In today’s over-commoditized world, building your company’s brand is one of the most important business decisions that you need to make. By formulating a solid brand for your organization, it sets the tone for your entire operation. This is more than just your unique value proposition – it is the way you interact with your customers and team members, it is what people feel and remember about your company. At the 2018 TCIA Winter Management Conference, Bruce Turkel stated, “A good brand makes people feel good. A great brand makes people feel good about themselves.” This brand must be yours and it must be genuine. Here are 6 questions to ask yourself when building a great brand for your business. What are your company’s values? Spend time thinking about your own personal values. What do you believe in? Does your business operate on those basic life principals? Talk to others within your organization and ask them what they value and how the company can emulate those beliefs. For my firm, I used a large list of value words and circled my top 10. Words like trustworthiness and altruism stood out and helped me solidify what I wanted our company to believe in. This helped tremendously in moving our brand forward. What are your company’s strengths? If you haven’t done a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) on your business, do so now. This analysis helps in so many ways and is vital in building a better brand. Think about the strengths of your company – What is your team the best at? Where are the opportunities for growth within your organization? Who is your ideal customer? Your company’s values and strengths will highlight who will benefit the most from your services. Get as specific on this as you can. The more laser focused you can be on your target clients the better you can fulfill your promises to them. What can you solve for your customer? For this question, dig deeper and think about the reason that your customers are contacting you to perform a service. It isn’t just about removing the dead branches from the tree in their front yard or making the leaves look greener on the tree that hangs over their porch. It is about eliminating the work on their end. It is about giving them more shade on a hot afternoon when they are enjoying their patio with their friends and family. Think about the real reasons someone wants work done on their trees. How do customers feel about your company? Are your customers raving about your company? Do they tell their coworkers about what a wonderful job your team did? Have you mastered the customer experience by renovating every customer touchpoint so they have only positive things to say about your organization? Understanding how your team and services makes your customers feel is a significant part of your brand. Does your company’s look match what your message is? – Does your logo and color selection match what your values and strengths are? Is your logo sleek, modern and edgy, yet your equipment and uniforms look old and worn down? Does your website convey the same message as all of your written communications with your customers? The look of your company, from every aspect, is the most visual part of a brand and a part that cannot be taken lightly. While this can be expensive to change, it should be your last step in revitalizing your brand. If you are confident in the answers to parts 1 – 5, this step should be easy to implement. After you have figured out what your brand is, you must be consistent with it. Ensure that all of your team members know what it is and why it is important. Common phrases within your organization can help solidify the brand internally so that the external world will start to believe it. Building a brand doesn’t happen overnight, however, with structured concentration on it, you will begin to see how it can dramatically change every aspect of your business.

Everyone wants to provide exceptional customer service, yet unfortunately there are few companies that truly wow their customers. The service and personal touch that you provide to your customers will always be evolving, but here are 3 tips to begin redefining your customer experience.

 

1. Understand Your Customer – This should go without saying, but it is so critical to know who your customers are and what they care about. Who is your ideal customer and how can your services make them smile? Understand how they communicate and what really matters to them. Remember, it’s not the tree that pays the bill, it’s the owner of the tree that writes the check to you. If you are not connecting with your customers, you are making it easy for them to find another company to help them with their trees.

 

2. Touch-point Teamwork – Hold a brainstorming session with each department within your company to focus on every customer touch-point within your organization. From your website appearance and functionality, to incoming phone calls and emails, to field staff doing the work, to the invoices and thank you’s that go out after the job is completed, ask yourselves three simple questions for every touch-point:

 

What do our customers love about it?
What do our customers dislike about it?
What can we do to make that interaction better or more shareable?

 

3. Training and Integration – After you have defined the ideal customer and what they want from you, everyone in your company must know how important each touch-point is to have the best possible customer experience. This is best accomplished by the department leaders walking their teams through each touch-point and how the customer should be treated. It helps if similar words or phrases are used to solidify the organization and promote the client first culture.

 

By consciously focusing on your customer’s experience at every touch-point, you will begin to transform your company. Have fun with it, get creative and don’t be afraid to try something new to stand out. Wow your customers so they can’t help but tell others about the great experience they had with your company.