Service as an emotional experience: how businesses build relationships with customers, not just sales

Maryna Bereziuk, a business psychologist and customer service consultant, has come to a simple conclusion over more than 20 years in business: service is always about relationships. She unpacks the webinar's provocative formula, service as "love for money", like this: a business exists to make a profit, but the sale of a product or service can be filled with attention to the person. Maryna tells how a parcel with a gift for a friend reached the pickup point at 9:20 in the morning, on the very day the meeting had been moved to. A plain delivery became an emotional moment, because the company works not with boxes but with human stories. Such moments, pleasant and unpleasant, stay in our memory and later shape which company we choose, even when the customer explains the choice by price or convenience.

The speaker separates emotions, which are momentary and different for everyone, from feelings, a more stable attitude towards a brand. She mentions the book by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore on the experience economy and the Starbucks example, where baristas started writing the customer's name on the cup: being addressed by name strengthens the bond between people. Host Yuliia Demchyk adds that more than ten years later the Starbucks queue is automated through an app, and service priorities have shifted along with customer expectations. Another point Maryna makes is about birthday greetings. If a company offers 10% off for a birthday but gave 40% off on Black Friday, the customer draws conclusions. She recommends a deliberate contact plan: which segments the company contacts, when, and for what reason.

Maryna looks at service as a system of four components: people, business processes, motivation in the broad sense, and monitoring. Monitoring is there to check whether reality matches what was drawn in the customer journey map and approved in presentations. In her view, the businesses suffering most right now are those that never set up or automated their processes. People are exhausted by almost four years of full-scale war, power cuts and prolonged stress, while customers expect speed and empathy. So everything that can be handed to automation and AI should be, so that those who deal with customers still have the energy for a smile and attention.

Asked by Yuliia how to motivate staff in these conditions, Maryna answers that employees always pass on to customers the way management and owners treat them. Care does not have to be expensive: asking in the morning how things are at home, buying a power bank, a blanket or dry shampoo. She works with Herzberg's two-factor model of motivation, where salary is only one of eight key points. Yuliia shares an example from an American steakhouse: the waitress gave excellent service but said something generic, without taking into account that her guests came from a country at war.

Self-service gets its own discussion. Kiosks at McDonald's, fuel station apps, coffee machines with QR codes are often not a trend in Ukraine but a way to survive when there are not enough people. The emotional side can still be kept: an offer to donate loyalty points to charity, a free coffee, fortunes printed on receipts, as Silpo once did. Maryna suggests an exercise with Maslow's pyramid: look at which other needs your product meets, for example belonging to a cause that benefits society.

Answering audience questions, Maryna talks about metrics: NPS matters as a trend, and open customer comments point to what needs fixing in processes. She recommends a mystery shopping wave every quarter, weekly complaint statistics split into justified and unjustified ones, and giving staff the authority to resolve issues on the spot. At METRO, board members phoned customers who gave low scores every week, and NPS was part of managers' annual bonus. She closes with a reminder: the market has shrunk, so keeping a customer costs far less than finding a new one.