RELEASE DATE: January 12, 2006
SOURCE: http://gmj.gallup.com
CONTACT INFORMATION: The Gallup Management Journal
Editorial and Executive Offices
1251 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 2350
New York, NY 10020
(888) 274-5447
G A L L U P
MA N A G E ME N T JO U R N A L
Is That a Neuromarketer in
Your Brain?
An expert on customers explains why
appealing to simple human emotion
beats neuromarketing in the race to
revenue. And he has the pictures to
prove it.
A GMJ Q&A with John Fleming, coauthor of "Manage Your Human
Sigma" (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2005)
Neuromarketing is a concept based on fact plus a lot of assumptions
-- and surrounded by a little fear. The fact is that the human brain
responds to images and words, which is why advertising works. The
assumption is that marketers, by using high-tech neurological
equipment such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
machines that trace brain activity, could create more successful ads.
The fear is that use of that knowledge could do more than stoke
interest in a product -- it could more or less compel interest.
But does
neuromarketing even work? And is it ethical? Maybe and maybe not,
says John Fleming, Ph.D., a Gallup principal and chief scientist for
customer engagement and HumanSigma -- a management approach
that helps organizations boost financial performance by assessing,
managing, and improving the employee-customer encounter.
managing, and improving the employee-customer encounter.
So what was Dr. Fleming doing in Tokyo last year, standing over an
fMRI machine collecting brain scans of 16 of that city's shoppers?
Dr. Fleming is also one of a team of scientists who researched and
developed CE11, Gallup's metric of customer engagement, which
differentiates between consumers' deep emotional attachment and
mere satisfaction. Boosting profitability by increasing emotional
response sounds a lot like neuromarketing, right? According to Dr.
Fleming, it's not. And in this interview, he discusses his take on
neuromarketing, explains how increasing positive emotion is both
profitable and ethical, and tells what he discovered in Tokyo.
GMJ: What's your take on neuromarketing?
Dr. Fleming: It's really an area that is in its infancy, and it has
attracted both strong proponents and big critics. Within the academic
community, the scuttlebutt that I've heard from neuroscientists is that
neuromarketing runs the risk of being perceived as a sham science.
It's being criticized on those grounds.
GMJ: Why?
Fleming: I'm not sure that anyone has conclusively demonstrated that
neuromarketing works, and many neuroscientists doubt it can. But
that sidesteps the ethical considerations. Regardless of whether it
works or not, there's a fear that it could. There's a kind of Big
Brother, 1984, scary aspect to it. The basic premise is that there are
neurological triggers that marketers can use to further embed their
brand, and the frightening dimension is that the targets don't know
they're being targeted and manipulated. So the idea that marketers
could get access to information about what makes things happen in
your brain and manipulate you without your knowledge is scary to a
lot of folks. Has it been done? I don't think it has. Could it be? It's
conceivable.
GMJ: But isn't marketing itself a configuration of words and images
meant to embed brands? Isn't that the whole idea?
Fleming: Yes, but it's always been assumed that there was some sort
of thoughtful mediation or reflection involved. There are people who
believe that, for example, Ronald Reagan got elected because he was
very clever in his use of the American flag in every one of his ads
and those images somehow connected him with American values.
But no one would argue that the flags drove anyone to vote for
Reagan; they just provided a strong image. So, there are people who
say that neuromarketing is merely another extension of what we've
been trying to do all along, which is get inside the heads of people.
The
pushback is
that words
and images
have never
been shown
to actually
produce
organic
changes in
changes in
the brain,
which is the goal of neuromarketing. There has been a belief,
however unfounded, that marketing involved some kind of thoughtful
mediation between advertisers and consumers: The target actually
had to think about the ad or the product, at least a little bit, then do
something. But the specter raised with neuromarketing is the
possibility that what marketers know about the things that can
change a consumer's brain gives them an inside advantage that the
consumer can't counter.
GMJ: So with neuromarketing, marketers are basically trying to find
a way to ring the bell that makes Pavlov's dog salivate.
Fleming: Right, exactly -- but without doing all the conditioning
usually required to elicit a response. Our intent with the Tokyo study,
in contrast, was to go in a totally different direction. We didn't want
to join the fray of neuromarketing. Instead, we wanted to
demonstrate that creating certain conditions -- beliefs or feelings or
emotions -- causes, or at least is related to, people thinking
differently about a product and a company. And we wanted to
understand the link between those conditions and future behavior. We
weren't interested in using this understanding for the same purposes
as neuromarketers. We were trying to validate a set of attitude
measures that could be used to proactively manage a business.
