I’ve always seen the relationship between brand and customer experience as a vital, but simple one. What your customers experience, is the fulfilment of the promise that your brand makes.
When experience doesn’t meet expectations
Brands can be out there promising the world, but if that doesn’t materialise in what your customers experience, then you’re off to a bad start. You’re effectively the person at a party, assuring everyone that you’re funny but not landing anything. It stands out rapidly.
In some ways then, complaints are simply a function of the gap between these two things. I’ve often thought that I could rapidly reduce complaints for any brand – but the way I’d do it wouldn’t be to the taste of the leaders of brand marketing there.
I’d fast be assuring customers that ‘we try hard but often make mistakes’ or ‘we have good recipes, but the chefs often don’t follow them’.
Positioning is key
I’m being a little facetious but you take the point. If you were to position the brand to customers in a way that would quickly lower their expectations, then I’d wager complaints would reduce at a similar pace. However – potentially so would custom.
Which of course brings us to the point. Complaints aren’t a customer service issue alone. They’re a brand issue. They need to be viewed as a critical tool to building brand as much as limiting problems for operational areas.
Want to build a brand?
Start by accepting that your customers’ experiences are the core of it, not separate from it. Challenging expense, fast tracking training, not recruiting well are all moments that can damage a brand far faster than one can ever be built.
Maximise your customer interactions
Customer Experience is a fundamental marketing opportunity that remains missed far too often. If businesses saw customer interactions – say a phone call, as a 3-minute brand advert, I think the focus on them would be very different.
We love talking about this in Project50 – and we’d love to talk to you about it.
