In the fall, the Women Presidents’ Organization hosted four regional seminars with Neeli Bendapudi, professor of marketing and director of the initiative for managing services at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, to speak about the importance of branding.
At the 2009 WPO annual conference, Bendapudi introduced in her keynote address to the WPO the concept of customer apostles and customer terrorists. Customer apostles can be loosely defined as those customers who will rave about your product, suggest it to others and perpetuate word-of-mouth marketing. On the other hand, customer terrorists are the small percentage who have had a bad experience and have gone out of their way to express that experience and warn others.
Our regional seminars were a perfect follow-up to this topic to discuss not only the customers but also the living brand of a company. Even though a company may undergo changes, the values for which the company stands should never drastically change. It is important that those values are reflected in all of the ways you conduct business.
The key takeaway from the regional seminars was the importance of customer service and knowing that branding begins within the organization. To quote Bendapudi, “The experience you provide to a customer will always trump the brand.” It does not matter how well known your company is, how long you have been around or the service you provide. If you provide an extremely positive or negative experience, those will be the outliers in your customers’ mind. These are the interactions they will remember. For this reason, it is so important that a high level of customer service is expressed in every communication with your company and that customer service is a value of the corporation that must be embraced by all employees.
Successful companies know that customer service can be the difference between their company and a competitor. For example, WPO member Carolyn Sawyer, president and CEO of Tom Sawyer Co. Inc., reported that: “For any service-driven company, customer care, as we coin it at TSC, is the most critical, cost-efficient strategy to beat our competitors. A customer interaction with TSC should be a memorable experience. The interaction becomes the differentiator for your company. Ask yourself, did you do everything you possibly could to close a sale or did you create a memorable experience? Think of it as making a first impression on each encounter.
“Demonstrating clarity, compassion and commitment to the stated next steps of the transaction become critical elements of the interaction.”
It is great to believe in customer service but the key is to deliver it. Sawyer sets herself apart by ensuring that delivery and states: “In our contact call center, we still encounter clients stunned when we call back to follow up or actually deliver on what we said was part of the next steps. Sadly, there is so much bad service that it doesn’t take much to lead the pack and put your company in a position to be a brand to remember.”
I have always been a staunch believer in people, and I know that hiring the right people and surrounding oneself with those people can truly drive success. Bendapudi shared her inspiring ideas and research with WPO members encouraging them to begin brand changes from the inside, with employees’ attitudes, because that is where the true brand will shine through.
Marsha Firestone, Ph.D., is founder and CEO of the Women Presidents’ Organization, the premier global peer advisory organization connecting top women entrepreneurs who own multimillion-dollar companies. Reach Firestone at [email protected], (212) 688-4114 or www.womenpresidentsorg.com.
