Personalized experiences: How emotional intelligence improves customer experience

Highlights

You’ll learn about enhancing customer experiences (CX) with emotional intelligence.

• Empathy: Build trust by understanding the emotional needs of your customers
• Personalization: Use customer data to deliver personalized experiences
• Emotion AI: Analyze user sentiments and make real-time adjustments

A good customer experience can improve revenue and business outcomes by up to 40%. The reasons are not far-fetched. As PWC reports here, customer experience tops the list for 73% of people. It is the main factor determining whether they purchase from a brand.

So, when customers experience poor customer service, they simply turn to other brands. This report shows that in the last 12 months, 49% of customers walked away from familiar brands due to poor customer service. 

Customers want to be treated well and will walk away when they are not. Businesses that deliver a great customer experience will improve their bottom line. So, how can they do it? They can start by focusing on personalized experiences. 

Emotional intelligence (EI) in customer experience (CX)

Brands first need to understand and be sensitive to individual customers' needs. They can create the right content and interactions that trigger positive emotions and actions. Here is a look at the core elements of emotional intelligence and how they relate to customer experience.

• Self-awareness: Teams must be able to recognize their emotions and how they affect the situations around them. This allows them to take a measured approach to managing customer relationships.
• Self-regulation: Aside from being self-aware, it is also essential to keep emotions in check. Only react to important issues and act at the most appropriate time.
• Empathy: It is also essential to recognize customers' emotional states and what drives those emotions. This leads to delivering better solutions for them.
• People (social) skills: Ensure you create emotional connections with customers. This can be achieved through clear communication and active listening to understand and manage customer interactions. 

Enhancing customer experience (CX) with emotional intelligence (EI)

Ensure that customer-facing teams have the right EI skills. Here are other ways to enhance customer experience with EI.

• Recognize and respond to customer emotions: Train your support teams to recognize emotional cues. Understand why customers feel a certain way about something, what drives them, their thoughts, etc. That way, they can respond to customer needs with empathy.
• Build brand loyalty: Continue with empathy, which helps build trust and loyalty. Customers who feel valued engage and purchase more. They also tend to refer their peers and associates.
• Personalization: Use personalization solutions to tailor content, offers, and experiences based on customer data. Also, build interfaces that cater to and adapt to customers' needs and preferences.

Emotional intelligence and customer service

Brands can deliver more effective customer service by being attentive to the needs and emotions of their customers. They can start by training their support teams to develop emotional intelligence skills. By doing so, they can:

• Improve communication: When you understand customers' emotions, you can talk to them however they prefer. This also applies to different platforms, as customers want to be spoken to in specific ways.
• Resolve conflicts faster: Support teams with high EI skills are better at resolving issues. Providing timely solutions to customer complaints increases customer satisfaction.
• Manage after-sales engagements: Customer service does not end after a purchase. Instead, a business must understand the impact of its product or service on a customer. That allows them to follow up with the right support and assistance.

Personalized customer experience through EI

Emotional intelligence provides a strong base for creating personalized customer journey maps. Here are some strategies:

• Using purchase history: Businesses can tailor content and offers based on a user’s purchase history. A customer’s past purchase behavior can indicate what they may need in the future, allowing you to create relevant interactions and offers that resonate.
• Personalized experiences: Strategies like personalized loyalty programs, first-line emails, and tailored messages on special occasions are great ways to start. Tailor-made offers and suggestions are also simple ways to leave a positive impression on customers.
• Personalized customer support: You can also leverage emotional intelligence to tailor customer support by localizing support features. You can also anticipate customer needs, provide timely solutions, deliver omnichannel experiences, etc.

The role of Emotion AI for enhanced customer experience (CX)

Emotion AI is a subset of artificial intelligence that analyzes, reacts to and simulates human emotions. AI adoption in business has given rise to the use of Emotion AI tools. These tools analyze vast amounts of data to assess customer sentiments in real time. When integrated with EI strategies, it offers several benefits, such as;

• Real-time sentiment analysis: Emotion AI can provide immediate feedback on customer emotions based on their interaction with a brand across multiple platforms. That allows for quick adjustments in product or service delivery.
• Improved customer satisfaction: By understanding emotional cues, businesses can communicate more effectively and meet customer needs promptly.
• Personalized marketing: Brands can use Emotion AI to factor in customer emotions, which can be used in creating target marketing campaigns.
• Proactive issue resolution: Emotion AI can detect early signs of customer dissatisfaction. That way, businesses can address problems before they escalate.

Case studies

Taxfix

Taxfix's WordPress CMS was adequate in the initial stages. However, as the business grew, its limitations started to show. The page speed was slow, and extensive manual effort was required to implement changes. This led to higher costs and a lagging customer experience.

They researched various CMS solutions and chose Contenstack’s headless CMS to power content across their locales in Germany and Spain. The localization feature allowed them to manage content in German and English. Also, Taxfix improves its efficiency and security and streamlined content management.

Since the migration, they have delivered 100% uptime for their customer base and increased page load speed by 30% while delivering fast updates to meet customer demands. These factors have enabled them to improve the customer experience, resulting in quicker tax filing for their customers.

Jana Teuber, Product Manager, said, “We work with a lot of variables — more than 300. It’s very complex, but now with Contentstack, it’s way easier to keep all the content up to date.”

Read more about how Taxfix improved customer experience with Contentstack.

Leesa

Leesa struggled with its brand story across its product platforms as content creators could not publish or update content. Relying on developers led to a slow process with no support for dynamic content delivery.

After opting for Contentstack’s headless CMS, they could rejig the content delivery process. Marketers and content creators now have the freedom to publish and edit content, leading to faster publishing. The changes also enabled them to deliver large-scale personalized experiences. 

Richard Bilton, the Director of Technology, spoke about the benefits of the changes. “Thanks to Contentstack’s Modular Blocks, we’ve really upped our game when it comes to personalization.” 

Read more about Leesa’s success with a headless CMS.

FAQ Section

How does emotional intelligence improve customer experience?

Emotional intelligence allows businesses to understand and respond to customer emotions more effectively. This allows them to create support, content, and offers that align with customer needs.

What are the benefits of using EI in customer service?

Using EI in customer service improves communication, faster issue resolution, and increased customer loyalty.

How can businesses develop emotional intelligence in their CX teams?

They can do so through EI training focusing on empathy, self-awareness, and people skills.

What is the role of empathy in customer interactions?

Empathy helps build trust. It is crucial in creating positive experiences, addressing customers' needs, and providing personalized customer service.

Learn more

As businesses innovate, emotional intelligence's role in CX is only set to grow. Integrating EI into customer experience will enhance customer engagement and grow revenue. The use of Emotion AI will also improve targeting and lead to a more personalized experience design.

Contentstack offers an AI-powered personalization solution that allows you to personalize customer experiences. It streamlines workflows and allows your content team to have more control. It gives you the power to create personalized experiences for customer experience based on emotional intelligence. Talk to us today to see how it works.