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Reflect Your Brand Values

The Five Keys to Customer Experience - Part 5

By Jeannie Walters

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

We are obsessed with brands in this country. How many of us refer to objects by their brand name instead of their category? Kids want to wear Nikes. Mild-mannered businesspeople long to ride their Harleys on the weekends. And how many times per day do you think urban dwellers ask for or invite each other out for a Starbucks?

This final step in creating a superior customer experience is really the grand finale. Living your brand, reflecting its values, and delivering on your promise are what a great customer experience is all about. The tricky thing about brands is that they are more than a name and logo. A brand reflects a promise. A brand is about what the company is offering to their customers. But just as importantly, it's how the company behaves and how the company literally lives and breathes in reflecting these values. Your brand must be part of each and every interaction with customers.

In a prior article, I mentioned SBC's tagline, 'Beyond the Call.'; While this brand promise is all about going above and beyond for customers, SBC isn't necessarily living up to it. Customers report unsatisfactory customer service, inconsistent delivery, and powerless customer service reps. Perhaps, SBC is forgetting that the brand is not just about the advertising.

Living your brand values can mean tough choices. One of my favorite examples of this is the cable channel, TNT. In 2001, the channel was struggling with its own identity. While they were enjoying moderate success, they knew they lacked a niche in the television universe. The highest rated program was the WWF. That's right, fake - er, dramatic - wrestling was the most profitable program the station had. TNT began to define their brand, and soon made a choice to focus on drama. They created a cable home for the hour-long dramas that could be syndicated. Once they made the brand promise of 'We Know Drama,' they changed everything about their programming to reflect it. TNT even dropped their highest rated program, the WWF, because it didn't fit the new brand values. It was a wise move. TNT is now ad-supported cable's #1 network in prime time among adults 18-49 and adults 25-54 categories, beating the second-place network by 9 and 14 percent, respectively.1 How? They focused on living the brand, difficult choices and all.

So let me ask you this. What is your brand? What does it mean? Once you have a clear vision of your brand, take a look around your company. How do your materials reflect your brand values? Does your website feel like it should? What about the promises made on the marketing materials and advertising? Do your values come through? Or are they a mix of messages? Take a look at the mundane, everyday communications with your customers. Does your invoice feel like that of a company going 'beyond the call,' so to speak? How about how your phone is answered? If you send out a regular newsletter, review it from the brand perspective.

Now, here's the really tough one. How do your employees reflect your brand values? If your company promises responsiveness as a value, how do you feel about employees who don't respond to voicemails within 24 hours? How should responsiveness be defined?

Your Brand Is Your Company

Strong customer experiences and strong brands go together. It's the tangible (like communications) and intangible (like the tone of the customer service rep). It's as much about listening as it is about communicating. Never underestimate the power of your customers' intuition. If you're not living the promise, then don't say it. Your customers will see that their experiences aren't consistent, and they'll walk away.

Action Items:

Do a communications audit.

Take the time to review all of your communications, right down to how you email customers who send inquiries via your website. Ask yourself, "Does this reflect our brand values?"

Create a brand manual.

Put specific guidelines around how to reflect your brand. Give your employees the tools to live it every day. Reward those who do. (TNT has a Drama King/Queen Award for their employees.)

Assign ownership to the brand guru.

When in doubt, ask an expert. Find someone in your company who really gets it; someone who is already living the brand. Ask them to serve as a review point for communications or sticky situations (like sponsoring a controversial event.) For consistency and quality, have your 'brand guru' review anything and everything that leaves your company..

Your customers appreciate you when you appreciate them. Create relationships by remembering your customers as individuals with whom you have one-on-one relationships. Keeping these five keys to a superior customer experience in mind will help you develop meaningful and powerful win-win customer relationships.

¹ Source: TNT press release, December 29, 2005.

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