Chapter 3: Road Map to Branded Customer Service

Overview

Even though empirical evidence tells us that developed brands correlate positively with financial performance, the power of branding is remarkably still largely unrecognized by many businesspeople as it applies to their own organizations. ^[1] When we speak on this topic, we often ask how many in our audience can state exactly what their brand promise is or what their brand values are. We even offer prizes to those who can. Very few people have this information on the tips of their tongues, and we frequently cart our prizes home with us.

Research by brand experts Scott Davis and Michael Dunn that included ninety global corporations shows that 45 percent of managers lack an understanding of the positioning of their own brand. ^[2] Sixty-two percent of Davis and Dunn's survey respondents described a lack of senior management support for their brands. Both of these deficiencies were judged by the corporations as threats to their long-term business success.

If this lack of brand knowledge and support is representative of management, it is reasonable to conclude that the pattern is even truer for customer service representatives. Yet Prophet's (the San Francisco brand consulting firm) 2002 Best Practices Study concluded that "despite an overwhelming belief in the impact of personal contact [on brands] . . . only 41 percent of managers considered investment in customer service an important part of their brand-building efforts." ^[3]

Linking human behavior, policies, and systems with branding clearly presents both practical and conceptual challenges that have not yet been entirely addressed by even the most successful brands. But we know that the signposts on the road to enhancing brand ideas with customer service minimally include

• teaching everyone how your marketing, advertising, mission statement, and so on define your brand and how this definition impacts the type of service required to reinforce the brand

• getting everyone—management and all employees—to understand and embrace the elements of your branded customer service without scripting everyone

• inspiring all staff from the CEO to administrative staff, the sales team, and the shop clerk to deliver—and act out—the brand and its values on a consistent basis

^[1]A lack of understanding by managers about their own brands arises, in part, because of the confusion about the differences between branding and marketing. Marketing is part of an externally focused exercise where consumer preferences are analyzed and needs are assessed. Marketing also involves decisions about the best way to package products and services. Finally, marketing is the process of communicating products and services to the marketplace.

^[2]Prophet's 2002 Best Practices Study, http://www.prophet.com.

^[3]Prophet's 2002 Best Practices Study, http://www.prophet.com.