Just like in relationships with family and friends, a brand must consider a customer’s feelings in order to be well-liked. Megan Rokosh, Communications Consultant at Havas North America, offers five rules of engagement for brands, not unlike those fundamentals we follow with the most important people in our lives.
An old client of mine asked me years ago how we could make people like our company. I thought for a moment and responded, “be likeable.” This client was the CEO of a 25 billion dollar organization and looked perplexed. He responded, “I’ve never thought of it quite that simply.”
My response sounded simple but is actually fairly complex. The essence of it is to prioritize the customer experience and consider how that experience would make people feel. This particular company, prior to the fabulous CEO, had burned numbers of bridges with their client base. False promises, overselling, under delivering, weak customer service, terrible customer relations and awful billing plagued their past. As our conversation continued, we agreed that as customers, we wouldn’t like his company either.
Brands are often detached from how their customers experience them. They make decisions distantly and often don’t shop in their own stores or call their own customer service lines. Where they can tend to fall short is when they make decisions that fail to consider the basic fundamentals of relationships. Just like with friends, family or acquaintances, it’s been proven time and time again that people have real relationships with brands. So real, in fact, that the common relationship rules need to apply or, quite simply, they get stung. Sting them enough and you’ve lost a customer and as research shows, you often lose them for life.
Consider the following rules of engagement for brands (which are probably the same as you would use with your friends):
1. Don’t make them wait. There is no more classic way to piss someone off than to be late – late for dinner, late delivery, long lines, long waits for customer service agents, etc.
2. Don’t lie to them. They will never forget.
3. Don’t devalue them and take them for granted. Quite simply, customers have options and will go elsewhere.
4. Don’t be one-sided. No one likes to feel as if they’re the only people who care about a relationship. Offer them value and keep the exchange as equal as possible. Listen to them when they speak.
5. Be authentic. Do what you say and say what you do. In the age of transparency, you will likely get found out if you don’t.
This list could go on and on, but you start to get the idea. Particularly in this time of massive competition, the rules of engagement with customers are more and more important every day. Some customers today even buy based on ideology, ensuring the brands they support have the same fundamental values as they do, disengaging with brands that do things that they simply don’t agree with.
The bottom line? Don’t take your customers for granted. If you want to create a brand that’s liked, get real about how you’re treating your customers. Jump in their shoes and ask yourself how you would feel if you were them. Make them feel loved and you will be loved in return.
