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If you run a high touch brand that must be in close communication with a customer before, during, and after the sales process, you understand the challenges that come along with it.
Whether you’re in banking/finance, high tech, retail, travel/hospitality, or another high-touch industry, you likely have many interactions with your customer throughout their lifecycle.
Since high-touch companies interact with customers on an array of channels over a long period of time, brand alignment is extremely critical. So, how do you know if your company is aligned, and therefore presenting a seamless and positive experience to your customer?
Here are five signs you’re not – along with business tips to fix it.
Your customers are confused.
You might think you’re projecting a unified image about your brand, at least externally, but take some time to uncover how your customers perceive your brand. After all, customer confusion is one of the first red flags that indicates your brand is not aligned.
Don’t just make an assumption here; actually take a look at your online reviews, customer emails, and other forms of feedback you’ve gotten from those who have patronized your company. If you find that customers consistently don’t understand how to use your product, or are unclear about why they should choose you over a competitor, you might be in trouble.
Your employees are confused.
Employee confusion is another clear signal that your business is out of alignment. If you have leaders that are clear about the company vision and value proposition, as well as the jurisdiction of each employee’s role, there should be no room left for the confusion.
So if you find that team members are stepping on each others’ toes, giving different answers to customers or asking endless questions to their managers – these are solid clues they’re confused, and your brand is not aligned as it should be. This tells you that you should revisit your training, and make sure your employees understand your company, as well as your products or services on an in-depth level.
Finger-pointing is more common than back-patting.
Piggybacking off the point above, a lack of alignment breeds employee confusion, which breeds conflict. Consider how your internal culture seems. Are employees celebrating one another, and recognizing their teammates when they do something well? Or do they seem to be argumentative and quick to blame one another?
If your departments aren’t unified around common goals, and equally empowered to do their part in achieving them, you’ll see discord and discontentment overtake your office. One of the best business tips to prevent this is to start at the top and make sure you and the rest of your executive team are aligned around your strategy and your goals. Then go to great lengths to clearly communicate this to your team members, and make sure they have what they need to be successful in their pursuits.
Your team members’ email signatures look different from one another.
Email signatures are just one example, but there could be a multitude of signs that your branding elements aren’t consistent across the board. Maybe your sales team creates its own one-pagers to give to clients, or perhaps your customer service agents don’t have uniform scripts to follow for certain customer scenarios. If you don’t have brand guidelines created, shared, and made accessible for your entire team, your customers will feel the disconnect of misalignment.
You’re not learning anything from your metrics.
Finally, what KPIs are you measuring?
Are you focused on the Average Handling Times (AHT)? This may not be the best metric for your high-touch brand, as your customers are likely to need more time on the phone with you to get through onboarding or to complete a renewal. It might make more sense to measure First Call Resolution (FCR). So make sure the metrics you’re measuring align with your brand, and your goals.
Furthermore, most successful high-touch brands are Omni-Channel in their marketing and customer service. But this doesn’t equate to being fragmented. All of your channels should be able to manage cohesively, and you should be able to track all your data in a single platform (like we can do with ConectysOS). If not, you won’t be getting the insight you need from the numbers you have, and won’t be able to make smarter decisions accordingly.
So, how does your high-touch brand stack up? Are you flying high with brand alignment? Or do you need to work on a few of these elements? Please contact us to learn more, or to get help setting your high-touch brand up for alignment – and success.
