Who's the first face of a brand?

Scene 1: It's a languid afternoon, when I step into the cool confines of a large showroom of a prominent Japanese brand of consumer electronics. Here I am, taking in the stunning images of a promo movie on an outsized television screen. The TV is on mute, the air-conditioning is just right, the couch, oh so comfortable. My goodwill for the brand leaps up a few scales — till the afternoon reverie is shattered by a huge belch emitted by the usher at the door. It reverberates around the room.

Scene 2: Few years ago, I pulled up at the entrance of a dealership of a prominent car brand in my beat-up old Premier Padmini. The security person at the gate eyes me, my car, disdainfully, and commands that I park on the road outside as there is no place inside. It doesn't occur to the poor chap that I may well be a customer who may plonk down some Rs 5 lakh to buy a new car.

Scene 3: I swing in through the gates of a prominent holidays' company on my motorbike to be scornfully told by the guard that I need to park on the road as bikes aren't allowed inside. I could well have been a customer who's paid a few lakh rupees to purchase a time share.

Stray instances, but this is something that many of you as consumers probably face every day. How many of you have had run-ins with the first consumer touchpoint of a company, who is the humble, poorly-trained and poorly-paid security guard?

FIRST IMPRESSION

Brands which pay top drawer to advertise the brand across TV networks, splash the papers with vision statements and corporate credos pay scant attention to somebody who could well be the first ‘calling card' of a company.

More often than not, the man or woman at the gate or the reception is an outsourced position, and the company may not even know who's manning this vital post for the day. He will deal with customers, investors, buyers, et al, and the manner in which he behaves could well set the tone for the visitor's mood when he enters an office premises. But then, you can't blame the man at the door because he has neither the background nor the training to understand his role.

I remember the time when I was buying a new car with a loan from a top MNC bank. The bank, at that point of time, had a touchy-feely corporate campaign on air which extolled the virtues of the emotional connect the bank made with its customers. But, the credit assessment of me as a customer was being done by an outsourced agency.

The person who came to my home was shabbily dressed, had scuffed shoes, and a general down-at-heel demeanour. And, here I was, being assessed for a three-and-a-half lakh rupee loan. Wouldn't the bank pay its outsourced agency enough for its staff to be reasonably well-dressed? I felt sorry for the poor man and it didn't leave me feeling good about it.

So, why do companies, which spend lakhs on lavish on-air spots, national press campaigns, consumer research, CRM software, not care to look at who the first consumer contact is? Like the sales person in a retail store is the consumer face of a brand, at that moment of truth, when a buyer is choosing between brands, a darwan who greets you could, in some sense, influence that purchase.

Some of the traditional stores in Chennai, for instance, actually have a ‘greeter' on the street urging passers-by to visit the store. His sales spiel or pitch could be the reason why you step into the store.

MOMENT OF TRUTH

Walking into a store of a prominent watch brand once in shorts and a T-shirt one morning, I found all the sales staff huddled together and talking boisterously, ignoring me completely. Did they think I was a non-serious customer? I could well have returned well-dressed and made an expensive purchase. After all, one doesn't carry one's wallet on one's sleeve!

The sales staff were the consumer face of the brand at that point in time, not the celebrity actor who adorned magazines, or who one saw on TV in big-budget campaigns. That's why marketers like to call that the moment of truth. The truth can be painful indeed, if a customer walks out because he or she wasn't treated well or didn't like what was said.

A colleague who walked into a furniture store was greeted with a dour face and told that the store dealt only with serious customers. The best way to make sure that your customer walks out on you! More often than not, brand owners are unaware of what's happening at the store.

Recently, at a store of a prominent menswear brand, the staff who did the billing slapped my credit card bill on the counter with a peremptory ‘sign here'. I didn't, till he looked up to wonder why, and I said, ‘say please!' He got the point.

The chief of a leading consumer brand points out that some brands clearly map out the number of touchpoints at their stores / retail locations, and work on improving each of these. A top hotel chain, for instance, has identified 45 instances of contact between guests to the hotel and its staff. The goal is to improve customer experience at each of these. But very few brands do something like this.

While outsourcing staff, such as security at the store door, do brands give enough thought to selecting the agency? Not really. Often, while advertisements and glamorous store designs are handled by professionally-qualified executives, the selection of security agency / security staff is done by lowly-ranked administrative personnel. Not enough thought goes into it, says this CEO.

Brands would do well to look at their consumer interface bottom upwards, and start with training the humble doorman or ‘security' as we like to call them, pay them well to be well-groomed and well-dressed, as they are the first ‘face' a consumer actually sees. The brand comes later.

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