Brand and the customer experience

By Marty Carroll

There’s a saying that beauty is only skin-deep, and for some companies, branding is only logo-deep. When they invest hundreds of thousands of pounds rebranding, the result is a new swirly logo to represent some re-imagined values. What goes on where the company meets the customer remains the same, though, so the customer’s perception of the brand is unchanged.

There can be a wide gulf between the brand promise, and the brand experience of the average customer. The website Brandtags invites members of the public to say what springs to mind when they see famous logos. The keywords entered rarely echo the company’s brand values, and all too often are a direct rebuttal of them.

Customers are more suspicious than ever before, with the latest Edelman Trust Barometer showing that more than half the customers surveyed trust brands less than they did a year ago. People are less likely to be influenced by marketing, and are more likely to trust their own experiences of a brand and those of their friends and influencers. With people densely connected online, the word of mouth effect is amplified, and that’s particularly true when there are negative experiences to share.

The investments that companies make in branding are important and should be sustained. They help to build trust with customers, and reinforce key messages. But they must be supported and reinforced at every customer touch point. You can’t be “innovative” if you make customers wait five minutes for a call centre agent, or if you can’t cope with customers moving between channels in a single transaction. You can’t claim to be a “luxury” product, if it’s a hassle to buy from you.

If companies are to ensure that their brand experience supports and enhances the brand promise, they must make delivering the customer experience a much bigger part of brand planning. They must involve operations directors in rebranding exercises, and ensure the performance metrics on the shopfloor reflect the company values, rather than just pushing for sales and conversions. They must strive to turn customers into ambassadors, and use word of mouth to build the business.

When companies get it right, the brand can be the business’s greatest asset, and its greatest defence against competitors. Without customers trusting that the company delivers on its promise, though, the brand is nothing more than a sugar coating on a bitter pill.