Affected

CHAPTER 6 Managing affect: Digital strategy in the real world

Hopefully by this point we have demonstrated that pursuing customer insights and investing in both the process of designing digital channels and the digital channels themselves has a great impact on the customer–company relationship. Scaling this relationship depends on the customers’ willingness to provide and share positive company experiences with others, which in turn enables the creation of engaging interactions via digital channels with customers, impacting company growth via revenue and the customers’ emotional investment (advocacy) in the company.

This process requires a combination of creativity, deep emotional understanding, knowledge of digital behaviour and a strong company-to-customer strategy. Thus, the need for a formalised framework — the Digital Affect Framework — that includes customer motivations and requirements in designing for the desired behavioural results.

The framework alone, however, is not enough — you need to be able to translate this into the real world. Here are the two main ingredients for managing affect (the hardest bit):

1. the people (Who should lead this digital relationship and drive change?)
2. the principles to implementation (Where do I start and how do I manage this customer-centric perspective?).

INNOVATING THE BIGGER PICTURE

Langdon Morris argues that while

one set of products and services may be exceptionally well-suited to the market at a particular point in time, it’s rare ...