GMJ: So
tell me
about the
Tokyo study.
Fleming:
First, six to
eight weeks
before the
experiment,
we recruited
customers from the general Tokyo metropolitan area who shopped at
an upscale retailer in Tokyo. We interviewed some four hundred
people, and our goal was to identify three different groups of
customers: a group of highly engaged customers, a group that was
less engaged, and a group that was essentially neutral to negative. In
the end, we studied sixteen women. We chose women for this study
because there are demonstrated differences in brain structure between
men and women, and when you mix genders, you introduce a source
of bias into the results.
Then we asked the participants to come to the lab and lie inside an
fMRI machine, and we scanned their brains as they responded to a
series of questions. We asked the CE11 metric questions about the
retailer plus some other related questions, a similar set of questions
about their bank, and questions about their everyday life -- the last
two sets were the control questions. What we wanted to know was
whether higher levels of engagement with the retailer were related to
different levels of processing activity in certain specific parts of the
brain related to emotion. (See sidebar "L3 + A8 = CE11: Questions
That Get at the Heart of Customer Engagement.")
GMJ: And what did you find?
Fleming: Well, we found that the higher the level of engagement,
the more activity occurred in three specific areas of the brain: the
orbitalfrontal cortex, which is where emotion and cognition are
integrated; the temporal pole, which is one area for accessing
memory; and interestingly, the fusiform gyrus, which is implicated in
facial recognition. So, the initial hypothesis was that the more
engaged customers are, the more actively they pull out memories --
and that their thinking process involves faces. The hypothesis was
that they were probably recollecting an experience they'd had at the
retailer, and at the same time, they were more active in integrating
emotional and cognitive information.
Now that was
the result for the
overall measure
of customer
engagement.
When we
looked more
closely at those
who scored high
on questions
related to their
"Passion" for
the retailer, two
additional areas
of the brain lit
up. [See sidebar
"Levels of
Customer
Engagement."]
The first was
the amygdala,
which is the
area associated
with emotional
processing. The
second area was
the anterior
cingulate gyrus,
which is
implicated in binary decisions -- for example, decisions about what is
good or bad. So those customers who had intensely strong feelings of
attachment to the retailer also showed enhanced activity in the
amygdala, which is the emotional storehouse, as well as the area
involved in good/bad decision making. The implication is that their
brains were firing off on a lot of emotional content.
GMJ: So the parts of the brain that activate when you're
remembering a person you love also light up when you're thinking
about a brand you love? In other words, to the amygdala, love is
love, whether it's love for a spouse or a brand of toothpaste. That's
pretty powerful. Is that why you were interested?
Fleming: Well, this research was important to us because, with its
CE11 metric, Gallup makes the claim that emotion mediates the
relationship between a customer and a company, and that emotion
relationship between a customer and a company, and that emotion
mediates that customer's ultimate behavior. So it's important to show
that emotion at an organic level is involved and not just something
else.
Now here's the important point: When we looked at customer
responses to the three CE11 questions that measure traditional
indicators of attitudinal loyalty -- I intend to purchase or visit again, I
would recommend, and I'm satisfied -- we didn't find any enhanced
brain activity, no matter how loyal or disloyal the customer might
have been. But we saw a lot of brain activity associated with the
eight CE11 questions that measure emotional, rather than cognitive,
attachment. In other words, we saw engagement rather than
satisfaction.
GMJ: That's a reversal, considering how much money businesses
pour into customer satisfaction measures.
Fleming: People have always assumed that satisfaction was the right
measure. They assume that measures of "employee satisfaction"
work, and they assume that measures of "customer satisfaction" work
too. No one bothered to step back and ask, "Are we asking the right
questions?" No one questioned the link between the question and the
behavior. When we began delving into the link between the question
and the behavior, we found that satisfaction didn't do a very good job
of predicting how people actually behaved.
So how do
we know
now that
we're asking
the right
questions?
Well, we
know we're
asking the
right
questions
because at an aggregate level, the questions relate to actual behavior.
