Working In Harmony: Why Aligning Brand & Customer Experience Is Critical In 2023

In this guest post, Matt Yuen (lead image), head of experience design at Switch, says money you invest in building a positive image for your brand and business is wasted if your CX isn’t up to scratch…

That sense of disappointment when an item you’ve purchased, a destination you’ve visited or a service you’ve used has fallen short of your expectations… We’ve all been there: hyped ourselves up for a great experience and felt short changed when it’s failed to materialise – especially, if the build-up was significant.

If your company has invested time and resources into building a positive brand experience, this is exactly what you don’t want to happen. It can mean that years of hard work positioning your organisation as a trusted, high-quality supplier are written off, virtually overnight, in some instances.

Counting the cost of a brand battering

Extreme case in point: Optus. Last year’s cyberattack, which saw the personal details of millions of customers compromised, dealt a $1.2 billion blow to the company’s brand image, according to the Brand Finance Australia 100 2023, an annual ranking released by the consultancy in January 2023.

“Removing the impact of this one-off pernicious event, Optus’ brand value would have otherwise increased by 11 per cent,” Brand Finance Australia managing director Mark Crowe noted.

By contrast, the telco’s chief rival, Telstra, clocked an enviable 29 per cent increase in brand value over the same period, courtesy of improvements in customer service, ease of interaction, perceived value for money and word of mouth endorsement.

Similarly, Woolworths, Australia’s most valuable brand for the fourth consecutive year, saw its brand value jump by 18 per cent to $16.2 billion, off the back of a slew of customer-experience-focused initiatives.

They included the introduction of ‘curated ranges tailored to local communities’, the provision of ‘more inclusive experiences to a wider range of consumers’ and a slew of ESG initiatives aimed at reducing emissions and managing the impact of climate change, the report noted.

Bringing brand and customer experience together

The term customer experience is commonly used to refer to the sentiments that arise following a customer’s direct interaction with an organisation, brand or product, either online or in real life.

Tightly aligning your brand and customer experiences will help you deliver on the promises, explicit or otherwise, that your sales and marketing campaigns make to customers.

A standout customer experience helps to close the gap between expectation and reality, lessening the likelihood of customers feeling let down in any way by the quality of the product or service they’ve purchased, or are considering investing in.

Struggling in siloes

In my experience, as a seasoned digital and CX strategist who’s worked with some of Australia’s largest companies, the majority of organisations have scope to improve in this area.

Typically, we’ll find their internal structures and departments are siloed, with business units all striving to hit their own respective KPIs – think growing revenue, pulling more prospects into the pipeline, getting orders out the door faster and cheaper, and so on.

Team leaders and contributors generally have little awareness of what their colleagues down the hall or on the next floor are doing. And they give even less thought to how they might work with one another, to make every stage of the customer journey a memorable one, for all the right reasons.

It’s good to talk

Most companies have consciously chosen to place their customers front and centre.

They have over-arching alignment strategies in place, which are revisited quarterly or bi-annually, to ensure they remain fit for purpose.

In almost every instance, there’s a senior decision maker sitting at the centre of everything – a brand executive, chief marketing officer or head of customer experience. It’s their job to ensure the sales, marketing, operations and IT teams are tight as a drum; all pulling together to ensure customers’ expectations are not only met but exceeded.

These genuinely customer-centric organisations know that they’re getting it right because they seek customer feedback frequently, about all aspects of their operations. And they do more than pay lip service to the oft-cited mantra of ‘continuous improvement’; refusing to rest on their laurels, and responding at speed when issues are identified.

Unfortunately, scrapping the siloes and getting multiple teams and stakeholders working in sync can be easier said than done. Many organisations find it pays to seek external expertise, from fresh-eyed strategists who can point out what’s missing and help them connect the dots.

Building a stronger future

Today’s customers are an increasingly discerning and demanding bunch – business buyers and consumers alike – and, in uncertain economic times, the competition for customers has never been more intense. Businesses that don’t ensure their brand is underpinned by a stand-out customer experience are unlikely to produce the loyalty and repeat sales they need to remain profitable long term. If your enterprise has scope to improve, there’s never been a better time to get started.