Say Hello to the CX brand

You’ve probably heard the Jeff Bezos quote that, “your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” It’s true. Audiences internal and external need to care about your brand, and without emotional connection, you don’t get access to the loyal customers that have the potential to be your best and loudest ambassadors.

And yet, it hasn’t always been the case. Brands have traditionally been owner-focused, not user-focused. Fortunately though, we’re living and working in a different time; a time of seismic change where brands have to be customer-centric because customers and users are an implicit part of every brand’s development, experience and evolution; and where it’s easy for customer and consumers to be heard.

For example, reports show that the link between consumers and brand values is growing ever stronger. According to research by Ipsos/ Harris, 70% of consumers in Europe and 82% in the US buy brands that align with their personal values. What’s more, a whopping 75% have parted ways with a brand over conflicting values.

When doing it right, today’s customer centric brands - or CX Brands as I call them ?- utilize their opportunity? and challenge to create expectations and fuel them through a continuous cycle of aligned experiences.

If you’re a CX Brand, you’ll find that you’re more likeable as a brand because you know what you stand for. I liken the shift in this as being From --? To.

?

From: ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????? To:

Expectation????????????????????????????????????????? Experience

Brand promise ???????????????????????????????? Brand promise fulfilment

Employee first ????????????????????????????????? Customer-centric

Multichannel ???????????????????????????????????? Cross and omni channel

?

So what is a CX Brand?

The brands who have evolved to become CX Brands are now purpose-led, co-created, always actively listening and have employee and customer satisfaction intertwined. Sustainability, circular economy, D&I are not ‘add-ons’ or ‘initiatives’ but are intrinsic to doing modern business. They’re also temperature checking, pattern spotting and synthesising. Reflecting the shift from organization as machine, to organization as organism and greater understanding of the world as a connected system, these attributes can manifest in the following ways:

1.??????? Purpose. CX brands are guided by their purpose. This is the transcendent desire to be a force for good in the world, instead of simply selling stuff. At Philips, we want to delivering impact with care, and improve lives through meaningful innovation; and we measure our social and environmental impact as well as lives improved.

2.??????? Co-Created. CX Brands prioritize human-centered innovation. It starts with involving the customers and users in the process of innovation itself. This involves really going deep on customer needs and pain points and then bringing together different types of people across different disciplines and it helps to ensure collaboration and the exploration of opportunities and challenges to discover breakthrough solutions.?

3.??????? Always actively listening and delivering – customer insights power activity. CX Brands have a Customer Pulse program, utilize market research, qualitative and quantitative research, conduct ad hoc surveys, tackling studies and workshops, postmortem audits, moderated customer interviews, in-depth interviews, expert panels, focus groups, analyze ratings & reviews, validate as-is or to-be experiences, and more.

4.??????? Employee and customer satisfaction intertwined. There is no one without the other. It’s as simple as that. There is an increasing trend for Customer Experience items and collaboration to meet customer needs, to put CX and EX scores together, to deepen the understanding of dependencies.?

5.??????? Sustainability, circular economy, D&I are not ‘add-ons’ or ‘initiatives’ but are intrinsic to doing modern business. Investors expect today’s companies to make a lasting, positive impact on society and the planet. Retailers are stepping up on sustainability and consumers expect companies to take responsibility. Customers increasingly ask us to help them tackle their sustainability challenges, while employees are seeking purpose from their work. The growing demand from every stakeholder group is not slowing down.?

6.??????? Constant temperature and fact checking – The deep feedback and optimization loop spans the full journey across all relationship touchpoints. The CX Brand sees the customer as being at the center of a multi-level feedback system where pattern spotting, synthesising and predicting behaviours and needs is a key part of maintaining and sustaining both the relationship and the brand relevance. Quantitative analysis from multiple data sources enable multi-dimensional views and insights.

Become a CX Brand

As technology and humanity continue their dance and we increasingly realise that AI can augment, enable and intensify the personal, we believe that the brands who continue to be successful will be the CX Brands who see their brand as the sum of the experiences and interactions of and with its audiences. And so, in closing, if you’re keen to unlock the experiential power of your brand, here are few tips to remember:

·????? Be – and stay – authentic and transparent

·????? Realise – or remember – that your brand and revenue will suffer if your brand promise and experience are not aligned

·????? Don’t discount the importance of your employee experience. Your people need to believe in your brand promise before you can expect your customers to believe in it.

·????? And always remember, it’s not a project, it’s a journey. You’ll never be done. It’s an end-to-endless journey where you’re always optimizing, always seeking to deepen your understanding to deliver more and better and shifting as your customer’s needs change. The CX Brand never stands still.

?