Today, even the most popular and leading global brands cannot afford to deprioritise CX and still expect customers to return to purchase their products. Studies suggest that nearly 1 in 3 customers would stop doing business with a brand they love after a single negative experience. In the US, 6 in 10 customers will walk away from a brand after multiple negative experiences.
As much as the branding experience (shaped by marketing and advertising) builds awareness and the product quality converts customers, it is CX that retains them and prevents churn in a highly competitive business environment.
CX is a Demonstration of Your Brand Values
A customer experience isn’t just about providing the necessary support and solving a grievance/query. The manner in which the CX is delivered exemplifies the values that your brand believes in. Is the agent interested and engaging, talking to the customer for a long duration to build trust and confidence? Or, are they quick and efficient, resolving issues at the speed of light? Both of these are positive experiences but speak to very different brand values.
That’s why brand designers must mandatorily participate in CX design (both at the top of the funnel as well as at the support stage) to ensure that there is uniformity. For example, if Apple’s brand mission is to drive simplicity and accessibility, it will define not only its products but also the support experience. Just as Apple products come with an iconic UI that is usable by literally everyone, its support executives interact with prospects and customers with minimal jargon – driving home the intersection between CX and brand values.
The Digital CX will Determine Your Branding Content Mix
At the end of the day, brand building is as much about the customer as it is about the company in question. You want to map the places that your customer frequents, and initiate a brand-building campaign spanning these regions, attracting the most eyeballs. If your customer experience is spread across social media and mobile primarily, both your support agents and branding collaterals will habit these spaces.
CX apathy leads to wasted investment in content, holding back your brand’s potential.
Technology Makes it Easier to Deliver Consistent CX and Reinforce Your Brand
Thanks to technology, you don’t have to train agents in brand values and hope for the best. Speech analytics, sentiment analysis, and keyword-based NPS surveys allow companies to monitor precisely which aspects of the CX appeals to the customer and what could be done better.
For example, if your company values politeness as an important trait among agents (driving home the same message of polite reassurance through brand design), you can actually ask customers if they were satisfied with an agent’s politeness using automated surveys and get granular results per agent per contact centre.
The Brand is a Promise, CX is the Execution
A poor CX will negate the brand identity you have so carefully built through marketing and advertising, and in the age of social media, one bad CX could cause irreparable damage. Therefore, it is vital to get this execution right and live up to your brand’s promise.
