What do customers say when you’re not in the room?

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is apparently “widely quoted” as saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room”.

Though the quote probably didn’t originally come from Bezos, the quote still holds true not only for you personally and how you present yourself but also for your organization.

In a nutshell, your brand and how it comes across to your audience is your reputation.

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive markets, successful brands have to be consistent in the way that they communicate with their audiences across all channels and also need to be consistent and superior in the customer and audience experience. This may be across many applications, many different types of interaction and through the message and communication of all personnel and mediums.

Consider then, how your organization interacts with audiences in these contexts:

• Environment (storefront or office) –
  • when a customer comes in the door, is there a way to know who that customer is?
  • do you know what their preferences are?
  • can you expedite their purchase/service with a more intimate knowledge of them?
• Print collateral, signage, packaging
  • do you even know where your customers live?
  • when you put something in the mail to customers, is it personalized?
  • what’s your yield from mailers?
  • would personalizing mail items have customers give it more attention? Market research evidence suggests – yes!
  • can you give your known clients personalized offers like coupons?
  • is signage posted in areas where your audiences live – do you know?
  • is the packaging that you offer with your merchandise sensitively aligned to the preferences of your customer base? How do you know?
• Website & online advertising
  • when a prospect or customer comes to your website, do you recognise them?
  • if you do recognise them, do you provide them with a personalized experience?
  • how are you identifying repeat visitors or customers?
• Content publishing
  • How do you make your clients and prospects aware of your content?
  • How do you know whether your content is pertinent to their interests and passions?
• Sales & customer service
  • when a customer buys in-store, shops online, or calls – do you know who they are?
  • if you know who they are, what exactly do you know about them?
  • do you provide them with unique, personalized and differentiated offerings?
  • how do you make them feel valued and special?

Brand building isn’t simple, but the reality is that once you have a customer for the first time, getting them back for repeat buys is easier if you offer great products and services but more particularly if you know who they are and are able to offer them a repeat experience based on what you know about them demographically and also based on their past purchases?

Brand reputation isn’t something that materializes overnight it is something you have to continuously work on and at Pretectum we believe that the starting point is collecting details about your customers and prospects early on, and as comprehensively as possible.

The only way to harness the power of that customer data is with a customer master data management platform that ensures that the data that you have is complete, comprehensive, accurate and relevant to the job you want to do. Further, you need to gather and maintain this data in a compliant and consented way. That data needs to also be secure but at the same time accessible to the business areas that need it—no mean feat in the current era of heightened concerns about privacy and corporate personal data abuse.

Pretectum has a scalable secure solution that at the same time offers flexibility and structure in a way that is attuned to the way your business prefers to work. We think of it as the Pretectum Advantage.