If you’re not considering emotional quotient (EQ) in your marketing efforts, you’re probably ignoring one of the critical factors that drive sales and conversions, eventually losing your customers to your competitors.
Understanding EQ has much more to do with eliciting a positive response from your customers. That’s where business metrics come to your rescue to tap into your customers, understand what makes them tick — makes them a little sad when their favorite product shows “out-of-stock” on your website, evokes a sense of goodwill at a 50% discount, sparks curiosity at the next “big reveal”, or reduces their agitation with easy return policies.
It’s no surprise that a fascinating dichotomy exists between the qualitative nature of emotional quotient and the quantitative nature of such metrics in understanding CX Through this lens, you can discover how to build strong customer relationships through their needs and emotions while using concrete, numerical data to provide tangible & quantifiable outcomes. In this article, we explore the harmonious blend of EQ and business metrics in understanding customer emotional journeys.
Think like the customer to appeal to them: The five components of EQIn marketing, the definition of emotional quotient isn’t far from the general definition. EQ, in business terms, involves transforming customer interactions into meaningful engagements by understanding and leveraging their emotions. It has the same five elements that include:
Self-awareness
Don’t we all wish to be self-aware at all times?! The same should go for your brand. In marketing, being self-aware requires your marketing team to understand customer interactions and purchasing decisions and how they impact your marketing efforts. It can help you create marketing effective marketing campaigns that are relatable and authentic, letting your offering truly shine through.
To illustrate it with an example- Dove, one of the leading personal care brands, educates women on positive body image with its Self-Esteem Project. Now, you can imagine how it can make any woman with low self-esteem and self-confidence foster a sense of normalcy about her body.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation in marketing can be tricky and requires you to manage customer emotions that are consistent with your marketing efforts. It involves the ethical use of emotional appeals that can help them make customer-centric choices. A great example is Walmart’s Every Day Low Price (EDLP) which lets customers control their expenses and have access to a wide range of goods. Now, who doesn’t like to save some extra bucks while buying groceries?
Motivation
Motivation in marketing is similar to getting motivated in everyday scenarios — sometimes easier said than done. Motivation is putting efforts into identifying emotional triggers, such as convenience, status, security, or belonging, that prompt your customers with repeat purchases and brand advocacy. It also means crafting compelling calls to action, recognizing and addressing customers’ emotional pain points, or creating a perception of scarcity to promote engagement.
For instance, the credit card issuer American Express’ famous 1990s advertising slogan “Membership has its privileges” encouraged customers to be a member to reap the benefits of the Amex card. Over the years, the brand has proved to be successful in anticipating consumer needs and invoking emotional responses with such successful campaigns.
Empathy
Empathy in marketing helps in a deeper understanding of customer needs and genuinely responding to their queries to build trust. It could look like a customer service rep patiently listening to a customer’s queries and responding empathetically, all while handling their negative emotions.
For instance, Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” brand strategy promotes the idea of a global community and belonging through storytelling that transcends culture and language.
Social skillsSocial skills are more than building and managing better customer relationships. They also create a sense of trust and loyalty among customers by consistently delivering on promises and fostering a sense of community.
For instance, Apple uses emotional marketing in its advertising campaigns, especially its “Shot on iPhone” campaign that encourages social sharing through the hashtag #ShotoniPhone. It also showcases Apple’s commitment to inclusivity and its global community of iPhone users through real stories.
These are different ways in which you can make your marketing campaigns even more effective. Many marketing campaigns don’t appeal to or make customers “tick” because they don’t mirror their needs, wants, or expectations. Some campaigns are akin to marketers shooting arrows in the dark, hoping that a few hit the mark; it seldom works.
Okay, so we’ve set the tone here: Incorporate EQ into marketing efforts. But the fundamental question lies: how do you know what customers need? What do they feel? How do you measure that?
Calculating the “wow” factor: Role of Business Metrics in Employing EQBusiness metrics can help you understand customer needs and pain points, creating empathetic and relevant marketing messages that elicit good CX. They help you measure, to some degree, the sentiment of the customer and their emotional state.
Here are some common metrics you can use:
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
CSAT is an important business metric that measures customers’ contentment with a company’s products or services. This KPI gauges how happy customers are with interactions or purchases. Companies conduct CSAT surveys that provide a quantitative metric of customer satisfaction levels and qualitative feedback that explains the underlying reasons. CSAT score data helps customer service representatives build emotional connections with customers in authentic ways, encourage repeat purchases, and identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.
