Customer Service Glossary
What Is Neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing, or consumer neuroscience, is the study and process of applying behavioral science and neuroscience to business processes, namely marketing. Neuromarketing may include various types of market research seeking to understand customers’ needs, preferences, and motivations that methods like focus groups and surveys can’t explain.
Neuromarketing involves a wide range of processes, including studies focused on how marketing, product packaging, social media engagement, web content, and advertising impact the human brain. Neuromarketers then apply information obtained from in-house research, neuroscience studies, and cognitive science data to guide marketing efforts without the need to test products, services, or advertising efforts before launching them.
Why Is Neuromarketing Important for Customer Service?
At first glance, neuromarketing may not seem like it impacts customer service at all. In fact, it may seem more like a form of mental manipulation than advertising. However, the research and technologies that have led to advances in consumer neuroscience can also be applied to support teams.
When customer support departments have greater insight into the thought processes, emotions, interests, and memories that lead customers through the purchasing journey, agents can better understand consumers, resulting in highly personalized interactions, human connections, and streamlined support. Applying neuromarketing principles to customer service can benefit departments in several other ways as well, including:
1. Improved Customer Insights
At its simplest, neuromarketing enables organizations and their employees to understand their target market’s purchasing behaviors on a neurological level. As such, advertising teams, salespeople, and customer support agents have more insight into the cognitive behaviors and emotions that lead to purchases.
This understanding may also enable agents to tailor their offerings to suit a company’s goals and marketing strategies.
2. Enhanced Customer Experience
Neuromarketing extends beyond advertising campaigns to narrow the experience gap, in which 86% of brands believe that they offer outstanding customer experiences, while only 8% of customers agree.
For example, the additional knowledge of who your customers are, why they interact with your brand, and how they respond to your goods or services can transform the customer service experience. With an enhanced understanding of each user, agents can provide empathetic, high-quality care at all stages of the buying process.
3. Increased Sales and Revenue
Brands use neuromarketing as a tool to accomplish countless goals, including making their goods or services stand out from the crowd, improving the customer experience, and more. Nevertheless, the study of neuromarketing ultimately exists to increase sales and conversions – sometimes by as much as 350%.
Applying neuromarketing techniques throughout the customer experience results in increased sales and revenue. That said, the message needs to be cohesive and exist throughout all customer care interactions, web copy, and design. To achieve the best results, many organizations hire expert neuromarketers or consult with neuroscientists.
How Neuromarketing Works
Neuromarketing uses highly detailed data on consumer response, brain activity, and sophisticated details such as eye-tracking and brain imaging to understand how – and why – customers purchase their products or services. The complex, detailed tool intertwines traditional marketing with consumer psychology, neurology, and cognitive science to attempt to understand, enhance, and manipulate the consumer decision-making process.
Neuromarketing is largely based on two scientific methods, which track brain activity: electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI). EEG analyzes the amount of electrical activity in the brain by using a measuring instrument, such as electrodes, to calculate engagement. On the other hand, fMRI monitors blood flow to the brain’s pleasure centers after study participants receive a visual or audible cue.
Researchers then use the data to understand how and why memories, needs, desires, and other subconscious factors influence purchasing decisions.
How Do Businesses Use Neuromarketing?
Companies around the world, ranging from local shops to industry giants like Coca-Cola, Nestle, PepsiCo, use neuromarketing to understand a shopper’s mental and visual perception when interacting with their web content, pictures, or products.
Neuromarketers may test products themselves using several methods, such as eye movement measurements, facial encoding, sensory marketing, and EEG and fMRI. Other marketers draw information from third-party neuroscientist studies or a relevant peer-reviewed article to determine how to make their communication, marketing, and overall creative concept more appealing to their audience.
For example, a company can use neuromarketing research to create an emotional response in their shoppers. By drawing on nostalgic or pleasant memories, customers will feel more positively about a company or product, making them more likely to purchase.
Neuromarketing in Customer Service Departments
Despite featuring “marketing” in its name, neuromarketing principles apply to virtually every aspect of an organization, including its customer service departments. Agents can use in-depth user personas, consumer behavior studies, and detailed customer profiles to enhance the customer experience at every stage of the buyer’s journey, ultimately creating happier, highly engaged customers, boosting retention rates, and raising satisfaction scores.