Promises Mean Nothing, Experiences Mean Everything By BRAD FEDERMAN
We live in a world of uncertainty. Companies today are biting off more than ever including social change. They are producing promises related to all their stakeholders including shareholders, customers, employees and society at large. Brand promises are the language of business. Those promises, in many cases, fall short. How do people know when a company can’t keep its promise? Experience. Experiences are where promises are actually made or broken. A promise is a pledge specifically a pledge to deliver on something. Companies make promises all of the time. However, certain organizations outline their promises more clearly and live up to those promises more consistently than others. Some of the more interesting and successful promises include: • Coca-Cola: “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.” • BMW: “The Ultimate Driving Machine” • H&M: “More fashion choices that are good for people, the planet and your wallet.” • Starbucks: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” • Marriott: “Quiet luxury. Crafted experiences. Intuitive service.” What makes a strong Brand Promise that has staying power? • It must be measurable. What does “Ultimate” mean? What does “luxury” mean? If it can’t be defined it can’t be measured. If it can’t be measured it can’t be managed or verified. Without measurement a company cannot provide consistency in experience. • It must be consequential. A promise does not mean much if there is no significance. It must be meaningful and unique to the marketplace for it to matter. The way to determine if your Brand Promise is significant is to ask the question, “Does it provide a reason for customers to choose and stay with us over our competitors?” • It must be lived. A promise must lead to an experience that matches the promise. If the promise is incongruent with a person’s experience the promise is broken which leads to a loss of trust. We all want to be a customer-centric business. It is a worthwhile endeavor. It provides a real competitive advantage. What we must realize is that we are making a promise to our customers, but that it also transcends our customers. That promise is also seen and heard by the broader community and our employees. A promise such as this requires investment. That investment starts with focusing on your customers and customer relationships, however, it does not end there. Here are just a few of the questions that must be answered: 34
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• QUESTION 1: Do you plan each stage of your customer’s journey? Do you have a customer journey map? It’s critical to improving the customer experience. The output of this question is relevant to re-engineering a business to be more customer centric and can impact the survey effort or customer experience program. • QUESTION 2: Do you know how much effort a customer must put into working with you to be successful? Being a customer should not be hard. Reducing the effort customers must make to be in a successful relationship with you creates a real ease of doing business. Creating positive experiences depends on making the customer relationship have less friction. • QUESTION 3: Do you measure how customer centric your culture is? We think measuring customer relationships is an external concept, but measuring and supporting how people think internally is the key to making it come to life. In the end being customer centric is not an outward journey but an inward one. • QUESTION 4: What KPI’s have you developed regarding the customer experience? How were they developed? Are they reflective of what your organization sees as important and more importantly what the customer sees as important? • QUESTION 5: What is your follow up to customers based on their feedback? How do you communicate what you have learned and are doing to better serve them? They deserve to know that their feedback is heard and will make a difference. They need to know that you are making your promise dynamic and a living, breathing promise. Otherwise they will begin to see it as stale and out of sync with today’s business environment. The answers to the above questions not only shed light on the actual customer experience and changes that need to be made to create a more powerful and sustaining promise, but they equally shed light on internal organizational changes and investments that must be made. The answers may also provide insights into necessary budgetary shifts and investments needed in the community or communities your organization belongs to and is a part of if your promise is to truly come to life. What happens when an organization does not deliver on its brand promises? • United Airlines invited its customers to “fly the FRIENDLY skies,” but suffered a social media nightmare when video was released of a passenger being forcefully dragged from a flight unjustly.
