Want More Brand Love? Look to Your EX
We don’t just interact with brands. We have relationships with them. Studies show that people build deep emotional connections to the products, services, and experiences they love. And when customers are happy, when they’re "in love” with a brand, they will remain loyal, and will even pay a premium.
It’s probably safe to say that most companies want to build long-term relationships with their customers, so it’s important to build that brand love and keep it alive. You can’t do that without exceptional customer experience (CX), and here’s why you can’t deliver great CX without great employee experience (EX).
What is Brand Love?
According to the American Marketing Association, brand love is traditionally defined as, “a marketing strategy that looks to adopt brand-loyal customers and turn them into advocates or influencers for your brand.” But it goes beyond a marketing ploy. Brand love is real.
Studies show that an emotional connection can strengthen the connection between company and consumer.
That’s why almost 40% of consumers associate brand loyalty with having love for a brand, and why 86% of U.S. adults would be willing to spend more on brands they love. That’s also where brand love comes into play with your marketing strategy, as over half of all sales are driven by word-of-mouth alone, making it more effective than even the best paid advertising.
How You Build Brand Love Through CX
Brand love is invariably tied to customer experience. Much like relationships, positive experiences strengthen bonds, while negative experiences can weaken them.
Research shows that when we are faced with a purchasing decision, all the related experiences and emotions in someone’s past can change a person’s preference. That explains why 1 in 3 consumers will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad interaction, but those who report the best experiences are willing to spend 140% more than those who had a bad or less than wonderful experience.
Studies even show that a “very good” service team can keep a customer’s loyalty even when faced with difficulties such as delivery delays or supply chain issues.
The Connection to EX
An EX-focused company is essentially a customer-centric company, since employees are the ones who strategize, design, and carry out every aspect of consumer interaction and customer experience.
And brands that excel in customer service report almost twice the number of engaged employees. Employees who are inspired and happy at work are more productive, more effective, and will go the extra mile for customers, reports McKinsey, with engaged employees more inclined to surpass work expectations, often by 40%.
The direct connection between employee satisfaction and customer service metrics is also clear from a recent study by Gallup that compared employee reviews on Glassdoor to ratings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). They found that each one-star improvement in a company’s Glassdoor rating corresponds to a 1.3 -3.2-point improvement in customer satisfaction scores.
An enthusiastic employee who shares an affinity with the brand can also have a direct impact on sales and revenue generation. Organizations that invest in their EX report double the return on sales and 4X the profit than those that don’t.
Why itel Values EX
At itel, we’ve always understood the value of employees, especially in the customer experience industry. In fact, EX=CX is a motto that has driven our company to record customer satisfaction and net promoter scores across many industries. It is also what kept us successful, resilient and agile, even during the economic turbulence of the last few years.
Exceptional EX is also the reason behind itel’s transformative, safe, and inspiring workspaces, its many health and wellness initiatives, and the crucial renaming of its HR department into People, Resources and Culture, to better reflect the company’s dedication to building a strong company culture that places its people at the center.
That’s also the concept behind itel’s other famous philosophy of “customers serving customers”. If brand love is felt by the agent, that will trickle down to the consumer. This is the why our operations team works so closely with clients, to ensure that customer service teams fully understand a brand, its values, ethos, and identity in the market, so they can better translate that brand love to the customer.
Want to learn more about itel’s company culture and our focus on EX? Click here.
