Following on from last week, this article ends our two-part series of “Using Psychology” with live support software. This week, we explore using psychology to delight customers, and in turn keep them coming back for more. This can be a good way to reduce churn thanks to live response and the great news is that you don’t have to be an expert in Psychology to apply it:
The Halo Effect
Verywell Mind describes the halo effect as a “cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about his or her character”. In other words, if someone is friendly to us on one occasion, then we assume they are always friendly. And since they are friendly, they are probably also clever, unselfish, loving, etc.
We could apply this principle to customer service and the way the customer views your business. If a customer has a good experience with your support team, then they may transfer this feeling of positivity to your whole company and keep using you for business.
First impressions are important to get this working from the start. Make sure you are using greetings that you know work for your company, make the conversation personal and check that you understand what the customer wants.
Negativity Bias
Apollo Answering Service describes negativity bias as the concept that “even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one’s psychological state and processes than do neutral or positive things”.
What this means for your business is that if a customer has had a negative experience, you have to work extra hard to counter this and turn their view of your company into a positive one. It’s not simply enough to be nice to them. You need to go out of your way to make them feel special in more ways than one. Offering them a discount or a free month’s service could help with this.
The Power of Thank You
A few simple words can go a long way. Martin Seligman researched different techniques that make people happy and one of the top three methods was personally delivering a handwritten thank you note. Harness some of this power yourself and use it in your conversations to increase consumer satisfaction.
Dare to Delight
You may have been dazzled by the complicated sounding terms in this article, but there is no need to worry. If you follow standard practice for providing good customer service in chat you can automatically harness their power and reduce churn thanks to live response. The key is to find what works best for your business. A quality live support software such as Xeno provides all the tools you need to optimize consumer satisfaction. With Xeno you can create post chat-surveys, look at previous conversations and use its detailed analytics. And all of this on a free for life plan!
