Who do you feel loyal to in your life? My money is on your answer being your friends and family. The reason you feel loyal to them is because you have an emotional relationship with them. They might do things you don’t like sometimes, usually at the holidays, that drive you crazy. However, you don’t sever ties over it. 

The same emotional connection happens in business relationships. Also, like your personal relationships, they can weather a little bad news without ending them. However, for this to be the case, there are some things you need to do ensure that this relationship forms—and it probably isn’t as complicated as you might think.

This episode focuses on how to create these emotional bonds with your customers and foster customer loyalty. We explain why emotional bonds protect you in business relationships and how to lay the foundation for customer loyalty. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

To begin with, we borrow from a concept in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People called the Emotional Bank Account. An Emotional Bank Account is a lot like a regular bank account where you make deposits and withdrawals. The difference is the deposits are good things that you do for your customers and the withdrawals are the things that happen that they don’t like. We think that everyone should invest a lot of time making deposits into the Emotional Bank Account for that rainy day when something doesn’t go the customers’ way. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 01:39  Colin introduces the listener’s business pickle and why loyalty is such an essential part of your experience.
• 05:18  We explain the concept of the Emotional Bank Account and how it applies to your personal and business relationships.
• 08:22  Colin shares an example of working with a construction equipment company that you would think wouldn’t want to get into the touchy-feely stuff—until they learned that’s what their customers wanted.    
• 09:57  We discuss the simple way you can build up your customers’ trust in you, which facilitates an emotional relationship forming with your business customers.
• 13:35  Colin explains how having the entire team consistent in their dealings with customers, and presenting a unified front is essential to forming an emotional bond with customers.   
• 15:01  We explain how you should be yourself when you deal with customers because the relationship will hopefully last, and no one can keep up pretense for that long.
• 16:41  Ryan explains how addressing the individual’s personal career goals and job responsibilities are also essential to emotional relationships in business, as well as understanding the company politics your business contact must navigate.  
• 21:06 We explain how creating win-wins is essential, and there are times when you have to let a customer go.  

 

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Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

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