Ran across this report recently… interesting way to approach your customer service.
…customers who are extremely satisfied — those who provide the highest rating of overall satisfaction with a company’s products or services — can be classified into two distinct groups: those who are emotionally satisfied and those who are rationally satisfied.
- Emotionally satisfied customers are extremely satisfied with the products and services the company provides and have a strong emotional attachment to the company.
- Rationally satisfied customers, in contrast, are also extremely satisfied with the company but lack the strong emotional connection of customers who are emotionally satisfied.
When we examine the indicators of customer behavior within these two customer groups, such as customer attrition, frequency of use, share of requirements/share of wallet, and total revenue and spending, among others, a clear and striking pattern emerges.
Emotionally satisfied customers deliver enhanced value to a company, for example, by buying more products, spending more for those products, or returning more often to or staying longer with the business.
Rationally satisfied customers, on the other hand, behave no differently than customers who are dissatisfied.
(Red emphasis added by Auntie Kate.)
The conclusion:
Customer satisfaction is not enough. Merely satisfying customers by delivering on their rational requirements represents a minimum point of entry…; managing to satisfy customers will not drive … enhanced financial performance…
To build the strong customer connections… a more complete view of customer requirements is needed, …understanding the emotional dimensions of customer commitment.
Customers want more than transactions — they want relationships.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
The information from Auntie Kate is so very true!! I was a Registered Nurse for over 30 years before I opened my consignment store, and many, many years we had to go to “customer service” classes. Hospitals were faced with shrinking reimbursement and shrinking “customer” usage, and they wanted to best the other hospitals in town with GREAT customer service. If a customer is emotionally satisfied and has had their needs met, they are much more likely to tell others about their wonderful experience. If they have not had their needs met, they make sure to tell everyone they meet how horrible their experience was. Which group do you want to be in? This is so very true of all businesses, where do you think hospitals got this from? They looked at the business world and at the folks that had the best bottom lines, and decided to find out why those businesses had that great bottom line. Then they set about to copy those businesses.
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Kathy, thanks for this viewpoint you learned from another profession! And, of course, emotional needs are so much more in the forefront when someone is ill or injured. Just think how EASY it is to get to the “emotionally satisfied” point with (mostly) women who are (mostly) enjoying shopping!
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So true! Our Medical Director in the ER told us to treat everyone like it was Disneyworld. What’s great about consignment vs. the hospital, is that we have paying customers! 😉
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