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In Customer Service
Why generic customer service is no longer enough! |
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In Business Strategy
Investors are placing more emphasis on strategies to build intangible value. |
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In Human Resources
The window to the corporate soul. |
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In Marketing
Building brand equity through service experiences. |
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| Customer Service |
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Dissatisfaction with customer service is burgeoning. Not only is this discontent reflected in many nationwide and individual organizational surveys, but it's now the talk of the Internet with entire websites devoted to slamming different brands. |
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| Even as businesses struggle to improve their customer service and top management aims at a strong brand, the word is out that service standards have fallen. In fact, if you believe what's being said, service stinks and it's getting worse. |
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| Surely it can't be that bad? How has it got to this? Surprisingly easily. The public has leapt ahead of organizations on this one. Consumers do not hold one idea of service in their minds; the public is not generic when it comes to service. When evaluating customer service, consumers hold a multitude of personal, specific, and unique expectations about services and products relating to specific brands. |
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| Read What Customer Service Business Leaders Say >> |
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| Business Strategy |
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Even though empirical evidence tells us that developed brands correlate positively with financial performance, the power of branding is remarkably still largely unrecognized by many business people as it applies to their own organizations. |
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| Research by brand experts Scott Davis and Michael Dunn, that included ninety global corporations, shows that 45 percent of managers lack an understanding of the positioning of their own brand. 62 percent of Davis and Dunn's survey respondents described a lack of senior management support for their brands. Both of these deficiencies were judged by the corporations as threats to their long-term business success. |
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Your brand is an external expression of your business strategy. Service is the delivery mechanism. Your company's ability to deliver what it declares is fundamental to your reputation - we promise, we deliver - and is paramount in building stakeholder trust and business performance. |
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| Read What Business Strategy Business Leaders Say >> |
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| Human Resources |
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HR departments are undergoing a profound change as organizations around the world have begun to position their human capital expertise as one of the strategic elements that comprise business success. Employees must work within, and feel engaged by, the system that aligns them to the strategic positioning of the business, and helps them to deliver on-brand behaviors. |
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| An HR department can take many steps to redesign itself to match the organizational brand. When a company is branded from the inside out, managers will have a context by which to filter their policies, practices, and behaviors towards their staff. |
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HR has the potential to play a make-or-break role in successful branded service initiatives. If not carefully and constantly assessed and nurtured, these efforts can wind up as veneers with no lasting impact. |
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| Read What Human Resources Business Leaders Say >> |
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| Marketing |
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Organizations spend millions to tell the world how they would like consumers to think about their offerings, and then a human being with a few simple words shatters the illusion. |
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| Is that so surprising? Not according to David Burrows of The Design Agency in England, who says that "40 percent of marketing investment is wasted, as ill-informed or demotivated behavior by staff unwittingly undermines the promotional promise. The result is that 68 percent of those who do buy go away because of how they were treated." |
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One major cause of this may be simple, but it is too often overlooked in the rush to develop a strong brand. We pay inadequate attention to the interaction service providers directly have with customers. That is the heart of the challenge as typified by brand experts Bob Tyrell and Tim Westall, "Branding customer service requires something much more complex than the bolt-on activities currently parading as 'relationship' building. It implies developing a recognizable style and personality, and that has important implications for brand marketing." |
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| Read What Marketing Business Leaders Say >> |
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 Barlow and Stewart break new ground in bringing together the dynamics of customer service with the intricate emotional connections a great brand engenders.  Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide
Saatchi & Saatchi
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 Branded Customer Service is more than a book. It's also a Tool-Kit.
Find out about the tools, processes and resources you can use today MORE >>
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