Brand consistency is a key driver of business success. When you deliver a consistent experience, you reinforce your values and build brand trust with your customers.
While most organisations are aware of the value of brand consistency, often implementing it can be a little more challenging. Particularly in today’s workplace where employees have the ability to develop content quickly and easily to share with customers.
Often this content will be sent off without going through the necessary checks. This can have a negative impact on the brand and can leave customers dissatisfied with the experience they have received as it didn’t match their brand expectations.
While employees may do their best to deliver a quick and seamless experience to customers, by adding individual touches not aligned to the brand values to the interaction, they are diluting the brand. For example if you think about your brand as a team of Russian synchronised swimmers, if one of the swimmers isn’t completely in sync, and perhaps their arm is moving a little further to the left than the remainder of the swimmers, this is glaringly obvious to the audience watching the performance, however, the swimmer is not even aware.
The way in which your customers experience your brand is very similar. While some people are on brand in all communications and interactions, it takes one person to deliver an experience that doesn’t meet the brand expectations, diluting on the brand which company has been building for an extended period of time.
Brand consistency is critical to a business’s success. It is the key to unpacking your values and building trust with your customers.
However, while consistency is important, it is doesn’t make sense to have consistency for consistency sake. The brand needs to be relevant and authentic in the way it comes across.
Once you have established a clear, strong and relevant brand then you need to put measures in place to deliver a consistent experience in every customer interaction at every time.