Tag Archives: brand

  • 02
    Jul 18
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big promises

Big Promises and Buying a Solution

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People are fascinating by media. They watch traditional television, surf their phone, and spend hours on YouTube. Are advertisers making big promises that they cannot possibly keep? Do buyers really care?

Advertisements Move Us

We see the commercial for the franchise restaurant and the food looks delicious. When we order it in the restaurant it looks like something is a little different.

There is the promise that the new automobile will make our family happy, the dog enjoys the ride, and haul all our goodies without any trouble, all while achieving better exceptional gas mileage. Does it do all those things?

We can’t forget about the diet supplements, the meal plans, and why we should buy gold. Are the implied promises kept?

Perhaps one of the most important points about all the things that are pitched to us is understanding who owns the responsibility for what works. Looking at it another way, who owns the responsibility for what doesn’t work?

“Just eat the meals and lose the weight.” may sound familiar. Are you buying the meals, or are you buying the idea that for some reason you’ll change your eating habits?

We can’t forget about the prescription drug advertisements. How does that work? We tell our doctor we want what the television is advertising? She then prescribes what we want?

Big Promises

Most people are buying something based on big promises. Promises that the advertisers probably can’t keep. Don’t blame them though, you didn’t do exactly as described. You didn’t eat the meals, so you didn’t lose the weight.

Perhaps the best way to get to where you want to go is to make the big promises to yourself. Most advertisers leave you with the feeling of finally finding a solution and that buying their product is just that, a solution.

In many of these cases people aren’t buying a solution, they are buying the hope of creating change. How much will you pay for hope? What about discipline, persistence, and motivation?

Really it is all still up to you.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a four-time author and some of his work includes, Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce and Pivot and Accelerate, The Next Move Is Yours! Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 09
    Apr 18
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culture drives decisions

Culture Drives Decisions, Does Your Team Get It Right?

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It is Monday, or Tuesday, or any day of the week. You’ll make some decisions today, everything from what to eat to your next big purchase. In the workplace, you’ll make decisions too. Everything from how you’ll navigate the environment to the timeliness of your work. Culture drives decisions, are you getting them right?

Organizational Culture

Your organization has a culture. It is hard to imagine any assembled group of people who over time do not develop a way of doing things, how to interact, and what the rules are. When hiring, many organizations try to find someone with the required skills, but they must also fit their culture.

Is this a good idea? In many regards, yes it may be. However, when the organization is trying to build something, grow, develop, change, and inspire, more of the same is exactly that, the same.

It isn’t a secret. Culture, and its associated density, is driving the organization or team where you do your work. This is especially true for how you make decisions.

Your Way

You have a way you build brand, a way you schedule and hold meetings. There is a dress code (formal and informal) and a proper way to interact. There are hours of operation and expectations on how you’ll accommodate those. Organizational hierarchy is strict or loose.

You’ll manage relationships according to the flow of the culture. This is true for the customer, the vendor, and your co-workers.

All of these things and so much more guide what choices you’ll make today. They will guide the workflow, the pace, and who has the final say in any matter.

Culture Drives Decisions

Organizations often pride themselves on being unique. Unique can be interesting, diverse, and compelling.

If your organization or team is stuck, stalled, or just can’t seem to get out of its own way. You may want to check your culture. It is the way you do everything.

It is probably the most important decision that you get right.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 29
    Sep 17
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customer service anchors

What Customer Service Anchors Are You Using?

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I really like the metaphorical use of the word anchor. Actually, if you consult a dictionary my use may not be metaphorical. We often anchor mentally, emotionally, to data or other types of input. Our thoughts directly connect to our decisions, which connect to our actions. Do you use customer service anchors?

Have you thought about things that you anchor to personally or professionally? What anchors does your department, your team, or the organization use?

Anchors and Decisions

Anchors have a lot to do with our decisions. We may consider what we have to gain or what we risk losing. Often these decisions are connected to time or money.

When we speed on the freeway, we’re taking a risk. The risk often isn’t measured by considering safety it is measured by the consequences of time and money. We may speed because we believe we can arrive sooner, and we make the choice about the risk of receiving a ticket. The citation costs us money.

The customer service that organizations deliver is rooted deep within the internal operation. It may exist in engineering, research and development, or in the manufacturing process. In service only organizations, it exists in the timeliness, attention to detail, follow through, and client outcomes.

