Getting Sticky | Emotional attachment and profitable customer relationships
Roger Sant
The value of Emotional Attachment
Now that we know more about the functional and emotional structure of customer relationships , we need to establish whether striving to achieve that emotional connection is a worthwhile goal . To do this we look at how our measures of profitable relationships – retention , recommendation and cross-sell / use more – change as we move up the relationship hierarchy .
EMOTIONS REALLY DO MATTER ... |
Likelihood to continue |
Cross-sell / ‘ Use more ’ |
‘ Promoters ’ ( 9 or 10 rating ) |
|
88 |
81 |
72 |
|
Emotionally Attached
Functionally satisfied
|
70 |
56 |
40 |
Dissatisfied |
36 |
22 |
11 |
Our research showed that there are substantial rewards to be had from creating an emotional attachment . As can be seen from the above chart , there are significant gains in terms of these ‘ business success metrics ’ as relationship strength progresses up the hierarchy – both by moving from dissatisfied to satisfied and from satisfied to attached .
When a customer is both functionally satisfied and emotionally attached :
• They are significantly more likely to stay with the brand in the future
• They are almost twice as likely to recommend the brand ( than if they were just satisfied )
• They are much more likely to consider the brand for other products and services
4