Your brand doesn’t just have to be a marketing or sales campaign, customer service can be an effective brand to establish a solid relationship with customers and contribute to a culture of customer service.
Having a recognizable brand is key to establishing the basis for your customer relationship. Your brand, like your reputation, often times precedes you.
Having a recognizable, service oriented brand will help establish the service relationship that will be the foundation for the customer experience that will follow.
Without a positive brand image and that initial frame of reference for your customer, it makes it too easy for your customer to expect bad service to happen and then be on the lookout for any little reason to validate their assumption.
What is a positive customer service brand?
A positive customer service brand doesn’t need to be complex. A simple message will help connect the customer with your company, long before they ever interact with an employee.
- Zappos – Powered by Service.
- Ritz-Carlton – We are Ladies and Gentlemen, Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.
- Lowe’s – Let’s Build Something Together.
- US Bank – Serving You.
The advantage to you is that your business defines your brand, and not the other way around. That means that you determine what your brand will be. You decide what actions you’ll take. You are in control of how you will create a relationship with your customers. Your business practices allow you to support those decisions. But what your business does, doesn’t make a brand.
Building a consistent customer service brand
The key to building a brand, one that is powerful and effective, is making sure that the essential message is the same. The core idea of your brand must always remain the same. It has be so across all of your business activities, and much be followed in principles by all of your people. Your brand message will be the template your customers will use to judge your business actions.
Your customer service culture depends on your customers being able to depend on you for your exceptional customer service.
Don’t delay thinking about your brand
As you’re starting out on creating a new customer service vision, branding and brand message may not always be something you’re considering. But no successful business gets to be that way without a strong brand message. At some point in time, your customers will need that connected vision. It won’t be enough to just leave your customer relationship to chance.
Creating a strong, service focused brand will be at the core of your customer experience program.
How is your customer service brand different?
Take time now to begin planning your brand message. What will you do that your competitors don’t? In what way will you offer your customers service that they currently can’t get anywhere else? You may already be serving and helping customers, but do you have an organized methods for ensuring that they get a consistent service experience?
How are you re-enforcing your customer service vision to your customers when you’re not working directly with them? All of these questions are answered by having a clear service brand in place.
Your take.
What have you done to establish your customer service brand? How has your brand image helped you win customers and deliver a better service experience?
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