Adam Kirk Smith

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How Business Storytelling Can Increase Customer Loyalty

This is a guest post from Elisa Abbott. She is a freelancer whose passion lies in creative writing. She completed a degree in Computer Science and writes about ways to apply machine learning to deal with complex issues. Insights on education, helpful tools, and valuable university experiences – she has got you covered 😉

There are many things a business can do to increase customer loyalty. Some companies rely heavily on offering conveniences and discounts to return customers, and others ask their clients to provide them with feedback at all stages of interaction. However, nothing seems to stimulate customer engagement as well as a well-written brand story.

And there’s no psychological trick behind creating enticing storytelling, either. It’s all about good writing and a well-crafted narrative. Furthermore, people are really passionate about other people’s personal accounts. When being exposed to great stories, numerous regions in our brains activate, followed by a short-term change in our hormone profile. In this article, we discuss why you should invest some time and effort into business storytelling.

It makes your business more human

The reason storytelling matters for businesses is that it’s an essential medium for our customers to create an emotional bond with the service or the product since they have a narrative to relate to. Needless to say, the world’s most successful companies are well aware of the importance of providing something beyond just a product but instead letting their customers share their vision and be a part of the company’s success. 

People all over the world have slowly started shifting towards more locally-sourced, artisanal products made by small-scale businesses, due to the fact that they slowly started losing trust for large corporations and marketers. People crave doing business with people.

Having a human story behind your brand will change your approach towards business and the way you’ll handle customers. A great example is MailChimp. This company has developed a fantastic style guide, which shapes all of their writing. They not only have a brilliant story behind their brand, but they also take a human approach: 

“At MailChimp, we’ve walked in our customers’ shoes, and we know marketing technology is a minefield of confusing terminology. We treat every hopeful brand seriously. We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them.”

This is how a brand can convert empathy to loyalty. By having a more holistic approach towards your service and not just providing it on the books, but actually connecting emotionally with your customer, you’ll be able to build a user/customer base founded on loyalty. 

Stories change the way we think

We are social creatures and our behavior is deeply rooted in this principle. We connect with people around us, even if they’re total strangers to us. People engage with other people’s stories, simply due to the fact that they can relate to them. Maybe they haven’t necessarily been in the exact same situation, but they’ve most certainly been in hard situations, having to make sacrifices and difficult decisions. Our instincts tell us that there is a lot of wisdom to be extracted from other people’s reports. 

Staying focused on another person’s narrative has an impressive effect on our bodies, especially our brains. An exciting narrative raises our oxytocin levels, according to Paul J. Zak’s research, published back in 2013. 

Stories make us feel safe

Elevated oxytocin is normal when we are around people that we love and care about. Higher levels of oxytocin are also very common during physical, social interactions like handshakes, hugs, pats on the back, and so forth. Similarly, oxytocin levels, as research suggests, increase when we are exposed to stories, both written and narrated. 

This hormone signals our bodies that there is no imminent threat to our safety and that everything around us is fine, which suggests that it is okay to interact with anyone around us. 

Brands that have taken the time to craft exciting story ensure that their customers have more trust for their company and thus are more loyal.

Stories give your business an extra dimension

By not tapping into storytelling, you might be limiting your business to the platitude of simply providing your customers with a service, thus not leaving too much space for your clientele to bond with emotionally. Whereas allowing your customers to engage with your content will enable you to showcase your company’s authenticity and transparency. 

“When it comes to content, authenticity is one of the crucial aspects that allow customers to connect with a business emotionally. “— Dina Indelicato, writer at PickWriters.

There is now a growing body of research that suggests that brands that have an authentic voice generate much bigger returns, compared to companies that refrain from doing so. Once a content strategy is built on the basis of authenticity, it will by default add much more to the business’s customers.

Similarly, companies that are open about their operations are also much more likely to generate more significant revenue. Customers find it impressive when a business takes responsibility for its mistakes, instead of just acting that it never happened. Slack is a great example, they’ve recently published a post where they bring their apologies to a number of customers for having deleted their accounts. 

Here are a few things you can do to ensure transparency:

  • Be transparent about where you source your materials from.
  • Be transparent about how you price your products or services.
  • Be transparent about your customers’ experiences. 
  • Create content that aligns with your mission and your customers’ goals.
  • Create content that makes customers feel comfortable about doing business with you.

Business has changed its shape throughout the last hundred years. It’s safe to say that companies that do not focus on the customer in terms of services and content find it harder to excel in the current ecosystem. 

