Hacking CX- 5 Psychological Tricks You Didn't Know About

According to McKinsey, 70% (seventy percent) of customer purchasing experience is based on how the customer feels treated. This makes hacking customer experience easier.

Our brain makes mistakes in a repeatable and predictable way.

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In this episode, I will tell you about 5 (five) psychological tricks that you should necessarily implement in your customer experience strategy so that your customers feel that you respond 100% to their needs.

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Do you remember Joshie's story? I told you about it when we first talked about Customer Experience here. If you haven't heard it yet, you absolutely need to get to know it, because I will probably refer to that story more than once.

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An American businessman, Chris Hurn, and his family were spending their holidays at the Ritz Carlton in Florida. When they came back home after a few days, they unpacked their luggage and figured out that their child’s stuffed giraffe was missing. 

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Chris, as an experienced father, prevented a “crisis” and stopped his kids crying noting that, “Joshie stayed at the hotel because she’d wanted to have longer holidays.” The next day, he called the hotel and asked the staff to send back the toy and help him make his story more believable.

When Joshie arrived home alive and well a few days later, she had an unusual holiday souvenir with her - an entire album of photos. The stuffed giraffe visited the SPA, spent some time getting a massage, traveled the entire hotel on a trolley, plus there was an organized party with other stuffed animals, and it even had the opportunity to see what work in the hotel looks like, even supervising everything from the gatehouse.

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And I can bet now that you think this Ritz Carlton must be creating a really good experience. Maybe even the next time when looking for a suitable hotel for your vacation or business trip, you will also consider it.

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The story about Josh and Ritz Carlton hacked your brain and you didn't even notice it.

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(halo effect)

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And the so-called halo effect is responsible for this. There is a tendency to automatically assign certain characteristics based on first impressions. This tendency can be positive or negative depending on whether the first impression is positive or negative.

A positive evaluation is very often referred to as the Galatea effect or the angelic halo effect. A negative evaluation, on the other hand, is most often called the satanic halo effect or the golem effect.

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The halo effect can be an instrument supporting your marketing activities - thanks to it you can build associations about a specific product, for example by employing a liked and popular person to promote it. Nice and aesthetic product packaging, interesting advertising messages, clear messages addressed to potential customers - each of these activities will affect the perception of the advertised goods or services.

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(Cocktail Party effect)

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Have you ever heard your name spoken from across the room during a lively discussion with a group of friends at least once at a loud party? How did this happen? After all, it was so noisy that you could hardly hear individual words?

The cocktail party effect is responsible for this. It is described as the ability to pick out essential sounds for the listener in the presence of noise or disturbances. The name of the coctail-party effect comes from the example situation that I used to illustrate the occurrence of this phenomenon

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How can you use the cocktail party effect in practice? Personalize your e-mails as much as possible. Use all information gathered about your client for this purpose. And if you do not have such an information structure yet, because you do not use CDP or CRM, at least use the customer's name in the title or body of the email. While this is no longer unique to most consumers, as most of them know that it is an automatic procedure, such emails containing the first name still have a higher opening rate.

You can also use the cocktail party effect when creating posts or ads in social media. To attract the attention of the recipient and make them interested in the content addressed to then, start publishing with a question that indicates the recipient of the post, eg you own an online store, run your own business, etc. or address the recipient directly: entrepreneur, salesperson, teacher.

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(FOMO)

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Each of us likes to feel special and does not like to feel left out. The fear of this is called the FOMO effect. This is an abbreviation of the phrase - Fear of missing something.

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This phenomenon occurs on a multiplied scale every year on the occasion of Black Friday or Cyber ​​Monday. It is safe to say that the announcements prepared for the needs of these two holidays are 100% based on FOMO.

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FOMO Marketing combines three powerful psychological effects: social proof, urgency, and scarcity. A number of studies have shown how our decisions are shaped by the people around us. For example, in the "Peace with a Point of View" study, behaviorists Goldstein, Cialdini, and Griskevicius showed that social norms can influence our behavior more than rational appeals.

