“Feelings are emotional takeaways – and each part of a journey needs to make the consumer feel differently.”

Else is a London-based consultancy that specializes in Experience Design, with an ethos deeply-rooted in identifying the feelings that people associate with companies, campaigns and experiences. We spoke with Dave Dunlop, the company’s Creative Director, to discuss the future of CX and the power of trends to turn the abstract into the tangible.

Do you feel modern brands should aim for the customer to have one clear feeling throughout the customer journey, or can they prompt different feelings throughout?

The short answer is the second one. We like to think of feelings as emotional takeaways — each part of a journey needs to make that person feel differently depending on context and what they’re setting out to achieve. In a way modern brands need to be emotionally intelligent. They need to be able to regulate their own brand attributes to suit the situation.

To do this we can think of these brand attributes as an equaliser. Let’s take as an example a brand that is exciting, smart, and trusted. There are times where it needs to be firstly exciting, secondly smart and thirdly trusted. For some brands that might be when they first attract a new audience. However there are times where trust needs to take centre stage — for instance during a financial transaction.

This doesn’t necessarily dilute the primary takeaway. If anything it augments it. Imagine a brand that is exciting all the time, at some point that becomes old, tiring and paradoxically predictable.

Do you agree with the overarching saving OR seizing concept?

Yes. The concept of seizing and saving attention provides a way of thinking that enables businesses to make sense of macro trends in relation to their products and services. 

Understanding whether or not machine learning, AI or Virtual Reality can benefit your business becomes more tangible when considered within the context of how it can help customers to ‘outsource thinking’ or ‘eradicate pain points’. 

Attention saving features become hidden to the customer; they set new expectations that become the norm —almost functional like. Whereas when you look at how you seize attention at any moment in the customer life-cycle, they become the own-able moments. The moments that become memorable and drive customer loyalty and continued engagement.