Your brand promise, giv­en through media mes­sages, does­n’t have the same weight as before. Today’s cus­tomer expects brands to keep their promis­es! How your cus­tomers feel when deal­ing with your prod­ucts or ser­vices has become increas­ing­ly impor­tant. It’s not enough any­more to pro­vide a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence; cus­tomers expect your prod­ucts and ser­vices to be afford­able, pleas­ant and easy to use, and to ful­fill their needs.

With the growth of social media plat­forms, cus­tomers have become empow­ered to com­mu­ni­cate with brands on one side and share their expe­ri­ence, with a large audi­ence, on the oth­er. As a result, the gap between brand promise and cus­tomer per­cep­tion influ­ences cus­tomer reten­tion and future pur­chase behav­iour more than ever.

7 steps to bridge the gap between brand promise and customer experience

1. Be where your customers are

Today, cus­tomers have a wide array of avail­able chan­nels through which they com­mu­ni­cate and acquire infor­ma­tion. Do you know where your cus­tomers are? Instead of wait­ing for them to come to you, be in all the places where they search for information.

2. Listen to your customers

The best approach and start­ing point to bridge the gap between the promise and ful­fill­ment is lis­ten­ing to your cus­tomers. Use a mul­ti-chan­nel mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to engage with your cus­tomers out­side of your busi­ness realm. You will be able to learn more about them, and ways in which you can improve their expe­ri­ence, when you meet them in their territory.

3. Build customer loyalty with premium support

When it comes to sup­port, most cus­tomers pre­fer using a self-sup­port ser­vice rather than approach­ing you direct­ly via phone or email, but they have lim­it­ed patience. Hav­ing a reli­able and effec­tive cus­tomer sup­port por­tal can be ben­e­fi­cial for your com­pa­ny and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Fur­ther­more, your sup­port site can be a great tool to gath­er valu­able insights from your cus­tomers. Plac­ing a sim­ple ques­tion, such as “Was this infor­ma­tion help­ful?”, at the bot­tom of every page, has the pow­er to get an instant and hon­est answer.

 pur­plenote: “Get clos­er than ever to your cus­tomers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they real­ize it themselves.”
~ Steve Jobs

4. Act on what you’ve learned and focus on the right activities

When you start to under­stand your cus­tomers, you have to act on the infor­ma­tion you’ve learned and gath­ered. Focus on activ­i­ties that evoke trust, and feel­ings your cus­tomers like to remember.

5. Make sure your brand promise and values are understood within your company

Brand promise is not meant just for your cus­tomers; it’s also appro­pri­ate for your employ­ees at all lev­els. Make sure you trans­late your brand promise, val­ues, and vision into a set of expect­ed behav­iours. Only if you com­mu­ni­cate your brand clear­ly, can your employ­ees deliv­er on the promise when inter­act­ing with the customers.

6. Engage and nurture your brand advocates

Encour­age engaged cus­tomers to become your brand advo­cates, and com­mit to nur­tur­ing cus­tomer rela­tion­ships as one of the pri­ma­ry parts of your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

Engage with your brand advo­cates in all chan­nels, pro­vide val­ue in the form of help­ful con­tent, coupons and spe­cial offers. Cre­ate cus­tomized expe­ri­ences and ask for their feed­back. After you receive pos­i­tive respons­es from your brand advo­cates, ampli­fy their tes­ti­mo­ni­als on your web­site and social media pages.

7. Deliver consistent branding in all channels

Con­sis­tent brand­ing is an impor­tant part of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Ensure that you imple­ment your brand iden­ti­ty accu­rate­ly across all mar­ket­ing chan­nels and cus­tomer touch-points. Wher­ev­er your cus­tomers can find you, make sure to achieve instant recog­ni­tion, and fos­ter an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion between the brand and your customers.