The Effectiveness of Brand Touch Points >>
How does a brand develop, grow and survive when the company it represents does not do ANY advertising?
Consumer touch points.
When those touch points reflect the company values, mission, and goals; are delivered with consistency by the team who stands behind them; and consistent throughout their sales process, you have a SURE winner.
Recently I had a fantastic experience with the Zappos brand. As described by their founder and CEO Tony Hsieh, “We just want to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience.” In fact, Zappos offer $2,000 for a new employee to quit because” we want to really make sure that people are working at Zappos are truly passionate about the company,” And even though I have yet to buy a pair of shoes from them I have experienced this in just a few preliminary touchpoints.
My birthday is coming up and my folks asked me what I wanted. And the only thing I could think of was that I have been searching for my “perfect pair” of boots. To my disappointment, I haven’t been able to find them locally. I have heard great stories about? Zappos so I thought I would load up their www and see what they had to offer. (At the same time that night I was on TWITTER, twit’ing away about what I was up to, because that’s what TWITTERers do.) By default I went to www.zappos.com and started searching. (TOUCHPOINT #1: website) I was pleased to find their site was super easy to use, and was a great customer experience. The selection was incredible, so I wanted to start “adding to favourites” the styles I like to go back and compare them later and in order to do that I have to create an account. Here I encountered an obstacle…..in order for Canadian shoppers to create an account you need to go to their Zappos Canada site.
No problem. Over I went. I created my account and went back to browsing. However when I went to hit the “add to favourites button” it didn’t exist!! (I commented about this on twitter). I sat for a few minutes, disappointed and a little frustrated. I’d now spent an hour looking for shoes with no favourite list to compare. Then I remembered all the stories I’d heard about how great the brand and customer service was, and I wanted to put it to the test. (and I wanted to see if I just wasn’t seeing the button, if it might be in a different place on the Canadian site)
Within a few minutes I was on the line with a Zappos call-centre rep. (wish I could remember his name here and pay him compliments, I *think* it was William), and it wasn’t your usual customer support conversation, as within the first minute we were laughing and having an easy conversation as I explained what I had found and expressed my disappointment. (TOUCHPOINT #2: authentic customer service on a support call) William quickly logged into the site, followed my path, and said with genuine surprise, “Wow, you’re right, we don’t have that function on the Canadian site!”
Now he could’ve just left it at that with a simple apology on behalf of the company. But standing behind the over-riding value of the company, to provide the ultimate in customer service/experience, he continued, “You know Karley, that’s a really great point, thank-you for calling and pointing that out. This is something I must definitely share with IT and our managment team. In fact I’m sending them an email right now.”
My turn to say, “Wow!”
William asked if there was any other way he could assist me on the call, and we said our good-byes. And I was left feeling more than satisfied with the call, and funny enough, like I had a new friend in William - even though I’ll likely never speak to him again. (It was also during this conversation that I found out from William that Zappos does NO advertising!)
Throughout and after my call I was posting tweets about my experience, real time. And you might think this is where the story ends……no, this is just where it gets interesting……
The next morning I logged into my email, where I received frequent updates from TWITTER, including who my new followers are, among the list was a note that said, “Zappos is now following you on Twitter!” Cool! (TOUCHPOINT #3: social media connections with your target audience). And I thought that was interesting, someone at the company was obviously doing their homework and searching last nights posts on Zappos, and working on collecting a following. But what I was shocked to discover is that the face behind the TWITTER account was actually their CEO Tony Hsieh!! How cool is that and how many CEOs do you know who are that in touch with their customers?! I even DM’d (direct messaged) him a thank-you for following me, and he wrote back. Talk about transparency and authenticity!
As you can see, it’s not only the # of touchpoints you have with your audience, but also the effectiveness of each touchpoint. Even though I only experienced 3 touchpoints in that first experience with the Zappos brand I’m sure you can tell how impressed I was; and you can be sure I’ll be buying my birthday present through them!
Tags: brand authenticity, Branding, developing brand touch points, effective brand touch points, ZAPPOS