club catalyst. How to become a quality brand

Apple, Google and Coca Cola. Three very different brands but united by one important factor: they were placed first, second and third in the Interbrand Best Global Brands listings for 2013. These are organisations with good brand equity.

Companies with good brand equity instantly strike a chord with consumers. Some are the brands with cachet, the brands that we associate with high-quality, friendliness and class, or with a certain aspirational lifestyle. Others deliver on a brand promise of great value for money or exceptional customer care. In all such cases our response to these brands is visceral and highly emotional.

It goes without saying that to build such levels of brand equity is the dream of many a business, but in order to fulfil that ambition, organisations must first determine what their brand promises; what it stands for explicitly. Where brand promise meets customer expectation is where we have the ‘moment of truth’, and it’s here where the emotional connection with a brand is won or lost. Explicit promises meet customer perceptions and it’s an understanding of what customers think and feel about a brand that underpins the advertising, marketing and pricing structure.

What makes the difference between the good and the truly great brands is the extent to which businesses hone this understanding of their customers, and deliver a brand experience that meets customer needs on both a functional and emotional level.

So how can this emotional connection be created?

Customer requirements The functional elements of the buyer cycle, the different technology and processes customers encounter along the journey, whether behind the scenes or upfront, are no longer enough on their own to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

As with any loop or chain, it’s only ever as strong as its weakest link and, when applied to the customer journey, it’s the underperforming links that trigger negative reactions or emotions from customers.

Talking about customers and emotions can seem like murky territory, which is not an unreasonable reaction. After all how can you measure customer emotion? However, understanding the emotion of customer experience, and applying it to the functional journey, doesn’t have to be a dark art.

For the most part, it’s a customer’s attitude that drives their behaviour towards a brand and those behaviours will dictate the types of results delivered financially; think: Attitudes drive behaviours deliver results. What’s crucial to understand about this ‘emotion equation’ is that customer behaviour can change based on the experiences or interactions they have with a brand, in turn those experiences will influence their attitudes.

The ability to change customer perceptions by understanding their behaviours requires the ability to anticipate intent, and act accordingly. Think about your own buying pattern. Once you’ve determined you need an item, if you are like the majority of today’s consumers you will start researching your options online, asking people you know, reading reviews and so on. From that information you will make your selection and go on to buy the item.

Throughout that journey, what involvement was there from the companies selling the desired item? Chances are the vendor may only have been involved in the final stages of the buying process. It’s this under-reliance on vendors, corporate websites and advertising that has made it imperative to better and fully understand customer needs and then proactively engage based on that insight.

Certain brands in highly competitive and commoditised markets such as travel, retail or telecommunications have latched on to the ‘emotion equation’ and are able to compete based on the brand equity they build. In the longer term the cache they win around their brand will allow them, if they so choose, to put a premium on it. Conversely, a brand may increase its equity by consistently delivering a guaranteed level of service against a cost-guarantee. Several supermarket chains have taken this low-cost guarantee approach, which has attracted a dedicated following in a particularly crowded market and have thereby earned enviable brand loyalty.

The customer journey For brands wishing to reach these heights, they must ensure that every part of their company is geared towards one goal: Delivering on their brand promise, this equates to meeting the customer’s functional and emotional needs in whatever way best suits that customer. To do that they need to fully understand the customer journey: Where does the customer go when they are looking to have their needs met, who do they talk to, who do they trust; what happens when the product is bought, how is the relationship continued, how do they use the product; and what happens if they wish to extend the relationship with the brand or ask a few simple questions? Mapping the customer journey across the entire buyer cycle starts to uncover issue areas. As your customer is going through the buying cycle, what actions are they taking and what response are they anticipating? Does your brand fulfil this expectation? Does it exceed or fall short? Where are the weak links? Being able to answer these questions helps identify the powerful emotional triggers that impact the emotion equation.

Modifying these triggers allows organisations to enact change and directly impact how a customer thinks or feels about the interaction. Changing the way a customer feels about an interaction will likely have the follow-on effect of changing their behaviour, and ultimately positively influencing their attitude.

OK great, but no two customers are the same are they? True! But there are two core customer attitudes contributing to how they perceive brands: the desire for control and the desire for ease.

What customers want First, control. When interacting with brands customers want it all their own way. They have a range of smart devices that provide constant connectivity to the web, which allows consumers to identify, research and select the products they want with ease. Customers therefore want to be able to reach their brands 24/7 using whatever means happens to suit them at that time, including the social media channels that have become so central to their lives. Over the next few years consumers are only going to wrestle away even more control from brands as web, social media and mobile services mature. They will expect all communication to be a seamless conversation with the brand. As a conversation aimed at filling their need, the customer may start on one channel (e.g. a phone call) but then move online or in-store to complete the process. If the brand fails to keep up with them they risk losing the customer altogether.

Second, the desire for ease. We have become very impatient as a species. We want things done immediately and easily. We don’t want to click through multiple web pages to have a need met, or enter in the same payment details multiple times on the same retail site.

We want it all to be simple, effective and efficient. Consumers are increasingly being won over by those brands that are the easiest to do business with, those that make the buying experience as easy and fulfilling as possible and save the customer time and effort.

Emotion and brand equity The way that customers think about brands is essentially through a series of associations made up of feelings, sounds, images and understandings. Every one of these will have an impact of how the brand is perceived, its equity and ultimately whether a purchase is made or not. As such, brand equity is built through eliciting positive emotional responses from customers; the goal of the business should be to shape brand associations so that positive associations come to mind easily and, in turn, predispose consumers to their brands.

If businesses can provide control and ease of engagement to customers then this emotional need is largely met. If customers are able to contact the brand however they want and get through immediately to have their needs met with minimal fuss they will be happy and the brand’s equity will increase accordingly.

(Atul Tuli is a Senior Director, Oracle Cloud CRM)

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