The Corona pandemic moves all of us. Over the past few months, many of us have had to deal with new, perhaps unknown emotions – most of them were negative. But the appearance of exceptional emotions offers opportunities, especially for companies that are able to measure why those emotions appear.
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The Corona Pandemic affects our emotions
Some of the diverse, yet unknown effects of the pandemic didn’t even have names before – like “Zoom fatigue” what you may experience when the sheer number of video calls just overwhelms you. Even if the situation in many regions of the world is now easing, people's concerns in the Corona crisis are still measurable.The reasons are obvious: Constant insecurity, social distancing and home office stress have an effect on our emotions. Those, in turn, are highly affecting our decisions – which media content do I consume? What products will I buy? Will I stay with my company?
Why businesses should care for emotions
“To survive and maybe even succeed in the future, businesses need to retain the loyalty of their employees and customers”, wrote Social Scientist Julia Flovén, CEO of VibeVision, in a recent article on the startup’s corporate blog.
The NMA portfolio startup VibeVision helps companies to understand the emotions of their customers and employees. Due to their scientific-bases surveys, VibeVision is able to measure and analyze emotions and provide recommendations about how to act on it.
From the results of the VibeVision survey at NMA
How the NMA network felt at the beginning of the crisis
With a three months lasting weekly survey, VibeVision examined the emotional profiles of the NMA staff and the founders of our current batch 10. Every Monday and Friday they were asked to give a brief insight into their emotions.
The results are pretty soothing: “Altogether emotions were positive! Both startups and organizers had mostly positive emotions.” Still, the pandemic is visible in the responses: “At the beginning of the Corona crisis, the emotions changed clearly from positive to negative.” Gladly, most of our startups have a great experience with remote work. They even shared a lot of inspiring survival tips in our current interview series.
From the results of the VibeVision survey at NMA
The survey underlines the approach of VibeVision: “Analyzing ‘satisfaction’ is not enough. If we want to have a better understanding, we should take a deeper look at the whole spectrum of emotions and especially at the reasons behind the emotions.” That’s exactly what distinguishes the scientific-based surveys of VibeVision from others.
"Having such data available allows us to provide a better experience for founders throughout our program”, says Julia Mandil, Program Manager at NMA. “Knowing the causes behind positive and negative emotions enables us to shape the activities according to their reaction. It gives us guidance to questions such as: what kind of support can we provide? Are we providing the right amount of activities?"
Knowing about emotions and the reasons behind them, help us at NMA to improve our program, our grown structures and to understand the needs, worries and expectations of our crew and startups during these unsteady, unusual times.
And it reminds us to ask each other regularly: “How are you?”