Richard Sedley discusses what makes a good online customer engagement strategy and argues that the most valuable element is the science of persuasion.
No human has ever lived in such demanding, fast-paced, information saturated and potentially confusing a time as you and I do today. As a result we just don’t have the time, resources or inclination to think that much about the majority of our decisions.
Even when faced with our most important decisions, very few of us are prepared to collect all the available data and sit down to make a totally rational decision. Instead we make our decisions based on cues – the signs and impressions we gain from context and presentation. We use these cues to take short cuts in the decision the making process, known as decisional heuristics (1).
It is only in this context that we can understand the importance of persuasion. Persuasion is about creating and shaping these cues. By providing helpful short cuts we can help our visitors to understand the value and credibility of our offering and ultimately encourage them to undertake the actions we desire of them. Online these actions might include: completing a form, clicking a button and buying a product, returning to visit us or promoting us to friends and colleagues. Using an understanding of human psychology and cultural specificity we can persuade our visitors to comply with our requests.
Can this mean unethical manipulation? Possibly!
Is that what I’m advocating? No!
It is possible to use persuasion to deceive and manipulate but not as part of a customer engagement strategy. Customer engagement depends on the establishment of a relationship that requires more than a single conversion (2). You might be able to fool someone once, or even twice, but in the long run if you’re not able to provide real value to your customers there’ll be no engagement.
To help us maximise the effectiveness of our ethical persuasion in this Web2 world I’ve isolated four pillars of persuasion:
- Credibility
- The weapons of influence
- Persuasion windows
- Persuasion as a dialogue
Credibility
Without credibility there is no persuasion. Perceptions of credibility can be hard earned with first hand experience over time (earned), created though third party endorsements, reports or referrals (reputed), gained through simple first impressions (surface) and pre-existing in the mind of the perceiver (presumed) (3). Many people believe that earned credibility is the most powerful, but each of the above can be telling and in fact earned can be the easiest to lose through a single negative experience.
An experiment conducted by the online journal Marketing Experiments in February 2007 increased conversion rates by over 12% simply by incorporating two of the credibility types above in a look and feel redesign (4). The starting role for persuasion in online customer engagement is to increase credibility in the mind of our customers.
The weapons of influence
There are around 60 different persuasive techniques but the in mid-’80s Professor Robert Cialdini (5) distilled them down to six weapons of influence:
- Reciprocity
- Commitment & consistency
- Social proof
- Liking
- Authority, and
- Scarcity
While all of the above can be used to persuade and improve conversions three: reciprocity, commitment & consistency, and liking can be immensely powerful tactics within a customer engagement strategy. When used well each has the ability to deepen the customer relationship and encourage sustained interactions.
For example a strategy integrating testimonials and user-generated content can lead to public demonstrations of commitment from customers, making it infinitely more likely that they will interact with you in the future.
Persuasion Windows
Persuasion is all about timing. There are key moments within our interactions on and offline where customers are more susceptible to persuasion, where they’re more open to undertaking an action, making a connection or changing an opinion. These are our persuasion windows. If we don’t ask and encourage while the window is open it is likely to be harder to gain a desired outcome later.
It is certainly possible to identify and wait for a persuasion window within normal customer journeys, however the real art is to encourage their opening. There are six recognised scenarios that can lead to the opening of a persuasion window (6):
- when you are in a good mood
- when your world view no longer makes sense
- when you can take action immediately
- when you feel indebted because of a favour
- immediately after you have made a mistake
and my personal favourite
- immediately after you have denied a request
Usually thought of as the ultimate in disengagement, the point of refusal in fact momentarily opens a window through which we can connect by offering alternatives and clarifying our online value proposition. Many of the most successful subscription based websites understand the power of refusal and cultivate the opening of Persuasion Windows by explicitly denying access in a way that incentivises non-subscribers while reaffirming subscriber benefits.
Persuasion as a dialogue
The essence of digital is interaction. As the medium continues to develop, so we need to recognise that persuasion is a two way process, and that this is something we should embrace within our customer engagement strategies. True customer centricity can only come when we facilitate and embrace the changes that our customers want to make to our products and us.
Probably the best understood example of the dialectics of persuasion is the Amazon system for adapting their recommendations. By voting on the recommendations that Amazon’s website makes to me I can help improve those recommendations, improve their sales and my overall experience.
Therein lies the value of persuasion. As the world increases in complexity and our ability to navigate it becomes more fraught with demands, the use of the science of persuasion helps both our businesses and our customers. And mutual benefit is the foundation of customer engagement.
(1) See Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model, 1986
(2) My definition of customer engagement is: “Repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand (company or product)”, adapted from a definition developed by Ron Shevlin (http://marketingroi.wordpress.com)
(3) BJ Fogg, Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, 2002
(4) Marketing Experiments Compendium: A year of 24 In-depth Online Research Experiments, Volume 1
(5) Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 1984
(6) BJ Fogg, Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, 2002
Richard Sedley is director of the cScape Customer Engagement Unit
www.loopstatic.com