Designing Brand Experiences
In another post (Touchstones and Touchpoints), I suggested that despite obvious challenges the ambition to achieve ideal brand experiences is better than dismissing the effort altogether.
Brand experiences are ephemeral because it’s hard to design an experience and deliver it according to plan. Too many uncontrollable variables create a gap that yawns between the ideal experience’s conception and its attainment. And while imagining better is less helpful than doing better, the more we can envision and design an ideal brand experience the better our chances of delivering them.
Brand experience design begins with a basic understanding of the customer cycle (or whatever stakeholder “seed-to-harvest” sequence one must consider). That cycle typically breaks down into discrete transactional phases (e.g., need → acquire → use → service), although some processes can occur in several or all phases of the cycle (invoicing/payment, for instance). In turn, each phase consists of multiple touchpoints, the most critical of which become priority candidates for designing best-in-class brand experiences.
Certainly, prioritizing touchpoints is easier said than done. Taking inventory of every brand interaction is like staring up to a clear, star-filled sky at night and trying to focus on one pinpoint of light among the thousands of other beckoning beacons. And touchpoints have their own hierarchy of genus and species. Some are momentary and perfunctory; some are highly choreographed and ordered; some extend over time through product usage; and some occur unexpectedly. Of course, any touchpoint that functions as a strategic hinge will command priority.
Customer surveys often provide the best starting point for touchpoint triage. If there’s a pattern or prevalence of experiential pain points, the targets reveal themselves accordingly. Absent customer feedback, those involved in customer-facing roles are likely to have first-hand familiarity with touchpoint deficiencies. Ask front-line employees what isn’t working well and you’ll get some valuable input for prioritizing the touchpoints that would benefit from experience redesign. You may also discover that redesigning internal touchpoints (e.g., to address protracted or slipshod handoffs, inadequate or inaccurate information, or bureaucratic administrivia) must come before any external touchpoints can be considered.
By now it should be clear that brand touchpoint experiences are a function of people and processes. We already know that the performance of people can fluctuate. That places a premium on designing experiences around reliable and repeatable processes. Which brings us to the guiding principle of brand experience design: minimize human decision making, process deviations, and band aids; maximize SOPs, protocols, and technology.
As discussed elsewhere, the first step in brand experience design involves identifying and defining the touchstones of your touchpoints. In other words, what are the iconic, brand-affirming characteristics of the experience you want to create for the touchpoint in question? This is a blue-sky process best edified by those proximate to the touchpoint. It should include standards of performance that reflect the brand’s value proposition, which can be both qualitative and quantitative, inasmuch as brand value encompasses both intangible perceptions and tangible performance.
Step two involves mapping the processes, technologies, information, functions/roles, and handoffs required to execute the ideal touchpoint experience. It’s important to stipulate the purpose and performance standards for each of these touchpoint inputs to ensure they suit the intended brand experience. Of these inputs, assess what can be prescribed as an SOP, what can be automated, and what requires defined decision-making protocols. If SOPs, technologies, and protocols already exist across the touchpoint inputs, double check that they sufficiently enable the intended brand experience.
Of course, financial, technical, and other practical constraints will come into play when creating touchstone brand experiences. Just remember that reliable, repeatable processes, procedures, and protocols lead to predictable, demonstrable, and affirming brand experiences. And those experiences should be engineered to uphold the brand promise in both its explicit phrasing and implied representations. In other words, if you know what you want your brand to be known for, design your brand experiences accordingly.
Still, no matter how clinically one might approach touchpoint experience design, the process must overcome serious potential points of failure:
Front-line employees — much has already been said here about the unpredictability of human efforts, which we often fail to account for in all our perfect plans. That said, whatever skills your front-line employees may lack are less important than their demonstrated willingness to oblige a customer. Attitude goes an incredibly long way in overcoming process deficiencies or resolving product-related problems. Conversely, a single employee’s bad attitude creates great dissatisfaction that attaches to the brand regardless of how well your processes work or products perform.
Preventive measures: Know the people on your front lines and understand what motivates each one. Help them appreciate that their role is more impactful on day-to-day organizational performance than the CEO or most other higher-ups. Empower them to make the best decisions according to what people expect from the brand while balancing the interests of the organization. Protect them from operational unreadiness or failures by keeping them informed and armed with appropriate messaging and potential remedial solutions. Don’t ever leave them without basic resources, back up, or security. Weed out shirkers, malcontents, and the impudent with furious resolve without burdening the employees you prize with more work.
Operational unreadiness/failure – undertaking commercial brand execution, including messaging, positioning and campaigns, before or without gaining input from colleagues in operations unnecessarily imperils brand reputation. Even the fundamental brand promise (especially if formally articulated through a tagline, slogans, or boilerplate messaging) imposes an obligation that operations may be unable to measure up to. Indeed, those leading commercial brand efforts can easily lose sight of the reputational brand’s value/values assurances while pursuing their customer/revenues goals.
Preventive measures: Simply, consult with operations at the earliest possible time following the decision to engage a significant commercial-brand endeavor. In fact, operations colleagues usually help brand practitioners understand potential problems with embellishments that are inconsistent with the practical realities of day-to-day operations. Of course, it’s helpful when commercial brand managers resist the urge to create additional brand expressions and commitments beyond those already invested in the reputational brand.
Value chain – third parties your organization relies on for supply, manufacturing, processing, services, distribution, customer care, and post-sale activities are critical links in achieving many ideal brand experiences. While there may be contractual or service level agreements that mitigate the financial, operational, or commercial impacts of third-party missteps, these can’t always forestall injury to the brand when mistakes or blunders impact customer experiences. Procurement colleagues usually obtain strong assurances from vendors, if only via terms and conditions, that can remedy most business-related costs (hard or soft). Remedies for harm to the brand are harder to enact; the brand usually will own its lack of third-party vigilance.
Preventive measures: Where third parties play a role in ideal brand experiences, treat them as uncontrolled variables that require contingency planning and risk mitigation. As appropriate, involve third parties in brand-experience design or at least make them aware of their role in the touchpoint interaction. Some third parties perfectly understand brand commitments and would add value to the touchpoint design if given the opportunity. Certainly, ensure that procurement colleagues convey brand expectations to third parties and, to the extent possible, codify those expectations within the terms and conditions of contracts.
Organizational disharmony – Unreliable back-office, administrative, and support personnel and processes directly affect the ability of front-line team members to effectively deliver ideal brand experiences. Indeed, nothing frustrates the “producers” more than the perceived bureaucracy and lassitude of “overhead,” especially when combined with processes that hinder efficiency, transparency, and responsiveness. That frustration intensifies when organizational disharmony detracts from touchpoint experiences, with only the expediency and resourcefulness of front-line employees preventing significant harm to the brand.
Preventive measures: Enmesh back-office teams and processes within the framework of the organization’s operating system (presuming one exists). The elements of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies, among other continuous improvement paradigms, apply equally to support, production, and service processes and the people involved in each. In addition, tremendous value obtains when back-office employees have the opportunity to shadow front-line employees over the course of a day or week. First-hand understanding of how their work affects front-line touchpoints enables back-office team members to enter brand-experience design with appropriate insight.