Organizations are often not doing well with walking the talk. They may actually believe that they have a culture of customer service, until their continued struggle for growth, or even to sustain, makes it obvious. The customer experience is never what you say it is, or even what you design it to be. Ultimately, the customer decides.

Customer Service Anchors

When you have processes and procedures that are driven by people who will make decisions and choices based on their thoughts and assessment of risk, you have to consider their anchors. What customer service anchors are affecting your operation?

Here are few possibilities to consider:

  • Mistakes. A mistake is made. Is it a big mistake or a little mistake? Does it, or will it affect the customer? Will the customer notice?
  • Quality. The produced product is close; redoing it will cost time and money. It’s not perfect, will we ship it anyway?
  • Questions. A customer may ask if it will solve their problem. The true answer is unknown. The sale is important. What will you tell the customer?

While some of these are rooted in ethics and integrity, they are all likely a product of the organizational culture. Employees often learn to anchor to the data they encounter from the environment in which they work. This is rooted inside the organization and is reflected in the reputation of the brand.

What customer service anchors are happening in your organization?

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 12
    Sep 17
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service promises matter customer appreciative

Why Customer Service Promises Matter

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Yes, it is true, the customer typically wants to be right. Your image and brand are critically important for continued success. What is sometimes surprising is how little businesses understand why customer service promises matter.

Certainly, it isn’t everyone, but when something goes wrong many people are looking for someone else to blame. When you’ve promised something to your customer and you don’t deliver you probably will make them look bad. Who will they blame?

Your brand, your image, what people believe or understand about the transaction will have a lot to do with the outcomes. It doesn’t always mean it is the correct impression or understanding, but it might be what they understand.

Ordering a Whopper at McDonald’s might be a misunderstanding or a simple mistake, but expecting your sandwich to be warm is a promise.

Service Promises Matter

Have you thought about your customer service promises? Those that are spoken, written, or otherwise assumed by your customer to be delivered by you? Have you considered how policies, procedures, and pricing affect loyalty?

Here are a few things to consider when you ask yourself about customer loyalty and living up to brand promise:

  • Giving new customers a price break to sign on while loyal customers pay more.
  • Insisting that the warranty is the warranty even when the difference is very narrow.
  • Encouraging a buy new, never fix, approach with products or services.
  • Assume the customer is not smart enough and speak with them that way.
  • Refuse to negotiate when in the past you always have.
  • Forcing features or specifications that your customer must now pay more for.
  • Fixing software bugs and selling them as an upgrade.

This list can quickly become very long. The difference for many promises is based on emotion. It is what the customer feels—or doesn’t.

What Customers Feel

How you make your customer feel will have a lot to do with the future of your relationship. Certainly nearly every situation is unique but word travels fast and a negative word even faster.

Do you believe customer service promises matter? You should, because your customers do.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 25
    Aug 17
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trusted not cheap

Why Your Brand Should Be Trusted Not Cheap

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We live in an era where price is often the first question. Driving down costs is an important consideration, but to the manufacturer, distributor, or web sales kingpin is price what matters? Should your brand be trusted not cheap?

People often take pride in working hard for the lowest price. Drive to the cheapest gas station, shop at the store with the best coupons, and insist on free shipping. Society seems to like cheap and convenient, there are even bragging rights for those who achieve the lowest price.

We can argue about smart, but what about the business who offers cheap?

Owners, Managers, Employees

If you own a business, manage a business, a department, or team, or even if you place high value on your job or career you may want to consider the cost of cheap.

Businesses offer sales pricing, issue coupons, and even promote what they often call loss leaders. Does this work? Sure, sometimes it does. Is this how you want to build your brand?

Buyers respond, often in big numbers, the thought is that it is working, but for how long? How long will it be until there is a lower cost replacement? How long will it be until the buying opportunity for the customer is closer or on-line with free shipping?

At your job or in your career how long until the work that you do can be performed with a lower cost solution? Are any of these situations trusted?

Be Trusted Not Cheap

Many people and businesses push for the lowest price when with the lowest price often comes low trust.

Easy come, easy go, may be the best way to describe these actions. When there is no investment in the customer, there will probably be little investment in the employee, and when there is no investment in either of these the lowest price will win—until it doesn’t. Then everything changes.

The next time you’re shopping for lowest price, when you find it, ask yourself, “Do I trust this product, service, and the people?”

Trust your answer.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 23
    Aug 17
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digital footprints

Digital Footprints, Brands, and Reputation

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There are at least several kinds of social media users. Perhaps all of them have an impact on brands, reputations, and culture. Have you considered the impact of your digital footprints?