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The effect of a limited amount on the value of an item was illustrated in another well-known experiment conducted in 1975.(ninety seventy five) During the experiment, psychologists Adewole, Lee and Worschel asked participants to rate the attractiveness of a cookie from one of the two jars (the one that was full and the other that was almost empty). A sample of 200 ( two hundred) undergraduate students rated those in the nearly empty jar as much more attractive than full ones.

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FOMO is based on one of four mechanisms:

• A sense of uniqueness
• Deals and discounts
• Lost opportunities
• Rivalry

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So how can you use it in practice in your business? Let me give you some examples without going into details.

• Set a time limit to use the product or offer
• Prove that other people are shopping - present customer reviews and testimonials as social proof
• On your website, add information about users who are viewing the same product at a time or about low stock of your products
• Offer limited free shipping based on the amount of your order
• Send exclusive offers to individual customers, emphasizing their uniqueness and their high "status" in the loyalty program, for example.

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Highlighting the limited supply of a product or offer encourages customers to take immediate action. The purchase of a hard-to-obtain product will make the customer feel special and will associate this feeling with you and your brand.

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(peak end rule)

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To illustrate another trick, let me give you an example.

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A customer who has just been robbed calls two of his banks to cancel his cards. When he called the first bank:

• She waits approximately 8(eight) minutes in the call queue before reaching the appropriate representative
• She explains his situation to a bank representative who shows empathy and quickly cancels his cards.
• the representative goes one step further, asking the customer if she has been injured, if she needs an ambulance or the police.
• the representative thanks her for choosing a bank and the conversation ends

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When the same customer calls the other bank,
- she waits for approx 3 minutes in the call queue before reaching the agent.

• She explains his situation to the call center representative who transfers him to the appropriate agent
• The second agent listens to the story and then cancels the card. He thanks her for choosing a bank and the conversation ends.

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Which of the conversations do you think the robbed customer will remember more positively?

The call to the first bank, despite the longer waiting time, as customer service made her feel that the bank was genuinely interested in what had happened to her.

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This perception of service is based on the peak end rule, which says that people judge an experience based on how they felt at the top and at the end, not the average of each experience moment.

What does this rule mean for you? Thanks to it, you can improve the level of customer service in your company and their experience with your brand or product.

To do this, you need to know what the peaks are, when and why they occur. Carefully trace your customers' journey and identify the emotional ups and downs of your customers as you interact with your business.

Then think what you can do to provide your customers with a positive experience in the designated peaks. You don't have to go overboard, it doesn't have to be expensive or complicated. You can create positive experiences with simple actions, such as using customer names, their preferences, remembering important dates, or simplifying a complicated process, such as making a complaint or returning a product.

This is exactly what Ritz Carlton did - not only helped Chris retrieve his son's toy and simplified the search process, but also added a wonderful souvenir - a photo album.

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(rule of reciprocity)

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And Chris responded by telling about it and making Ritz Carlton look good in the eyes of his friend and anybody who listens to a story on youtube. 

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What was behind Chris's behavior? What was driving him? We can say with certainty that he felt obligated to do something for the Ritz who had done him a favor before. This is a general explanation of the reciprocity rule by which we should repay positive things.

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How can you use the reciprocity rule in your business?

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• If you offer a product or service that can be purchased as a subscription, please offer your customer a free trial period. This is what most SaaS companies do, most often it is a 14(fourteen)-day free trial, during which customers can test the technical capabilities of the tool.
• Give the customer a discount. When you receive a discount on subsequent purchases in a particular store, do you feel more obligated to use it? You get something nice and you want to do the shopping to redeem the gift and… repay the company. Use it in your business
• Offer value in exchange for data - email address, name and surname. Create valuable content for which your customers will pay with information

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And these are all the tricks I wanted to share with you in this episode. As you can imagine, there are many more. If you want another episode and more tricks, be sure to let me know in the comments.

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