Building Brand Loyalty Through People

Building a positive brand starts the minute a company opens for business, and the process evolves over time as the company and its people do right by its customers again and again. A company must continually deliver on its brand promise to transform itself from the new kid on the block to a pillar with a reputation for strength and longevity.

A strong brand earns a reputation for reliability—and loyalty—when it invests in creating beneficial relationships with its employees and customers. 

The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement (which recently changed its name to simply the Forum) conducted research that examined the importance of people versus the importance of the brand. The results indicated that customers are more interested in building and maintaining personal relationships with the people rather than the brand. 

The Forum study focused on field sales personnel for a national insurance company. When its customers were asked to evaluate both their sales agents and the company, they overwhelmingly rated the agents higher. This supports the premise that employees play a key role in relating to customers and creating brand perception, as well as in building and maintaining client relationships. 

The brand is bolstered by the people in the company who interact with customers every day. Making real connections doesn’t just mean face-to-face time. Social networking has opened up a whole new way to gather input from customers. Brands that focus on building connections with their customers, both online and face-to-face, deepen relationships and encourage brand loyalty. 

Think about the many consumer brands that are using Twitter as an avenue for customer service. At these companies, engaged employees are given the leeway to use technology and social networking to serve as brand ambassadors, building meaningful connections with consumers. 

National electronics retailer Best Buy empowered its Geek Squad to offer tech support services to people on Twitter by launching Twelpforce. The company has succeeded in becoming a resource and genuine voice on Twitter for those needing tech help. 

Providing a distinctive and reliable product or service encourages a consumer to choose a particular brand. For a brand to experience continued success, it must exceed the expectations of the consumer.

The value of a brand in a consumer’s mind is made up of many drivers. People make choices based on what they think is the right mix of value, convenience, price, as well as performance. 

All of these factors are important, but, as the Forum study indicates, the one thing that truly differentiates a brand and makes it more valuable than others is its people. The winning factor in determining where we buy our coffee may be the barista with whom we have struck up a friendship. Or we may choose to buy our running shoes at the store way across town because it has employees who help us find the perfect shoes that match our gaits.

Speaking of footwear, consider the Zappos.com story. Its reputation is built entirely on its employees’ customer interactions. Each employee is empowered to deliver the wow experience to every customer. 

Zappos.com believes so strongly that its people are its brand that it offers new trainees $2,000 should they quit during its four-week training program. If a new Zappos.com employee doesn’t believe in its culture and the brand, he is paid to leave. This ensures that all associates are invested in the company’s long-term vision, extend the brand culture, and pass along their enthusiasm to all customers. 

And it works! The company had $1.6 million in sales in 2000 and more than $1 billion in revenues when it was purchased by Amazon.com in 2009. 

 

For years companies have advocated that their greatest assets are their people. Now we know that extends to building brand loyalty. Consumers initially choose to do business with a company based on the products or services it offers. But they continue to do business with a company because of its people.

People provide the ultimate delivery of the brand promise. Employees make the company tick and develop real connections with customers. Their ability and desire to deliver on the brand promise help elevate brand perception in the mind of the consumer, strengthens the brand’s reputation, and contributes to its long-term success.

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