Brand vs Customer Experience: Going Beyond Expectations

It is often said that what sets a company apart is its brand experience and customer experience. While they may sound similar, they are unique concepts that require different treatments and understanding.

Say you run a small local sandwich shop in a busy business district. When people see your logo, organic, fresh, and delicious tastes come to mind. The shop interiors imbibe a sense of calm, like stepping into a garden in the middle of the city. That's brand experience.

When they order a sandwich, your friendly and efficient staff greets them. They are then served a well-made sandwich with flavors that exceed their expectations. After repeated visits, they trust your business to deliver consistent quality, so they tell their friends—that's customer experience.

The trick is to find the balance between providing the best brand and customer experience (BX and CX) to gain a competitive advantage. But how? Let us help you explore and identify the differences between the two to build a better strategy and a brand that customers love. 

It’s when things like your logo, brand name, typography, and interiors evoke joy, excitement, curiosity, etc. When the impression and perception are favorable,  they cement your brand into the minds of consumers. This is when brand recognition occurs, a key element to establishing a solid brand reputation.

Now, let's explore what you need to create a brand experience.

Elements of a Brand Experience

1. Brand Identity 

Brand identity refers to the visual and emotional communication of elements representing the brand that customers resonate with. This includes logo, color palette, messaging, values, and brand personality. The brand identity sets the stage for existing and new customers' expectations.

Brand identity also influences customers' perception if they relate to your brand. For instance, sharing brand stories that resonate with your audience and feature people similar to your target market are more likely to be receptive to your brand message. 

2. Emotional Connection

An emotional connection occurs when customers find similarities in the brand's values, stories, and experiences. These evoke feelings and memorable experiences that build loyalty, trust, and a bond between the brand and its audience. When brands focus on emotional connections, they are more likely to succeed and maintain long-term customer relationships.

3. Cultural and Social Influences

Cultural and social influences shape how we see and decide which brands to support. For instance, Japanese consumers are more likely to purchase green tea soda than cola because it's a cultural preference. Friends and family also affect what we like and don't like. A deep understanding of culture, traditions, and social influences and listening to customers' wants create an enjoyable and meaningful brand experience.

4. Marketing Communications

It's not what you say but how you say it.

This adage rings true when creating a brand experience. With thousands of competitors sharing the same goals and purpose, how you tell stories, create excitement, and connect through various marketing means can make a massive difference to your brand.

The last and most crucial element of brand experience is the customer experience, which we will tackle next.

It is the actual feeling and trust customers have when visiting your shop online and offline, engaging with your staff, and using your products and services. With a significant impact on companies, there's an increase in investments in modern initiatives like AI  to improve the customer experience.

Elements of a Customer Experience

1. Multichannel Communication

Creating an accessible brand means having a presence on multiple relevant platforms. Presenting options for customers to talk to you and vice versa—texts, phone calls, online chats, emails, feedback forms, etc. —makes them feel seen and valued as the branding and customer experience you provide adjusts to their comfort.

Remember that while different platforms cater to specific audience segments, you must consistently convey your brand message.

2. Personalization

Every consumer has individual needs and preferences, and brands are expected to meet them. When a brand offers customers unique experiences, it helps differentiate themselves from competitors who rely on generic strategies. Personalized branding and customer experience make people feel important and understood, which can lead to a higher conversion rate and increased brand loyalty.

3. Reliability

When customers know you can deliver high-quality products and services, they are less likely to worry about whether you are worth every penny. Reliability also hinges on being steadfast in solving problems like damaged products. These lead to a great customer experience that keeps them coming back.

4. Feedback and Improvement

Allowing an exchange of ideas and feedback between the brand and its customers opens doors to growth opportunities and improvements. It lets you understand what customers need and want so you can develop your products and services they will surely love.

When a brand offers customers a venue to express feedback, it builds better relationships by making customers feel seen and revealing problems that need addressing before they worsen.

Focus

The brand experience focuses on developing individuals' perceptions and emotional connections, regardless of whether they are potential leads or existing customers. In contrast, customer experience targets captured leads or actual customers in pursuit of a long-term relationship.

Scope

The brand experience begins with the target audience's initial awareness of the brand, such as its logo, social media posts, paid ads, etc.. It continues through the final point of interaction, such as customer service and word-of-mouth referrals.

The customer experience starts with the first interaction, which includes researching the products, purchasing them, and receiving customer support.

Measurement

Assessing the brand experience relies on metrics that gauge the perception and emotional connections of the target audience with the brand. It uses qualitative measures like unaided recall, engagement rate, brand awareness survey, sentiment analysis, and emotional loyalty metrics.

