3 Reasons Companies Don't Own Their Brand
- Jul 7, 2015
- 3 min read
Your company doesn’t own its brand. Seems counterintuitive, right? Of course, your company owns its brand. After all, haven’t you have poured oodles of time and resources into building your brand? But, you really don’t. Your employees own the brand. Why? Because,
Relationships are built between people
Employees are the heart and soul of your brand
Customers’ experience with your employees is transferred to your brand
Consider my recent experience visiting colleges with my son. Although he’s not a senior yet, we were heading to LA and San Diego for spring break and decided to kill two birds with one stone and see some colleges while we were there. I dutifully went to the college websites to sign up for tours. Of course, after signing up, I needed to make changes to a couple of tours as our plans had changed. Late one evening, I went back to the website of one of the colleges to change the day and time of our tour, but could not log in. After trying several times unsuccessfully and feeling my frustration grow, I emailed support. Lo and behold, I had an email from a tech support person sitting in my inbox early the next morning and a voicemail from the same tech! Unfortunately, the fix he suggested didn’t work so I sent him another email. Rather than risk making me more frustrated trying multiple other fixes, he escalated the problem to his supervisor and emailed me to let me know he had done so. Within an hour I had an email from the supervisor with a fix that worked. Turned out that I was trying to log into the wrong portal, which pointed to an UX issue, but that’s another story. Although my son may not end up going to this college, based on my experience, I believe it’s a very caring and supportive institution, and it would be a good place for him.
Relationships Are Built Between People
Relationships exist between two or more people. They are built over time, one interaction at a time. Ekaterina Walter wrote “In the digital age companies don’t have much social capital, whereas people do.” Over a period of two days, multiple emails and several phone calls, I built a relationship with two IT people at a college. Real, living, breathing people. Not an image or a mission statement or a marketing message on the website.
Employees Are The Heart And Soul Of Your Brand
In this interview with Seth Godin, he said “A brand can’t care. All that can care is people.” He is so right. How do your customers interact with your brand? Through your employees—salespeople, customer service representatives, people in the billing department, the person at the front desk, your marketing team through social media, webinars, events, etc.. For good or for bad your employees truly are the face and heart of your brand.
Customers' Experience With Your Employees Is Transferred To Your Brand
Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. Or, in this case, from one person to a brand. Whatever our experience, good or bad, with employees of a company, we transfer those emotions to the company brand. How many times have you been on the phone with a very unhelpful customer service person and sworn to yourself that you would never, ever do business with that company again? On the flip side, my experience with the IT people at the college was so exceptional that, to this day, I am convinced that the college is also exceptional.
Your employees own your brand because,
Relationships are built between people
Employees are the heart and soul of your brand
Customers’ experience with your employees is transferred to your brand
What kind of brand relationships are your employees building right now? And, what are you doing to ensure your employees are prepared to be your brand ambassadors?
As posted on LinkedIn
Picture by Sagar Dani
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