Customer Service and Brand Perceptions

I travel a lot for business and pleasure. I have been to many countries around the world, including many third world countries, some dictatorships, a couple communist countries and some religion-based states. I just returned from Cuba. Staying at hotels and resorts and eating at restaurants throughout the world has led me to experience many different degrees of hospitality and service, including the complete lack thereof. 

In the USA, we have grown accustomed to a fairly high level of personal service when we interact with brands. Most people know the mantra, "Right or wrong, the customer is always right." Ghandi said, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." Going back more than thirty years, companies have hired consultants to help them create "legendary service" cultures and "aha! moments" for their customers. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Ritz-Carlton employees are empowered to offer each guest up to $2,000 per day to make things right with those guests.

We expect happy greetings, smiles, civility, politeness, deference and responsiveness in our interaction with service people. And we expect their patience and understanding when we are slow in our interactions with them. We even have grown to appreciate service people who anticipate our every need before we do ourselves - refilling water glasses, pulling a shade down to reduce the sun's glare in our eyes, replacing a dropped napkin, carrying our luggage for us, etc. We have grown accustomed to positive brand experiences delivered by well-trained and pleasant service people.

This is not the case everywhere. I am generally very civil, pleasant and perhaps even annoyingly cheerful in my interactions with others. Which is why it surprises me when I find that a service person completely ignores me or yells at me or tells me to do something myself. I have even had service people respond, "So what?" One waitress spilled wine on me and then started laughing. I recently witnessed a concierge shouting, cursing and shaking his fist at a customer. 

Don't take good service for granted. It is an important element of a positive brand experience.

Brand Experience

Back in the 1980s, when I was responsible for new product development at Hallmark, I recall reading an SRI International report that pointed to the emergence of experiences as something increasingly salable even over tangible products. Based on that report and other research, I developed a new business proposal for Hallmark that focused on providing and enhancing gift certificates for "experiences as gifts." These included massages, dinners at nice restaurants, balloon rides, wine tastings, movie tickets, etc. We even included services such as housecleaning and yard clean-up. 

While there is still a need for tangible products as we all still have functional needs, experiences are becoming an increasingly important part of our portfolio of purchases, especially for people with disposable income. 

When I think of my own spending, a significant portion of it is on leisure travel, adventure travel, dinners out, skiing, sailing, scuba diving, massages and similar experiences. Even my tangible purchases include a large element of experience - traveling to Napa Valley, touring wineries and tasting wines before I purchase them and visiting public and commercial art galleries before I purchase art. 

And while charitable giving should be altruistic, we often attend galas in which we have a chance to wear our formalwear,  dance to live bands, enjoy nice food and drink, socialize with old and new friends and bid on silent auctions, which I particularly enjoy. Clearly, galas are experiences. 

Even our local brewery (Genessee Brewing Company) has added tours, tastings, restaurants, bars, a beer museum and views of a 95 foot waterfall in downtown Rochester -- all clearly part of an experience. And, thanks to a local not-for-profit organization, an adjacent bridge across the Genesee River gorge from the brewery will soon be the home of a horizontal garden akin to New York City's High Line or Shelburne Falls, MA's Bridge of Flowers.

So, I would have you consider what sort of experience your brand is creating. When you consider how much we enjoy sensory stimulation - sight, taste, scent, touch and sound - it is important for brands to create experiences that play to these senses. 

I wish you great success in creating your brand's sensory experience. 

Creating the Total Brand Experience - Starbucks

Starbucks does this (creating the total brand experience) well. Not only is its product extraordinarily different from and better than a normal cup of coffee, but everything else the company does also adds to the brand experience. The stores feature carefully crafted,  aesthetically coordinated components: the smell of fresh brewed coffee, a wide variety of unusual blends, exotic names (Venti Mocha Frappuccino), fresh pastries, piped-in jazz, comfortable wing chairs, a fireplace (some stores), live music (some stores), functional but stylish lighting, sophisticated design graphics, stylish merchandising, etc.

Starbucks store designers must first work behind the counter for a while to better understand the in-store experience. And their employees (called “partners”) receive extensive brand and customer service training and stock options to ensure the quality of the customer experience in the store. Each employee receives a document called the Green Apron Book, a booklet that fits into the pocket of a barista’s green apron, filled with tips and insights about how “to provide an uplifting experience that enriches people’s daily lives.” The company’s website devotes space to the history and mystique of coffee brewing. Starbucks delivers an affordable indulgent experience. Everything is designed to make you feel sophisticated in a warm and inviting way. (Buy a cup of Starbucks coffee and you are swept away from the

ordinary for a while!)

I wrote the previous paragraphs for the first edition of this book (Brand Aid, 2003). Since then, Starbucks has experienced a long period of rapid growth through new store openings, geographic expansion, new product development, and selling Starbucks products through new channels (including five airlines) and retail formats (including Express, which caters to the “grab and go” customer). This demontrates the problem of growing successful brands. Starbucks products are now available in environments in which the company can no longer control the brand experience. On an airline, for example, a passenger may get a cup of Starbucks coffee, but its preparation probably does not follow the company’s brewing guidelines—and it is served to a passenger in a cramped seat on a crowded plane, one of the least comfortable places anyone can imagine. Does this experience fit with the Starbucks brand? Certainly not. To continue on the growth trajectory, decisions are often made that detract from the intended brand experience. Is Starbucks still about that special “third place” experience, or is it now just another ubiquitous brand with mass appeal?

