Improving Customer Experience

Living the brand training

Delivering a branded experience

Most brands will have a set of brand values that sum up the brand’s essence and what it stands for to its stakeholders and customers. These direct and pervade the promise that the brand creates through its advertising and promotion. These are the building blocks the experience must deliver on if the promise is to have any meaning.

In a world where product quality and price differences have narrowed in virtually all categories, delivering a distinctive and relevant customer experience is the factor that can win the hearts and minds of customers and create competitive advantage for organisations.

How a customer feels about a brand is affected by what they perceive the brand to be, what they hear about the brand, during the many interactions they may have with it. Their experience is made up of a blend of the company’s physical performance and the emotions evoked and measured against customers’ expectations across all brand interactions. How customers feel emotionally and rationally has a direct impact on how committed they are to a brand and in turn what they say and do.

How front line employees deliver your brand principles plays an important role is shaping a customers perception of your brand overall. It is important that Customer Service and Sales Team members support and live out the brand values during their interactions with your customers and this can be demonstrated by amongst other things, what they say to your customers and how they say it as well as the actions they carry out both during and after a interaction.

Customer Experience principles are derived from brand values and can be deployed in a checklist format for staff to judge whether or not the experiences being provided and those being considered are “brand true”.

These are some customer experience dimensions that team members should consider during customer interactions:

Personalised - Are we being personal in our dealings with the customer and do we demonstrate that we know and understand him or her?
Friendly - Are we friendly, without being too matey?
Fair - Do we take understand the customers view and empathise with them, when appropriate
Easy – How easy did we make it for the customer to do business with us?
Expert -Will we be perceived as being Travel Experts during interactions, do we know are stuff? How do we communicate this?
Differentiated -Does our approach to customer experience and interaction make us unique, or do our major competitors already do it?
Involved - Does the customer become closer to us because of this?
Responsive – How well do we respond to our customers, do we create and actively seek to create emotional connections – do we share in their excitement?
Guided-Are team members using knowledge of the customer to guide him or her in their decision making?
Available - Are you services available to the customer whenever and wherever they want to enquire about, or buy, them

Enabling your people

The way customers experience your brand is not just at an impersonal company level. It is often at a personal level through the interface with the company through customer facing employees and intermediaries.

If your Sales and Service team members are to deliver this branded experience a number of key factors have to be in place to engage employees effectively and consistently. Our experience shows that:

Values need to be translated into behaviours with standards, developed with employees which, when delivered by employees, will evoke the desired customer experience
All employees understanding the benefits of service quality and the relationship with customer retention and acquisition
Team Leaders are in place that ‘walk the talk’ and all managers operate in a way that reinforces the belief that delivering good service internally and externally will contribute to good business results
Creating a working environment wherein appropriate employee values/ expectations are delivered
Open and regular communications and effective use of recognition is utilised
Effective first-line management
Regular measurement and evaluation of the customer and employee experience against KPI's

How we can help you deliver a branded CX

Vision Consulting as developed a Training Program that helps your people deliver a branded customer experience to your customers during their interactions, right across channels. We also provide support to organisations who are struggling to formulate their tone of voice.

Our "Living the brand" training program explores a number of themes including;

What is a Brand and what is Branding
How organisations seek to differentiate themselves from their competition through their brand.
How people can live your brand during their customer interactions.
Your organisation's Vision and Values and how these can be translated into words and behaviours