Emotional design - how emotions affect the customer experience

Emotions make up a large part of the customer experience. That makes it especially important to decide what you want to convey along the way. Here we explain more about how emotions affect the customer experience and what you should consider.

 

Emotions influence our decisions

At heart, humans are emotional beings who largely make decisions based on our feelings. One could even go so far as to say that it’s not products or services we buy — we buy feelings. That is why it’s especially important to decide what you want to convey. And which feelings you want to evoke with your brand, your products and services.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Depending on which emotions one manages to evoke, they affect people in different ways. Everything we as a company communicate and do along the customer journey therefore contributes to the overall experience our customers have. That, in turn, affects how they behave. Emotions should therefore be seen as a tool and an opportunity, partly to build loyalty and engagement but also to increase conversion and profitability.

By understanding what triggers our emotions and thereby our decisions, we can create emotional bonds with our customers. That emotional piece is something products or services often struggle to achieve on their own. It’s rarely a shampoo bottle that makes us excited with happiness, but when we throw in a handsome hockey player with a beautiful head of hair alongside the product, we react. We therefore need to consciously design the right kinds of emotions through effective communication and proper packaging.

Many companies overestimate their importance to their customers. All too often, they focus on producing content based on what they want to convey, instead of starting from what customers actually want to know. The fact is that your customers don’t care all that much about your company. They want to know what they personally get out of your product or service. That is why emotions and customer value can give you significant competitive advantages. To be able to design emotions into a customer experience, we first and foremost need to understand and get to know our human brain a little better.

“Your customers don’t care about you. They don’t care about your product or service. They care about themselves, their dreams, their goals. Now, they will care much more if you help them reach their goals, and to do that, you must understand their goals, as well as their needs and deepest desires.”

- Steve Jobs

How we make decisions

We humans often think that we make well-founded, rational decisions, but research has shown that this is rarely the case. Our decisions are instead made up of automatic and emotional processes. However, we are good at justifying and rationalizing decisions afterwards. Our thinking is divided into two processes or systems: System 1 and 2.

• System 1: The emotional or affective system is our subconscious experience, our intuition. The system often operates quickly and automatically because it is always on. It is driven by long-standing habit.
• System 2: The rational system is our thinking system with conscious awareness. This system is somewhat slower and requires more effort. It is often engaged when System 1 cannot process complex information.

The emotional system influences the rational, and therefore we must learn more about how to awaken the impulses in the emotional system. Generally, companies are good at designing rational experiences, where, for example, they help their customers from point A to point B. However, they are not as adept at how to include and design for the emotional side. Companies that manage to take control of the customer experience and ensure that all touchpoints align with the feeling they want to convey will have a significant head start over competitors.

Only then can we design experiences, products or services that users actually like and want to use. But how do you do it? A first step can be to find out the company's emotional signature and where you stand today.

The company's emotional signature

Whether you are aware of it or not, your company leaves behind an emotional signature. Everything your customers experience and encounter throughout the customer journey (both physical and psychological stimuli) triggers emotional reactions that in turn affect the company Some call this "emotional brand voice" and mean that the emotional signature is about how the brand expresses its personality. Tone, emotions and the personality you project through your communication can strengthen the emotional bond with customers.

How the emotional signature works:

• Stimuli are all the physical or psychological elements that your customer experience consists of, e.g. website, app or the way customer service staff interact.
• Response is all the reactions that your stimuli can trigger, e.g. that the customer feels safe and satisfied or stressed and irritated.
• Effect describes how the customer's reaction affects the company. Based on what the customer encounters/experiences and the reactions it triggers – what is the effect and the final business value.

Consider which stimuli customers encounter in their experience with you? What response do these stimuli trigger in your customers? And what effect does that have on your business? Find out what the situation looks like where you stand today. Which emotions do you evoke at the moment? Does that match how you want to be perceived? What can you change to get where you want to be? Once you have a handle on the current situation you can start thinking about how you can change or strengthen emotions in the customer experience.

 

Designing emotions into the customer experience

Evoking emotions is about understanding triggers. What do customers want to feel and achieve when they use your product/service? If you run an e-commerce site, it’s not just about getting customers to buy something. Your customers want a good experience on an emotional level. The elements we choose to include evoke and convey different types of feelings. If we choose the wrong kinds of images, colors or text content, we can also evoke the wrong kinds of feelings. There’s a reason why pictures of cute cats are click-friendly – they awaken something in us.

"It’s not just about the transaction. Your customers aren’t just coming to you to buy. They want a positive experience on an emotional level."

Factors that affect our emotions

Text and image

The saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" has its merits, but good copy and textual content also evoke feelings. The visual feel must match what is conveyed in the text. At the same time, it's important to be consistent. If we are unclear, have too many different messages, or don't let images and text interact - there's a big risk we'll lose the customer along the way. Also make sure to speak the customer's language; avoid jargon or complicated words that no one understands. Writing good headlines is a way to capture the customer's attention and get them to click through or read more.

When we see images of people, we try to determine whether we can identify with them or not. We therefore have cognitive biases that we must take into account when we design. Use images that the customer can identify with – either who they dream of becoming, or can recognize themselves in.

Memories and past experiences

In addition to interpreting what we see, we also base our experiences on prior experiences and memories. When we hear certain names, places, scents or dishes we can relate to encounters we've had before. Perhaps we associate a scent with a particular place from our childhood or a dish with a holiday trip. This means people can interpret things differently, and as a company it can be difficult to influence. But at least we can try.

The basic perceptions are fairly similar among consumers. Get to know your customers and find out which emotions trigger them. Find out what type of customer they are — what needs and motivations do they have? Analyze user data and interact with them.

Colors

Colors also evoke emotions, and certain types of colors elicit certain kinds of feelings. Did you know, for example, that cool colors appeal to the emotional side of the brain? Or that blue is the most common corporate color? Blue signals a sense of calm, and dark blue often evokes feelings of trust, authority and intelligence. It's also no coincidence that stores use red signs and red prices to signal SALE. We often perceive red as urgent and important. Stores simply want to make us aware so that we act immediately, otherwise we risk missing out.

Brands and colors are also closely linked. Colors can quickly make us associate them with a particular brand. If we say ICA, most people probably think of the color red. Say Facebook and you think of blue. McDonald's, yellow, etc. What does your primary color say about your brand, and does it convey what you want?

Emotional state

Our emotional state also affects how we think, feel and act. If we are irritated, angry or in a bad mood we are likely to be less tolerant of what we experience. If, on the other hand, we are happy and content we are likely to be less focused and more relaxed. We are probably more forgiving of minor problems and obstacles we encounter, and the chances are greater that we will have a positive experience of a product or service.

Summary

• If you want your customers to have a positive experience, then you must invest in it. Start by finding out your current emotional signature so that you have a clear baseline.
• Map the customer experience to take control of it. Make sure all parts of the experience align with the feeling you want to convey.
• Get to know your customers so you know which emotions trigger them. Highlight customer benefits and use emotions as a tool and an opportunity to influence and get customers to act.
• Evoke emotions through visual elements, colors or different types of interactions and micro-animations. Differentiate yourself from competitors by having a unique, eye-catching design. Focus on strong content and the interplay between text and image. At the same time, be aware that people's emotional states, memories and past experiences also affect how we think, feel and act.

 

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