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 .
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