Defining Brand As Culture

In September, I attended an incredible AAF DC event hosted by Cravety Executives Ed Bodensiek, Mike Gardner, and Greg Kihlstrom, whose mission is to help businesses connect joy to revenue.

Cravety sees our current economy as one being driven by experiences: “Customers crave brands with empathy. They crave businesses that think through their human needs — carefully aligning process, people, product and place around a desired experience.” Additionally, they explained how this relationship between businesses and clients actually begins with the employee’s experience.

The Cravety team broke the process of “employee-to-customer-experience” down into a few simple steps:

First, they encouraged us to re-think the word “brand” as “employee experience,” or the sum of every interaction an employee has with a company.

Then, they described how the employee experience leads to revenue:

It suddenly seemed so shockingly obvious to me. Why have I never thought of branding in this light before? It’s easy to assume that customer service is a one-way street. You have a problem with a product or service so you call someone to fix it. But it can’t possibly begin there. The employee on the other end of the phone has to believe in what they’re representing in order to be an advocate for the client’s needs.

The easiest way to visualize this is with a real brand example. One of the first companies Cravety talked about was JetBlue, which I agreed with whole-heartedly even before listening to their reason. If I’m going on a trip, the first airline I look at is always JetBlue. Why? Because their customer service is impeccable. One March, I was traveling to Fort Myers, Florida for spring break. Out of all the days I could have picked to travel, this ONE day was forecasted to snow. I called the customer service line, explained how I was afraid my flight would be cancelled and asked if I could hop on an earlier one. In a matter of seconds they had re-booked me at no cost, and I was on my way. Side note: my original flight ended up not getting cancelled because JetBlue is the GOAT. But I digress.

The Cravety team explained how JetBlue Founder and current Chairman of Azul Airlines, David Neeleman, achieves this top-tier service:

1. Train employees to act as ambassadors of the brand
2. Create products or services that are as flawless as possible
3. Transform problems into opportunities to please customers (like my example above!)

What exactly do your employees want, you say? Employers need to figure out what motivates each employee. For example, maybe one employee has a kid and wants to be able to pick them up from school each day. Another may desire flexible PTO and WFH benefits. When I worked in sales, my manager rewarded me with Sephora goodies when I met monthly quotas. You can bet your booty that made me hustle even harder each month!

Ultimately, the idea here is that we can’t assume all employees want the same things. We need to go deeper and see what motivates each individual.

Now, the flip side: How do you define what your customer service experience will be? This will look different from company to company, but start by mapping each interaction out on a piece of paper or white board to see where every client touchpoint, no matter how seemingly small, can be enhanced.

At the end of the day, people are driven by emotion. Good experiences are more likely to attract repeat happy customers.

So remember:

Happy employees = happy customers

Happy customers = happy business