And we've demonstrated that result hundreds of times in our data, but
now we can actually see those results happen in the brain. The
importance of this study is that it allows us to show an organic effect
that mediates the engagement measures we collect. And this is
important, because we collect these measures in advance of financial
performance measures. Emotional engagement measures are leading
indicators of consumer behavior that companies hope to influence in
the future.
GMJ: What do you mean by "leading indicators"?
Fleming: Let me ask you a question. How do you know if a
company is successful?
GMJ: If its revenue is healthy, if it's increasing employment, or if its
share price is going up.
Fleming: That's what most people would say. But think about it for a
moment. Those measures show that your company is succeeding after
the fact, right? Those indicators show that your company has been
the fact, right? Those indicators show that your company has been
successful, but not that it still is or will be. A leading indicator is
useful because it allows corporate leaders to anticipate the need for
change before it shows up in outcomes that can't be changed. You
can't steer the car by looking in the rearview mirror.
Today, we may look at our corporate balance sheet and decide our
company is healthy, but we have no idea whether it's going to stay
that way in the future. The outcomes that business cares about are
revenue, growth, and profitability. So the search began for things that
would serve as an early-warning system to tell us if our company's
health was in jeopardy long before it ever showed up on the balance
sheet.
What the CE11 metric does is give businesses that forward look.
What the Tokyo study does is show how that forward look works.
Engagement is that forward look, because engagement triggers
customer behavior that's positive toward the brand. Now in the
Tokyo study, there was a very strong relationship between our
measure of attachment and actual spending (a correlation of about .6
on a scale of 0 to 1). What that says is the higher the score on
attachment, the more they spend.
GMJ: How does a business increase that attachment, that
engagement?
Fleming: You first have to understand that attachment is an
emotional connection. Then you need to begin to identify activities
that drive that emotional connection. And though those activities will
be unique for every business model within an industry, those levers
can be determined statistically.
One of the most potent levers is the interaction that customers have
with your staff. So help your employees understand how to maximize
the emotional benefits they can deliver each and every time they
interact with a customer -- it's a powerful creator of value. [See
"Marketers: Don't Ignore Your Company's Employees" and "Living
the Brand" in the "See Also" area on this page.]
A lot of customer service training has been about execution, steps,
behaviors, transacting. It needs to evolve to a new platform, one that
says the transaction and the execution are the minimal acceptable
outcomes and that the customer actually expects more than simply
transactions. That's a first step. Another way to improve is to go into
your organization and identify those locations where that engagement
is already happening. Use them as a source of solutions for the rest
of the company.
GMJ: So every company already has a blueprint; they just have to
look for it.
Fleming: That's exactly right. But here's the key: Up until a few
years ago, business leaders made the assumption that certain leading
indicators were valid, notably employee satisfaction and customer
satisfaction. They didn't really bother to check whether high
performance on this or that indicator was actually related to future
good performance on the things they cared about -- growth, revenue,
and profitability. But it turns out that customer satisfaction is the low
bar of performance. Satisfied customers don't stay with companies;
bar of performance. Satisfied customers don't stay with companies;
they aren't more profitable, and they don't deliver value to the
company.
The difference between satisfaction and engagement is that
engagement includes an understanding of the crucial emotional
connection that ultimately drives customer behavior. And we know
that it drives customer behavior because we've done the linkage work
that proves that the more engaged a customer is, the more value he or
she delivers to a company. Engaged customers deliver increased
purchasing, increased share of wallet, higher levels of profitability,
deeper cross-sell, willingness to try different options, new products,
and importantly, a reduced cost to service. I saw all that happen in
someone's brain, and I'll tell you, it's a powerful thing to see.
L3 + A8 = CE11:
Questions That Get at the Heart of Customer Engagement
CE11 measures three key factors pertaining to a customer's rational
assessment of a brand (L3) but also adds eight questions on
emotional attachment (A8).
L3
• Overall, how satisfied are you with [Brand]?
• How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase/repeat (if
needed) [Brand]?
• How likely are you to recommend [Brand] to a friend/associate?
A8
CONFIDENCE
• [Brand] is a name I can always trust.
• [Brand] always delivers on what they promise.
INTEGRITY
• [Brand] always treats me fairly.
• If a problem arises, I can always count on [Brand] to reach a fair
and satisfactory resolution.
