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is a legendary story about Starbucks, their brand, and toilet paper.
From within the bowls of Starbucks, their branding guru had summarized
the Starbucks brand into an extremely concise brand statement: A
great coffee experience. This brand statement encompassed the Starbucks
store design, bean selection, barista personalities . . . even their
toilet paper.
Seems some smart MBA type hired into Starbucks wanted to downgrade
from two-ply to one-ply toilet paper in their store restrooms. He
calculated a significant cost savings based on deep analysis of
the comparative cost of toilet paper, the number of Starbuck stores,
how many rolls per year were needed, ad nausium. But Starbucks kept
the thicker two-ply paper to preserve their "great coffee experience."
Stated perhaps too bluntly, Starbucks was worried about all branding
"touch points."
A touchy subject
Your brand - as perceived by the only legitimate judges, your customers
- is the sum of all their interactions with your company. Every
place where a customer can interact with your company is a "touch
point," and that touch point affects how you are perceived.
A lousy experience with one touch point can negate all the brand
equity you build in other touch points. When Microsoft releases
a security patch that creates more openings for hackers, their brand
is diminished.
This is why toilet paper matters.
Let's look at the high tech market as an example. A customer, be
they IT or consumer electronics buyers, interact with your brand
both directly and indirectly, through promotions, sales, product
use, technical support, up-sale opportunities, and more. All these
factors contribute to a customer's impression of your brand. To
create and manage your brand - in short to make the market think
and feel what you want them to - you must create your brand through
all these touch points.
Sony consumer electronics is a depressingly good case. Sony is
widely perceived as an inventive company with poor product quality
and service. Innovation and product turnover drives their corporate
culture, but their brand never evolves past that barrier because
Sony fails to carry any other brand initiative through touch points
beyond the sale.
High tech companies have a number of brand touch points, and should
evaluate how their desired brand is (or is not) being managed through
these points of customer contact. You need to create you own list
by determining every interaction your customer has with your company
and products. I'll get you started by listing the more common ones.
Promotions
Back before the Carly era, Hewlett Packard was perceived as a great
technology company that could not market their own wares. The standard
industry joke was that if HP were to market sushi, they would advertise
it as "cold, dead fish, low on intestinal parasites."
Promotions are where customers first encounter your brand. Like
flirting in a bar, it is a process of attraction on superficial
touch points. Sadly, inexperienced marketing people create promotional
images that do not match the product or company brands - or perhaps
the company fails to live up to the image rightfully created by
marketing. Regardless, this creates disappointment later in the
customer relationship.
If your promotions reflect a brand image you want to develop, the
rest of your company has to reinforce that image. Failure to do
so will rapidly create a consensus in the market that your promotions
are misleading, and as a company, you cannot be trusted.
In the IT market where customer expenditures can be millions of
dollars, mismatched promotions and delivery can be fatal. IT buyers
want to build long-term relationships with vendors, and as we all
know, relationships are built on trust. Violate that trust, and
the customer has every reason to abandon the relationship.
Sales engagement
Sales people are the first human interactions customers have with
your brand (this is under the broad assumption that sales people
are human, something yet to be scientifically proven). This applies
regardless of products category or channel. For example, in the
consumer electronics space, your sales people may be working for
Best Buy or Circuit City (and thus not entirely within your control).
A poorly coached salesperson can destroy your brand more quickly
than a defective product because they prevent the sale from ever
happening.
And it all comes down to behavior. Sales people must project your
brand, whatever you have decided that to be. If you are a low-cost
provider, your sales team needs to be fast and efficient in helping
a customer reach a buy decision. If your brand is based on great
customer service, your salespeople need to listen first, then meet
your customer's every need. Regardless of your specific positioning,
you must train and enculturate your sales teams to project your
brand.
As an aside, let me note that I live in fear of salespeople with
PowerPoint presentations. Most spend your customer's time explaining
why their products are so great and why their company is wonderful,
and almost no time listening and learning what their customers need
and want. After 30 slides of marketing effluvium, these self-absorbed
sales types might actually ask a question, and might receive an
answer if the customer is still awake.
