10 Guaranteed Ways to Tarnish Your Brand

What words come to mind when you think about your favourite brand (such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Coca-Cola)? Customer-centric? Credible? Trustworthy? Excellence? Exceptional service?

Will Kenton in his article on Brand defined it as “an intangible marketing or business concept that helps people identify a company, product, or individual. As such, they help shape people’s perceptions of companies, their products, or individuals. This is especially true when companies need to set themselves apart from others who provide similar products on the market, including generic brands.”

A brand is what your business is known for or people’s perception about it. We underestimate the importance of a brand in attracting and retaining a loyal customer base. The ability to build or ruin your brand lies in your hands as brands can make or break a company. You may thus be the one ruining your business with your actions or inaction.

There is a family in our local market we usually buy groceries from. The primary reason we have remained their loyal customers over the years is that the female shop owner is friendly, welcoming, and helpful. She makes you feel special when you are at her shop irrespective of the quantity of foodstuff you are purchasing. 

Some of my worst purchasing moments had to do with the seller’s poor attitude. The seller came off like s/he was doing me a favour by selling the product to me. I mean it’s all fine and dandy to take pride in the products you sell or the services you provide but the bottom line is sales. You are in business to make a profit and without customers, your business will ultimately cease to exist.

The main goal of all commercial enterprises is to attract customers or clients, and make them purchase what they have on sale. They also try to encourage them to keep coming back.

Culled from Customer – definition and meaning by Market Business News

The lowest bar for a seller to scale is to meet the customer’s expectations and then s/he must consistently work on exceeding those expectations. This is how you build a good customer base. Marketing your products/services also plays a huge part, but if you don’t have repeat sales and word of mouth recommendations, you ought to reconsider your strategy.

In the past, people chose which companies they did business with based on price, or the product or service offered, but today the overall experience is often the driver.

Overview: What Is Customer Service?

Here are some of my observations on how businesses carelessly or unwittingly tarnish their brand and lose their customers:

1. Tardiness – If you say you will deliver a product or provide a service on a specific date and time, keep to your word. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. This affects the credibility of your brand. For instance, when the guy who repairs our generator tells me he is close by I know not to expect him till another 3 hours or so.
2. Poor communication – Last I checked telepathy is not one of the ways people communicate. Will there be a delay in delivery that will affect agreed timelines? Let your customer know in good time and if possible, provide an alternative. I was dissuaded from patronising a horticulturalist after I was unable to reach her for 3 days. She wasn’t picking up my calls or responding to my messages asking her to send the cost of my selected plants. After being incommunicado for 3 days she informed me that she was out of town and had limited connectivity.
3. Unrealistic deadlines – Making a habit of missing your deadlines and giving excuses or lying is the worst. Better to under-promise and over-deliver. Always give room for unexpected events. Don’t wait till your customer prompts you before you inform them about setbacks or worse yet, stay mum when the agreed timeline arrives.
4. Make excuses – Don’t justify your mediocre service. Making excuses and blaming the customer is a sure way to lose your customer. Remember that one way of increasing your customer base is through positive reviews and referrals. The converse of this is also true.
5. Inattentive – No one enjoys being ignored. Pay attention to your customers! That’s not the time to be distracted. Listen to and act on your customer’s feedback. Don’t shrug it off as irrelevant.
6. Inferior service or product – If you provide horrible service and your products are below par, you can’t expect to sell. If you keep getting complaints and poor reviews, you need to go back to the drawing board to work on improving your service/product model. “No one gets ahead by striving for mediocrity.” ― Glenn C. Stewart
7. Unapologetic – It’s quite infuriating when a seller who has made a blunder starts arguing or casting blame or becomes uncouth instead of apologising. Learn to apologise and mean it. Don’t stop there, go the extra mile to remedy the error and ensure it doesn’t recur.
8. Incompetent staff – It baffles me how people set up businesses and put inept persons in charge. Putting a salesperson who isn’t knowledgeable about the product or service to sell it makes no sense to me. Worse still is an employee with a lackadaisical attitude to work. You can see the business decline. Spend the necessary funds to hire talent or train your staff adequately.
9. Non-availability – Your customer shouldn’t be waiting for you to open your shop during your opening hours. Have fixed opening hours and be available.
10. Discrimination – Having different standards for your customers sucks! Don’t use your customer’s appearance, gender, religion, ethnic origin, disability or other characteristics to determine whether the person is deserving of receiving top-notch service. Have one standard of excellence for all.

Loyalty in the form of favorable online reviews, referrals, and future business can be lost or won based on a good or bad customer service experience. – Will Kenton

To delve further into this discussion, let’s define some terms that can help build or redeem your brand.

Blake Morgan in her article, Customer Experience Vs. Customer Service Vs. Customer Care, distinguished the terms – customer service, customer care, and customer experience as follows:

“Customer service is the support you offer your customers — both before and after they buy and use your products or services — that helps them have an easy and enjoyable experience with you. Offering amazing customer service is important if you want to retain customers and grow your business.“

“The customer service representatives are the ones who have direct contact with the buyers. The buyers’ perceptions of the company and the product are shaped in part by their experience in dealing with that person.”

“Customer care means how well customers are taken care of while they interact with the brand.“

“Customer experience is the sum of all contact, from first discovering and researching a product to shopping and purchasing to actually using the product and following up with the brand afterwards. Customer experience measures how customers feel about a company overall and includes the emotional, physical, psychological connection customers have with a brand.“

“All three elements work together to build a satisfied customer base that is loyal to the brand and will return for more.”

Customer experience is more than just a buzzword—it should be at the heart of everything a company does. By including customer service and customer care, brands can exceed expectations and delight customers. – Blake Morgan

Culled from Customer Experience Vs. Customer Service Vs. Customer Care

1. Keep improving your skills. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Don’t be praying for the downfall of your competition rather think about how you can improve your products or services. Differentiate them further to give your business a competitive edge. Delve into the plethora of online resources on YouTube, Google, LinkedIn Learning, etc or books that provide the knowledge you need to build your business, improve your marketing strategy, and your customer service.
2. Know your customer. Identify your ideal customer and get to know how best to serve them. This could be meeting their needs, solving intractable problems, or simplifying their lives.
3. Keep abreast of the times. “Change is the only constant in life”. Be adaptable. When you refuse to move with the times you become stagnant and irrelevant. Some businesses have gone out of business because their products or services became obsolete.
4. Have an online presence. In this day and age, it is essential to have your products/services online. It’s one of the easiest ways to market your business. Find a social media platform that works for you. Having a well-designed website is another way to publicise your business.
5. Show respect. Your employees are also your customers. Treat them with respect and pay competitive salaries. Create a friendly and dynamic work environment with the necessary checks and balances. Listen to your employees and carry them along. These are some of the ways you can incentivize your team to give their best in building a formidable brand.

It doesn’t cost more to strive for excellence, but if you settle for mediocrity, it’ll cost you dearly. ― Frank Sonnenberg

Culled from Listen to Your Conscience: That’s Why You Have One

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Please share in the comments section, one of your most memorable recollections of outstanding customer service. What do you as an entrepreneur do to engender customer loyalty? What’s your favourite brand? And why?