PRIDE
• I feel proud to be a [Brand] [customer/shopper/user/owner].
• [Brand] always treats me with respect.
PASSION
• [Brand] is the perfect [company/product/brand/store] for people
like me.
• I can't imagine a world without [Brand].
Copyright © 1994-2000 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.
All rights reserved.
-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison
The CE11 items are protected by copyright of The Gallup
Organization, Princeton, NJ, 1994-2000. All rights reserved.
MORE INFORMATION
Married to the Brand, by William J. McEwen, tells the story of
what makes profitable brand relationships work -- through the eyes
of the consumer, not the marketer.
Packed with stories and compelling discoveries from a worldwide
consumer database, this book explores why people form deep
emotional connections with some brands and not others.
Order Now
During the Married to the Brand Web event, William McEwen
explains why people bond with some brands and not others. His
insights draw on 60 years of Gallup Organization research into
consumer psychology, and he shows how emotional connections can
be measured and managed.
This 90-minute virtual seminar event was presented on Wednesday,
April 19, 2006. You may purchase a CD-ROM containing both the
audio and visual components of the program for $295.
To order a CD of this presentation, click here. For more information,
contact David Osborne at 202-715-3200.
To learn how Gallup can help your company increase the power and
performance of its brand, visit the Brand Management area on the
Gallup Consulting Web site.
Copyright © 2006 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All
rights reserved. Gallup®, A8TM, Business Impact AnalysisTM,
CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinderTM, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder
theme names, Customer Engagement IndexTM, Drop ClubTM,
Emotional EconomyTM, Employee Engagement IndexTM, Employee
Outlook IndexTM, Follow This PathTM, Gallup BrainTM, Gallup
ConsultingTM, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup
PressTM, Gallup PublishingTM, Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup
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SellingTM, StrengthsCoachTM, StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuestTM,
TeacherInsightTM, The Gallup Path®, and The Gallup Poll® are
TeacherInsightTM, The Gallup Path®, and The Gallup Poll® are
trademarks of The Gallup Organization. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. These materials are provided for
noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without
the express permission of The Gallup Organization.
SOURCE: http://gmj.gallup.com
CONTACT INFORMATION: The Gallup Management Journal
Editorial and Executive Offices
1251 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 2350
New York, NY 10020
(888) 274-5447
G A L L U P
MA N A G E ME N T JO U R N A L
Is That a Neuromarketer in
Your Brain?
An expert on customers explains why
appealing to simple human emotion
beats neuromarketing in the race to
revenue. And he has the pictures to
prove it.
A GMJ Q&A with John Fleming, coauthor of "Manage Your Human
Sigma" (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2005)
Neuromarketing is a concept based on fact plus a lot of assumptions
-- and surrounded by a little fear. The fact is that the human brain
responds to images and words, which is why advertising works. The
assumption is that marketers, by using high-tech neurological
equipment such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
machines that trace brain activity, could create more successful ads.
The fear is that use of that knowledge could do more than stoke
interest in a product -- it could more or less compel interest.
But does
neuromarketing even work? And is it ethical? Maybe and maybe not,
says John Fleming, Ph.D., a Gallup principal and chief scientist for
customer engagement and HumanSigma -- a management approach
that helps organizations boost financial performance by assessing,
managing, and improving the employee-customer encounter.
managing, and improving the employee-customer encounter.
So what was Dr. Fleming doing in Tokyo last year, standing over an
fMRI machine collecting brain scans of 16 of that city's shoppers?
Dr. Fleming is also one of a team of scientists who researched and
developed CE11, Gallup's metric of customer engagement, which
differentiates between consumers' deep emotional attachment and
mere satisfaction. Boosting profitability by increasing emotional
response sounds a lot like neuromarketing, right? According to Dr.
Fleming, it's not. And in this interview, he discusses his take on
neuromarketing, explains how increasing positive emotion is both
profitable and ethical, and tells what he discovered in Tokyo.
GMJ: What's your take on neuromarketing?
Dr. Fleming: It's really an area that is in its infancy, and it has
attracted both strong proponents and big critics. Within the academic
community, the scuttlebutt that I've heard from neuroscientists is that
neuromarketing runs the risk of being perceived as a sham science.
It's being criticized on those grounds.
GMJ: Why?
