Editor’s note: Neal Kreitman is senior partner at marketing research consultancy ABN Partners, New York. This piece was written with brand insights provided by Betsy Bender, principal, Bender Solutions Group, Baltimore.
Every organization is concerned about the customer experience. It is often mentioned as a key differentiator from competitors. But many organizations miss the correlation of customer experience and their brand.
Brand is defined in many ways. Simply, it’s the promise you make to your customers. Customer experience is a function of that brand promise.
Customer experience is the intersection of your brand promise and customers’ expectations. And it begins the moment a customer perceives they may need your product/service. Their journey with your brand begins as soon as they see your store, your sign, your ad, your Web site, etc. and continues when they interact with your people, your process, your product, your service, etc. Each experience arouses an emotion and leaves an indelible mental imprint that influences their perception of your brand.
To think of customer experience in terms of an operational process understates its influence on your organization’s success. Consideration must be given to the customer’s emotions.
Let’s look at an example. A company’s marketing materials portray their brand promise as warm, caring and approachable. Then, customers confront an automated phone system with eight choices and 10 minutes on hold to ask a simple question, after they provide their account number, date of birth and mother’s maiden name. It’s not only a bad customer experience but a brand problem. That’s because there’s a disconnect between the customer’s expectation, per the brand promise, and their experience.
So, what’s a business leader to do? Know that customer emotions change at various points along their journey with your brand, and design your process accordingly. Measure customer experience qualitatively, not just with quantitative satisfaction surveys. Engage a consumer insights (a.k.a. research) professional to explore customer wants, needs, attitudes, emotions and behaviors. Collect feedback from multiple touchpoints about how well your process delivers the brand promise, how customers describe your company and what’s most important to them about their experience.
Synthesizing the findings will reveal the most complete picture of how to design a customer experience that supports your brand. Use customer journey mapping to plot the route a customer takes during their experience with your organization, including detours and redundancies. Include the emotions associated with each stop and consider how the process can support delivery of an on-brand customer experience.
Customer experience and brand health need continuous monitoring and should be open to change at any time. Done right, it can increase customer loyalty and referrals.