Your brands worst nightmare

We’ve all experienced it. Something goes wrong with our phone, internet, cable, credit card, or [insert any product or service here]. We call the customer service line, and after punching in what feels like a thousand numbers, we finally get a real live person, and the rush of mollification gives us hope. We explain our dilemma, and wait.

That’s often where the hopeful feeling ends. Almost always, the Customer Service Rep is bored, untrained, or unsure. Some are unhelpful. Some are even blatantly rude.

Our frustration turns to rage. Nothing makes us go from irritated to irate faster than the attitude of a front line person. And now, with the proliferation of social media, we consumers have more power than ever before. We tweet, Facebook, Instagram and text like madmen, sharing our negative experience to our networks to be shared and shared in the limitless world of cyberspace.

The statistics are astounding. 70% of shoppers have stopped buying goods or services from a company after experiencing poor customer service. 68% of the time, a lost customer is caused by feelings of poor treatment. Despite most large companies’ claims of superior customer service, customers continue to see poor and sometimes abhorrent customer service from those same companies.

To us marketers, this is a branding nightmare.

Nothing can break a brand’s promise quicker than a front line person’s attitude. This isn’t always rudeness from a CSR; a coffee shop cashier that takes too long to deliver orders has a similar brand issue.

When disconnects happens between a promise and delivery, it’s a brand failure. As many of us know, it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one negative one, but studies show that 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with your organization again. The bottom line is that when a front line person hurts your brand, it’s extremely costly – both financially and to your reputation.

What’s a marketer to do?

1. The marketer must understand his/her role in the branding process. A marketer doesn’t create the brand – a brand is an embodiment of the values of the organization. The brand is determined by the fundamental essence of the company – typically by the founders, and is ingrained in the culture of the organization. A marketer brings a brand to life. He/she lights it, personifies it, and keeps it going.
2. The most important ambassadors of the brand are the front line staff. Employees are the greatest asset of any organization, and the single greatest attributes to a brand. Without employee buy-in and understanding, the brand is extremely vulnerable. A marketer’s job is to work to ensure that all employees believe in and embody the brand in all aspects of their work.
3. Education and training as an essential element of the brand. All front line employees (heck, all employees – whether in accounting, admin, or IT) need to understand and buy into the brand. This comes with a direct line of communication from marketing to the rest of the organization. A very effective element to this is to add brand training as part of an employee’s onboard training. Partnering with Human Resources is an excellent idea, as employees see on their first day what the brand is all about and their unique role in delivering on it.

All marketers in charge of brands must add employee training and buy-in into the overall brand strategy. This must be repeated as often as possible (a ‘once and done’ strategy is rarely effective). This is especially important in service industries such as telecommunications, insurance, and hospitality, but there are few industries where customer service isn’t paramount to a company’s success.