Do you deliver? Keep your word?

Do you deliver? Keep your word? 
Read the article to discover how very important these aspects are to your brand.
81% say they would pay more for these elements.
#branddevelopment   #brandingtips  

Originally shared by Mark Traphagen

Broken Brand  Promises: the Disconnect Between Marketing & Customer Experience
Kerry Bodine kerrybodine.com at #MozCon  2014

Supposedly it pays to be among America's most hated companies: http://t.co/WvhZtbxgS9

But 81% of consumers say they would willing pay more for better customer service. 70% have stopped buying from a brand because of bad service.

Brands like United Airlines think loyalty matters. Making a lot of explicit promises to their customers. But Kerry had a story about a friend getting very bad service right after getting an email from United promising better service.

Brands also make implicit promises. For example, you would expect a Twitter account @DeltaAssist to be, well, helpful. But took 9 hours to get a response to an urgent need.

Simple: When expectations based on a promise don't meet what is delivered, bad feelings are inevitable. Be very careful about what expectations you raise re: what you are able to deliver.

Customer journey maps from the real world: (the value of creating a journey map that tracks how a typical customer interaction really goes)

People often have an up-and-down roller coaster experience throughout a customer service interaction. Companies need to be aware of where the down points occur, what is happening to the customer there, and what they could do to fix that.

Questions:
Who is responsible for brand?
Who is responsible for marketing?
Who's responsible for customer experience?
Answer: EVERYONE in the company.

Create a service blueprint based on findings from the customer journey map. Map out every touchpoint the customer has with your company and what kind of interaction typically happens there. 

Actions:

1. Come to terms with what your brand really stands for (hint: it's probably NOT your slogan. Example: Best Buy: Try It Out Here Before You Buy it on Amazon). Use a collage of real customer impressions about your brand.

2. Determine your brand journey and create a customer journey map. Elements: 1. Your brand promise 2. Evidence in actual customer experience 3. Your brand reality (the promise that you're actually keeping)

3. Help employees to discover the role they play in the customer experience. Needs to go beyond just having a brand standards guide. Need to empower people to create better CX's. Ask them to take each brand promise, think about what that should feel like for a customer, and then think about what they could do to deliver that promise.  

But don't just pay attention to the problem spots in the journey. Also focus on the spots that are already really working, and incorporate those into your current marketing messages. In other words, make sure your marketing messages emphasize promises that you know you currently can keep. 

Put those promises front and center in your branding messages. Emirates Airlines has their experience as the first item in their site navigation. 

In other words: KEEP your promises first, THEN make them!
Resource: kerrybodine.com/CXbrand