward behavior, and this allows us to improve how we communicate leadership. 

Engagement with Others

Executive presence is not a one-way communication. We also communicate competence and confidence by how we listen to people, ask good questions, and seek to understand the knowledge and perspectives of others. Executive presence does not mean we always need to have the right answer, be the smartest person in the room, or make all the decisions. Leadership is a team sport, a synergy between a leader who serves their people, and the people guided by that leader. Without synergy, leadership does not exist. An adage, often attributed to John C. Maxwell, says “If you think you’re a leader and you turn around and no one else is following you, then you’re simply out for a walk.” 

A Powerful Combination

Our executive presence is a combination of many factors, including internal mindset, communication of competence, and how we engage others. All these factors merge to create an executive presence that is unique to each of us. The most effective executive presence is not only achieved through our individual actions, but through the powerful interaction between us and the people around us. Our executive presence inspires others to have confidence in us as a leader, and that together we will achieve our goals.