How would you define your activity, what type of user are you? Here are three:

Bold. Those who share often and share anything, they are seemingly immune or care free about potential consequences or the impact to others. Positive or negative, ignorant or arrogant, they are making digital sound.

Careful. Those who live in absolute fear of sharing but secretly want to share much of what hits their feed. They share some but only with the feeling of great risk. They watch their posts in anticipation of acceptance or rejection and often worry until they post again.

Shy. Those who watch secretly, they stalk, creep, and are voyeurs of the system. Nobody really knows they are there and only a few would care if they realized they were.

Computer Forensics

The idea of computer forensics became widely known in the early to mid- 2000’s. People who post may recognize the permanency of their actions, or not. Everything posted enters in the chance for a cultural shift or the probability of influencing a brand.

It doesn’t matter much about the type of user, playing fields are leveled and volume is affected perhaps only by the number of followers. It might be the Presidential tweet, the suburban work from home mom, or the guy in the bar before noon.

Your brand, your reputation, or the culture of your environment exists today in part by the digital trail left behind by those who engage. You have little control over others actions or behaviors. The passer-by, the troll, or the person with digital rage all affect what happens next.

Digital Footprints

People often believe everything that they read, with the right script and implied emotion a post may go viral. Positivity seems to spread but negativity carries more drama and increases speed.

Sharing something that you care about feels important. It is rooted in your values and beliefs. It may be challenged by the bold, studied by the careful, and avoided by the shy.

Digital footprints affect culture, brands, and reputations.

It may answer this question: If a user makes a post on the worldwide web but no one reads it does it still make a digital sound?

Post well, share well.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 14
    Jul 17
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repackaging hurts appreciative strategies

3 Reasons Why Repackaging Hurts

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Sometimes it is about a fresh look, other times it is about sustaining or improving profit margins. It might seem like a good idea, but have you considered how repackaging hurts?

I grew up eating breakfast. It was reinforced as the most important meal of the day. Today arguments exist whether breakfast is good or bad but I’m rolling with the concept that breakfast is a good idea.

Same Face But Different

Most days, for as long as I can remember, I indulged on traditional breakfast cereals. Sure, some of them had little marshmallows and were loaded with sugar. Sometimes as a kid, I added sugar. Yes, its true and I’m still alive.

Cereal is still on my diet, but what is up with the boxes? I’m not sure if it is applicable to all brands, but many have changed their packaging. The box looks the same from the front, but its thickness has diminished, and so has the product weight.

In retail markets, we often consider the product face. In this case, the product face remains basically unchanged. Its height and width take up just as much space. So the presentation is the same or very similar. The idea might be more profit, but the true cost might be unbearable.

Does the model work? It might, short term, but when the customer feels cheated will it still be okay?

Repackaging Hurts

Here are three reasons why repackaging hurts:

  1. Hurts Trust. Consumers often make purchases or stick with a brand because they trust it. This is true for nearly everything. It is true with cereal for kids (big kids too), consumer electronics, and automobiles.
  2. Hurts Brand. Not only is this particular product in jeopardy, but anything associated with the brand. When trust has been violated it will often spread to other products or labels produced by the same company.
  3. Loses Customer. With the trust and brand violated, the customer might make a different purchasing decision. This is potentially a lost customer, perhaps lost forever.

Consider cereal to be a metaphorical example. This is true with nearly any product. It might also be true with people.

When you don’t get what you expect or you feel fooled. It might be the beginning of something. Perhaps, the beginning of the end.

Repackaging hurts.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a four-time author and some of his work includes, Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce and Pivot and Accelerate, The Next Move Is Yours! Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 19
    Aug 14
  • 2

Build More

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Colgate, Tide, and Pepsi, all are brands. Brands have a reputation built on trust, tested over time, and likely recognized as a leader in a category of product or service. Yet there are other brands, brands that stand for low cost, convenient, or ease of use.

AppStratPhoto-Brand

Do you remember something that you paid too much for six months ago? If it wasn’t a major purchase, you probably don’t. Do you remember the brand that let you down? Do you remember when your trust was violated?

Your brand, your image, your product or service are all built from your reputation which likely starts, and ends, with trust. People will pay more, or pay less, and in the long run they probably won’t remember if they overpaid, but they’ll always remember what they trust.

You can build your brand, your talent, and your reputation, but if you don’t build trust you’ll likely build very little.

Build more. 

– DEG

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