GfK 'Emotional Imprint' Bridges Satisfaction / Loyalty Gap

GfK has unveiled a new concept it calls the 'Emotional Imprint', to help clients address the gap between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

According to a recent GfK global study, the correlation between a company's level of customer satisfaction and loyalty is around 40%. GfK claims that through its new customer experience approach, it can prove that strong 'emotional imprints' with a brand, product or service lead to significantly lower rates of customer churn and more positive word-of-mouth. By integrating this with customer advocacy and other KPIs such as 'relationship durability' and 'switching', the firm says it is able to predict company-level loyalty scores at a rate of 80% - double that of using customer satisfaction scores alone.

David Robbins (pictured), Global Lead for GfK Customer Harmonics, explains: 'Our new model shows that the more memorable and vivid an experience, the stronger the emotional imprint it creates - and the higher that person's advocacy and resistance to switching to competitors. By identifying those aspects of the experience that leave an emotional imprint, we can provide sharper, customer-centric insights on which attributes to promote, to drive loyalty and enhance customer life time value.'

Web site: www.gfk.com .