Gary Buck

Seeing the Big Picture

TOUCHPOINT ANALYSIS

Your brand is what the world says it is. It shifts and changes with every conversation and interaction. The internet makes it possible for customers, influencers, employees, investors, the media and anyone else with a networked device to “touch” your brand from anywhere on the planet, at any time of the day or night. After the sale, your products exist in the world as a physical representation of your brand and are experienced by prospective customers. And the press, competitors, former customers, employees and investors are all talking about you behind your back.

So with all that going on, how can you possibly manage to keep your brand consistent, coherent and meaningful in today’s world? Many companies don’t manage their brands well merely because they don’t know how. They throw their products out into the marketplace, run ads, print brochures, launch a website and then wait. Some might conduct customer surveys, offer in-store comment cards, or even create a Facebook page. But what do they do with the information?

Recent successful projects have uncovered another amazing use for the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) segment of our VIBE process whereby we measure the effectiveness of individual touchpoints. By gathering brand stakeholders in the same room with their customers, we create an environment of exploration into the needs, desires and fantasies of each side of the commerce coin.

Imagine a room full of your organization’s key executives, brand managers and product designers. Interspersed among them are your most loyal customers, your competitor’s most loyal customers, and highly-interested prospects. We start the CPS process with the fuzzy situation of “How might we make our customers happy?” and facilitate the conversation from there.

We’ve seen absolutely incredible revelations occur between groups of people who should be very familiar with the other but aren’t, simply by introducing them to each other and guiding a structured process of exploration. The resulting insights have led to jaw-dropping discoveries of where brands are “doing it right” and “completely missing the boat.” At the same time, customers learn about “why things are the way they are” and gain new understanding and appreciation for what they perceived as a brand’s shortcomings.

Not surprisingly, the CPS session itself is the best possible kind of visionary, innovative brand experience you can have with your customers. Involving them in the process of designing their own brand experiences creates tremendous VIBE with your customer that cannot be achieved any other way.

Often, we find that these same kinds of significant discoveries, revelations and VIBE occur between our client’s employees during these sessions. These epiphanies have led to organizational change that results in increased innovation, quality and production as well as reduced costs, waste and turnover.

We use the CPS process to generate a list of answers to the initial question and then prioritize and weight those “ways to make our customers happy.” These answers help establish a comprehensive set of brand touchpoints that can be monitored, measured and analyzed so that their quality and resulting ROI can be maximized.

Once a system of metrics for your brand touchpoints has been developed, you own a unique tool with which you can communicate with your entire organization about all of the ways in which your brand interacts with the world. Employees can then use the this system to monitor and measure how well they are executing on the brand strategy for their specific touchpoints. Analysis will inform decisions about how to continously improve each touchpoint’s performance. And because the touchpoint prioritization and weighting is determined in collaboration with actual customers, positive results are virtually guaranteed.

If you’re interested in the kinds of positive change that this amazing process can generate, give me a call and let’s get started.