Power Tool 3: Consistency

The third brand power tool is consistency and is the major challenge for customer service. If customers are to return to places of business they like, they need to feel as if they are returning to a familiar place. The brand needs to have a repeated feeling of familiarity about it. As Tim Ambler, with the London Business School says, "Brands earn their reputation for reliability, not from a rapid investment in communications, but from providing consistent satisfaction over many years." ^[5]

Because customer service involves human exchange, people who deliver customer service will always struggle with consistency. If too consistent, customer service loses its ability to make an impact on us. If every waiter says, "Enjoy," before we begin to eat our meal, this attempt at friendliness can become extremely unlikable. Yet some restaurants actually script their staff to say precisely that.

In order to believe that the other person is authentic, most people expect some variety in their human interactions. As University of Chicago physics professor John Rader Platt says, "The needs of man, if life is to survive, are usually said to be four—air, water, food, and in the severe climates, protection. But it is becoming clear today that [there is a fifth need] the need for novelty—the need, throughout our waking life, for continuous variety in the external stimulation of our eyes, ears, sense organs, and all our nervous network." ^[6]

Fortunately, if we let service representatives be themselves, they will not repeat themselves over and over again. They get tired of spouting mindless repetition as much as customers do listening to it. And they don't want to sound like mere mimics of their colleagues unless it's part of a ritual. If given a sense of a brand's personality or tone of voice, people will find creative ways to individually express themselves within the brand's personality and still create the novelty and authenticity that we expect in human interactions. Remember, for branded service to be consistent, it does not have to be identical. It merely has to be recognizable. ^[7] This is particularly challenging for organizations that have merged service offerings to their customers, as in the case of the off-brand service below.

off-brand (AND HORRIBLE GENERIC SERVICE)

Janelle purchased an around-the-world ticket on United Airlines in business class, spending the extra money because she wanted protection for what would be inevitable changes to her itinerary written with the multiple airlines of United's Star Alliance. The brand promise of the Star Alliance is that if one airline doesn't have a desk in a particular city, passengers can go to any of the Star Alliance partners and be helped. The alliance is a great idea and adds a lot of extra value to customers, but the promise has to be delivered to work.

Sure enough, one ticket change in the middle of Janelle's trip necessitated rewriting her entire ticket. On an around-the-world fare, this involved recalculating distances, taxes, and so on. The adventure started in Zagreb, Croatia, where the Lufthansa ticket agent, while personable, didn't have enough time before Janelle's flight left for Warsaw to reissue the ticket. The ticket agent, however, said she would send a special note to the Lufthansa Warsaw airport desk with all the change details programmed into the computer for easy pickup. Janelle left for Warsaw with a happy heart, confident that the Star Alliance brand concept worked!

Late on a Friday afternoon, however, the two Lufthansa agents at the Warsaw airport refused to help! They told Janelle that the UAL (Lufthansa's partner) locator codes and ticket calculation price changes were "worthless," even though the changes had been entered by Lufthansa in Croatia.

Janelle asked about the promised note from the helpful lady in Zagreb. They said it wasn't there and that a note wouldn't have been enough in any case; the woman from Zagreb should have called them to see that this was okay with them! When Janelle asked how she could possibly be expected to know this, they shrugged their shoulders. They told Janelle she would have to go to Austrian Airlines, her next carrier, even though all the airlines on her itinerary are partners in the Star Alliance program.

Austrian Airlines service staff couldn't have been more helpful. They did everything and did it fast. They also indicated that the Zagreb note was in the file and apologized for their partner. New ticket in hand, Janelle marched back to the Lufthansa desk to tell them what she had learned. The woman acknowledged that she had lied. She said she just didn't feel like reissuing the ticket! It was too much work in her estimation and of no benefit to Lufthansa.

All it took was two women with off-brand behavior, and the Star Alliance brand—several airlines to help you while you fly just one—was dashed.

Clearly, this service was appalling as well as off-brand, a lethal combination for brand building. Janelle will tell you that the bad service, which she actually found so horrible as to be entertaining, stung less than the damage done to her brand concept of Star Alliance. On her next flight to Europe, Janelle booked herself on United to London. She then switched out of the Star Alliance system to her next destination rather than give her business to Lufthansa.

Richard Branson, founder and CEO of Virgin (the huge British brand ranging from Virgin Airways to Virgin Records and dozens of companies in between) writes passionately about branding as individual human behavior: ^[8]

The idea that business is strictly a numbers affair has always struck me as preposterous. It is my conviction that what we call "shareholder value" is best defined by how strongly employees and customers feel about your brand. Nothing seems more obvious to me that a product or service only becomes a brand when it is imbued with profound values that translate into fact and feeling that employees can project and customers can embrace. ^[9]

Branson's words are an ultimatum to both brand and customer service experts. He advocates that "profound values" must be defined in advance, strategically linked to brand positions, and promoted to staff. Then comes Branson's challenge: "translate into feelings that employees project and customers embrace." We believe this challenge can be met.

^[5]Tim Ambler points out that Mercedes is viewed by some consumers as being better than Lexus, simply because it has been making quality automobiles for a much longer time. Tim Ambler, "Do Brands Benefit Consumers?" International Journal of Advertising 16 (1997).

^[6]As quoted in Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988).

^[7]The word recognizable is the one used by Bob Tyrell and Tim Westall to describe this phenomenon. They write, "Achieving a distinctive and easily recognizable personality in every aspect of the literal and metaphorical conversation the company has with its customers needs every part of the company to 'live the brand.' An economic and sustainable solution to this has yet to be fully developed." Tyrell and Westall, "The New Service Ethos."

^[8]For a complete listing of all the Virgin companies, visit the intensely branded Web page: http://www.virgin.com/uk/atoz/.

^[9]Richard Branson, foreword to Daryl Travis, Emotional Branding (Roseville, Calif.: Prima Venture, 2000).