MSN > Women > Relationships

The Power of Surprise

 Hesham Abdel Mohsen

Marketing is very much concerned with psychology.

Since Marketing's main function is to affect human behaviors and attitudes, any marketer should be aware of the nature of the human psyche.

 This so-called human psyche is very similar to a very deep sea that is full of secrets and trying to unleash these secrets is a real pleasure. One of these secrets is motional reactions towards the "Unexpected", in other word, the "Surprise".

Unexpected news in particular, have a way much stronger impact on the human psyche than expected news, that’s because, when you expect something to happen, all your senses and emotions are in a heightened receptive status, but if not expected, a knock down to our senses and emotions might be the result depending on the intensity of that surprise as perceived by your senses.

Let's agree that there are always some worries from the unexpected among all humans, surprises have some special power that affect all of us, if it is perceived a happy surprise then your emotional reaction will be a maximized happiness, and on the other hand, if it is perceived as unhappy surprise, then the emotional reaction will be a maximized unhappiness.

The magnitude of such maximized happiness/unhappiness various according to the intensity of that surprise as perceived by the senses. Let's give a slice of life example to illustrate what we have mentioned.

Imagine that you felt slightly exhausted, some headache and overall unbalance forced you to give your doctor a visit for overall check up.

after checking you, the doctor asked for some brain and blood tests, 2 days later you took results of the tests and gave them to the doctor, after 10 minutes of silence, instead of giving you some medications for your headache, he told you "I am sorry to tell you that you have brain cancer in a late stage", How would you react to such a horrible unexpected surprise?

Most probably it will quickly knock down your emotions and it might drive you to a severe depression that might speed up your death, because it is both severe and unexpected, but later you might recover if you are an optimistic, life-loving person.

Marketers should capitalize on that emotional nature of human beings. Induce happy unexpected surprises to your customers and avoid bad unexpected surprises. This could be achieved by "Under promising and over delivering", this rule will definitely increase customer retention and decrease customer churn which is the aim of all marketers.

People are lazy by nature, reluctant to change, this applies to your product as well, initially they don’t want to change it, but you force them to do so because of unfulfilled promises or poor customer service.

Under promising and over delivering is the golden rule for customer satisfaction. Integrating 'customers' surprises' in your communication mix is now inevitable, it should be planned and monitored very carefully.

Imagine if you go for lunch in the same restaurant you are used to go every now and after finishing your lunch, you ask for the bill, the waiter surprised you "sir, your meal tonight is free of charge because you are one of our valuable guests", how would you feel towards that restaurant? Of course loyalty will be the result, but moreover, you will promote positive word of mouth about the restaurant.

Finally, marketers should strive to understand the nature of the human psyche, unleashing its secrets is a must for any engagement in a successful long term l relationship with customers.

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