Sum of all scores / total # of responses x 100 = % of satisfied customers
For instance, an apparel company conducts a CSAT survey to understand shoppers’ preferences, enhance CX, and improve brand loyalty. It sends out the survey by crafting empathetic messaging to understand customer opinions. The company then performs sentiment analysis to classify its customers’ emotions into happiness, frustration, excitement, disappointment, and more. It performs a trend analysis to track the gradual shift in customers’ emotions over time and the factors that influenced those changes. Say, there was a trend of net positive sentiment over two months, and corresponding to that were the keywords: “summer sale”, “eco-friendly”, and “discount”. To go further, the company also segments the customer base to understand the variation amongst different age groups.
Now comes the action. Based on the customer feedback, the company takes prompt action to understand the pain points and resolve their concerns, while incorporating customer testimonials and reviews in its marketing efforts. It also promotes its sustainability initiatives and encourages buyers to share their outfit photos on social media using specific hashtags. This helps in promoting emotional resonance with a broad range of customers.
Customer effort score
Customer effort score (CES) measures the effort a customer exerts in interacting with a business. This gives a quantitative measurement of what customers perceive while engaging a company, say, getting their issues resolved or a request fulfilled. Companies can survey customers in real time and collect CES data after an interaction or purchase through an email or on the website page.
For instance, a music streaming platform uses its CES feedback to improve its recommendation algorithms. It collects user data, such as their preferences, playlists, favorite artists, and listening history, to identify patterns and trends. They also collect subsequent metadata such as moods, song genres, and tempo to make better recommendations that are tailored to the users’ preferences.
Churn rate
The churn rate determines how efficient a company is at customer retention. It is defined as the reduction in the percentage of customers using a company’s product or service within a specific period. For instance, an OTT platform determines its churn rate by comparing the number of subscribers leaving the platform in a billing cycle to the total number of subscribers at the start of that period. It does this by adding customer behavioral data and sentiment data. Read more: Here is how combining quantitative and qualitative data is the sure-shot way of getting better customer insights.
The platform works on its recommendation engine and performs segmentation based on user demographics and activity. It comes up with various ranking algorithms, such as “Top 10 TV shows” and “Trending Now” that help boost client retention by helping subscribers in discovering good shows from its extensive catalog. They do this by not only tracking user metrics but also incorporating qualitative data into their analysis to discover the underlying reasons for churn. In short: the “why”.
Net promoter score (NPS)
NPS is a key business metric and loyalty score that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a business. It is an indicator of company growth and can easily gauge a company’s offerings. Companies can run surveys through their websites, emails, or chats to measure NPS. The following scores help in determining the NPS:
For instance, a SaaS company uses NPS surveys to determine customer satisfaction. The survey not only contains: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend or colleague?” but also additional questions such as:
Descriptive: “What factors influenced your NPS rating?”Multiple choice question: “What features or aspects of our product do you find most valuable?”Rating scale: “How responsive and effective is our customer support?”Descriptive: “Would you like to share any specific comments or suggestions?” These questions help provide more context for the survey questionnaire.It segments customers based on their scores and sends them personalized emails. For promoters, it sends emails that show gratitude for their positive feedback and loyalty. The customer support team works on actively acknowledging the detractors, empathizing with their issues, and taking active measures to turn them into promoters. This effort is enhanced by knowing exactly what’s working for promoters and what’s not working for detractors by analyzing textual data.
How can business metrics help?A direct bearing of understanding how business metrics can help in employing emotional quotient is essential to a company’s positive growth and success. Here are some ways:
Better targeting with segmentation
Business metrics like CSAT help companies understand how their offerings align with customer emotions. By using customer data from surveys, companies can segment their audience, perform sentiment analysis, and develop content and messaging that appeals to specific emotional triggers based on the segmentation. They can develop and use business metrics to measure emotional resonance, churn rate, and sentiment shifts within each segment.
Better understanding of emotional reasons behind the purchase
Business metrics help brands identify emotional motivators that drive customer behavior. They can measure customer emotions at different stages in the buying journey and understand how they affect purchasing decisions. They pinpoint areas like emotional barriers or motivators that impact the purchase journey. The metrics can also provide high-level insights into customer sentiment and emotional satisfaction.
Better offerings
Business metrics can give you different insights into your offerings. For instance, metrics related to customer feedback, such as NPS and CSAT, can help you get information on what customers like and dislike about your products or services. By analyzing this data, you can make informed adjustments to improve your offerings. Metrics can also help you with the optimization of pricing strategies, the analysis of the conversion funnel, and assessing the profitability of different offerings.
The interconnection between emotional quotient and customer experience cannot be overlooked. With ConvertML, you can integrate and assess all your marketing data to gain relevant insights. No code, no queries anymore. ConvertML also empowers you to “converse” with your data through natural language queries. Curious? Contact Us with us today to learn more!
