Delivering good customer service is always an ongoing challenge for a startup business. You need to keep them invested long enough to continue purchasing. But psychology gives you some useful tools to help your efforts.
One of these is, surprisingly, cognitive biases. When used right, you can use these biases to nudge your patrons in the right direction. But tapping them requires some careful strategizing. Here is a guide to help you master this and better serve your patrons.
Understanding Cognitive Bias
Cognitive biases are inherent in the human psyche. After all, we can only process so much information at any given time. As such, it is not uncommon for us to have errors in our judgment that affect our decisions.
Image from Doist.
While cognitive bias is often viewed negatively, it has its uses. In particular, cognitive biases help us simplify the information processing in our brains. These serve as shortcuts that allow us to make decisions faster. But they can also be a source of the problem if those decisions are incorrect. As such, people need to be aware of how these cognitive biases affect their perception of their surroundings.
The Most Common Types Of Cognitive Biases Your Startup Business Should Know
With it being an integral part of our psyche, we encounter many different kinds of biases daily However, there are several common ones that you will find in most interactions. These are also the ones that you can tap into when creating your customer service strategies.
Confirmation Bias
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It is the tendency of people to rely on information that conforms to the beliefs that they already hold. Here, people will block any information that is contrary to those beliefs, even if the former has evidence to support it. This type of bias has become more prominent with the growth of social media, as it lets people access information relevant to their beliefs faster.
Bandwagon Effect
The bandwagon effect refers to the tendency of people to join existing trends. The desire to belong to a group often fuels this bias. It is one of the most commonly known biases, as companies use it to draw customers by relating their products to existing trends.
Anchoring Bias
Image from The Decision Lab.
People also tend to latch into the first piece of information they encounter. That is because that first info often saves them the time to weigh several options. However, this discounts the possibility that succeeding options might be better than the first one, resulting in potential missed opportunities.
Isolation Effect
When presented with several options, people also strongly tend to go for the one with at least a small difference. Often, these differences are more visual, such as a different color. Brands often use this type to quickly drive their attention towards a specific product in their line.
Framing Effect
image from Michael Bunker.
Even when faced with the same pieces of information, people can make different opinions about it depending on how it is presented to them. This one is known as the framing bias. It arises from the tendency of people to interpret information based on the context surrounding it.
Halo Effect
Sometimes, a single characteristic can define something in the eyes of people. Based on that characteristic alone, they can make various inferences about the subject. These might not exactly match its actual characteristics.
How Your Startup Business Can Use These Biases For Customer Service
Most applications of these cognitive biases are within the marketing realm. Companies tap into these biases to push customers towards making their desired purchases. But you can also take advantage of them when dealing with customer service concerns. Here are the situations where understanding it can help you a lot.
Understanding Your Startup Business Customers More
The first area you can use these cognitive biases is understanding your customers. By determining which biases they display during your engagements, you also see what they value most. You can then use this information to tailor your response.
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That is particularly the case when dealing with negative customer experiences. As it turns out, these cognitive biases can sometimes be the ones that trigger the negative experience. For instance, anchor bias can prevent customers from choosing options that may better suit them.
However, you can turn this to your advantage. The idea here is to impress your customers during their first engagement with you. That ability to “wow” them helps counteract any potential negative notion they might have about your brand in the future.
Creating A More Personalized Customer Experience
Personalization is now becoming the name of the game when it comes to delivering the best customer experience. But it isn’t just about knowing your patrons’ names, demographics, or preferences. You should also get into their psyche to create an experience they will love.
Cognitive bias also plays a huge role here. With this, you can create touch points within their journey that they would most likely respond to. For instance, you can use attention bias to direct them to a specific customer service option.
On the other hand, the framing effect is useful for highlighting the effectiveness of your customer service solutions. Here, you would want to consider a different framing for each customer. Consider what stimulus they respond to and use it as part of the framing. For instance, you might want to frame a solution in terms of the qualitative results it produces for customers who prefer that.
Dealing With Illogical Decisions
One thing you should remember when doing customer service is that people are not always going to respond as you expect. They can make illogical decisions that will leave you scratching your head. But understanding cognitive bias also helps you in handling these issues.
That goes back to getting a greater understanding of customer behavior. Here, you can use your knowledge about these biases to counteract any illogical decisions they make.
Image from LinkedIn.
For this, you will need to consider two actions; positive ones and negative ones. The first, your customer acted in a way that is not exactly what you wanted. However, their response shows that they are committed to working with you.
Meanwhile, negative actions are when the customer isn’t even responding at all. That can indicate that something is wrong in the process. It can also show you that they might not be interested enough.
Understanding cognitive bias will help you better uncover the reasoning behind both actions. And while you can’t exactly predict what will happen next, you will be able to decide the best approaches here. Putting all of this in place will help you better respond to diverse customer service situations.
Embrace The Bias And Better Serve Your Startup Business Customers
Cognitive bias can tell you a lot about your customers. And when tapped correctly, it can help you guide them towards success. So, be ready to understand these biases. They will give your startup business a strong edge in customer service. And Virtua Solutions is ready to help you out. Contact us today.