Fleming: I'm not sure that anyone has conclusively demonstrated that
neuromarketing works, and many neuroscientists doubt it can. But
that sidesteps the ethical considerations. Regardless of whether it
works or not, there's a fear that it could. There's a kind of Big
Brother, 1984, scary aspect to it. The basic premise is that there are
neurological triggers that marketers can use to further embed their
brand, and the frightening dimension is that the targets don't know
they're being targeted and manipulated. So the idea that marketers
could get access to information about what makes things happen in
your brain and manipulate you without your knowledge is scary to a
lot of folks. Has it been done? I don't think it has. Could it be? It's
conceivable.
GMJ: But isn't marketing itself a configuration of words and images
meant to embed brands? Isn't that the whole idea?
Fleming: Yes, but it's always been assumed that there was some sort
of thoughtful mediation or reflection involved. There are people who
believe that, for example, Ronald Reagan got elected because he was
very clever in his use of the American flag in every one of his ads
and those images somehow connected him with American values.
But no one would argue that the flags drove anyone to vote for
Reagan; they just provided a strong image. So, there are people who
say that neuromarketing is merely another extension of what we've
been trying to do all along, which is get inside the heads of people.
The
pushback is
that words
and images
have never
been shown
to actually
produce
organic
changes in
changes in
the brain,
which is the goal of neuromarketing. There has been a belief,
however unfounded, that marketing involved some kind of thoughtful
mediation between advertisers and consumers: The target actually
had to think about the ad or the product, at least a little bit, then do
something. But the specter raised with neuromarketing is the
possibility that what marketers know about the things that can
change a consumer's brain gives them an inside advantage that the
consumer can't counter.
GMJ: So with neuromarketing, marketers are basically trying to find
a way to ring the bell that makes Pavlov's dog salivate.
Fleming: Right, exactly -- but without doing all the conditioning
usually required to elicit a response. Our intent with the Tokyo study,
in contrast, was to go in a totally different direction. We didn't want
to join the fray of neuromarketing. Instead, we wanted to
demonstrate that creating certain conditions -- beliefs or feelings or
emotions -- causes, or at least is related to, people thinking
differently about a product and a company. And we wanted to
understand the link between those conditions and future behavior. We
weren't interested in using this understanding for the same purposes
as neuromarketers. We were trying to validate a set of attitude
measures that could be used to proactively manage a business.
GMJ: So
tell me
about the
Tokyo study.
Fleming:
First, six to
eight weeks
before the
experiment,
we recruited
customers from the general Tokyo metropolitan area who shopped at
an upscale retailer in Tokyo. We interviewed some four hundred
people, and our goal was to identify three different groups of
customers: a group of highly engaged customers, a group that was
less engaged, and a group that was essentially neutral to negative. In
the end, we studied sixteen women. We chose women for this study
because there are demonstrated differences in brain structure between
men and women, and when you mix genders, you introduce a source
of bias into the results.
Then we asked the participants to come to the lab and lie inside an
fMRI machine, and we scanned their brains as they responded to a
series of questions. We asked the CE11 metric questions about the
retailer plus some other related questions, a similar set of questions
about their bank, and questions about their everyday life -- the last
two sets were the control questions. What we wanted to know was
whether higher levels of engagement with the retailer were related to
different levels of processing activity in certain specific parts of the
brain related to emotion. (See sidebar "L3 + A8 = CE11: Questions
That Get at the Heart of Customer Engagement.")
GMJ: And what did you find?
Fleming: Well, we found that the higher the level of engagement,
the more activity occurred in three specific areas of the brain: the
orbitalfrontal cortex, which is where emotion and cognition are
integrated; the temporal pole, which is one area for accessing
memory; and interestingly, the fusiform gyrus, which is implicated in
facial recognition. So, the initial hypothesis was that the more
engaged customers are, the more actively they pull out memories --
and that their thinking process involves faces. The hypothesis was
that they were probably recollecting an experience they'd had at the
retailer, and at the same time, they were more active in integrating
emotional and cognitive information.
Now that was
the result for the
overall measure
of customer
engagement.
When we
looked more
closely at those
who scored high
on questions
related to their
"Passion" for
the retailer, two
additional areas
of the brain lit
up. [See sidebar
"Levels of
Customer
Engagement."]
