What do you do if your brand strategy clashes with your customer service team's approach?

See, it's a two-way dialogue. Firstly, take a step back and evaluate the customer service approach being pointed out. Ask yourself if their perspective has merit. If their suggestions align with your brand values and goals, consider implementing those changes. View their input as valuable feedback that can enhance the overall customer experience. However, if you determine that their approach doesn't align with your brand strategy, it's important to communicate this clearly to the customer service team. Explain the reasoning behind your strategy and the potential consequences of deviating from it. Share relevant pointers and examples to illustrate your perspective and ensure alignment with the overarching brand vision.

Incorporating a customer feedback loop into both our brand strategy and customer service processes was crucial. We actively sought out and analyzed customer feedback to understand their perceptions and experiences. This dual focus allowed us to tweak our approach in real-time, ensuring our brand strategy and customer service were not just aligned but also responsive to our customers' needs and expectations.

Marketing, sales, and customer service need to have complimentary customer facing strategies. Director meetings should be held between departments regularly to make sure you can realign objectives and establish protocols that put the customer first.

?? Brand Strategy vs. Customer Service: What to Do? Here's a thought: Cultivate a customer-centric culture across all teams. Make your customers' needs and preferences the heart of your decision-making. It’s all about syncing every action with the goal of delivering value, wrapped in empathy. This way, whether it’s your brand voice or your service response, you’re singing the same tune – one that resonates deeply with your customers.

A brand disconnect is a training failure. Don't assume customer service reps are fluent in brand strategy. Develop clear guidelines on voice, messaging, and how to handle complaints in line with brand values. Role-play common scenarios, and make brand expectations part of their onboarding and ongoing training.

You and your CS team should be speaking the same brand language. They are the closest team to your customers (or at least those customers who seek their aid), so they are directly delivering your brand positioning to your target audience. Develop training for all new CS reps, share brand guidelines, and provide updates as needed for any brand evolution and positioning on new subject matter. Before all this, however, your CS team can help YOU as you develop your brand strategy, providing key insights into your customers’ identities, pain points, and needs.

Marketing teams should know how customer service deals with complaints, too. For example, they could learn about common customer gripes and how they're sorted out. It's also useful for them to understand how feedback from complaints helps improve products or services, which can then influence marketing strategies. For example, if customers complain about technical difficulties with a specific product, marketing could create content showing proper use.

Training without oversight is wasted effort. Listen to customer calls, review support tickets. Are reps embodying the brand? Identify gaps and provide individual coaching. Reward those who excel in brand alignment. This isn't just about efficiency, it's about protecting your reputation.

It's crucial to foster collaboration between departments. One effective initiative we've undertaken is creating a shared spreadsheet between marketing and customer service. This spreadsheet consolidates the most common complaints and outlines the most effective strategies for addressing them.

?? When Brand Strategy and Customer Service Collide Here’s a fix: Empower your customer service team. ??? Give them the reins to make decisions and take actions that echo your brand values. Arm them with the right tools, authority, and our full support. This way, they can tackle customer issues in a manner that not only makes our customers happy but also polishes our brand's shine. ?? It’s about creating champions within our team who can elevate our brand with every customer interaction.

Listen to how others respond to complaints and concerns. Your own responses can be a combination of the best responses you hear from people, even if they’re from other departments.

Encourage CS teams to identify opportunities for innovation that can enhance the customer experience and align with brand strategy. Host regular brainstorming sessions where team members can suggest new tools, processes or approaches based on their frontline experience. This collaborative innovation is good because, apart from bringing fresh ideas to the table, also ensures that the solutions developed are practical, customer-focused, fully integrated with brand's vision and, most important, have CS teams buy in, since they were co-creators on these solutions.

Brand strategy clash with customer service? Bridge the gap! Align on Brand Values: Ensure customer service approach reflects brand promises (e.g., friendly, helpful). Communication is Key: Clearly communicate brand voice & messaging to customer service teams. Empower & Train: Train CS reps to handle situations that align with brand strategy. Gather Feedback: Involve customer service in brand strategy discussions for better alignment.

?? Brand Guidelines: A Must-Have for Every Team Member ?? Ever realized how essential brand guidelines are? Not just for the marketing folks but for everyone in the company. They're the setlist that keeps us all playing the same tune - ensuring consistency, empowering creativity, boosting efficiency, and uniting diverse ideas under a singular brand voice... ...creating a unified team.