Are you the proud owner of a successful brand? Branding Agency London will tell you that the primary voice that can give an honest and unbiased answer to this is your customer. Your most unsatisfied customer can provide your brand with a valuable opportunity for growth. This is precisely why it is important for customer expectations and brand delivery to be aligned. If your brand’s mission and vision promise one thing, but your customer experience displays something else, your business will fail to grown. Consistency on these two fronts is essential as a brand is a key lever to driving growth.
Today’s thriving companies that either do thorough research or work alongside professional services brand consultancy are able to truly weave the brand into the fabric of their organisation. When everyone from employees to executives makes decisions based on brand, your company can align the brand experience to what matters most to your customer. The most successful companies have products, cultures, marketing strategies and customer experiences that all stem from what they stand for.
If your company is one of those that is uncertain about their brand position, brand research is the answer to the predicament. It is the bread and butter for Brand Consultancy London that allows them to pave the way for companies to meet their targets and seize opportunities. It can pinpoint what matters most to the customer throughout the experience your brand has with them (pre-, during, post-purchase), where your strengths are relative to the comp set and how you should position your brand to drive customer acquisition, retention and loyalty. FMCG and packaging brand consultancy always takes a page from this strategy.
For brands that stand for good customer service, one way to deliver on that is by making the corporate decision to train your employees to listen and connect on an empathetic level with customers. By going beyond customer service basics, a company delivers an exceptional customer experience and gains retention and loyalty.
Customers also define a great customer experience as one where any problems are solved seamlessly and proactively. Southwest Airlines, for example, has been known to send both apology letters and $100 credits to customers who experienced flight delays—even if the customers never complained. Unlike many other airlines, Southwest allows customers to check two bags fee-free, and has made it easy for its fliers to cancel and change flights too. The brand knows how to translate their “LUV” of customers into outstanding customer experiences and because of that they continue to report record earnings.
Corporate decisions that impact customer experience are so important that Adobe created an Experience Index, which is a tool that attempts to calculate what matters most to customers. Today’s consumers are most impressed by experiences that are personalised (an airline that provides the perfect recommendation for the city a customer is traveling to) and innovations that improve everyday experiences (like the coffee shop that makes ordering easy via an app).
It’s clear that in a world where customer experience leads, growth will come to brands who know how to deliver on it through smart corporate decisions that reflect and elevate their brand positioning.