The first was
the amygdala,
which is the
area associated
with emotional
processing. The
second area was
the anterior
cingulate gyrus,
which is
implicated in binary decisions -- for example, decisions about what is
good or bad. So those customers who had intensely strong feelings of
attachment to the retailer also showed enhanced activity in the
amygdala, which is the emotional storehouse, as well as the area
involved in good/bad decision making. The implication is that their
brains were firing off on a lot of emotional content.
GMJ: So the parts of the brain that activate when you're
remembering a person you love also light up when you're thinking
about a brand you love? In other words, to the amygdala, love is
love, whether it's love for a spouse or a brand of toothpaste. That's
pretty powerful. Is that why you were interested?
Fleming: Well, this research was important to us because, with its
CE11 metric, Gallup makes the claim that emotion mediates the
relationship between a customer and a company, and that emotion
relationship between a customer and a company, and that emotion
mediates that customer's ultimate behavior. So it's important to show
that emotion at an organic level is involved and not just something
else.
Now here's the important point: When we looked at customer
responses to the three CE11 questions that measure traditional
indicators of attitudinal loyalty -- I intend to purchase or visit again, I
would recommend, and I'm satisfied -- we didn't find any enhanced
brain activity, no matter how loyal or disloyal the customer might
have been. But we saw a lot of brain activity associated with the
eight CE11 questions that measure emotional, rather than cognitive,
attachment. In other words, we saw engagement rather than
satisfaction.
GMJ: That's a reversal, considering how much money businesses
pour into customer satisfaction measures.
Fleming: People have always assumed that satisfaction was the right
measure. They assume that measures of "employee satisfaction"
work, and they assume that measures of "customer satisfaction" work
too. No one bothered to step back and ask, "Are we asking the right
questions?" No one questioned the link between the question and the
behavior. When we began delving into the link between the question
and the behavior, we found that satisfaction didn't do a very good job
of predicting how people actually behaved.
So how do
we know
now that
we're asking
the right
questions?
Well, we
know we're
asking the
right
questions
because at an aggregate level, the questions relate to actual behavior.
And we've demonstrated that result hundreds of times in our data, but
now we can actually see those results happen in the brain. The
importance of this study is that it allows us to show an organic effect
that mediates the engagement measures we collect. And this is
important, because we collect these measures in advance of financial
performance measures. Emotional engagement measures are leading
indicators of consumer behavior that companies hope to influence in
the future.
GMJ: What do you mean by "leading indicators"?
Fleming: Let me ask you a question. How do you know if a
company is successful?
GMJ: If its revenue is healthy, if it's increasing employment, or if its
share price is going up.
Fleming: That's what most people would say. But think about it for a
moment. Those measures show that your company is succeeding after
the fact, right? Those indicators show that your company has been
the fact, right? Those indicators show that your company has been
successful, but not that it still is or will be. A leading indicator is
useful because it allows corporate leaders to anticipate the need for
change before it shows up in outcomes that can't be changed. You
can't steer the car by looking in the rearview mirror.
Today, we may look at our corporate balance sheet and decide our
company is healthy, but we have no idea whether it's going to stay
that way in the future. The outcomes that business cares about are
revenue, growth, and profitability. So the search began for things that
would serve as an early-warning system to tell us if our company's
health was in jeopardy long before it ever showed up on the balance
sheet.
What the CE11 metric does is give businesses that forward look.
What the Tokyo study does is show how that forward look works.
Engagement is that forward look, because engagement triggers
customer behavior that's positive toward the brand. Now in the
Tokyo study, there was a very strong relationship between our
measure of attachment and actual spending (a correlation of about .6
on a scale of 0 to 1). What that says is the higher the score on
attachment, the more they spend.
GMJ: How does a business increase that attachment, that
engagement?
Fleming: You first have to understand that attachment is an
emotional connection. Then you need to begin to identify activities
that drive that emotional connection. And though those activities will
be unique for every business model within an industry, those levers
can be determined statistically.
One of the most potent levers is the interaction that customers have
with your staff. So help your employees understand how to maximize
the emotional benefits they can deliver each and every time they
interact with a customer -- it's a powerful creator of value. [See
"Marketers: Don't Ignore Your Company's Employees" and "Living
the Brand" in the "See Also" area on this page.]
