Are you a Good Brand or a Great Brand?

December 9, 2020

It is an expression of a product or service of a company and how well they have internalized their customers.  It is rightly put by Lisa Gansky: “A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.”

So what makes a good brand? – A clear focus with thorough knowledge of the target audience, competition, and USP. A brand’s identity reflects the goals which the company consistently maintains: during presales, sales, and post-sales.

What is a great brand? Great brands are made out of a consistent business effort that creates a strong identity that its customers relate to. This identity remains constant over time.

The Story of a Great Brand In 1999, Coca-Cola introduced vending machines that automatically raised prices during the summer for consumers to pay more for the ice-cold beverage. Customers were furious customers termed it “price gouging”. Pepsi, Coke’s competitor was quick to take advantage by saying Coca-Cola was taking advantage of people in hotter climates. As a result of intense public backlash, Coke pulled back the idea entirely.

Amazingly, Coca-Cola survived this PR nightmare, rebounded, and remained as one of the biggest and valuable brands. One reason is of course the strong brand loyalty of its customers that they were willing to look past mistakes and carried on drinking Coca-Cola.

Building Brand Loyalty

Coke created an emotional connection with the customers. But it was not created overnight. Brand loyalty is developed through a deep understanding of customer priorities and buying behaviour, and then by aligning it with what you offer (product or service.) This gradually creates an identity ─ that is the foundation of all your marketing efforts.

The best way of measuring your brand is by measuring customer experience. It is best done through dynamic communications like online form surveys and feedback. In today’s world, these are possible with a strong online presence; ability to decipher feedback data through BI, use of effective CCM tool, and #RPA.

When you create a loyal customer base, they will not switch easily. The basis of that is a sound knowledge of customer expectations. CCM acts as a single source of information for customers for any business. It can take care of customer data through BI integration business logic with data sources, automation of customer communication, and use of Robotic process automation (RPA) to reduce the cost of regular communications

Let us see how we measure it.

Dynamic communications across channels:

Traditional matrices of customer survey can be dynamically used to measure customer satisfaction:

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Asking the right question about your product or service will give you an idea about their comfort-level with your product: If your product/service meets their expectations; what they like best; if the service is convenient etc.
• Improvement Suggestions: Involving customers in the product improvement process has proven to be beneficial (i.e., Apple and Amazon.) You could ask them what they will improve if they were to do so. This can give you the better picture of what they want.
• Recommendation Probability: How likely your customers will recommend your product/service to others is a crucial question. This information will give you a fair idea about customer loyalty. Because loyal customers recommend products or services to others. Working on this along with the improvement suggestions can create trust. Once you earn this, you can coin your tagline accordingly to attract more customers, i.e., “Things go well with Coke.”
• Customer Expectation Management: Use ratings to calculate brand reliability, quality, value for money, and the likelihood of switching etc. Then create your offering in a way that will create a trusting relationship.
• Brand Image: Your brand must earn customers’ respect and goodwill. Only awareness or familiarity about a brand is not enough for this. A brand that regards its customers earns their regard in return. So you need to have knowledge about it through questions like: if they will choose you over your customers and work on the negative feedback strategically.

Customer Data Management is the Real Crux

Digital technology of Business Intelligence (BI) translates customer information acquired through surveys and other channels to customer knowledge. It also streamlines any service. The better understanding and prediction through BI helps influence customer behaviours; gives insights about how your existing customers think, act, and spend using Big Data. The concrete understanding of customers’ needs, wants, and behaviour helps you create better user experience. This in turn gives you increased profit from existing customers and also getting new ones.

Automate Your Customer Communications

Customer communication management (CCM) software automates communication by integrating customer data sources with business logic. When mundane processes are handled by machines instead of humans, it reduces employee-hours. Robotic process automation or RPA can take action on that data more without human input.

RPA software robots or bots which is a type of artificial intelligence automates tasks by following given company procedures. RPA templates enable CCMs to:

• Automatically respond to customers
• Send product or service-related messages periodically
• Send requested resources
• Receive, store, and organise customer input
• Send alerts for further action

Stay Visible

Having visibility is the secret sauce for brand familiarity. Monitor your visibility on various channels while you work on their suggestions & feedback and create strong communication.

So when do you know you are a great brand?

Any #business would like to have a loyal customer base. However, it is easier to get a customer than retaining them. The cost of retaining customers is brand loyalty isn’t just a “nice to have.” The cost of acquiring a new customer is five to seven times higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer. A 2019 survey shows that customers are 27% more likely to try multiple products and services. Therefore, you know when your brand is great when you have more and more customers recommend your brands to others. Base your data collection and focus on this and use analytics to find out what clicks and what would click with your customers.

In the age of social media and YouTube brand-building is a difficult challenge. For the long-term financial benefits of customer retention and repeat purchases, brand loyalty is a must-have. So, automation is a must-have strategy to build a solid and action-based business. Loyal customers bring in new ones. Recommended customers have a 25% higher lifetime value compared to others who are likely to develop loyalty as well. As per a study conducted by the Wharton School of Business, referred customers end up being 16% to 24% more loyal than non-referred customers.

Interested to discuss more, please feel free to contact the author at ashish.bhalla@dbppl.com

About Ashish Bhalla

Ashish has almost 30 years of industry experience in a wide range of business solutions primarily focusing on end-to-end customer experience management. He is the founder and CEO of Digital Business People (DBP), an omni-channel customer experience management company headquartered at Singapore with it’s development and delivery centres in India.