Key psychological customer needs

The key to providing superior customer service and retaining existing customers is to understand consumer behavior. When you completely comprehend this, you’ll realize what they want from your organization and how to provide it best.

Fortunately, technology has significantly simplified – and accelerated – the process of analyzing and comprehending the psychology of customer service. When that technology is combined with years of market and consumer research, you have the capabilities to use psychology to drive your customer service employees and offer the type of customer service that your consumers want. Therefore, specifically for young startupers to understand the importance of customer psychological needs, we introduce an article dedicated to this topic.

What does the consumer want?

The key to unlocking consumer psychology is recognizing that wishes trump needs when it comes to customer purchases. In a modern world where hundreds of toothpaste brands exist, and new food products and electronic gadgets are introduced daily, it is in the interest of psychologists and those marketing the products to understand the relationship between financial and psychological factors that influence what people buy. Consumer psychology encompasses more than psychology alone. It should also study economics and culture. As a result, various principles come into play when studying this subject.

Psychology views certain factors that include:

1. The Gestalt principle – If you want to understand why a restaurant is popular, it’s critical to comprehend the cultural connotations beyond the food.
2. The Iceberg principle – What could be the ostensibly sensible or rational cause for a person to make a purchase (the need)? What other elements (desires) affect it? For example, even if shoes are purchased to protect the feet, the desired shoe may be open-toed, strapless, and have six-inch heels.
3. The Dynamic principle – By appealing to your audience’s psychological triggers while developing your marketing personas, you can ensure that they return to your site and develop trust in your business. In your next content marketing effort, incorporate emotion, authority, reciprocity, mystery, and a variety of formats..
4. Image and Symbolism – From product spokespersons to the image on the wrapper of a candy bar, the ever-elusive association individuals have with a product may play a significant role in whether or not they purchase it, much more than the product’s nature or quality.

Key Customer Psychological Needs

The Need for Attention

Never make the mistake of letting the customer feel unappreciated or unattended to. Make them feel ignored for just a moment, and you could lose them forever. Ask yourself, “How can I let this buyer know I am focused on them in a welcoming (not intimidating) way?”

The Need for Affection

Everybody wants to be appreciated, and customers want to know that you value them more than their money. Demonstrate your affection by delivering small tokens of appreciation, whether in the form of things or services. Ascertain that you provide them with the items and services that best satisfy their needs, not just those that will generate the highest revenue for you. Consider the following: “What will demonstrate to this person that I respect them and care about their comfort?”

The Need for Appreciation

Everyone enjoys being thanked. Make an effort to contact clients on an irregular basis with personalized messages, whether via email, Twitter, or handwritten notes. Consider the following: “What will demonstrate my appreciation for this person’s time, attention, and consideration?”

The Need for Acceptance

If you can establish an emotional connection with the customer, they will almost certainly become lifelong customers. To accomplish this, you must personally embrace them and accept them for who they are. This is straightforward when dealing with a pleasant customer who spends a lot of money with you but not so straightforward when dealing with angry, emotional, or excessively thrifty customers. The task is to empathize with, maintain calm, and avoid passing judgment on customers despite their imperfections. Consider the following: “What will demonstrate to this person that I am willing to meet them where they are?”

3 core customer psychological techniques

Leverage Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Everybody is familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Demands, which states that you should cater to your consumers’ physiological, safety, social, self-esteem, and self-actualization needs. This motivates your customer service representatives to expedite customers’ journeys until they become brand ambassadors. However, Clayton Alderfer established a complete model, the ERG Theory, in which customer demands are classified as follows:

1. Existence – When a consumer seeks a simple solution to a simple problem, they have several possibilities. One technique might be to simply differentiate the brand’s offers to demonstrate how the brand’s products are more beneficial in resolving the consumer’s pain points. The objective is to differentiate and demonstrate the brand’s solution’s effectiveness.
2. Relatedness – This relates to the need to preserve critical interpersonal ties. Once the brand has earned the consumer’s trust, they can share their great experience with their friends and family on social media or leave a positive review on a public channel. To reach this stage, the consumer must have completed at least one successful purchase and had the opportunity to interact with the brand’s offers.
3. Growth: The inherent urge for personal growth. At this point, the client is already a brand promoter and has demonstrated this by previous actions. Cross-selling should now be considered if the brand is producing a new product, solving a more significant problem, or cooperating with another brand. Consumers may be beneficial at this stage.

Personalize All Communication

This is one of the most subtle yet powerful methods of assuring consumers of a brand’s dependability. When you meet a child for the first time and address them with a generic title such as kiddo or cute one, you obtain passive and voluntary attention; yet, when you manage them by their first name, you immediately gain their attention is a natural reflexive action. Being addressed by our first name creates the idea that we are being contacted by a friend.

And there is scientific evidence that this phenomenon exists:

1. Businesses can improve income by up to 760 percent when they use tailored email campaigns.
2. 73% of consumers appreciate businesses that use data to tailor their purchasing experiences.
3. According to research conducted by the University of Southern California, 85 percent of millennials are more likely to acquire a product that has been customized to their preferences.

One way to accomplish this is through chatbots, which have established a unique channel for individuals who are naturally receptive to messengers. With growing messaging on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, the natural response to chat-boxes is to reply. As a result, incorporating chatbots onto the home page might be highly beneficial.

The Halo Effect

It has been said correctly that the first impression is the last impression. While a brand with a big PR spend may be able to rehabilitate itself, not every firm can. That is why it is preferable to have a pleasant first connection between the brand and the customer, as this will pay dividends in the long run.

The Halo Effect is a psychological phenomenon that states that when a person has a favorable initial impression of a business, that person will have a favorable view of future interactions with the firm as well. This good perception can be fostered in a variety of ways – by delivering single-click solutions to first-time consumers, by providing essential freebies, by showcasing your credentials, and even by sharing your recommendations, since all of these can have a cumulative effect.

In Conclusion

Customer service psychology should guide your marketing strategy and, indeed, your entire organization. Understanding others and communicating their demands impacts marketing, sales, product development, and even your executive departments’ decision-making processes. Acquire the ability to listen to customers. Allow them to talk, and when you do, speak to them with respect, understanding that by using “positive words,” you will generate pleasant feelings.

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