Rethinking Objectivity: How to Use Emotions in the Customer Experience for Effective Decision Making

In “A Key Decision Is Often Clouded by Emotion,” James Staten, a veteran in the infrastructure and operation management field, discusses the need to purge “emotion, conjecture and bravado” to make decisions effectively. The IT field offers us an example. IT is an industry proud of its cool analytic and intellectual image, yet the power of emotions is such that best practices must take the role of emotions seriously as a part of the decision-making process.

Where Staten calls for objective decision making divorced of emotion to resolve this issue, Beyond Philosophy believes that harnessing the power of emotions to forge collaboration between IT, application developers, and delivery professionals is much more productive. In order for technology to improve the value chain of any organization, outsourcing must result in an optimal network of relationships between internal and external environments. Strategic right sourcing describes organizations with creative, productive and robust relationships between internal and external environments.

Staten argues that emotion is the barrier to objective decision-making that hinders strategic right sourcing and multi-sourcing. We believe it is the fundamental building block. Who deals with someone they don’t trust? Are we being asked to ignore “early warning” emotions indicating that all might not be well?

On one hand, Staten’s analysis is correct: if an organization consistently misses the mark between strategic right-sourcing and multi-sourcing management, it makes a costly blunder. The expense of inappropriate sourcing and vendor management adds up over time. However, when he claims that the answer is for IT and development to have “emotionless” internal discussions of which applications to put in the cloud, he is simply incorrect.

Emotions account for nearly half of all customer experiences. When an organization fails to take account of emotions as a part of the overall experience, it leaves half the proverbial chips on the table.

I am often asked if emotions exist in the B2B experience. The example of breakdown in communication between application developers and IT service professionals illuminates exactly how emotions affect the B2B experience. Suppose your organization decides to outsource its application development or delivery. When it comes to marrying strategic right sourcing with a multi sourcing management model, it is imperative to recognize that no company will want to purchase a system from a business it does not trust as an industry leader.

Emotions are the building blocks of the trust necessary to be a successful player in the B2B experience. They are the fabric of our interaction in both our personal and business lives. We appreciate this fact and we encourage you to embrace it.