Providing good customer service can be a complex effort. After all, you require a good understanding of what people want. Here, psychology can be a very handl tool. Let’s look at how it works and how your startup business can effectively tap it to provide better service.
The Basics Of Customer Psychology
When people talk about customer service psychology, you might think that you need to hire some experts for the work. However, that isn’t exactly the case, as you can still readily jump into this even without that. But you do need to familiarize yourself with certain principles. These will help you better understand what customers think and how you can better connect with them.
Principle no. 1: Emotions Play A Big Role
We might not be willing to admit it, but emotions play a big part in our decision-making process. And that applies to the purchases that we make. For instance, we are more likely to make big purchases when we feel happy.
As such, good customer service revolves around the management of these emotions and the ability to turn them into positive actions. Here, you need to remember the five key components of emotional intelligence.
- Self-awareness: It is the ability to understand personal moods and emotions. You also recognize the effects of these emotions on others.
- Self-regulation: This is the ability to control negative emotions and redirect them into something more productive. You also require the ability to suspend decisions until you have thought of your actions.
- Internal motivations: Your reasons to continue working beyond the usual monetary gains.
- Empathy: This is the ability to understand the emotion of others and respond accordingly. It lets you become more sensitive to the plight of customers.
- Social skills: Your proficiency in handling and managing customer relationships. You also require the ability to build rapport with others.
By effectively using these five elements, you can better address the emotional needs of your customers and provide them with good service. That also helps you better position your startup business for long-term engagements with them.
Principle no. 2: Branding Earns Customer Loyalty
You have probably thought about how to brand your business better and catch people’s attention. But have you wondered what exactly plays out to get them attached to your brand.? Here, the trick is to appeal to reasons that resonate with them. Some of the common ones are:
- Convenience: People will continue to choose you if they feel you are the easiest one to use for their needs.
- Trust: Customers have known you well enough that they know you won’t fail them.
- Status: People would want to stick with you if doing so makes them feel good and have a pleasant experience.
- Excitement: This goes another step from above. People are more likely to stay with you if you get them excited.
- Camaraderie: Most people would be eager to be part of a group. Building your brand around that idea helps you draw more potential customers together.
To better support your chosen branding, your startup business customer service should reinforce these values. Make sure that the experience they get from your service team is the same experience they have with other departments. That strengthens their association with the whole brand.
Principle no. 3: Increase Gratification, Reduce Pain
Of the various customer emotions, pleasure and pain are probably the most powerful. If people are enjoying your brand, they are more likely to stick. On the other hand, they will stay away from you if they have to go through a lot of struggles.
Thus, one of your goals in customer service is to give them a lot of pleasure while reducing their pain points. For the former, you need to provide instant gratification. Make it easy for people to initiate and complete actions to get their desired results faster.
Image from Conversion Fanatics.
For instance, you can include instant chat functions on every site page. That makes it easier for customers to reach out to you wherever they might be. You would also want to encourage the use of your self-service tools.
Meanwhile, reducing pain isn’t just about addressing the major pain points. You also look for the minor annoyances that can nevertheless frustrate your customers. For instance, processes that have a lot of steps can discourage them from proceeding. By remedying these annoyances, you create a more engaging customer experience for them.
Principle no. 4: Adapt Communication To Startup Business Customer Expectations
Another essential thing to remember when it comes to customer service is that every person is different. As such, their expectations would also be different. Thus, you should adapt your service to those.
Image from REVE Chat.
Of course, it would be tricky to do that for every customer. That is where extensive analytics will help you better understand customer behavior patterns. Once you have that information, you can begin segmenting customers into groups.
But beyond being familiar with these customers’ personas, your service agents should also actively discern the changes in customer expectations. That relies more on their personal skills. As such, you want to get agents who understand customer behavior well. At Virtua Outsourcing, our agents have that owing to their years of experience interacting with various customers.
Principle No. 5: Small Changes Can Have Significant Effects
Improving how you engage with customers isn’t just about making extensive changes. Even the simpler things that you do can have a significant impact on their behavior. For instance, a slight change in your wording can better encourage customers to act.
Researchers at Arizona State University demonstrated this in a simple study. They found that people are twice more likely to donate to a cause with a slight change to the relevant call to action. That is due to that small change highlighting the impact their action would make, better convincing them.
But you still need a good idea of what small changes to implement. Here, you would want to experiment with different variations. Our team can help your startup business run these experiments with our customer support service. With that, you can get steady updates on which changes work for you.
How Your Startup Business Can Take Advantage Of Customer Service Psychology
The above principles will help your startup business guide its customer service team and imrove its work. But don’t just stop there. Once you understand these principles, you can also use novel strategies to engage customers better.
Using The Halo Effect
One such strategy you can take advantage of is the halo effect. It is a cognitive bias where people transfer their feelings for one thing to another. For instance, they might associate the imagery on your website with the actual quality of your service.
Image from Sprouts.
Thus, you need to leverage that initial impression and deliver the experience they perceive. That might seem obvious but many brands can still struggle with trying to pull it off. Often, this has to do with the very high image that they put on themselves as part of marketing.
For that, you need to do this both ways. The marketing image that your startup business presents should match the capabilities that it has. This way, you can bring customer expectations to a more reasonable level.
Teach Customers New Things
One novel way to influence the psychology of your customers is by teaching them things. The idea is that you want people to see your brand as not just another place they buy products from. Instead, you want them to see you as a dependable partner.
For this, you need to teach them the value of your product instead of its price. Talk about how you can use it in various situations. You can also talk about areas outside of your products’ regular use where they can still be handy. When done right, people will see not just its versatility, but also your brand as a whole.
Boost Your Startup Business By Changing How Customers Things Of You
Harnessing these psychological principles and tactics for your customer service isn’t something you can do overnight. But if your startup business is committed to this strategy, you will gradually see some interesting developments. And for that, you also need to have the right team to help you. Contact us today and Virtua Solutions will show our expertise.