Experience My Brand: How Successful Companies Develop Loyal Customers and Increase Profits is about what it takes to reach the goal of every business, creating a base of loyal and supportive customers. The book suggests that businesses only need one thing to stay profitable, a unique branded experience. To create that branded experience, you have to do more than offer low prices or create a fancy app. You have to get involved with customers on an emotional level. Experience My Brand shows business owners how your customer’s emotions are the key to a profitable bottom line.
What is Experience My Brand About?
Most business owners know that branding involves more than combining colors and shapes (sometimes letters). They struggle with making that all-important leap that will turn a casual customer into a loyal fan. Experience My Brand explores this problem and offers a framework and step-by-step strategy for conquering it. The key to making the leap from brand to loyal fan involves experience, specifically how customers experience your brand.
The problem, according to the book, is the separation between branding and customer experience. Businesses still place customer service in a “department”. Because of this separation, other areas of the business remain disconnected from the front line of your business. As a result, business leaders don’t “dig deep” when it comes to customer service. They focus on eliminating costs, superficial-level surveys, and excessive control. This cycle of disconnect isn’t apparent on the surface. For a while, a business can float on cutting corners with simple customer service surveys.
The decline begins when a new competitor offers customers a better deal closer to a customer’s concerns. (Think about Blockbuster’s late fee policy versus Netflix’s no late fees policy.)
Avoiding this downward spiral of your business’ brand requires maintaining a specific brand experience for your customers. It means figuring out what your customers need or want and aligning everything in your business around that purpose. In this kind of business, leaders empower the front line with resources and flexibility to deliver that brand experience. Front line workers keep leaders updated on issues and provide insight into other areas of the business.Customers are invited to be ambassadors and referral agents. As a result, a business creates its own cycle of listening, learning and monitoring. It creates its own upward climb toward brand excellence instead of a downward decline.
Experience My Brand is the brain child of Joe Tawfik. Tawfik is an author and consultant with over 25 years of management experience, Chief Executive Officer of Kinetic Consulting Services.
What Was Best About Experience My Brand?
Experience My Brand provides a unique perspective on customer service that you won’t find in other books. It offers the most comprehensive measurement of customer service you will probably find. If you are looking to connect business goals with the stats coming from the customer service department, this is definitely a book that you want to consider.
One other interesting aspect of the book is its view that customer service is a resource, not an asset that you can ignore.
What Could Have Been Done Differently?
Experience My Brand does an incredible job of breaking down the vague concept of “customer service” into something that a business owner can track and measure more effectively. While this is extremely helpful, there are two caveats to consider. First, Experience My Brand is probably not a good fit for very small businesses (one-person businesses or partnerships.) The book requires labor and resources that a very small business may not have.
The other issue is the number of steps involved in the book’s core plan. The plan’s logic is very simple, but it involves 30 steps.
Why Read Experience My Brand?
Although Tawfik hates to use the word “customer service department”, Experience My Brand is best suited for leaders and executives running these very departments. The book provides an improved method for tying customer service efforts to business goals. It is also recommended for any leader of a small or medium-sized business who wants to improve his or her customer service department or staff. The book provides those leaders with a powerful vision that will give any business a profitable edge.
This article, “Experience My Brand Ties Customer Service Efforts to Profitability” was first published on Small Business Trends