EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Emotions play an integral role in how customers make decisions and form judgments. This means that how a customer feels about an interaction with a company has an enormous impact on his or her loyalty to that company. However, companies tend to ignore customer emotions, especially during digital interactions, which is problematic as customers are increasingly interacting with companies online. This report focuses on humanizing digital interactions by replicating the elements of strong human conversations. Here are some highlights:

• We developed The Human Conversational Model, which is made up of seven elements – Intent Decoding, Contextual Framing, Empathetic Agility, Supportive Feedback, Basic Manners, Self-Awareness, and Emotional Reflection.
• We share over 35 examples of best practices from companies that are designing digital experiences across the seven elements of The Human Conversational Model.
• We demonstrate how you could apply The Human Conversational Model to three types of digital activities: opening a new bank account online, purchasing a pair of shoes through an app, and getting technical support online.

This report was originally published by Temkin Group prior to its acquisition by Qualtrics in October 2018. It has been reformatted, but no substantive changes have been made to the content.