…For years, the highlight of my morning was my visit to the coffee shop. It was the perfect experience: the smiling barista, who quickly knew my order without me having to state it, a handwritten “thank you” note inscribed on my cup with silver pen, and a vibrant community. As a loyal customer, every couple of weeks, I earned a free drink. I loved it.” #HeartWon
As human beings, when we make decisions such as a decision to make a purchase, there is an emotional process that takes place before the purchase actually happens and I don’t mean a mushy type of emotional feeling. What I do mean is that we are first sold at heart before our brain thinks logically to satisfy the buying process.
More often than not, the brain follows the heart. From a scientific point of view, we have learnt that there is more information flowing from the brain to the heart than vice versa and this is the case for every human on earth.
Understanding this as a business owner would make you think on how you can position your products or service offerings to completely win hearts and then wallets.
The way we think this can happen is through customer experiences—delivering experiences that leave your customers with a feeling, hopefully, a positive, shareable feeling. Feelings are emotions and once you are dealing with emotions you are talking to Mr. heart.
Businesses that understand this very well, know that they do not have to spend money on acquiring new customers, they rather invest in delivering amazing experiences for the customers they have.
King of online retail, Jeff Bezos of Amazon Inc (sorry, Jack Ma fans:)) explains:
“We take those funds that might otherwise be used to shout about our service, and put those funds instead into improving the service. That’s the philosophy we’ve taken from the beginning. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each others about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”
On the quest to delivering pleasant and word-of-mouth-worthy experiences. There are a few ways in which merchants can do this and they include:
- Sending “Thank you” messages after transactions —Everyone loves this.
- Taking feedback from customers and acting on it— Makes customers feel attached.
- Communicating with customers, as mundane as that sounds—what is a (business) relationship without communication; and a lot more other ways.
One easy win with potential for high impact would be customers’ birthdays.
For example, merchants using the Loystar app can send a pre-composed birthday message that gets delivered to a customer’s phone. This message can also contain a special offer for the customer if the merchant chooses so. Best of all is that merchants never have to worry about manually tracking the birthday dates for the many customers they have. The Loystar app handles all of that.
A customer’s birthday happens only once a year and so this presents an opportunity to make him/her feel special.
We also think a whole lot more can happen beyond sending a birthday message and an offer. That’s why we take things a step further by notifying merchants of customers’ birthdays with Loystar App. Perhaps you as a merchant would like to place a voice call to your customers, personally wishing them a happy birthday or you want to make magic happen, maybe serenade your customers. Whatever floats your boat, the point is lookout for opportunities to deliver truly amazing customer experiences, because you want to aim for winning customers’ hearts, so the brain can follow and then you win a share of the wallets too.