People now care about a multitude of things, when choosing a company to take their business to, far beyond just the price tag. Customers are also very selective about the company’s “personality,” thus we need to focus on maintaining the same set of values and tone throughout our company’s lifecycle.

Considering the insight we’ve collected over the years in understanding how storytelling affects our brain, it is most definitely one of the essential components of a successful branding and content strategy. 

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Can You Make the Alternative Case?

Leadership drives intelligent, wise change. Change is about people and behaviors. Therefore, leaders must be skilled in influence and persuasion.  Influence and persuasion are often centered on status quo vs. possible future state discussions. 

Weak and manipulative leaders try persuasion through straw man arguments. A straw man approach calls attention to something you covertly substituted into your opponent’s argument, which he didn’t say. You knock down that straw man, giving the impression you defeated the argument, when in fact you didn’t address the original argument at all. This is frequently observed when the value of the appearance of vanquishing an opponent is far greater than critical thinking about complex issues.  

Strong, confident leaders know this truth: “We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.” (Lord Acton) The most persuasive leaders will articulate the “other side” arguments even better than they do – and then explain point by point why an alternative approach is better. This is called the steel man approach. 

The steel man approach is especially helpful for major changes with significant consequences. You want to bring people along with you when your organization faces a “no going back” irreversible decision. Therefore, you must be articulate about all options. One of the best outcomes of the steel man approach is that people will respect you even if they don’t always agree with your decisions. 

Some historical examples: 

  • Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation by articulating the Pope’s arguments for indulgences and other practices, then demonstrating why they were illogical and inconsistent with the Bible.  
  • Charles Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” broke through historic dogmas because he used the steel man approach. He laid out the case for alternative explanations of different species far better than others had done, and then systematically showed why those explanations were inferior to evolution.  
  • Karl Marx brilliantly documented the inherent consequences of capitalism in “Das Kapital” by partially using a steel man approach – though 100+ million dead demonstrate his recommended alternative proved disastrous. 
  • Law schools in England and the US (until the mid-20th century) used the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans as the archetypical ancient legal brief. Paul effectively used the steel man approach to make the case for Christianity rather than the pantheon of Roman gods and traditional understanding of how “the divine” interacted with men. 

Develop your leadership capability by making the case for both “sides” or “next actions.” Discipline yourself to articulate ideas and strategies (especially if you think they’re dumb). You can practice this even in situations where you aren’t making the decision.  

This practice work will be truly helpful when you are put to the leadership test. Straw man arguments go down badly in history.  

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Leading as Education

Leaders are in the education business, because leaders need to pull people – team members, bosses, customers, partners — along with them. Pushing people is partially effective, but requires positional power. Educating people is a key part of persuasion and influence.  

The word ‘educate’ comes to English from Latin: ducere, meaning to draw or lead, with the prefix e to indicate “out of.” Education is not pouring into, but drawing out. It’s not cracking open the skull and stuffing in facts. Education requires that we use information, questions, dialogue, and experience plus feedback to shape the way a person thinks and behaves. 

Therefore, education will never be an efficient process. There are efficient ways to give people information. There are efficient ways to begin dialogue. Yet education is about a whole person, requires their participation and cooperation, and touches the mystery of how the mind works. 

Sometimes people have created a loose connection between education and indoctrination. Working from formal definitions: 

Education: imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

Indoctrination: teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view. 

Observation: If we approve of the curriculum and worldview, then we call it education. If we don’t, we condemn it as indoctrination. 

Education is an open mindset; indoctrination is a fixed mindset. A test to consider: An educated person may develop a separate worldview from his teachers, disagree on many matters, and still be friendly and learn from one another. An intense focus on indoctrination yields a situation where departure from the doctrine is labeled heresy and destroys fellowship.  Indoctrination as a strategy does not create mature individuals who continue learning and growing. People hell-bent (I use that word purposefully) on indoctrination do not tolerate a student exceeding the teacher. The only cooperative part of the indoctrination process is obedience and rote learning. 

Education must be a mix of information and experiences. Sharing stories is crucial.  Few will remember your seven brilliant bullet points, but they will remember the well-told story that touched their heart or made them smile.  Better yet, share a story which made them see differently! Inspiring, transforming leaders weave stories and information together. They give people context where they can fit in the facts and information.  

Your leadership will go to new levels when you see yourself as an educator.