Brand Promise

How to Deliver an Exceptional Customer Service Experience

June 11, 2021 by Workdom Strategist

No matter what type of small business you run, you know that the core of what will attract customers and bring them back is your customer service. But with more and more companies turning to automation for everything from product fulfillment to support, how can your company stand out and really ensure that your customer service gets noticed and talked about?

It’s interesting to note that poor customer service will get your business shared (and not in a good way!) more readily than great customer service, but great customer service stands the test of time — especially when it is done consistently. In short, you’re teaching your customers to expect exceptionality, and that puts your business well ahead of those automated, self-service brands that only look at their customers in terms of dollar signs.

With that being said, here’s how to create a memorable customer service experience for each and every customer, no matter what you’re selling.

Know Your Product (Like No One Else!)

The fact is that no one knows your product as well as you do. And that’s leverage that you can definitely put to work for your business. When you know your product inside and out, including not just its features but how it works and what’s inside, you’re able to troubleshoot problems more effectively and help your customers reach a satisfactory conclusion before they start wandering deep into your website looking for your customer support number.

But simply knowing your product or service well isn’t enough. It can form the base of your customer service operations, but the real exemplary experience is when you:

Look for Ways to Anticipate Problems

Knowing your product inside and out also means that you can learn to anticipate the most common questions, concerns, and issues that people tend to have with it. When you can anticipate problems, you can take steps to help customers and prospects resolve them. No matter the channel that you use to see this through to completion, customers will always appreciate not having to wait forever to get a solution and will appreciate that an actual person took the time to help them rather than forcing them to fend for themselves.

With that being said, however, it’s never a bad idea, particularly if you have a technical or complex product or service, to consider setting up a knowledge base so that customers who want additional steps to follow or a video walkthrough can have access to that should they wish to solve the problem themselves. In business, it’s all about being flexible and adaptable to serve the user’s needs — making it even more important to be attentive to anticipating them!

Respond Quickly (Even if It’s Just to Say Their Message Was Received!)

We get it, whether you’re one person or a small team, it’s entirely possible that the number of support and customer service messages you receive far outweighs the time you have to answer them all. However, oftentimes customers will send a support ticket, an email or even a call and find that their request goes straight to voicemail hell or never gets a reply.

Even a short message to say “We got your request and we’re working hard to answer it as quickly as possible” can help give the customer a sense that their concern or problem truly matters and that your team is concentrating all their efforts on resolving it. As much as we’d all like an instantaneous solution, sometimes that’s just not possible — but it is possible to let your customers know quickly that you’re working on it, and they’ll appreciate it every time.

Listen More than You Speak

When offering support over the phone, it’s easy to want to jump right to the solution — but it’s better to fully listen to the customer explain the issue just so that you don’t miss some critical part of the problem. Listen to them explain it entirely, ask questions if necessary, but take the time to listen. This assures them that you’re taking the time to wholly understand their concern or problem so that you can more fully seek out an answer or a solution.

A small tip, maybe, but one that is often all-too-forgotten in our rush to answer tickets or support calls quickly and move onto the next one.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help!

It’s easy to get overwhelmed even if you’re fully committed to delivering the very best customer experience. When that happens, don’t hesitate to reach out for help! At Workdom, we help support your customer service efforts by implementing proven, workable strategies that make significant and measurable impacts, not only in your ability to offer solutions, but in how you offer them.

From customer sales enablement and content creation to helping you more efficiently manage your tech stack, our knowledgeable marketing experts can help you deliver the kind of customer experience that your customers can’t get enough of! Contact us today to learn how our on-demand marketing services can help you take your customer support to the next level!

The Complete Brand Messaging Checklist from Workdom

June 26, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

A brand is so much more than just a tagline and a logo. Of course, when you add up all these things that encompass the brand itself, it can feel rather overwhelming. Brand messaging? Brand tone? Brand style? Fortunately, although these things take time to develop, by having a concrete strategy, brand messaging overall can be distilled into a checklist of sorts — a formula or a framework wherein once you go through it, ensures that you have all of the boxes ticked!

So how can you be sure you’re on the right track when it comes to your brand messaging?

Here’s our complete list of the things you’ll need in order to make sure your brand messaging is on point with your target audience.

First, it’s important to note that we’re not delving deep into specific brand assets, like your logo, tagline, typography/style and color scheme. All of those are important, but they’re like the icing on the brand messaging cake — you can’t develop them until you have nailed down the points below.

Your Unique Selling Proposition

One of the most important aspects of building any brand is the USP or unique selling proposition. It’s what’s truly unique about your product or service that makes you different (and worth paying attention to) in a competitive and crowded market.

In other words, your USP answers the customer’s question, “why should I buy from you?” Be careful about competing on superficial things like price, since saying “we’re the cheapest” can easily be attacked by another competitor, and then it’s a race to the bottom – which in turn hurts your revenue and brand. The same applies to quality — it’s an intangible thing and someone, somewhere, can always build a better mousetrap.

