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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

Connecting emotionally to build relationships with guests

There is a misconception in the FEC industry that you win by offering customers a fun experience. However, fun is a very generic concept. It is not an emotion, so it doesn't create an emotional connection and relationship with your business. Fun can be a means to an emotion, such as happiness or excitement, but fun alone doesn't create repeat appeal in today's highly competitive entertainment marketplace.

To offer customers a great experience, you need to offer them an outcome with a positive emotion. This goes way beyond customer service, which only creates a rational connection.

Creating emotional connections with customers is key to delivering exceptional experiences. Organizations that optimize emotional connections significantly outperform competitors in revenue growth and profitability.

Emotionally engaged customers are:

• 3 times more likely to recommend a business
• 3 times more likely to revisit
• Less likely to shop around
• Much less price sensitive

Creating emotional connections with customers does not happen by chance. It only happens by design. You have to design the entire guest experience and its emotional outcome, and then properly staff and train to deliver that emotion.

Our Leisure eNewsletter does not accept advertising nor do we accept paid endorsements. However, every so often we are so impressed by something that we discover that we bring it to our readers' attention.

We recently held a workshop for a major eatertainment project we are producing. One of the subjects we covered was delivering the project's brand vision to customers. Frank Price, of FL Price (www.fl-price.com) , participated and gave a presentation on his system to deliver exceptional experiences by creating customer journey paths, a hiring screening methodology and the training to deliver positive emotional outcomes that align with the brand. We were blown away, as his system goes so far beyond the mechanics of normal customer service by humanizing staff and customer interactions to deliver positive emotional outcomes, the true glue that creates loyalty and repeat business.

As Frank says, “If you win their hearts, their wallets will follow.” However, that can only happen by detailed planning and design. We think Frank has a systemized process that can deliver that outcome. If you want to raise the experience you offer your customers to the next level, you might want to talk to Frank (919.387-1966) or contact him via the Internet (www.fl-price.com/ contact-frank-price) .

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