The Road to Amygdala is Paved with Gold

by Richard K. Hendrie

The 'Off the Shelf' Column in the Sunday Money section of the December 5th New York Times spent its entire length examining the explosion of recently published books on the virtues of 'farming'. Focus on you current customer and the rest takes care of itself.

"What drives behavior in a complex world is emotion. Emotions are an important determinant of economic behavior, more so than rationality."

— Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Dr. Daniel Kahneman as quoted in The New York Times, Tuesday, December 7th

The 'Off the Shelf' Column in the Sunday Money section of the December 5th New York Times spent its entire length examining the explosion of recently published books on the virtues of 'farming'. Focus on you current customer and the rest takes care of itself. Ken Blanchard wrote Customer Mania. According to columnist Paul Brown, Blanchard offers 4 key points:

1. Decide to become customer focused. Do it, don't just talk it
2. Give customers what they want as they interact with every component of your company
3. Treat the employee right. Abused employees won't provide superior service (Co-incidentally, I was interested to see that one of the major QSR chains was prepared to offer limited health benefits to its hourlies. Maybe they're seeing the light.)
4. Make service a leadership priority

Others, like Bill Stinnet in Think Like Your Customer , say "It's not about you and what you have to sell. It's about the customer and what they want to buy." Barlow and Stewart's Branded Customer Service states that a brand which consistently delivers on its promise builds brand equity. Now, anyone familiar with the 10 GEMS™ would know these principles to be valid and valuable.

What took the topic into a new world was an article in the following Tuesday New York Times on Neurology, in which author Sandra Blakeslee reports on scientifically documented proof that:

• Customers buy brands based on emotion.
• Certain parts of the brain 'light up' when customers, who have a strong emotional attachment to a brand, are given branded stimuli.
• The primary area in the brain which controls this emotional attachment is called the amygdala. It is the gateway to brand emotion.
• The most effective way to stimulate the amygdala is through the emotions, not logic.
• The most effective brands have deeply embedded connection to the amygdala.
• Brand loyalty, an emotion, is developed and nurtured through repeated interaction with those selling the product or service to the guest.
• The Face-to-Face interaction is most often handled by the lowest paid people (See above books on customer centric leadership).
• It's in those moments of truth that the emotions of brand loyalty are reinforced or destroyed.

So we now have a reason to take the plunge. Gallup managed the consumer study using electrodes and brain scans. They demonstrated through their study of consumer's electro-chemical responses to brand stimuli that a customer brain's 'emotional center' had no chemical reaction to mundane questions. But ask something about a brand the consumer cared about, their brains lit up like a Christmas tree.

In a word, The Road to Amygdala is paved with bankable gold. Conversely, it also suggests that clever advertising will be even less effective, because we live in an age of well earned cynicism, where a customer can define a "Hello" as the most 'over-the-top' example of a WOW retail experience they've had recently.

The article goes on to quote Frederick F. Reischheld, author of The Loyalty Effect, "If a company could turn 5% more of its customers into loyalists with hooks into their amygdalas, profits would increase 25 to 100% per customer." A company wins brand loyalty by creating an authentic experience, which offers not just the basics of product or service, but the emotional connection with a customer. It's the clearest example that we are in Showbiz, Baby. It'll never be about selling things or meeting simple needs, but about recognizing the hopes of our guests and to plug directly into that emotional center of the human brain which controls brand loyalty.

So, circling back to Blanchard, the task at hand is to 'get' that the retail experience is controlled by our associates/actors and manage based on that fact. The enlightened organization will then revere the line associates: choosing wisely, paying handsomely and recognizing & rewarding those who authentically enact the branded experience.

Based on the above data, the price you charge is less important (that's the rational part) than the experience you create. In fact, when you commit to a learning relationship with your guest, the value proposition is transformed. They'll pay you more because you understand them and then come more often because they feel recognized. This assumes you walk the talk when the guest reaches out to you to 'converse', whether about an issue or just for some information. Don't follow the lead of the Dot com's, who do everything in their power to keep themselves anonymous except through e-mail.

If you hit the amygdala jack-pot, the biggest payoff is the fervor with which guests will promote you to others. All of this 'process', orchestrated though it may be, is based on keying in on feelings and preferences; following the golden path to the Amygdala. It's time for a road trip.

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Richard K. Hendrie is the Chief Experience Officer of Link Inc., a restaurant consulting and coaching firm. He does extensive speaking to industry groups and associations, offering keynote, workshop and seminar presentations.

Link Inc. © 2005