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This is how we avoided a flood of calls to customer service during a one-day workshop.
Discover how we mitigated negative emotions
Aj, bad news
The nightmare of every communications expert...
You have to send an e-mail with bad news, but you want to avoid the customer service center gets flooded with phonecalls. How could Proximus do this?
Proximus' loyalty program was revised: it was no longer based on automatically saved points, but on participations in games.
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Research showed the audience would react negatively towards the changes. And the mail to 500.000 customers hadn't even been sent.
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Oh oooow...​
Loss aversion
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Taking something from someone literally hurts (the parts in the brain that register pain, react).
It hurts 2x more to have something and lose it than to feel pleasure from gaining the same thing out of nothing. ​​
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In this case the automatically saving of points (=security) was replaced with a very small chance of winning (=uncertainty). The new program feels as a 'loss' and provokes a lot of negative emotions. ​
How to avoid that angry clients call or mail you?
Bad news often provokes emotions of fear, angers and sadness.
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The consequences can be big:
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A customer complains on social media and you receive bad publicity
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Negativity is demotivating for your team and drains time and energy
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Your customer never wants to buy from you again​
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How do you:
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Get your message to your customer
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Mitigate negative feelings
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Get your customer to perform the desired behavior?​​
To do this we use our Escalation Prevention Model (EPM)
developed by 2 behavior-psychologists.
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Through applying techniques such as empathie, depersonalisation and action perspective you have something in hand that has impact on the emotions and behavior of the client.
In 1 workshop day we created the new e-mail together.
3 techniques we used in our bad news e-mail
1. No marketeese
When someone is avoiding telling it as it is, we can become frustrated and angry.
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Don't start your message with promoting the new way of working as an advantage to later tell them they will also lose something. Avoid marketeese senteces link: 'This how amazing our new program is.'
Take you client serious, they're not stupid. So be clear and honest. That's why we immediately made it clear their loyalty program was about to change.
Empathy
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By responding empathically, people feel understood and acknowledged in their emotions, making them more open to communication.​
As human beings, we want to be heard. Because when we feel that someone is not taking us seriously, negative emotions surface.
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But, the better the other responds to how we feel and what we think, the more willing we are to listen and go along with their story.
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Responding empathetically, ensures that they will listen to your story better and in the end digest the negative message better as well.
2. The power of helping
Nothing is more powerful than helping people. Moreover, people are also very grateful when you help them.
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Therefore, we clearly indicated what customers could do to include their accumulated points from the old programme. ​
This way, we mitigated their ‘loss aversion’ and generated positive emotions despite the bad news, because people felt helped.
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Offer help​
Offering help is something expected in bad news messages.
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If you can't help directly, there are other things you can do so your customer doesn't feel let down and you can save the long term relationship with the customer:
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Offer a tip
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Forward a link
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Deliver their question to the colleague who can help
In the long run, customers will remember your help as a fine customer experience.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
3. Aj, frequently asked questions. It must not be clear
FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions.
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But. what message are you giving the reader with that?
You definitely shouldn't check this one out because it wasn't clear to many people.
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Maybe not the best frame for a bad-news message? After all, you don't want to create additional fear.
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Rather, choose ‘Maybe you still have these questions’.
It makes the section more non-committal (whatever it is) and more personal (we'll help you further).
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Framing your FAQ
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FAQs are a crucial part of a bad-news message. With every question, you need to assess: How many people will ask this question? Tip! Often your customer service team knows the answer. Involve them!​
Adding the answers to these questions in your email is important. We need to make it as easy as possible for customers to find the answer. That way, you are extra helpful. Hupla, again your customer helped.​
BUT, frame the FAQ as something that is there to help people, not a must read.
But does it really work?
We mentioned, the mail was sent to almost 500,000 customers. After sending, the tension was palpable....
But fortunately, it soon became clear that it would turn out positively.
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More than 50% opened the mail, so many people had read the message.
But fortunately, only 261 calls came in. That's only 0.055%!
And even finer: they weren't even very negative.
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Everyone relieved! 😊
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And even more punishing perhaps, a few months later we told another client about this. To which she said that, as a proximus customer, she remembered the mail. She had been angry at first because something was ‘taken away’ from her, but then she read the mail and felt the anger go away.
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And that was perhaps the best proof of the effect of the Escalation Prevention Model!