How to Ensure Your Customer Experience Aligns with Your Brand Promise

“Talk the talk, walk the walk” is more than an old cliché; it’s actually a great benchmark for creating and/or reviewing your brand promise. Your brand should communicate the promise you make to your customers. It’s not just a catchy slogan or selling proposition. It should exist in the minds of your customers and align with how they experience your brand. Customer experience, then, is how you deliver on your brand promise. It’s important to understand how to set yourself up for success with a great brand promise and ensure it aligns with your customer experience.

How to Create a Brand Promise

A great brand promise is both measurable and meaningful. The bolder and clearer, the better. The best brand promises go big, challenge the status quo, and fulfill your customers’ expectations and desires. Follow these steps to create a brand promise that sticks.

Make it measurable

You need to be able to deliver on your promise. While you want to aim high, make sure it’s achievable. It’s bad form for a company to over-promise and under-deliver. Adding metrics, like Geico’s “15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance,” gives your brand accountability. This can help validate your customer experiences and hone your customer service strategy.

Make it meaningful

Your brand promise should convey what matters most to your customers. Ask yourself why a customer would pay for your products or services. What value does your brand bring to your customers? Marriott’s brand promise “Quiet luxury. Crafted experiences. Intuitive service” does a great job at conveying what customers seek when they want to get away. In order to foster a deep connection between your brand and your customers, your brand promise needs to be meaningful to them.

Make it unique

The most successful brands are the ones that value innovation. Your brand promise needs to set you apart from the competition. What makes you different? Wegman’s “Consistent low prices,” is unique in that unlike other supermarkets that rely on coupons and weekly ads, they promise shoppers something they can rely on. In order for a brand promise to stick, it’s important for brands to carve out a unique space to “own” in the minds of customers.

Validate Your Brand Promise

A brand promise sets customer expectations. Your customer experience depends on how well those expectations are met. Here’s what you can do to ensure your brand delivers on its promise.

Create a vision that inspires

A paycheck isn’t the only thing that motivates your associates to get out of bed and go to work. For many, it’s knowing that what they’re doing matters. When your associates have a shared vision and are working toward a common goal, this passion will be evident to your customers, creating stronger connections and more consistent customer experiences.

Make your promise known

It’s important to communicate your values and promises to your customer. Set their expectations so you can give them what they want. Your brand can accomplish this through marketing and advertising, but you should also consider displaying your brand promise on your website, in your stores, on social media, and everywhere else your customers are.

Use a value-based hiring strategy

Customer experience starts with your people. Make what you stand for known to your associates. As you grow your company, it’s important to make sure everyone you bring into the company shares your values. Ask questions during the interview process, like “What excites you about this opportunity?” and “Describe your ideal work environment.”

Exemplify your brand

Your associates represent your brand. Translate your brand promise into a clear set of expected behaviors for your people. This will help them gain a better understanding of what it means to not just work for your brand, but “live” it as well.

Hold yourself accountable

Simply writing a brand promise isn’t enough. You need to regularly measure your customer experience against your brand promise to ensure it holds up. Listen to your customers and associates—and look for objective ways to gather feedback—in order to learn exactly how well you’re delivering on your promise and identify where you can improve.

What’s Your Brand Promise Worth?

An empty promise isn’t going to hold up when it comes to creating exceptional customer experiences. In order to stay competitive in an ever-competitive market, your brand needs to make good on the promises to your customers.

IntelliShop understands the value of a brand promise. We practice what we preach by putting you, the customer first, and going above and beyond to get the results your business needs to succeed. Our solutions will evaluate your customer experience by providing objective feedback through mystery shopping and customer listening through voice of customer programs to ensure it aligns with your brand promise. We’ll then present our findings to you in a detailed, actionable InSite™ report to create a strategy that will improve customer experience at your organization.

Contact IntelliShop today to request a quote and see how we can ensure your customer experience aligns with your brand promise.