Product demos
For IT vendors, product demos are the very first interaction customers
have with your product. Your product must live up to the brand image
your advertising and sales people created (starting to see a layered
effect in branding?). Examine with a cold eye what your brand claims
are, and what the demo actually presents. If they are too different,
then it is best to restrain product releases until everything is
in harmony.
The two most common branding disasters with IT product demos are
the "beta hack" and the "ease of use" lie.
Beta hack demo: All too often, a vendor is tempted to rush
products out before they are ready. Under the top-line revenue gun,
they release what should be considered beta test versions as the
final product. This can be fatal in all technology markets, but
is especially acute for IT vendors. IT departments require stability
as well as functionality for all products - deliver beta test code
as a final product and you immediately destroy a core brand element.
Ease of use lie: The ability to easily use a product is
a primary customer touch point. If your brand is built in part on
an ease-of-use promise, you better deliver - there is no way to
mask poor usability.
Support
Technical support is the ultimate customer touch point. It creates
(or breaks) human bonds, and can often involve more hours of inter-company
interaction that all other phases of the relationship. Support services
are where customers build or lose trust with an vendor after having
been beguiled by the advertising, charmed by the sales person, and
convinced by the product demo (did I mention that branding has a
layered effect?).
Sadly, few technology companies educate their tech support teams
on the company brand and how to meet the expectations created through
the promotion and sales process. Negative customer support images
are greatly exaggerated by automated email response systems that
incorrectly categorize a customer request and reply with unhelpful
answers.
Training technical support staff in branding is not difficult and
has amazing benefits. Long ago, I managed a support group for a
company that had a corporate motto of "we make happy customers."
I indoctrinated the support team with war stories about the founder
and how he went out of his way to make sure every customer knew
how to get the most out of the product. I also made it plainly obvious
that I conducted random customer satisfaction calls from tech support
logs (people never do what you tell them, but they do what you inspect).
My surveys indicated we had very happy customers, and not because
the product was sexy (it drove pagers), or that it was easy to use
(it didn't even have a GUI). They were happy because we helped them
be successful with the product - we created happy customers.
Up sale and ongoing relationship
Sales people have jobs after the initial sale is complete. There
are always opportunities to up-sale customers and fatten revenues.
Likewise, there are always opportunities to destroy your brand after
the sale. Up-sale opportunities typically vanish in two ways: either
the brand value was destroyed after the sale due to poor product
design or support, or the sales person/system fails to correctly
map the customer's situation and needs.
I knew an IT software sales person once who was great at moving
product and stunk at up-selling. In every case, he failed to stay
close to his accounts after the initial sale was closed. Thus, he
never heard their complaints, concerns, suggestions, or understood
where gaps existed between what he had sold and what they needed
next. When he did finally waltz back into the customer's offices,
he would suffer a near endless barrage of verbal, and occasionally
physical, insubordination from peeved clients.
The point is that to up-sale, you have to have as good of a grip
on the customer's situation as you did on the initial sale. Often
with IT products, the salesperson correctly addresses the strategic
desires of their customers when making the initial sale. But just
as often, the salesperson cannot grip the more tactical realities
of their post-sale world, and thus the up sale opportunities available.
This level of fumbling depletes the brand equity created through
the rest of the process.
Touchy, touchy, touchy
Executives need to understand one point with crystal clarity: Your
brand is communicated with every customer interaction. From your
promotions, to your documentation, to your technical support, and
right down to the cheerfulness of your receptionist - your brand
is defined, projected, enforced, or depleted. Defining your brand
is the easy part. Your ongoing job is to drive that brand through
every part of your organization and any organization that works
on your behalf, such as your channels. If Starbucks worries about
toilet paper, you should worry about all the plies in your organization.
Guy Smith (guy@SiliconStrat.com)
is the principal of Silicon
Strategies Marketing. Guy specializes in strategic marketing
and market development for technology companies. Aside from his
marketing successes, Guy has a background as a technologist for
NASA, McDonnell Douglas, and Circuit City and remains active in
technology, primarily within the Open Source Community
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