all your account information that you’ve already entered. Then
the rep will ask you a bunch of stupid questions you already
answered for the person you spoke with previously. When you
do schedule your appointment, customer service provides you
a four-hour window of time when you need to be home. The
technician shows up either early or late, or not at all. Finally,
you get your cable bill, which is already too high to begin with,
and discover that the company charged you way more than you
expected for the service call.
When it comes to customer satisfaction—or the lack of it—it
doesn’t get much worse than this.
With that atrocious level of customer service, pretty soon some
of the big cable companies earned a dismal reputation among
customers. You can go into a party and overhear people talking
about how frustrated they are with their cable provider. “Oh,
gosh. I had to call the cable company the other day. What a
nightmare. I’m still upset!” Everybody in the room utters a sigh
of disgust because they’ve experienced the same thing.
Pretty soon, Consumer Reports or Temkin Group releases a
survey and finds that the cable industry has the lowest customer
satisfaction scores of any industry. Then the news media picks
up the story. The bloggers start ranting. Twitter goes crazy.
Before you know it, the cable industry has been branded as an
awful industry that abuses its customers. It can be very difficult
to shed that reputation, and it can take years.
The cable industry lost control of its brand and let someone
else—in this case, customers—own the brand. When you don’t
take control of your brand’s image, and you don’t properly
manage the relationship you have with your customers, the
results can be devastating. And they show up on the bottom
line.
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
Branding doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need to
have a major branding agency on retainer or go on weeklong
branding retreats.
MEET
DEB
GABOR
By answering three major questions, you can take control of
your brand and understand who you are and how you fit in the
market.
These are deep questions, and three full chapters in my book,
Branding is Sex, are dedicated to understanding them and how
best to answer them.
1) What does it say about the customer that they choose your
brand?
2) What is the singular thing that only your brand can deliver
to your customer?
3) How does your brand make the customer the hero in their
own story?
By understanding the answers to these three questions,
companies can ensure that they are sending the right message,
and that their customers’ experiences are aligning with their
messaging.
BRANDING IS NOT A STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS
I want to be clear: Companies cannot just answer those three
questions once and then hang up their branding hat. Answering
the above questions is an ongoing exercise that should happen
throughout the life of the brand. Branding is not something
that takes place at a single point in time.
The answers to these questions will always be evolving and,
even more importantly, living your brand and ensuring that
customers experience your values is a constantly ongoing
process.
You are in a competitive environment with changing customer
needs and market forces that are beyond your control. Your
brand needs to be constantly evolving to meet these challenges.
You have to be in constant touch with your customers and your
customers’ needs or subject yourself to the risk of becoming
irrelevant.
Deb Gabor is the CEO and Brand Dominatrix of Sol
Marketing, a brand strategy consultancy obsessed
with building winning brands. Since 2003, Deb and
the Sol Marketing team have led brand strategy
engagements for organizations ranging from
international household names like Dell, Microsoft
and NBC Universal, to digital winners like Allrecipes,
Cheezburger, HomeAway and RetailMeNot. Investor
pitches created by Deb and her team have enticed
investors to open their hearts, minds, and wallets
to fund emerging companies with amounts ranging
from $250K to more than $100M. SolMarketing.com
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