Creating client experiences that amplify your brand

We all want to give our clients and customers a brilliant experience, to make them feel that they have made the right choice by choosing our business, delivering moments of delight that quickly convert them into loyal fans.

Think about the last time you had an amazing experience with a product or service that you bought. Not the quality of the product or service itself, but the experience wrapped round it. You may well be scratching your chin to find an example – because truly great customer experiences are rarer than we perhaps imagine they should be.

And poor experiences are more common than we’d like. And boy, do we remember them.

Some years ago, I bought some porch lights from a local lighting shop. I was very pleased to have found them locally, and feeling chuffed, took the two boxes to the desk to pay. The assistant disappeared under the counter for some furious rummaging before informing me that they didn’t have a carrier bag big enough for the lights. However, he could put them in this black bin bag for me. What a treat.

I trudged back from the shop, with the lights knocking against my shins in the rubbish bag, feeling decidedly less chuffed with my purchase. Because whilst the shop had told me in their strap line and on their website that they only stocked quality products, what they had shown me was that their lights were more at home in a scrunched up bin bag.

And there we have the crux of the brand experience: it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s what you show that demonstrates your brand loud and clear.

It’s the old film makers adage: show, don’t tell. Your brand story can be told – on your website, your brochure, in networking – and that has impact. But SHOW your brand story, and it is powerful evidence that you live your brand attitude and promise. And once prospects and clients have evidence for themselves, they are persuaded.

Any interaction you have in your business with prospects and clients will be sending out a message, so business owners should be designing these interactions purposefully to show what kind of business you are, what values are important to you and what your superpower is. Because leave it to chance and without due care and attention, before you know it, the Bin Bag Effect is soon in full force.

If you tell your customers one thing, yet show them something to the contrary, it creates uncertainty in your customers’ minds because they no longer have a clear picture in their head of what your business is really all about.

Don’t tell customers that your products are high quality, show them by having beautiful carrier bags that protect your products.

Don’t tell clients that you care about their enquiry, show them by not making them wait in a phone queue of 45 other customers slowly grinding their teeth into dust, but by answering the phone promptly or giving them another way of finding out the answer they want.

Don’t tell your customers you’re all about a playful approach, show them by gamifying your shared project plan.

Here’s an exercise to help you get some ideas about creating brilliant experiences in and around your business. You can use Post-Its to write your answers on, because everything looks more creative on a small square of brightly coloured paper.

First ask: what do we stand for as a business?

Write down the values, behaviours and attitudes that make up your brand.

Next to each, write down 5 key interaction points in your business – big or small. This could be your onboarding process, your website, your email signature, your invoices, your client status reports, your packaging, your zoom meetings….

Then pick a value or attitude and pair with an interaction point.

Come up with 5 ideas as to how you can you SHOW your prospects this value or attitude at this interaction point, to evidence your claims.

Let’s say one of your brand promises is to give your clients adventure, and your interaction point is your project proposal. An idea to show your adventurous spirit would be to create your proposal as a map and send that to the client. Or send them an onboarding adventure kit for the exciting journey ahead.

Or part of your brand story is taking the hassle out of managing your business finances. How do you show this is true? Not by sending a complex report swimming with numbers that your client takes one look at and falls into a stress-induced coma. You create an app with a simple dashboard and a visual representation of the client’s finances. Or you don’t send that report, you book a half hour Explainer Session with your client to make sure they understand. These interactions speak volumes about your business, and will amplify your brand in the process.

Don’t leave your client experiences to chance. Know your brand story, get creative about how you can show it in the interactions between your business and your clients, and create raving fans who have never, ever had to carry anything home in a bin bag.

If you want to understand your brand story elements, map your interaction points, and get really creative about how you bring your brand experience to life, contact Jodie for a Cultivator session where you will work with a range of creative tools to build your brand experience.

You will also find a handy tool called Building a Brilliant Client Experience that has recently been added to the Tool Shed, our online membership, which is free to download. Hop into the Tool Shed here.