Meanwhile, customer experience can be measured through metrics about customer journey touchpoints. This includes the customer satisfaction rate, customer effort score, repeat purchase rate, and sales. 

Interaction

In terms of interaction, brand experience leverages efforts that result in strong emotional connections and perceptions. It is often indirect, coursed through marketing campaigns, social media pages, websites, and visual identity. On the contrary, customer experience interaction is transactional, focusing on stages of the customer journey that lead to purchasing products or services.

Overall Goal

The brand experience aims to create a community of people with shared values. It's about creating fun and memorable experiences that build trust, resulting in a lifelong bond between the brand and its community.

Customer experience aims to create a super easy and smooth interaction to keep customers happy. The brand offers customers reasons to come back, refer the brand to friends and family, and continuously engage with you.

Elevate your branding and customer experience by applying these tried-and-tested strategies.

Periodic Brand Experience and Customer Experience Auditing

Running an audit on your brand and customer experience gives you the big picture of where your business stands in the market. This process entails thoroughly assessing all touchpoints and other interactions to spot strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement so companies can align their branding with the audience's expectations.

Regular audits also identify gaps hindering a business's relationship success, leading to increased trust and loyalty. This ensures the company is updated with changing market conditions, allowing it to adapt its strategies proactively.

Brand and customer experience auditing tools include surveys and feedback tools, web analytics, social media listening tools, competitive analysis, and other brand tracking tools. 

Aligning Brand Values with Customer Expectations

Trust is a valuable element in creating a meaningful relationship with your audience. And this begins by aligning your brand values—diversity, innovation, integrity, etc. —with them. Doing so leads to higher levels of curiosity, engagement, and referrals. More importantly, it enhances differentiation in the market, leading to a stronger connection.

Creating a Consistent Brand Message

Consistent brand messaging requires conveying what a brand wants to say and what makes it unique across all channels. Your marketing team, other departments, and customer-facing employees should observe this.

That said, a brand guideline helps ensure everyone uses brand assets correctly to avoid confusion and misrepresentation of the brand. It provides a brand's logo, colors, and personality to stay the same everywhere. You can also integrate brand training in your onboarding process so everyone understands and embodies the brand.

Optimizing Customer Touchpoints

How you interact with your target market can significantly influence their perception of your brand. For instance, 84% of surveyed consumers rely on the branding and customer experience provided by the companies to determine if they will continually support the brand. 

Hence, enhancing customer touchpoints is vital to a brand's success as it lessens friction, which can affect the churn rates. Some examples of friction points include complicated sign-up processes, poor website user experience, and inadequate personalization. 

With advanced tech and other digital tools, improvements can be made. For example, a business can integrate instant support via chatbots, automate the online order process, invest in CRM for efficient data management, and automate feedback analysis. 

The Ritz Carlton is undeniably a brand that customers trust in the hospitality industry. Embodying gold standards, it has ensured meticulous attention to detail as it delivers customer service. The Ritz Carlton trains its employees to personalize its guests' branding and customer experience by remembering their preferences, like favorite cocktails, flowers, and special occasions. 

Finally, the brand acts on information from guests via feedback mechanisms. This is conducted by asking for reviews, completing surveys, and directly communicating with guests on different channels. No wonder the Ritz Carlton is considered a top-notch luxury hotel brand. 

Integrating a Feedback System

Creating a feedback system is not merely about collecting data; it's about creating an environment where customers can share opinions, allowing the internal team to implement improvements in brand and customer experience.

Fortunately, integrating a feedback system is a challenging endeavor. You can start by conducting surveys during and after purchase, monitoring comments on social media and direct messages, adding website feedback forms, and talking with your sales and after-sales teams. 

A feedback system can also be applied internally. For example, communication platforms like Slack allow users to set up real-time collections of team members' comments, reviews, and suggestions. This transparency and accessibility ensures problems are addressed immediately for a better brand experience.

Stimulating a Healthy and On-Brand Internal Culture

Excellent branding and customer experience are possible when you have the full support of your team and stockholders. Hence, a healthy and on-brand internal culture is needed. 

You can achieve this by creating an inclusive environment where different perspectives are welcome. It also makes a difference if business leaders proactively recognize team members' achievements and address internal issues. Finally, brands must spearhead development programs that allow employees to improve their skills and advance their careers.

The journey to becoming a brand that customers love is often fraught with challenges. It requires balance, where the brand offers customers meaningful relationships and unique experiences. Brands must also remain adaptable and strategic in the changing face of the market. Ultimately, it requires a deep understanding of your target audience and relentless passion to deliver only the best experience.

All of these are possible when you have a reliable team. Start by partnering with a professional brand design firm to create a unique customer and brand experience that speaks to your audience!