To answer this question, let’s look at an example provided by customer experience expert Mark Gobé in his book, Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People. At one point in Starbucks’ history, the company’s financial managers determined that switching from two-ply to one-ply toilet paper in Starbucks’ bathrooms would save the company a significant sum of money annually. Despite the potential cost savings, however, senior management rejected the idea. Why? According to Gobé, “Because Starbucks promises a great coffee experience. And in order to do that, it takes more than a barista and a menu of coffee drinks that will make your head spin. It takes satisfaction at all touch-points.”

The question, then, is how Starbucks can continue to create the total customer/brand experience now that it has become the largest coffee shop company in the world. With competing brands like Peet’s, Caribou, and Boulder Coffee taking market share away from the coffee behemoth and independent coffee shops appearing in many markets, Starbucks has to work harder than ever to preserve the emotional connection with its customers that made the company the leader it is today.

Excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition (2015), available here.

What is Your Brand Delivering?

Storytelling

Brands tell stories. They create myths. They engage people. They entertain people.  What story does your brand tell? Is it engaging? Does it create an emotional connection to the brand?

Experience

What experience does your brand deliver? Does in connect with people through one or more of the five senses – touch, smell, sight, sound and taste? What feelings does it evoke? Does it calm people? Does it exhilarate them? Does it make them laugh?

Values

Brands often stand for something. They embrace a set of values.  What does your brand stand for? What values does it embrace? Does your brand express the values of its intended customers? Can they wear the brand as a badge of their values? Can they use the brand as a self-expression vehicle?

Personality

Brands have specific personalities. What personality does you brand have? Is it trustworthy? Is it reliable? Is it friendly? Is it smart? Is it innovative? Is it entertaining? Is it compassionate? Is it rugged? Is it stylish? Is it quirky? What personality should your brand have?

Service

How does your brand serve its customers? Does it have a service ethic? Does it strive to anticipate customer needs and exceed customer expectations?  Does it try to surprise and delight its customers?

Archetype

What is your brand’s archetype? What drives it to behave as it does? What is its primary motivation? Does it like to guide others? Is it trying to save the world? Does it like to achieve? Is it a nurturer? Is its motivation to create the next big thing? What drives it to be the brand what it is?

Personification

In what ways does your brand take on human qualities? As listed above, does it have a specific personality and does it hold certain values? Is it trustworthy? Does it make promises to its customers? Does it connect emotionally with its customers?

Promise

Finally, what is your brand’s promise? What does it promise to its customers? Does it promise unique and compelling benefits or shared values? Does it consistently deliver on those promises? If it fails to deliver on one of its promises, does it recover from that failure and even turn the failure into a victory?

Summary

This then is what a brand does.  It tells stories. It creates experiences. It holds a specific set of values and it shares those values with its customers. It makes promises. It delivers on those promises.  It provides services to its customers. It has an archetype and a personality.  And it can do all of this because it is the personification of an organization and its products and services.

Creating the Optimal Brand Experience

How do you create an optimal brand experience? First, ask the following

questions:

• Will the experience impact all of the human senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch?
• How will the experience make people feel?
• Will people want to linger with your brand’s products and services?
• Will people want to use the brand often? Will they want to return frequently (for applicable product/service categories)? Will they look forward to using the brand’s products and services again?
• Does your brand reinforce something about who your customers are?
• Does your brand have a strong “point of view”? Does it stand for something? Is it clear what it cares about?
• Is your brand exciting, soothing, exhilarating, fun, comforting, relaxing, stimulating, centering, calming, rejuvenating?
• Will your brand conjure up images in your customers’ minds? Will it evoke memories?
• Will your brand have the power to take people to “a different place”?
• Can it put them “in a different state of mind”? Will it have the power to change their mood?
• Will your brand make people feel as though they belong to something important or good or newsworthy?

Excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.

Creating the Brand Experience

Brands deliver functionality, information and entertainment. Brands often also include a service element. The service element treats customers with respect and deference. It caters to their needs and desires and makes them feel special. Brands might also stand for something important to their customers. In this way, they are able to create a community of people who share the same values. Further, brands can serve as a “badge” for people who share those values. The brand experience itself might be soothing, relaxing, reassuring, affirming, surprising, exciting, titillating, thought-provoking, educational, refreshing, rejuvenating, uplifting or just plain fun. Brands should connect with people’s heads and especially with their hearts.

Remember, brands are more than the products that bear their identities.  They represent the complete experience customers receive when interacting with the brand and its products and services.  What experience does your brand create for its customers? What problems does it solve for them? Does it illuminate them or make them see the world in a different way?  How does it make them feel?