A lot of customer service training has been about execution, steps,
behaviors, transacting. It needs to evolve to a new platform, one that
says the transaction and the execution are the minimal acceptable
outcomes and that the customer actually expects more than simply
transactions. That's a first step. Another way to improve is to go into
your organization and identify those locations where that engagement
is already happening. Use them as a source of solutions for the rest
of the company.
GMJ: So every company already has a blueprint; they just have to
look for it.
Fleming: That's exactly right. But here's the key: Up until a few
years ago, business leaders made the assumption that certain leading
indicators were valid, notably employee satisfaction and customer
satisfaction. They didn't really bother to check whether high
performance on this or that indicator was actually related to future
good performance on the things they cared about -- growth, revenue,
and profitability. But it turns out that customer satisfaction is the low
bar of performance. Satisfied customers don't stay with companies;
bar of performance. Satisfied customers don't stay with companies;
they aren't more profitable, and they don't deliver value to the
company.
The difference between satisfaction and engagement is that
engagement includes an understanding of the crucial emotional
connection that ultimately drives customer behavior. And we know
that it drives customer behavior because we've done the linkage work
that proves that the more engaged a customer is, the more value he or
she delivers to a company. Engaged customers deliver increased
purchasing, increased share of wallet, higher levels of profitability,
deeper cross-sell, willingness to try different options, new products,
and importantly, a reduced cost to service. I saw all that happen in
someone's brain, and I'll tell you, it's a powerful thing to see.
L3 + A8 = CE11:
Questions That Get at the Heart of Customer Engagement
CE11 measures three key factors pertaining to a customer's rational
assessment of a brand (L3) but also adds eight questions on
emotional attachment (A8).
L3
• Overall, how satisfied are you with [Brand]?
• How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase/repeat (if
needed) [Brand]?
• How likely are you to recommend [Brand] to a friend/associate?
A8
CONFIDENCE
• [Brand] is a name I can always trust.
• [Brand] always delivers on what they promise.
INTEGRITY
• [Brand] always treats me fairly.
• If a problem arises, I can always count on [Brand] to reach a fair
and satisfactory resolution.
PRIDE
• I feel proud to be a [Brand] [customer/shopper/user/owner].
• [Brand] always treats me with respect.
PASSION
• [Brand] is the perfect [company/product/brand/store] for people
like me.
• I can't imagine a world without [Brand].
Copyright © 1994-2000 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.
All rights reserved.
-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison
The CE11 items are protected by copyright of The Gallup
Organization, Princeton, NJ, 1994-2000. All rights reserved.
MORE INFORMATION
Married to the Brand, by William J. McEwen, tells the story of
what makes profitable brand relationships work -- through the eyes
of the consumer, not the marketer.
Packed with stories and compelling discoveries from a worldwide
consumer database, this book explores why people form deep
emotional connections with some brands and not others.
Order Now
During the Married to the Brand Web event, William McEwen
explains why people bond with some brands and not others. His
insights draw on 60 years of Gallup Organization research into
consumer psychology, and he shows how emotional connections can
be measured and managed.
This 90-minute virtual seminar event was presented on Wednesday,
April 19, 2006. You may purchase a CD-ROM containing both the
audio and visual components of the program for $295.
To order a CD of this presentation, click here. For more information,
contact David Osborne at 202-715-3200.
To learn how Gallup can help your company increase the power and
performance of its brand, visit the Brand Management area on the
Gallup Consulting Web site.
Copyright © 2006 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All
rights reserved. Gallup®, A8TM, Business Impact AnalysisTM,
CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinderTM, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder
theme names, Customer Engagement IndexTM, Drop ClubTM,
Emotional EconomyTM, Employee Engagement IndexTM, Employee
Outlook IndexTM, Follow This PathTM, Gallup BrainTM, Gallup
ConsultingTM, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup
PressTM, Gallup PublishingTM, Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup
UniversityTM, HumanSigma®, I10TM, L3TM, PrincipalInsightTM,
Q12®, SE25TM, SF34®, SRI®, Strengths SpotlightTM, Strengths-Based
SellingTM, StrengthsCoachTM, StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuestTM,
TeacherInsightTM, The Gallup Path®, and The Gallup Poll® are
TeacherInsightTM, The Gallup Path®, and The Gallup Poll® are
trademarks of The Gallup Organization. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. These materials are provided for
noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without
the express permission of The Gallup Organization.
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