Aligning the Customer Experience with Branding

The line between customer experience and company branding can be as thin as a supermodel. Even so, there are some important distinctions to consider. A company’s brand is an easy-to-grasp identifier that enables customers to quickly understand what products and services the company offers, as well as who the company is. The brand clearly conveys the organization’s attributes.

In contrast, customer experience refers to a customer’s actual interactions with a company, regardless of whether they match the company’s brand, or declared attributes. One — the brand — is a promise. The other — the customer experience — is the truth.

It doesn’t really matter which comes first, the brand or the customer experience. What does matter is that an organization’s branding works synergistically with the customer experience. The two must overlap. If, after reviewing your customer experience intent statement, you find that it’s out of sync with your company’s brand positioning, consider it a red flag.

Credit: Illustration courtesy of Roy Barnes.