How can you integrate customer feedback into your brand strategy without losing sight of your values?

Amazingly many companies have what I call placeholder text for brand values. They are often diluted in jargon or so broad individuals don’t know how to apply them. A critical step is to evaluate the brand values through the perspectives of all stakeholders internal and external. In doing so, for each value, you should easily be able to identify ways they apply to decision making. Additionally each value should be easy to understand for all stakeholders. They can’t identify and align with your brand values if it doesn’t mean something to them. Once you have updated brand values into those with true meaning, that you can apply and that people can identify as aligning with their own, you can start to track feedback to guide decisions.

Set core values as non-negotiable benchmarks. Then, strategically gather & analyze feedback, focusing on data that aligns with these core values. Translate insights into initiatives through a cross-functional team, ensuring coherence with brand core values. Pilot these initiatives, & scale up those that resonate with both brand core values & customer needs. Monitor impact through key performance indicators while evolving with customer insights. Feedback is the only way to improve.

During my career, whenever I've conducted market research or attempted to implement the findings, I've always put emphasis on understanding the customer's intent and viewpoint, rather than just how they express themselves. It's important to remember that customers may not always know how to articulate their thoughts, but it's up to us to discern their underlying emotions. It's crucial to strike a good balance between qualitative and quantitative data – sometimes numbers are enough, but other times descriptive words are necessary to truly grasp the tangible emotions of the customer.

Brand values need to delivered on ground first before you plaster it everywhere on your brand/marketing communications. Once that is done, you can do the following - 1. Have solution oriented communication with customer at the center. Don't shout we will do this, we are giving you this. 2. Have humble tonality when blending feedback into strategy. Aggressive communication can be off putting to majority. 3. Integrate feedback+ solution in your customer services & feedback collection mechanism. Add that as part of ORM responses too. 4. Ensure that the final comms output has easy to understand call to action. E.g. If you digitized your sign up process, help the user go through it seamlessly with all the right steps. 5. Monitor results.

This becomes very crucial as we start dealing with scale and volume. In order to prioritize feedback, we can adhere to the following :- a. Prioritize the feedback basis the ICP b. Segregate the feedback on the basis of time, effort and scale c. You can also add expected revenue from each improvement/ feedback