The term “brand experience” is more than our industries most recent buzzword, it’s the sum of every single touchpoint a business has with their customers. No matter the size of an organization or its operational budget, the brand experience remains a company’s greatest ally when influencing customer interactions with a product or service.
With more retailers, products and services than ever before competing for each precious consumer dollar, organizations can no longer rely on catchy names, sexy company logos, or trendy color pallets in order to stand out. If only it were that easy. Success requires much more than that, it demands they must leverage each customer interaction in order to create a unique brand experience that will set them apart from the competition.
A great brand experience both initiates and cultivates an ongoing relationship between business and buyer that keeps customers coming back for more. However, building a successful brand experience requires a healthy dose of empathy, consistency, collaboration, and strategy that may not come inherently to organizations.
The brand experience evolution can be particularly difficult for companies that use the traditional business model of department silos (sales, marketing, customer service etc.). In this model, each department tends to interface differently with the customer. Such disjointed interactions negatively impact the brand experience over time by causing friction that frustrates customers.
In his book X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, author Brian Solis writes “Businesses are no longer the sole creator of a brand; it is co-created by consumers through shared experiences and defined by the results of online searches and conversations.” The impact of customer experience is not to be underestimated. In 2017 Spiegel Research Center released a study stating “With nearly 95% of shoppers reading online reviews before making a purchase, reviews have transformed the way consumers make purchase decisions.” The customer experience remains at the center of every brand experience and must be seamless, connected and consistent throughout.
By starting with the following three steps, organizations can begin building (or rebuilding) a compelling brand experience that will keep their customers coming back for more.
Consider The Big Picture: Keep the full customer cycle in mind when creating each unique customer experience. Consider each interaction that someone who is completely oblivious to the brand would have in order to become an evangelist of it. How would they first hear about this business? How seamless are your digital touchpoints? When they finally arrived at the storefront, how would the ambiance make them feel? After they made a purchased, would the product keep its promise? If the product didn’t work, how would customer service respond? It may sound excessive, but in order for brands to make a strong and lasting impression, they must focus intently on all consumer touchpoints. Your story is told in every touchpoint, not just in the copywriting.
Track Your Progress: Since the customer experience directly impacts the brand experience, organizations that seek consumer insights at each touchpoint can save time and money by strategically focusing marketing efforts where they prove most effective.
Know Your Customer: Advances in machine learning have given companies a competitive edge in the never-ending quest for understanding customer behavior. Collecting real-time data based on limited customer interactions can be far more effective than relying on lengthy surveys and questionnaires. Use data smart. Meet customers where they are. Delight them with the simple things, like ease of use, to create a refreshing experience that surprises customers and keeps them coming back for more.
Build Trust Through Transparency: Commit to offering products and services that not only do what was promised but in the way it was promised. Organizations that can anticipate the experiences of their customers at each touchpoint are able to provide relevant information at the right time. This proactive approach to customer support gifts customers with peace of mind and an added measure of confidence in their purchase.
“Welcome to a new era of marketing and service in which your brand is defined by those who experience it,” Solis writes. Just ask Yeti, Uber and Airbnb, the benefits of designing a memorable and consistent brand experience is a sign of longevity, and will pay off in more ways than one for years to come.
Ben McCraw
What is Brand Experience and Why Should You Care? was originally published in accpl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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