Improving your brand perception

5 steps to improve brand perception with better customer service

Just as rave reviews about a company can travel quickly across social media, so can stories of rude service or a company being unresponsive to their customers. Social media and mobile devices have given customers a voice like they've never had before.

Whether you realize it or not, people are more likely to talk about bad customer service experiences than good ones.

Zendesk surveyed 1,000 customers to determine exactly how customer service impacts brand perception and influences a company’s bottom line. Here are some of the findings I find particularly interesting:

People like to talk about their experiences.

– Almost 100% of respondents said they share bad customer service experiences with others. – 87% share good experiences.

Bad customer service can ruin a customer's relationship with a brand.

– 39% of respondents said they avoid vendors for two or more years after a bad experience. – More than 40% recommended others not buy products or services after having a bad customer service experience.

People like to share customer service experiences via social media.

– Almost 90% of respondents said they have been influenced by online reviews when making a purchase. – 45% said they've shared bad experiences on social media. Thirty percent have shared good ones.

Based on the statistics above, customer service is ultimately linked to your business’s bottom line. This should make managing customer experience a strategic priority for your company.

Scouring through the net I came across an article on 1:1 media on how to exactly manage this relationship, below are 3 steps to help maintain a positive customer experience with your brand:

1. Establish a brand strategy and implement it not only to marketing communications, but also to all elements of customer service, including call centers, online help, or other face-to-face interactions. And listen to what is being said about your brand on social media, with and without the twitter “@” handle.

2. Set up customer service processes that reflect your brand identity. A high-touch brand might want to emphasize person-to-person communications rather than bury its consumers in a hefty website that make it difficult to find contact information.

3. Employees are the face of the company and their demeanor should reflect the brand image. A company with a fun image, for instance, needs to hire people with exuberant personalities for all its service touch points.

Managing your brand should involve developing a relationship between a person and the brand. These relationships evolve as individual experiences with the brand accumulate. A company’s customer experience strategy should be reflected across all touch points.

The steps above can help create a good relationship between your customers and your brand. A results focused management approach is another way to manage this relationship and that’s by establishing the right KPIs (key performance indicators) across your company and with your team.

This article was provided by: RESULTS.com