Brand Touchpoints Audit
A recent Bain & Company survey of customers from 362 companies found only 8% of them rated their experience as “superior,” but 80% of the companies believed that the experience they had been providing was superior. Are you in the 80%?
Inside most organizations, when sales fall Marketing is blamed. However, upon more rigorous investigation we often find that Marketing is the unsung hero in an organization, acquiring new accounts at an impressive rate. So, if the number of purchasing households and revenues are down, what’s going on?
The real problem is elsewhere.
An organization’s brand promise is crafted and distributed by the Marketing department, but that promise is kept by the whole organization. It’s kept - or broken - by your parking attendants, your ticket services staff, your inbound and outbound telemarketing team, your ushers, your artistic staff, and everyone else in your organization.
Customers brand you one connection - one touchpoint - at a time.
Remember, you don’t brand you; your customer brands you. At best, branding influences opinion-formation among audiences, but it controls nothing. Putting that brand promise out there is where the real work begins. A relevant and meaningful brand doesn’t live in pixels, paper and ink. It lives in the totality of the customer’s experience.
Why is that even among those sophisticated organizations that understand the importance and impact of branding that so many people think the work is done when the branding work is finished?
If friendly is one of your brand values, it only takes one grouchy employee to impeach the credibility of your brand in the mind of the person who might have experienced that churlishness. If accessibility is a key brand value and your building signage is illegible, your promise has been impeached. If comfort is a brand value and there is no place for anyone to sit down and rest in your lobby, how comfortable is the experience?
As you probably know, your brand is a promise your organization makes to its customers. Your customers expect you to keep those promises. The brand “lives” in the minds of customers. You refresh – much like refreshing your computer browser – how customers experience your brand each and every time they interact with or experience an impression of your organization. That impression can occur directly with the organization or from media or a third party.
Marketing defines or makes the brand promise through its communications. Ultimately, a successful brand shapes customers’ experiences by embedding the fundamental value proposition into every touch. Your entire organization fulfills the brand promise.
Our Brand Touchpoints Audit evaluates every experience a customer has with your organization through a qualitative and quantitative process.