Feelings drive behaviours

Chapter 1, Part 2 - Corporate Brand Personality

People behaviour is ultimately affected by how they feel about themselves and how they are treated by others. If people are feeling valued, respected and empowered by colleagues and line managers for example, they will ‘infect’ others with similar positive behaviours.? However a lack of the same will create demotivation and dis-engagement and will be further compounded by too much to do, lack of training and hampered career progression, which will likely result in a bad attitude. All these are contributing factors to corporate bad manners displayed externally as well as internally, affecting behaviours of others around us, thereby compounding the issue.? Of course there are other factors to consider here too, that we are not covering in this book – those of rewards, workload and hours etc.

Loss of Trust

So we can start to see that the largely untapped resource within your corporate walls that can build brand equity more effectively than you may certainly have considered, is your people, and specifically those employees with strong and individual personal brands. It is these personal brands that can make your corporate brand real, trusted and pertinent in the eyes and minds of your customers and potential clients. This is because of the connection they bring and the human level of personality they add to the brand.

The corporate brand reputation you’ve been able to rely on and your customers have trusted in previous decades, may not exist for much longer if the critical area of people brand is not addressed effectively now.? Every interaction adds a layer to your corporate brand and your reputation grows or declines as a result. This reputation is often created from the inside, out, by the attitude of your people and how they feel about your company and the managers they report to. Customers move away from suppliers mostly due to perceived indifference. You rarely get to hear about the specifics about how they feel under-valued, but your bottom-line feels it.

The banking industry’s reputation in particular has been in question in recent years and a loss of trust has occurred.? Even though some of that reputation has been recovered, half of US adults say their trust in banks has still been declining. 66% of Americans state that personal experience with their banks has a great deal of influence on their level of trust. (The Financial Brand, 2014). It is not easy to gain this trust back once broken.

?Case study

I was interested in the Swedish Bank, Handelsbanken, who appear to have bypassed the typical decrease in levels of trust in banks and have retained their customers loyalty.? They were ranked Europe’s, and one of the world’s strongest banks, by Bloomberg in 2013.? Their model is one of localisation – they give autonomy to the branches rather than at national or head office level, as they believe that the branch know their local customers better than anybody else. They therefore empower their people to make decisions that are truly aligned to the customers needs, putting the power with the people who make the day to day decisions.

I interviewed Anders Bouvin, UK CEO of Handelsbanken UK, who is far from your traditional stereotype of a head of a bank! Anders first of all believes that customers ultimately control the brand of any organization – the brand is what your customers say it is. He says “Can you really talk about brand at all if the people are not aligned with what you say you are?”? This belief is right at the heart of how Handelsbanken run their business. They are crystal clear in the communication of the values of the bank and they keep it simple. Thousands of decisions are made every day and these are taken from the one core fundamental value they have at the bank, that of doing what is right for the customer at that time. Anders believes that so many companies today say they put the customer first but they do not have the energy or capacity to make this happen in reality. Many other banks have said they will replicate what Handelsbanken are doing, but they never actually achieve it. None have been able to radically change to the level needed.

One of the key reasons Handelsbanken are able to really put their customers first is that they have eliminated all targets except the overall financial one, as they believe that any sort of product target can detract from doing what is best for the customer.

The important point here is that the core value of the company is simple, it is communicated clearly, and then processes are put in place to allow for every individual to adhere to that core value consistently.

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Copyright Lesley Everett 2024

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