Your brand is the emotional and intellectual association your customers make with your company, product, or you personally, according to Dirk Knemeyer, co-founder of Innovation Studios.
That means that every single interaction people have with your company, or every “user experience,” is part of your customers’ brand experience.
That is why your telephone needs to be answered promptly, your website has to work smoothly, and your product itself must deliver on its promises.
How can you ensure your brand perception stays positive?
You have to double-check that every single point at which your customer touches your company, the experience is positive.
In other words, you might have the best product in the world, but if you go online to buy it and your website is too complicated for consumers to purchase it easily, they will leave. If you promise great customer service but when they call you, they are left in limbo for half-an-hour or when they email you, nobody answers for three days, their anger will stop them from making any future purchases.
Think of all these touch points as the value of your product. Do your user experiences tie in with the level of value you want to deliver with your brand experience?
Before you can answer that, you must know what value you want to deliver. What are your brand values? Take some time to write out your objectives for your corporate culture, service policies, marketing messages, and even organizational behavior. Armed with where you want to go, the next step is to figure out how to get there.
Check out your visual design, the user’s interaction design, and the information provided to all as part of your user experience. Any of these points can make or break your brand experience.
Look carefully at every phase of your design. Does it deliver on your core values?
Once you have achieved that consistently, ask the second critical question: Does my brand deliver what my customers expect? Will it satisfy them sufficiently to prompt them to return to me in the future?
If your customers are not seeing your brand experience as consistent and positive, they will be less inclined to engage in doing business with you. If you see evidence of that, go back to each of your touch points and determine how they can be improved.
Therefore, creating a positive user experience can be done by having completeness and consistency across your marketing elements and having a positive emotional connection with consumers. Creating a positive user experience is hard work and is not a one-time thing. Ensuring that you stay on top of your customer service and marketing is essential to a lasting relationship with your customers.
About the Author
Roz Bahrami is a blogger for SkyPrep, an online training software. Roz regularly contributes blogs related to corporate training, L&D, and marketing.
