Cognitive biases, those mental shortcuts we all take to simplify decision-making, are increasingly being used by companies to improve the customer experience and optimise sales strategies. However, during the sales sessions and trainings in which I share space with new and experienced sales people, I notice a lack of understanding of how they can influence consumers’ decisions and how they can adapt their conversational strategies to better meet customers’ needs. Below, we will shed light on these issues by exploring five cognitive biases and how they are applied in sales conversations to improve customer satisfaction.
Recency bias
Recency bias refers to the tendency to give more weight to the final information or experiences in the purchasing process or in the relationship with the company. A very interesting example would be medical interventions. Patients who have had long and painful interventions, but who end up with a long recovery period in which the pain gradually disappears, report better experiences than patients who have undergone short interventions that end abruptly. So when designing a customer experience, we need to pay special attention to what happens in the final stages. For example, Uber saw that the moment of payment for the ride was a pain point, so it moved it to the beginning of the process, so that the customer’s last moment with Uber was satisfying. Saving a product benefit for last or summarising the terms of service that suit the customer are techniques the salesperson can use to help the customer make a more favourable decision by making them remember these arguments more strongly than the rest of the topics of conversation.
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to seek, interpret and remember information in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. Companies can exploit this bias by personalising product or content recommendations based on the customer’s previously expressed preferences. For example, streaming platforms such as Netflix use recommendation algorithms that analyse a user’s viewing history to suggest movies and series that match their personal tastes, thereby reinforcing their preferences and increasing customer satisfaction. Similarly, a salesperson should review the history of products and services used by the customer and reinforce the positive points of these in their conversations for future conversations. In addition, this bias highlights the need to ask the customer’s opinions and those of the people they listen to at before making a decision. In this way, the salesperson can base their argumentation on the customer’s own ideas and avoid unnecessary confrontations that create friction in the relationship and destroy the customer’s experience.
Anchoring effect
The anchoring effect occurs when people base their decisions on the first information they receive. Movie theatres with popcorn or some universities in their programmes and master’s programmes offer high prices and then discount the price to make the price seem more affordable and give the customer the feeling of getting a bargain. In the context of sales, salespeople can use this bias by initially presenting a higher price or premium option and then offering a lower-priced alternative, which makes the latter seem more attractive compared to the other option. For example, during a sales conversation a car salesperson might highlight the luxurious features of a high-end model with features that the customer does not need before presenting cheaper options on a model that better suits the customer, making this offer even more attractive. In addition, by offering some discount off the “anchor price” the customer ends the interaction with a better experience: they got what they wanted, and at a lower price than they had imagined.
Social bias
This bias leads us to assume that the right behaviour is what other people are doing. So if everyone else is rating a restaurant, a hotel or a pair of shoes well, I will be more likely to rate them positively. For example, the TripAdvisor platform, which shows the positive reviews and ratings that hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions have received, as well as the percentage of excellent ratings. This influences the customer’s perception of the quality of the place and increases the likelihood that they will leave a positive review.
Conclusions
In conclusion, cognitive biases play a crucial role in sales conversations and the overall customer experience. By incorporating these principles into their sales strategies, companies can build stronger relationships with their customers and ensure long-term success in the marketplace. In turn, by understanding what customers care about or value and how they make decisions, marketers can use these biases, in an ethical and transparent manner, to improve customer satisfaction and increase conversion rates.