In 2020, Customer Experience (CX) and Brand are the same thing. As we have said on previous blogs your brand is more than a logo, it is the feeling that your customer experience provides! It is important for companies to invest the time and resources in defining their brand through the values they want to people to perceive when interacting with their organization and the best place to do that is within the customer’s journey or better said customer experience. It is important to have a thorough understanding of how you wish that experience to progress provides you with the necessary messaging that you choose to promote.
Companies struggle with controlling how their brand is perceived if they do not focus on fostering the experience that is aligned to their brand. Customers can effortlessly tell the market about their experiences through social media and review platforms that will live long past that initial interaction. This advancement has made brand less about what you promise and more on what you deliver.
CX = BRAND
Many customers may not be acutely aware of your company’s official brand story but they will quickly have an idea through the impressions they receive based upon their experiences across their interaction or touch-points. Additionally, feedback from their spheres of influence will play a major role.
An example of how those interactions play a major role in your brand’s perception was a story from 2017, when United Airlines Flight 3411 bumped a few passengers and they didn’t appreciate it. A fellow passenger filmed the whole incident and it caused a social media backlash. This sparked an entire debate on the United Airlines customer experience eventually ending in a $140mm settlement and United Airlines CEO publicly saying
“This will never happen again. We are not going to put a law enforcement official onto a plane to take them off…to remove a booked, paid, seated passenger. We can’t do that.” –United CEO Oscar Munoz, three days after the incident.
While this was a hefty settlement cost the damage to the brand was untold and United Airlines had to commit to improving their customer experience and state that this was not what the United Airlines brand stood for!
BRAND IS EVERYTHING
Brand is more than just goodwill it’s a company’s most-valuable asset that is appearing as significant values on company’s balance sheets. Customer experience is more than just meeting the basic needs its about making people feel great when interacting with your organization! It’s about trust, ease, convenience and delight! Companies that deliver on their brand and customer experience will be positioned for long-term growth and success! Positioning your company to create brand to business strategy alignment is paramount in your success plan. Investing in things such as proper technology stacks, qualified brand managers and growth-oriented agencies are just some of the ways that you can make meaningful assets in your company’s brand.
MEASURING FOR SUCCESS
As experience continues to grow in importance it as become crucial for organizations to create measurable experiences and has blossomed an entire industry of platforms measuring customer satisfaction with things such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS) through platforms such as Survey Monkey and Get Feedback additionally customer sentiment has become an important metric all being key indicators of success in Customer Experience in ultimately brand success.
