MAL42:21 | Page 48

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Personal Versus Corporate Brand Experience

By Carolyne Gathuru

Customer Experience Training Programmes cannot be complete and effective if one major topic is not captured in the training curriculum - ‘ Personal Branding ’. Sounds cliché doesn ’ t it ?

The critical need for this subject though , is occasioned by the fact that by and large , customer experience excellence is a factor of the human element of the attitude , demeanor and manner in which the service is delivered , much more than the actual product or brick and mortar facility .
Customer Experience is the sum total of all interactions a customer has with a brand at each and every touch-point , and these interactions have far greater impact when the human element that elicits customer feelings has these outcomes as positive .
The ‘ personal branding ’ training module within CX programmes , seeks to have participants understand the overall brand promise of their organization , its sub elements and then the inherent relationship between that and their individual and collective responsibility towards delivering it .
Embedded in the topic is how to identify one ’ s current personal brand and how to develop a brand of choice . This involves reflection questions that need review , without which the current status and the areas for attention towards reaching the finishing line , that are important for personal and corporate brand work , would be missing .
Customer experience excellence is a derivative of delivery of great customer service , which is a further derivative of persons with personal brands that stand for doing what ’ s right and treating customers fairly . Corporate brands are therefore a consolidated derivative of multiple personal brands that make up the human capital of the organization .
But where you may ask , in the service delivery excellence chart , does a personal brand start and the corporate brand end and vice versa ? Can a corporate that

Everyone then needs to ask themselves - what is my audience ’ s ‘ experience ’ of me online ? Is the experience reflective of my personal brand that impacts my corporate ’ s brand overall brand equity ? Is the service I deliver with my personal online engagements up to par with the service delivery standards measured at my workplace or in my business ? brands itself as one that puts customers first , is customer centric and runs on the fuel of customer obsession , do so without the personal brands encapsulated within standing for the same values , code of practice and culture ?

The sum total of a corporate brand constitutes all the external branding efforts to project , display and communicate the brand values and standpoints , as well as the internal branding metrics as epitomized by the workforce . An employee ’ s personal brand therefore takes center stage for organizations gunning for customer focus as one of their key brand stands , and … they are many !
Everywhere one turns , be it in the public or private sector space or public benefit non-profit-making space , the desire to be known for providing customer or stakeholder value presents itself in every strategic paper and implementation plan .
So essentially , the consolidation of the workforce ’ s personal brands , in terms of who they really are , what they stand for , how they project themselves both spoken and unspoken , their thoughts , opinions , expressions , what they align themselves to and represent as their persons , is central to how the overall brand operates and its impact in the customer experience excellence realm .
With that equation and association firmly in place , the online manifestation of the same has a significantly far-reaching bearing , given the ratios between physical reach and online reach in terms of sheer numbers .
46 MAL42 / 21 ISSUE