Customers
experience your brand in numerous ways: products, packaging, price, marketing,
sales personnel, etc. Each of these contacts or touchpoints molds the
customer's impression of the brand. Some of these touchpoints are obvious, like
product performance, and one-on-one customer interactions. Other touchpoints,
such as the product manual, monthly statements or post-sales support, may be
subtler in their brand effects.
Your brand image creates
expectations. It defines who you are, how you operate, and how you're different
from your competitors. In essence, your brand image is a promise - a promise
that must be kept.
1. Identify your
reasons-to-believe.
Your brand promise is
irrelevant if your customers do not believe it. Therefore, your promise must be
supported by reasons-to-believe. This will automatically add substance to the
promise and define specific expectations for the customer.
For example, an automobile
manufacturer promises potential customers that Car XYZ is an "intelligent
choice for serious drivers." What makes it an intelligent choice? Why
should the customer believe this promise?
To address this question
effectively, the manufacturer could frame its promise with two
reasons-to-believe... sporty performance and safety. These two reasons in
essence define "intelligent choice" and clearly set customer
expectations. They also give the company specific direction for designing the
customer experience through tangible customer touchpoints like vehicle design
features, advertising campaigns, dealer sales approaches, and customer service
activities.
2. Identify customer
touchpoints.
Each individual step in your
business process contains a number of touchpoints when the customer comes in
contact with your brand. Your ultimate goal is to have each touchpoint
reinforce and fulfill your marketplace promise.
Walk through your commercial
processes. How do you generate customer demand? How are products sold? How do
your customers use your products? How do you provide after-sales support?
This comprehensive trace of
your marketing, selling, and servicing processes allows you to create a simple
touchpoint map that defines your customers' experiences with your brand.
3. Determine the most
influential touchpoints.
All touchpoints are not
created equal. Some will naturally play a larger role in determining your
company's overall customer experience. For example, if your product is ice
cream, taste is typically more important than package design. Both are
touchpoints, but each has a different effect on our customers’ experiences as a
whole.
To determine the touchpoints
driving your customers' overall experience, your organization can use a wide
array of techniques ranging from quantitative research to institutional
knowledge. The methods you use will depend on the complexity of your products,
commercial processes, and your existing knowledge base.
4. Design the optimal
experience.
Once you have completed the
above three steps to building a brand, you should be able to design your
optimal customer experience.
Here's how:
Determine how to express each
reason-to-believe at each key touchpoint. For example, how can you reinforce
sporty performance (a reason-to-believe) in product design, at the dealership,
and in marketing campaigns (the influential touchpoints)?
5. Align the organization to
consistently deliver the optimal experience.
A holistic approach to
aligning your organization to consistently deliver the optimal experience is
essential. Identify the people, processes, and tools that drive each key touchpoint.
Look beyond employees that
have direct contact with your customers. The impacts of behind-the-scenes
employees are less obvious but no less important. Similarly, the impact of
workflow processes and tools (i.e. technology systems) on the customer
experience may be less intuitive but crucial to consistent delivery.
Identify which activities
don't align with your envisioned customer experience. Determine how to address
them so that these components can be brought into alignment.
The Final Word
Every product or service you
bring to market yields a customer experience. Is it the experience you intend?
Does that experience fulfill the promise you've made to the marketplace?
By identifying the people,
processes, and tools that drive your customer experience, you can actively
design and control your own, unique, optimized experience. The brand promise
you make to the marketplace will be kept day in and day out across every key
customer touchpoint, building a strong brand
Source : http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/marketing/a/brandbuildingsg.htm