Branding and customer experience: a winning combination

Many organizations have a branding team and a customer experience (CX) team. And, unfortunately, more often than not there’s not enough communication between them.?

Branding and customer experience are inextricably linked.

The argument could even be made that branding is customer experience, or at the very least it falls under branding’s umbrella. And combining branding with CX is a surefire way to positively engage customers and encourage customer loyalty.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with some definitions to make sure we’re all on the same page!

Defining branding and CX??

In The Brand Gap, branding expert Marty Neumeier summarizes a brand as a “person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”1 In line with that definition, branding can be defined as the strategy to cultivate the desired gut feeling in people.?

On the other hand, customer experience is “the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company.”2

If branding is about generating specific gut feelings about companies, and customer experience is about customers’ subjective responses to contact with companies, it’s not hard to see how they’re linked.?

It doesn’t matter how much you spend on branding, how great your visual identity looks, or how you position your brand; all it takes is for a customer to have one negative experience with your company to never do business with you again.?

That alone should be reason enough for companies to start seriously thinking about how their branding and CX teams need to work together.

Branding and CX working hand in hand

Our experiences are what fuel our opinions and beliefs, and it’s no different for brands. While some experiences are easier to see as being in the scope of branding, other experiences, typically relegated to the realm of CX, also greatly influence consumers’ perceptions of brands.?

A branding strategy includes elements like positioning, brand guidelines, branded content, and communication standards. This makes sense, since the way a brand looks, feels, and communicates all influence how consumers view it.

But consumers’ opinions are primarily influenced by their direct interactions and experiences with brands. What kind of customer support does the company provide? Can customers easily talk to a human representative? Are customers having positive experiences?

Customer experience is an integral part of any brand. Aligning your branding and CX strategies will allow you to provide the best possible branded customer journey.?

Branded customer journeys

Focusing on individual touchpoints can lead to an obscured understanding of your customer experience. Often, it is not individual touchpoints but processes on the whole that need to be improved.

Instead of individual, unconnected touchpoints, brands should consider entire customer journeys and all the touchpoints involved. Indeed, researchers have found that journeys, and not touchpoints, are more predictive of business outcomes. According to their findings,

across industries performance on journeys is 30% to 40% more strongly correlated with customer satisfaction than performance on touchpoints is — and 20% to 30% more strongly correlated with business outcomes, such as high revenue, repeat purchase, low customer churn, and positive word of mouth.3

The work of branding and CX need to be leveraged together to provide the best possible branded customer journey. While the CX team needs to make sure the entire journey is a positive experience, the branding team needs to make sure the entire journey is on brand.?

For the branding team, this means ensuring that communication at each touchpoint in a journey is in line with the brand’s voice and tone. The branding team should also make sure the brand’s positioning and values are reinforced throughout customer journeys.

Customers should be able to deduce a brand’s values based on their experiences with it.?

For example, if your brand is committed to providing transparency, is this actually delivered throughout your customer journeys? If your brand values speed and efficiency, do customers praise how fast it is to deal with your customer support team?

In addition to optimizing customer journeys, this exchange between branding and customer experience will allow you to nurture relationships with your customers.

Nurture relationships

Best-in-class customer journeys that reinforce brand values, culture, and identity are what separate brands with customers, from those with brand advocates. Advocates who are loyal to, engage with and promote their favorite brands.?

Advocates like, say, Apple users. While it’s all too cliché to cite Apple in branding content, it’s for good reason: their branding is on point and their customers are of the most loyal variety. And Apple is a perfect example of the idea being presented here.

No matter where you interact with Apple, you don’t just have a positive experience, you have a positive Apple experience. Whether it’s using an iPhone, browsing an Apple store, or contacting their customer service, your experience will look and feel distinctly Apple.??

Simple and painless don’t just describe Apple’s products and operating system but all of their touchpoints.

Branded CX

Brands play a more prominent role in our lives than ever before. There are many brands in our personal and professional lives that we would rather not live without. These are brands that enrich our lives, make our work easier, and represent our values and identity.

If you want your brand to occupy that same place in the minds of your customers, combining your branding and CX efforts is your ticket to success.

1 Neumeier, M. (2005). The brand gap: Revised edition. Peachpit Press.

2 Meyer, C., & Schwager, A. (2007). Understanding customer experience. Harvard business review, 85(2), 116.

3 Rawson, A., Duncan, E., & Jones, C. (2013). The truth about customer experience. Harvard business review, 91(9), 90-98.