Using Behavioral Science to Reach Your Customers

The article titled, "Want to Perfect Your Company’s Service? Use Behavioral Science" by Richard B. Chase and Sririam Dasu from the Harvard Business Review’s On Series seeks to examine service encounters from the customer’s perspective with behavioral science as an analytical tool in order to create operating principles for service-encounter management.

Chase and Dasu’s point about the wealth of knowledge behavioral and cognitive scientists have generated after decades of research on social interaction articulates the logic behind applying results to customer service. Tailoring service encounters to reflect the "known" of how people experience certain situations, like the passage of time, can better the chances of successful customer engagement.

For example, Chase and Dasu explain, according to behavioral scientists, when people reflect on a particular experience, "they remember snapshots, not movies" (169). What of these "snapshots"? The article states they are concentrated on the sequence of pain and pleasure, high and low points, and the ending.

In the "Duration Effects" section, Chase and Dasu shed light on how behavioral scientists have examined human perception of passing time. Among several interesting findings observed, Chase and Dasu highlight how perceived duration is lengthened when the number of sections in an encounter is increased. In other words, the more articulated steps in a sales experience, regardless of elapsed time, the longer and less effective it may seem for your customer.

The Five Operating Principles:

From time-tested scientific research, Chase and Dasu have compiled a solid set of principles coupled with several real-world examples by which to guide service-encounter management.

1. Finish Strong: The authors debunk the concept of service bookends – the beginning and end of an encounter- as myth, stating that the end of an encounter is strongest in customer recollections.
2. Get the Bad Experiences Out of the Way Early: The authors explain how research reveals that people prefer to have undesirable events come first in order to "savor" the desirable ones. From a services perspective, the authors note that service providers, though apprehensive about delivering bad news, are better off getting the pain and discomfort out of the way first, "so they don’t dominate the customer’s recollection of the entire experience" (178).
3. Segment the Pleasure, Combine the Pain: This principle is translated from duration effects: an experience will seem longer if broken up into sections. The authors say breaking up the pleasurable aspects of an encounter will likely make the overall encounter seem better to the customer when the negative aspects are combined. They use the example of short Disney theme park rides and how they add to the perception of a "longer and richer day."
4. Build Commitment Through Choice: When experiencing any sort of process, people are more comfortable when they feel some control. Giving customers more choices creates a better service encounter.
5. Give People Rituals, and Stick to Them: People find "comfort, order, and meaning in repetitive, familiar activities" (181) and the authors say service-encounter designers don’t realize the important role ritual plays.

Chase and Dasu transform complicated scientific concepts into useful tools; they clearly and concisely demonstrate how service encounter managers ought to consider behavioral science when creating a customer experience. After all, the authors reiterate, your customer’s perception of an encounter is what matters most.