How many times have you called into customer service, only to get off the phone more upset than you started? Or asked the cashier a question only to have them look at you like giving you the answer to that question is not part of their job, which is fine because they didn’t know the answer anyway?
In today’s world, these interactions are often the only ones we have with people who work at the companies we patronize, and their lack of commitment to their company’s brand can leave us with a negative impression of the company as a whole.
The lesson: the MOST important aspect of a brand is its people.
“BRAND AMBASSADOR” IS A REAL THING
Buzz words abound. But make no mistake, every person in your company is a brand ambassador. Every single thing they say, face they make, or tone they take is a reflection of YOU. If your people not only love what they do but are also invested in you, in your company, and its future, you can stop reading. For the rest of us, there are holes in the ship that can sink us. So let’s start plugging those holes, right?
Wrong. Let’s build a new ship.
HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM
Employees are people too and each one has something that makes them tick. Just as you’d research deeply to find out the wants and needs of your consumer, you need to spend time learning the wants and needs of your employees.
Mike Bruny at Fast Company has detailed some simple but necessary steps to address this. A summarized version is below but you can read the full text here.
- Get to know the values, strengths and aspirations of your employees and make sure you truly understand how their current role fits in your company’s brand.
- Teach them to connect with both internal and external individuals to give them perspective and help them understand they are not a team of one.
- Give them a project. This doesn’t mean a to-do list. They need you to…
- Let them lead. When something is at stake for them because their name is on it—and therefore a sense of pride is attached to it—they’ll begin to take ownership of their place in the company and the company as a whole.
Once you’ve done this, you’ve turned your employees into leaders, and no one cares about the outcome of a business (and therefore the voice—the brand) like those who are empowered to truly be a part of it. So no matter if they are a customer service rep or a barista they have a sense of control, they have a sense of self, and they have a sense of place larger than them.
The 25 Best Corporate Cultures
Check out this list of the 25 best corporate cultures according to Business Insider. Each listing includes a sentence or two about why the employees think these are the best cultures. What you’ll see is that it’s actually a list of 25 companies who got their employees to believe in, and therefore advertise, the brand.
Join me next week as I try to figure out if there’s life left in QR codes or if it’s time to say goodbye.
