Your brand and customer experience drive each other.
Today, the brand extends beyond a logo and visual identity. It is a promise of value that continues after purchase. Customer experience focuses on keeping that promise. Both are intertwined in a feedback loop. The brand creates expectations. Customer experience reshapes the brand.
Technology has enabled personalization, automation, and analytics providing brands opportunities to bridge gaps between expectations and delivery. Brands now can engage at various touch points across the customer lifecycle and keep the relationship. Your brand promise lives this journey – an experience that customers appreciate and advocate.
In fact, brands that deliver superior customer experience generate 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors. At the same time, 73% of customers agree that a better customer experience influences their purchasing decisions.
It shows customer experience is the embodiment of brand promise. But how does that play out? Let’s dive into the details.
The interplay between brand and customer experience
Customers build associations through brand identity. They can easily recognize Microsoft, AWS, and Salesforce from their logos. However, the value is not in their memorable designs. The top brands are looked up to for their performance, value, and experience.
To cultivate this, brands need to meet customer expectations at every touchpoint. Discovery call, purchase process, after sale – customer journey must be filled with pleasant experiences throughout.
A brand now is often identified with its purpose, that needs to be reflected in its messaging and experience. For instance, for a brand that puts sustainability as its core value, the customer would expect to experience it at every touch point – beyond the promotional literature.
These core values often appeal to the emotional aspects and propel customers to align for a greater cause. While B2B customers do decide more rationally, each decision has both the right and left-brain elements to it, rationale, and emotional value. The decisions, after all, are made by humans. Understanding your decision-maker is a key driver to elevating the customer experience.
The Bottom Line: Brand and CX fuel each other
The symbiotic relationship between brand and customer experience is changing rapidly. One enforces the other. While CX has the upper hand in defining brand success, the brand influences perception, and expectations. It determines what the brand should do next.
On the other hand, brands need to position themselves beyond their product. They must fulfill the expectations customers attach to their name. As technology advances, brands will also explore hidden opportunities to improve the overall experience. Human interactions still take precedence for building relationships. The key is to sprinkle technology like salt – just as much as needed.
Explore our blog section to read more articles about the interlinking ideas between brand and CX.
