Your brand is not simply a logo, marketing program, product or service. It is all of these and more – much more. Your company reputation or brand is about performance. Your company is defined every time your customers interact with your organization.

These interactions are your organization’s Moments of Truth — experiences that define your company. A Moment of Truth occurs any time a customer comes in contact with any part of your organization: the cleanliness of the parking lot, the sign on the entrance, how long the line-up is, how a problem is handled – plus every contact they have with your employees.

More than we would like to admit, the most important brand activator is when your customer interacts directly with your front line people through the phone, email or in person and that customer decides “I don’t like this” or “This is good”. Today you no longer own your organization – your employees do!

Customer experiences that reinforce the brand messages are perhaps the most important means of keeping and getting new customers. The experience they provide to your customers will ultimately determine your success or failure, regardless of the time and money you have spent on marketing programs.

It’s not enough to merely satisfy the customer: customers must be surprised and ‘delighted’ by having their needs not just met, but exceeded

– A. Blanton Godfrey

But the brand experience will fall short if your employees do not understand and internalize the brand promise and recognize the importance of their own behavior in delivering the promise.

To the customer, customer service is your brand in action.

On-Brand vs. Off-Brand

An On-Brand Moment of Truth is one that goes beyond generic customer service – it magnifies your brand promise. When a service experience is aligned with your brand promise, it is significantly more powerful than just a well-recognized brand name, a Branded Customer Experience is a Moment of Magic.

An On-Brand customer experience creates a personal connection with the product or service and inspires brand loyalty. When a customer experience does not match the brand promise, trust and confidence is damaged and this can seriously diminish your marketing efforts.

We know from experience that most customers’ experience is neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with any great intensity. This is defined as the zone of indifference or ambivalence. Mildly satisfied and mildly dissatisfied customers can easily and justifiably be lost to your competitors.

Leaders cannot make all the customer service decisions themselves, so they must cultivate a secure working environment that fosters flexibility and innovation and creates the right atmosphere for employees to make the right decisions at the Moment of Truth.

Employees must fully understand the vision of the organization. The leadership team must define clear goals and strategies and prepare employees to take responsibility for reaching those goals. Successful organizations provide staff with a short list of expectations, not a long list of rules.

Small improvements in the Moments of Truth can intensify the customer’s mildly positive feelings and move your customer out of the zone of ambivalence to one of highly satisfied.

Click here if your company could use some help creating Moments of Magic.