Are you living up to your brand promise?

IF YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ISN’T LIVING UP TO YOUR MARKETING, THEN IT’S TIME TO REMOVE SOME BLIND SPOTS. MAT WYLIE EXPLAINS HOW.

WE ALL HAVE blind spots when it comes to our own businesses. Whether it’s letting our teams slide away from excellence because we like them as people, making decisions based on gut instinct, or continuing to push an agenda that clearly hasn’t worked, every business owner has the odd area where they might not be completely clear-eyed.

Unfortunately, customer experience seems to be one of those blind spots for many businesses – and it’s leading to a real disconnect between marketing and reality.

IT’S TIME TO GET HONEST

Just about every business in the world has in their mission statement that they care about their customers, but does your company actually follow through? Is the customer really at the heart of your business, or are your decisions driven by the finance or operations department?

Do you talk about the customer every day, or just look at what they think once a quarter?

Take a good hard look in the mirror and consider how you would honestly answer those questions. Identify the areas in which you are focusing on customers and the aspects where you’re driven by other considerations.

If the customer isn’t close by every key decision, then you’d have to seriously question whether you are truly customer-centric.

MAKE SURE YOUR BUSINESS REFLECTS YOUR MARKETING

Is your marketing promising a great customer experience? Do you sell your business on price, or on something more?

For some businesses, customer experience isn’t their driver. For big discount retailers with a “stack ‘em high, watch ‘em fly” mentality, customer experience isn’t at the forefront of what they want to do. They’re less concerned about whether they make a great impression or not because they have leeway on price. They know that if they can be cheaper than their competitors and market that well enough, they’ll succeed.

However, for most businesses, competing on price is no longer an option. As Amazon and other low-cost online retailers undercut virtually all of the competition, marketing your business as providing an exceptional customer experience, and then living up to that market, is vital.

So how do you know if you’re living up to that promise?

GET RID OF YOUR BLIND SPOTS

Great business owners or executives focus on removing as many blind spots as they can. From daily financials to regular surveys of staff, successful business owners keep their eye on the ball and make sure they know as much as they can about all facets of their business to make informed decisions.

Do you have a customer experience measure built into your business? Are you reporting on this? How high up is it being reported? To only your store manager, or right up to your board?

Does your marketing team have access to this measure so they can reflect that in their work?

Because customer experience is intangible, it’s difficult to see or know what the customer thinks; in other words, it’s easy to ignore. Unlike your financials, which are easy to report on and measure, there’s no one stock standard way to measure customer experience yet.

But having a customer experience (CX) measure in your business is key – whether it’s NPS (Net Promoter Score) or another measure, having this data keeps you honest and gives you the insights you need to actually make customer-centric decisions.

Link your CX measure to KPIs, and report up to the highest level. Share it with your team and with whoever does your marketing, and make sure that what you’re putting out into the world reflects the reality of what someone will experience when they enter your store or engage with your company.

If your customer experience isn’t living up to your marketing, then it’s time to make some changes and do something about it. Aren’t you sick of not living up to your brand promises?

Is the customer really at the heart of your business, or are your decisions driven by the finance or operations department?”