In an increasingly commoditised market place, where people see less and less difference between products, brands have become more important than ever. People buy brands not just products (unless it’s a remarkable, groundbreaking product), so we need to create positive impressions of the brand. Each year businesses spend vast sums on communications to build their brand but very few businesses, particularly those with a heavy service slant, take measures to ensure that consumers have an experience that is commensurate with the expectations raised by the brand. Many advertising campaigns over-promise because businesses do not prepare employees for delivery.
To build a successful brand it’s critical that you gear your people up to deliver the experience the brand promises. A brand creates certain expectations that are more often than not let down by frontline employees who fail to deliver the brand promise. Many compelling advertising campaigns are undercut and corporate brands are tarnished when a customer encounters a surly employee or is trapped in the voice-mail maze of ‘customer service’.
Strong brands are built on the actions of employees over time. Leading companies fully understand the value of continually engaging employees as their ‘brand ambassadors’. They spot the points where employees’ behaviour has the most impact on perceptions of the brand, and they can identify the organizational barriers that prevent employees from fully supporting the brand. Most importantly, they have developed processes that enable employees to ‘deliver the brand’ effectively and consistently.
There are a number of factors that are driving the need for a sharper focus on the links between employee behaviour and brand image delivery.
There are more customer touchpoints than ever before. Customers interact with companies via more and more channels ATL, BTL, website, mobile, Customer Services, Sales and so on. Each affect channels has an impact on the customer’s experience.
Approximately a third of corporate costs are employee costs. Astute business leaders conduct an on-going examination of productivity and pressure on management to generate greater value from employees.
When employees know how they fit into the organisation's success and understand the benefits of brand alignment they tend to be more satisfied. The result is lower churn, lower recruitment costs and, of course, the benefits associated with staff continuity.
But I guess ultimately its about the growth of the service economy. Manufacturing in developed countries is in decline. Service industries are contributing >70% of GDP. Looking at the automotive industry, most manufacturers make their money from servicing not from flogging cars. (Why then doesn’t a brand position itself as offering a superior ownership experience?)
Linking employee behaviour to the brand promise helps businesses pull in the same direction. This will help to increase conversion rates, customer loyalty and advocacy, word of mouth and ultimately sales. In my experience, many large organisations don’t communicate to frontline staff how they fit into achieving the company’s brand and, ultimately, financial objectives.
By properly aligning employee behaviour (‘on-brand’ behaviour), business vision and brand positioning, an organisation can build a brand that is more credible, more durable and effective, and more clearly differentiated than anything it can achieve with a standalone killer ad campaign or a hot new product. When I say alignment I mean, 1) Employees understand the business’ aims (what needs to be achieved), 2) Employees understand the brand (how the organization wants to be perceived), and 3) Employees know how to behave (to deliver an experience that fulfils the brand promise).
I’d like to give an example of a company that does this well…but to tell you the truth I’m finding it hard to give you one. The company that came nearest to it for me most recently is Mazda. I’ve been taking my Mazda for a service at the same service centre for the past 2 years and I’ve always found the staff to be very professional, knowledgeable and courteous. When I called their customer service line I had a similar experience. I was treated as a valued customer. This is in stark contrast to when I bought the car. I had a painful and protracted 3 hour negotiation with the sales staff. At one point the salesman asked for my credit card to show I was serious, which I promptly handed over. Later, when I got up to leave because we couldn’t make a deal, he accused me of wasting his time. Deal finally done, I felt like I’d been hit with every slippery sales trick in the book – not a nice feeling and most definitely a dampener on the new car excitement vibe. Upon reflection, I figured that Mazda had a firmer control on their call centre than on their franchised dealers.
So aligned employee behaviour is a key enabler of brand differentiation…but it isn’t easy to achieve.
Employees are not hard-wired to deliver experiences that are automatically aligned to the brand; unchecked their responses are largely driven by their personalities. Marketing - the function responsible for developing and implementing the brand - does not control the touchpoints and the employees that have the crucial interactions with customers. Few companies’ internal communication efforts reinforce brand strategy efforts. And employees often don’t see research data; employees often aren’t engaged in the process of defining the behaviours they believe will lead to better alignment of brand positioning and image attributes.
CEOs need to mandate a path to brand enthusiasm; a roadmap to change employee behaviour in line with the brand promise.
Taking an approach from Kim and Mauborgne’s seminal work Blue Ocean Strategy, to make alignment happen, you need to recruit Kingpins, the persuasive, respected influencers in the organization. Once you have these guys, all the other pins will come toppling down. It also helps that because there are usually only a small number of kingpins, it is relatively easy for the Chief Exec to identify and motivate them.
Broadly, and in brief, I see 4 steps to the journey, taking place over 1 to 2 years. The first is to develop a change attitude and educate the workforce about brands (its role and benefits) via the Kingpins. This should include an understanding of the company’s emphasis on delivering an aligned brand experience. The second step is to build knowledge about the brand positioning components, familiarize staff with examples of excellent brand experiences delivered through employees and highlight expectations of behaviour. The third step is to urge employees to believe that they can personally make a difference and that it is in their interest to deliver the brand. Compensation systems should be modified to encourage employees to deliver the brand via incentives and performance reviews. It should be made clear to staff that they will recognized and rewarded for excellence in customer service that reinforces brand image delivery. The final step is for all employees to deliver; to become brand ambassadors that actively and enthusiastically deliver the brand promise and experience to customers.
There is much to be gained from an alignment program, and much to be lost if an organisation fails to do so.
In these tough economic times, I’ve been thinking about corporate reputations and I've come, I think, to a rather compelling theory: nasty companies will become extinct and nice companies will survive and thrive. The reason why nice companies will do well is that they establish attractive reputations. Companies that have reputations for being good employers find it easier to recruit and keep good people. Companies that have reputations for being good citizens are looked upon favourably by consumers. These days, companies that give to charity and are genuinely concerned about the environment tend to attract more customers. Companies that care about their customers as well as their suppliers give to their products and services an additional, and rather special kind of value. Business leaders are getting very interested in this ‘reputation’ value. They’re beginning to see it as an asset on their ‘invisible balance sheets’. Those are the balance sheets accountants can’t see, but which contain the really crucial things like brand values, intellectual property and know-how of employees.
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