We have all had that one experience where we encounter an employee of our favorite brand who is either slow and inefficient or rude and unpleasant. How did that make you feel? You probably would be reluctant to do business with that company again, given the less-than-professional attitude of that employee.
This negative experience demonstrates why involving your employees in your brand’s development is so important. If left to themselves and not taken into your branding strategy, employees have the ultimate power of either sending your brand soaring to the skies or crashing to the ground.
Let’s take a closer look at exactly how your employees can affect your brand and what you can do to ensure that your customers consistently receive the kind of attention and interactions that build your business.
Your Employees Are The Face of The Business
Whether you are picking up the phone to make a food order, requesting information about a product or service on a website, or walking into a store to do a bit of clothes shopping, an employee is often responsible for greeting the customer and providing support or solutions.
At this touchpoint with your brand, it’s your opportunity to reinforce the brand promise you made through your marketing and advertising activities. Your customers would have already started to form their perceptions about your brand. They will confirm their impression of your business by the service they received from the person you choose to represent you- your employee. Therefore, an employee’s appearance, personality, attitude, and professionalism reflect your brand values and should be complementary.
An employee with a neat appearance, warm and welcoming personality, and an efficient manner will most likely communicate the message that your company is willing and ready to serve and places a high value on its customers’ time. In contrast, an unpleasant employee with a sloppy appearance and a distracted, unprepared manner can indicate a laissez-faire attitude to products, service delivery, and time.
The Walt Disney Company had to its credit over 200,0000 employees in 2019. It claims to be the happiest, most magical place on earth. Just imagine if the people who work there appeared unhappy, greeted guests while wearing bored expressions on their faces, and donned incomplete uniforms of the Disney characters that your kids have waited all their lives to meet and see? The magic would disappear into thin air!
Your Employees Are Powerful Communication Tools
Employees lend a level of authenticity to your messages and naturally interact with your customers to make a personal connection with the brand. Brand distributed messages will only go so far as to draw in potential clients. It is the personal touch from interacting with actual human beings that convert potential customers to buyers. People tend to trust the words of real people over brand messages. While ads can be staged, and brand messages are deliberately and carefully designed to impress and persuade, in contrast, there is a greater level of genuineness in hearing comments about a brand from someone you may know or can interact with. After all, the person you know is more likely, to tell the truth about a brand than the brand itself would be.
Your customers engage with your brand and your employees in person and through online touchpoints like your website and social media sites. Your employees are social beings who enjoy connecting and sharing precious moments with others, just like any other human being. Use your employees to connect and engage with both existing and potential customers in a brand-approved way.
Your Employees Are Your Brand’s Ambassadors
We mentioned earlier that employees are the face of your business. Some employees fail to realize, however, is that this statement remains true whether they are on the job or off the clock. Once others can identify an individual as an employee of a certain institution, no matter their location or the time of day, their every action is being monitored and judged according to the brand they represent.
The truth is that employees do more than simply work for your brand. As such, they are your brand and must be consistently mindful of their words and behaviors wherever they go.
Because let’s be honest. How much faith would you put in a brand that is trying to raise awareness about healthy eating while the employees who represent the brand are seen consistently making poor food choices and publicly advocate unhealthy choices? It will indeed shine an awfully bad light on the brand in question.
Your Employees more than just part of Your Brand
Effectively branding your business is difficult enough to remain relevant amidst a world with constantly changing trends. Don’t create extra work for yourself by ignoring the needs of the people who are the driving force behind your business. Your employees are one of, if not the most crucial element in brand development. Therefore, it is imperative to include them in your brand strategy so that they work for your brand, rather than against it.
Take the time to give your team the tools they need to make your brand come alive in their daily interactions with your customers.
Employee Brand handbook, training, or approach
Gain product or service knowledge
Company Brand Strategy
Our customer-centric project management approach to creating marketing solutions can create an environment where winning relationships are fostered with your staff and customers for increased business success, heightened visibility, and greater profits.
Contact us at www.kimaleneregisconsulting.com for a consultation to discuss how we can help you take your business to the next level by unleashing the hidden power behind your brand.
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