Your Brand Promise

A brand promise is a facet of brand messaging. It’s what you want your customers to know about your brand. For example, Domino’s pizza built a brand promise around “30 minutes [delivery] or it’s free”. Even though they haven’t offered that standard for years, they’re still known for it, demonstrating the stick-ability of a good brand promise.

Another example is clothing retailer Men’s Wearhouse. Their brand promise is that they guarantee that you’ll look good in their suits. If you don’t like the fit, style, or look, they make it easy to change it, which gives consumers more confidence when doing business with them, that they’ll get exactly what they want.

Your brand promise answers the questions — what will customers get as a result of doing business with us? And how will they know when they’ve gotten it? How does that reflect on our company?

Your Brand Values

This is what your brand stands for. It’s essentially designed to shore up the previous points in a way that makes it abundantly clear how you differ from your competitors. Even more than that, your brand values should resonate with your target audience. These shared values when meant sincerely, draw you closer to your target audience. As long as you’re able to demonstrate those values through every step of the process, you’ll be able to make genuine connections with the people that share them in which potentially results to building up your customers’ loyalty to your brand.

Your Position

This is where you “fit” in the overall marketplace. Not just in terms of price or quality but in terms of the value you offer. As you might imagine, it’s tied very closely with your unique selling proposition. When you offer a unique experience to your customers, your position helps cement your commitment to making that experience happen for your customers every time they do business with you.

You might even share certain values with other competitors in your space, and that’s perfectly acceptable. What’s going to set you apart is your USP. As you hold true to your values and maintain your brand promise, you’ll naturally find a place where your brand is comfortably “settled”.

Your Authority

Finally, there’s authority, or the proof from outside your company that your brand is every bit the promises, values and statements you’ve made about it. That means getting your customers excited to talk about it. Encourage them to leave testimonials, to share their success with your product or service on social media, and to become something of a “brand ambassador” as a case study.

There are lots of ways to build up authority, but like all good brand messaging initiatives, it takes a consistent effort over time to make it happen and make it stick.

If you need help with any of the points mentioned here or you feel like you’re not quite hitting all of your prospects’ buttons when it comes to writing brand messaging that perfectly fits your company’s style and goals, why not reach out to our senior branding professionals and let our team here at Workdom help you to refine and realize your vision? Contact us today to learn more about the services that we offer and let’s help you get started further your brand’s growth!

What is Your Brand Promise?

June 19, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

(It’s Okay If You Don’t Know….Yet!)

Let’s face it — your branding does a lot of heavy lifting. When you think about it, your brand is inextricably linked to many of your business activities. While it consists of all the tangible things like your logo, tagline and style guide, at the same time, it’s also intangible: the personality you want your company to convey to customers.

Crafting a Brand Promise

Your brand promise is what guides your customers to you — like a magnet. It affects everything from marketing to customer service and sets the stage for what customers can expect from you. It is, quite literally, a promise in a sense that ties your company to a specific goal or outcome that customers want.

It’s Not the Same Thing as a Mission Statement

A brand promise is not a mission statement or philosophy. It can touch on those things, but it serves a separate purpose. For example, things like your logo, slogan, style guide and mission statement are all inherently tied to your branding, but they are separate facets of the same concept.

With that being said, how do you go about creating a brand promise? And how can you make sure that it doesn’t devolve into something like a mission statement, strategy or philosophy? Here’s how:

Ask Yourself: What Kind of Experience Will You Deliver to Your Customers?

Your brand experience is what makes your company desirable and special. It can be a statement, but it’s something that you want people to know above and beyond anything else. For example, if someone could know ONE thing about your brand, what would it be?

As an example, let’s say that you sell a high quality tea made with ingredients that help women look younger. Perhaps the experience you want them to remember is “look younger from the very first sip”. It seems like that alone would sell boxes and boxes of tea, but it won’t — at least not yet.

Why Should Your Customers Care About That?

Now that you’ve made your experience statement, why should customers care? In other words, what is it about your brand that should make them want to sit up and take notice of what you have to offer?

Referencing our example above, your customers should care because this way, they don’t have to invest in a lot of creams, ointments and concealers. All they have to do is drink tea! But even though expanding on what makes you different sets you apart from your competition and centers around the promise you’re making, how will they know it’s working?

Can You Measure It?

Your brand promise should look to fulfill a certain expectation — such as saving time or money, being convenient or high-quality. In our example above “from the very first sip” demonstrates that it works immediately. Your brand promises a certain result within a certain time frame in a way that’s enough to set it apart from the competition.

That’s a tall order to fill!

Of course these are by no means the only things that go into creating a brand promise, but they are a few of the most important points and should be enough to get you started on your brand development journey. The truth is that every brand is different and requires a different approach tailored to its specific needs, its target audience, its overall expectations and much more. It’s equal parts of art and science!

If you’re ready to work on creating a memorable, actionable, and aligned brand promise, reach out to our senior branding specialists here at Workdom today. We’ll work with you to hone in on your vision, develop a meaningful brand promise and lay the foundations so that you can create a truly remarkable customer experience and build customer loyalty sooner than later.