• Home
  • BLOG
  • About
  • Contact

Lucavìa

~ Small Business Next Level

Lucavìa

Tag Archives: Brand Advocate

Engineer Your Customer Experience

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by Jim Lucas in Branding, Customer Experience, Shared values

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Apple Store, BestBuy, Brand Advocate, Branding, Customer Experience, retail

Customer Service, Brand Advocate, Lucavia Consulting

Created: The Happiest Place On Earth

Earlier, I dropped into BestBuy looking for a gift. Sometime ago they must have implemented a greeting policy for their personnel. For a time, they would look right at you, smile, and greet you as you walked in. That devolved into a “Hi,” or “Welcome to BestBuy” that was sort of lobbed in your general direction but not at you personally. Now the greeting is gone and you’re invisible again.

The Apple Store: When you enter you’re always greeted and someone speaks directly to you (sometimes they smile!). Customers shop, learn, and discuss their needs with a small army of Apple staff members so no one ever waits long for personal service. I realize it’s familiar now but I’m still impressed with their checkout process. It’s just so cool when your sales guy reaches into his pocket and pulls out his iPod touch, takes your payment, activates your product, and emails your receipt.

So, the obvious question is, what makes the difference between these two experiences? They are both branded experiences. That is, we have come expect a certain kind of experience with each brand. BestBuy’s is what it is. Apple’s doesn’t just happen by chance. Seemingly effortless and organic it’s something they’ve invested in, iterated on, and improved year after year. Apple’s experience is one of the ways they consciously strive to transform customers into brand advocates with the hope that those brand advocates will “evangelize” the Apple message by telling their friends (or blogging about it).

Lucavìa Consulting engineers positive branded experiences and uses them to: 1) Increase the power of your brand, 2) Mobilize your staff toward a shared goal, and 3) Transform your customers into brand advocates who can’t wait to return and eager to tell their friends about you.

Jim

Lucavìa
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

Tweet
© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved

How To Transform Customers into Advocates

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by Jim Lucas in Branding, Customer Experience, Shared values

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Brand Advocate, Branding, Customer Experience, retail

Customer Experience, Brand Advocate, Lucavia Consulting

Your brand image is composed of hundreds of little connected fragments of customer perception. Your logo, your business card, your products, the way you dress, your store/storefront/offices, the way customers are treated by your staff and then what they tell their friends. Every little interaction and every way your customers come into contact with you, your staff, and your messaging comes together to create an image. It all builds up to create your brand. Your brand = what you stand for; but not just in your mind: primarily in the minds of your customers.

It’s important to make each of these little interactions and perceptions add up to something you intend—something that keeps your customers coming back with passion. Taking ownership of the total customer experience is the single most important step you can take and it is one where you have an enormous amount of control. It’s far more powerful than any advertisement or inbound/outbound promotion—and you can invest in it every single day.

From the time a new customer starts looking for a new place to shop, to the time they return, to the time they refer their friends; you are in relationship with them. The more responsibility you take for how they perceive and experience your brand, the more opportunity you have to make a good impression, satisfy their needs, and develop a positive lasting image in their minds. But, of course, this comes with responsibility; it requires you to think outside your four walls, beyond the time your customer spends directly in front of you, and it requires a clear plan of action to make them feel qualitatively better after every interaction.

If you would like to learn more about creating a Transformative Customer Experience for your business, please contact me.

Jim

Lucavìa
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

Tweet
© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved

Drop your address here and receive future posts email.

Recent Posts

  • Two Kinds of Salons
  • Measure Up!
  • Multiply Your Impact

Pages

  • Home
  • BLOG
  • About
  • Contact

Contact me

(925) 980-7871
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
8:00 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific Time, 7 days.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Lucavìa
    • Join 30 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Lucavìa
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...