Brand Matters: Where Are Your Brand Manners?

Give the gift of service to your customers

December 2007 By Andrea Syverson

multipage

Your mother was right. Manners really are important. Please and thank you, common courtesy and civility—where have they gone?

I bring this up as a consumer being treated less than what I would call “pleasantly” by many companies. I think you can relate. Like you, I am over-e-mailed, underappreciated, hassled and bombarded by irrelevant messages. My time is not of marketers’ concern. My past, present and future purchasing power are ignored. My money is taken without gratitude, often by people talking on the phone to a noncustomer. My stress level is increased by too many choices because companies are too lazy to edit their product lines. I am annoyed companies don’t seem to get that I have a life and don’t want to spend extra time doing complicated business transactions with them, let alone doing for them what they should be doing for me. Like Rodney Dangerfield used to say, “I don’t get no respect.”

I bring this up as a brand strategist because companies should know better. This is not news. Even Henry Ford back in the Industrial Age knew that “the only foundation of real business is service.”

Yes, there are companies that do indeed know how not only to mind their manners, but also treat their customers like royalty. You know the companies that do it right because they create a memorable experience:

• A birthday card and thank-you coupon from the president of Talbots.

• J. Crew’s promotion of real people, not machines, answering its phones.

• Citi’s focus on the ease and simplicity of banking with it.

• Zappos.com’s positioning as a service company that happens to sell shoes.

• L.L. Bean’s prompt knowledge of my name and my transactions when it picks up my call.

• Gap’s call button inside its dressing rooms for additional help.

• Charles Schwab’s folksy financial services campaign that touts, “Feel valued, no matter how much you’re worth.”

• JetBlue’s highly publicized Customer Bill of Rights (albeit a bit late!) documenting its dedication to “bringing humanity back to air travel.”

Yes, the mothers of these companies should be proud. The managers, directors, planners and executives of these companies remember that, first and foremost, customers are human beings. They treat them with dignity.

Does Your Brand Mind its Manners?
As Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, has said, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well.” Manners, civility and common courtesy in business transactions should not be difficult, but in today’s ultrafast-paced world, it seems they are. For Ann Ruethling, founder of Chinaberry, a direct marketer of books and other treasures for the whole family, it’s a no-brainer. “We treat customers exactly as we would want to be treated ourselves,” she says. Chinaberry’s Customer Service Manager Patti Guthrie shares, “I speak for our whole team when I say we love the company, and we believe in what it is doing. We all truly care and our customers get that!”