Emotions from LinkedIn

When do we have emotions? Before or after the experience? And what's the relationship among emotion, expectation, and experience?

Jack Springman
Vice President at Inforte, A Business & Decision company

We have expectations of what an interaction will bring. We will judge the experience relative to our expectation and the outcome of that will be emotion - delight if the experience exceeds our expectation, disappointment if it falls below.

There will always be some degree of emotional engagement prior to experience - hopes and expectations are frequently linked, there is often a degree of aspiration. This is what most brand marketing tries to achieve, but I believe it is very minor compared to the emotion developed post the experience should it differ markedly from what we expect.

Suet Yu
General Manager at Hong Kong CSL Limited

emotion is always there! just "when" and "how" you evoke it to the best extent to be impactful to customer and yet to bring in positive value to both customer & your business.

Paul Ward
Managing Partner at Avos Holdings, LLC

The question is how to shape emotions and how to deal with emotion-based customer attitudes and issues. This is cognitive science, behavioral economics, branding, and continuous learning.

Framing, for example, is very powerful in shaping an emotional response. Active listening is very powerful in dealing with service failures.

Alan Bergstrom
Chief Strategy Officer & Principal at Brand Insights, LLC

A UK-based consultancy, Beyond ,have identified 20 emotions that either drive or destroy value during the customer experience. These emotions have been validated by independent academics. The tool, or diagnostic they use to measure how these emotions "play" during company-specific or brand-specific customer experiences is documented in a unique "Emotional Signature". They can compare company-specific customer experience "emotional signatures" against industry and overall business indices. The work is explained in the company's third book, "The DNA of Customer Experience". You can view a recent webinar on the subject ( http://www.beyondphilosophy.com/thought-leadership/webinars/webinar-customer-loyalty.php ) and read white papers ( http://www.beyondphilosophy.com/customer-experience/articles.php ).

Daryl Choy

@Suet: great to see you here. If emotionless is a kind of emotion, then yes emotions are always around. So back to when... when really? Before the customer experiences the experience, or after? Or as you said... any time?

@Paul: Is the "how" when-driven?

@Alan: That's a great book isn't it? But what exactly is the relationship among emotion, expectation and experience? Does emotion affect experience? Or does expectation affect experience? And there is no relationship between emotion and expectation?