The 6 Feels
The Business Life Support Customer Experience Principles
Six questions, asked from you customer’s perspective.
Why we built them this way
Most customer service training hands people a list of rules – greet the customer, use their name, follow the script. This is usually handed down by management from a top down approach, and it produces staff who can perform service without ever being taught to read a customer.
The 6 Feels work the other way around. Instead of telling staff what to do, they ask what the customer is feeling right now. You put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think as they would, each question begins with “Do I” – do I feel noticed, do I feel heard. Six questions, plain enough that people still use them months after a session, and broad enough to cover the situations no rulebook anticipated.
That sounds like a small change in wording and it isn’t, because it gives people something they can apply in situations nobody trained them for. It also gives a business a consistent way to measure itself, rather than a different checklist for every part of the journey.
“Provide a warm welcome” is something you can technically do while a customer still feels ignored. “Do I feel noticed right now?” can only be answered honestly from where the customer is standing“
That sounds like a small change in wording and it isn’t, because it gives people something they can apply in situations nobody trained them for. It also gives a business a consistent way to measure itself, rather than a different checklist for every part of the journey.
The 6 Feels
None of these happen in order. All six are running at once, in every interaction, and any one of them can be the reason somebody doesn’t come back.
“Do I feel noticed right now? Are they glad I walked in, or am I just a number?”
Being noticed is the first thing that happens, before a single word is exchanged about what someone actually wants. It is whether a person registers as a person, or as the next item in a queue.
When it’s working:
- Acknowledged within seconds, even when nobody is free to serve them yet
- Whoever is closest looks up, rather than waiting for whoever is technically responsible
- An enquiry that arrives out of hours still gets a reply that reads like a person wrote it
When it slips:
- Online enquiry forms that disappear into nothing
- Being clearly seen and not acknowledged
- “I’ll be with you in a minute” said to a screen rather than to the person
“Am I actually being heard, or is this person just waiting to give me the standard answer? Am I being told what I want to hear?”
Most requests have two layers: the literal thing being asked for, and the thing actually being felt underneath it. Feeling heard means both got picked up, not just the first one.
When it’s working:
- Paraphrasing the problem back before offering a solution
- Acknowledging the emotion before explaining the process
- Asking a clarifying question rather than guessing and getting on with it
When it slips:
- Answering the question that was expected instead of the one that was asked
- Agreeing with everything to avoid a difficult conversation
- Solving quickly, and solving the wrong thing
“Do I trust this business knows what it’s doing? From the outside, does it look like it’s got its act together?”
Confidence is the customer’s read on whether the business is competent, built from small signals rather than qualifications. It is not about having every answer.
When it’s working:
- The same answer from whoever they happen to ask
- “I don’t know, I’ll find out and come back to you by three”, followed by coming back by three
- A website, a price list and a shopfront that all agree with each other
When it slips:
- Two staff members giving two different answers
- Out of date information left live because nobody owns it
- Hedging instead of committing to anything
“Do I actually matter here, or am I a transaction, a name on a screen rather than a person in front of them? Do they want me to return and tell my friends? Do they go above and beyond for me?”
The difference between being processed correctly and being treated like your business matters. At its best, it is also the difference between a customer who returns and one who simply does not come back. Both can be perfectly polite.
When it’s working:
- Remembering something from last time without being prompted
- Doing the small thing nobody asked for
- Thanking someone in a way that doesn’t sound like a script
When it slips:
- Service that is entirely correct and has nothing personal in it
- New customers looked after better than existing ones
- Loyalty that only ever runs in one direction
“Am I being made to work for this? How much am I having to chase, repeat myself, or fill in gaps they should’ve covered? Are they wasting my time, making me wait?”
Effort is what the customer has to spend to get what they came for: steps, handoffs, repeated explanations, follow-ups they had to start themselves. It is close to invisible from inside a business and very visible from outside it.
When it’s working:
- Getting it right the first time, so there is no follow-up to make
- Context passed along with a handover, so nobody has to repeat themselves
- The business doing the chasing, not the customer
When it slips:
- “Can you just send that through again?”
- Transferring somebody without explaining the situation to the next person
- Processes built around what is convenient internally rather than what is simplest externally
“Do I know what happens next, and can I trust it will? If something goes wrong, will it be taken seriously, or will I be managed until I go away?”
Reassurance is about certainty. It covers the ordinary moments where a customer has handed something over and is waiting, as much as the moments where something has gone wrong. Do they know what happens next, when, and who to contact if they need to. When it fails, the customer is left filling in the gaps themselves, and people rarely fill them in optimistically.
When it’s working:
- Told what happens next, and when, before anyone has to ask
- Given a name and a way to make contact, rather than a general inbox to chase
- A problem taken seriously immediately, before anyone knows whose fault it is
- Followed up afterwards to confirm it was actually resolved
When it slips:
- A quote, order or enquiry that goes quiet, leaving the customer to guess
- A date that passes without anyone from the business making contact first
- Explaining why something happened instead of what is being done about it
- Fixing it and never confirming with the customer that it is sorted
They work inside the business too
The same six questions apply exactly as well to a colleague in another department as they do to a paying customer. Same six questions, different “they”.
That matters in any business where one team’s work depends on another’s. A handover that drops the context, a request that sits unanswered for three days, an internal system nobody explains: those are the same failures, and customers feel them second hand whether they ever see them or not.
When something goes wrong: REBOUND
Feel Reassured covers the ordinary waiting moments as much as the ones that go wrong. The half that goes wrong is the harder half, so it has a framework of its own behind it.
Handled badly, one problem can undo years of goodwill. Handled well, a complaint often leaves someone more loyal than if nothing had gone wrong at all, because they’ve now seen how your business behaves under pressure. That isn’t a consolation prize. It’s one of the few chances you get to prove something to a customer.
REBOUND is seven steps grouped into three phases, so staff only have to know which phase they’re in rather than recall a list of seven while somebody is upset in front of them.
In the moment · the first few seconds
Relax | Empathise | Back Them [R.E.B]
Taking control · the next few minutes
Own It | Understand [O.U]
Closing the loop · hours or days later
Notify | Deliver [N.D]
Own the fix, not the blame
We teach this one explicitly, because it’s where most staff go wrong in both directions. Taking charge of a resolution is not the same as admitting fault. Sometimes the business got it wrong, sometimes a supplier did, sometimes there was a genuine misunderstanding.
Staff who don’t have that distinction either over-apologise for things that weren’t their fault, or get defensive and refuse to help. Neither is necessary, and both cost customers.
How we use them
The 6 Feels aren’t a training exercise. They’re the measure behind everything we do.
In a CX Audit
In CX Testing
In CX Training
See where you stand
The free CX Score is the fastest way to find out. A handful of honest questions, an instant result, and a clear read on where the risk actually sits.
If you’d rather just talk it through, book a call and we’ll work out the right starting point together.