Your brand is a set of promises. Don’t be a liar.
I know we talk about branding and design and all those fun and fascinating things. But we haven’t spent a lot of time defining what branding is. Branding is just a set of promises that you make to your members or customers. That’s it. It is nothing more fancy or complicated than that.
Now, the complicated part is keeping your promises.
Promises are hard to keep, that’s why they shouldn’t be given out freely. But if you do give a promise, you should swim through fire to keep it – your word is everything. This is what my Dad taught me. And he was very serious about that.
To him (and now to me), a broken promise is nothing but a lie with a fancy nametag.
So, what are you promising your members? Do you promise them exceptional service? How did you define exceptional? Is it above and beyond the best service that you have ever had or is it just better than the bank across the street?
To me, exceptional service is something that is a cause for pause. Exceptional service causes me to finish my business, walk outside and turn around to look at the building and say, “Wow, I really felt important.” Anything else is a lie. Anything else is “simple service”.
Do you promise to have the best rates? That’s a dangerous promise. The first time someone challenges you on that you had better be ready to man-up and eat that loan. Otherwise you have no credibility. Otherwise you are a liar.
Do you promise to protect me from identity theft by making me sign a signature card and go through a triple verification over the phone to assure my identity? Well, then if something happens, I expect a little handholding. I expect you to help me get this mess cleaned up. I expect a good deal on a little protection. Otherwise you just scammed me. If you don’t keep your word, then because of you, I just got robbed twice.
I take branding and promises pretty seriously. We make the promise to our clients that we will walk with them hand in hand in their marketing. We tell them that we will give them our best ideas. We tell them that we will stay on top of the credit union marketing game so that they don’t have to. We tell them that we will read the magazines, forecast trends, stay up on current events, do regular gender and age based focus groups. We promise them to be professional. We promise that as long as they are with us, they don’t have to worry about things going wrong. We promise them that we will stand at the press while their job is coming off the line to assure quality. We tell them that if something goes wrong (as they inevitably do) that we will stand with them.
But this isn’t a commercial. It is just a challenge.
I sometimes do presentations before banks and credit unions. At the end of these presentations there is usually a Q&A segment where folks will put me on the spot. One such presentation the conversation turned towards business accounts. Being a guy who has owned and run businesses since I was 6 years old, I have some experience in this capacity. I was doing my best to address how the entrepreneur’s mind works and how a financial institution should go about attracting a variety of business accounts based on age, size, needs and demographics.
I was asked about remote check scanning technology. This (for those who don’t know what I am talking about) is a little box that allows you to run checks that you receive through and have them instantly deposited into your account over the internet. I explained that we have not adopted this technology in any of our businesses even though our bank that holds our business accounts offer this service. I explained that right now it is just not necessary or that convenient for us. We are happy with the way we do things (honestly my bank is across the street from my coffee shop – so it is an excuse to stop by for a drink).
The person asking the question responded, “Well what if I told you that if you do not adopt the technology we would begin to apply fees and penalties to your account?”
I told her “Then I would close my account with you.” Obviously you do not want my business.
A profound silence expanded through the room. I guess this was not the answer that they had anticipated. I qualified my statement a moment later.
“By telling me that - what I am hearing as a consumer is that I am not important to you or your business. You want me to change the way I do business with you, or face the consequences. No one wants to be told that. I have been doing business the same way with my bank for 25 years. Now, they want me to do extra work that saves my bank time and money and effort but costs me more in training and effort – or pay extra for the privilege of banking there.”
I was pretty sure that she wanted to throw something at me. It wasn’t her fault. I talked to her later and she was a very nice lady (very friendly). I think she was just putting me through my paces to see what I was made of. Well, I was up to the challenge. I explained a better way to attract business accounts over to this new system. I suggested focusing on the many benefits of the new system and all of the free stuff that comes along with it and maybe even a rate bump on the business accounts. She said “But WE provide the scanners to our members for free!” I replied, “Well, I would expect that you would.” She looked surprised “But those scanners are expensive! That is a great deal!”
“Not to me. You want me to change the way I do business AND pay for the opportunity? I know I am doing the bank a favor by switching to this technology. I know they are saving money on labor and time. Why SHOULD I pay for the scanner when in reality it benefits you more than it does me or my business? I already have my method built into the way I do business.”
That was a foreign business concept to me. That would be like me hiring a gardener to landscape my house and he charges me extra to use his new riding mower that is faster and saves him time and effort. Why should I pay more? Aren’t you getting all the benefits here?
But I think what happened was that the business of banking took priority over the service of banking. And that is a brand for failure.
With all the options available to me as a consumer, I am not tied to any company that I do business with. My clients know that they can always try a different agency (some do, but usually come back). What I want my clients to know is that I don’t take it personally (though it really does make me sad when someone leaves even temporarily – I am a person after all). But if they don’t try other places, they can never truly appreciate the quality of the work that we provide. That is our brand – “Professional Quality and Personal Service”.
So, this is branding. Are you ready to brand yourself for success? Are you ready to make promises to your members? Are you willing to keep the promises that you make? If you are, then you will stand out in a crowded room of your competitors. Your members will know that they can depend on you. They know that when you offer them a new product or service – that it is in their best interest to take advantage of the opportunity.
Or, you could just be a liar.
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Comments
RM,
This is a GREAT example of the problems in the industry. I cant really lay too much blame on the VP or CEO (as I am sure that you don’t either). I think they have been conditioned to think this way.
I work in a service oriented business (like you) where I NEED my clients to tell me when they are unhappy so that I can fix the problem. The other option is that my client get so frustrated that they leave and I am left wondering “What happened?”
If I have a client that comes to me and says “You know, I really like you guys, but we have been having this one problem…” I feel like I could hug them! Do you know how great that is? That means your clients or members STILL want to do business with you and are asking for just a small channge in the way you relate to them. And I bet that if you make that change, the member/client could become and advocate. Word of Mouth advertising comes from advocates.
And isn’t that what we REALLY want?
Thanks for your great story!
Great post and a great definition of branding. I always have trouble describing branding in a concise form, but you just did it.
Great article and it really struck home. As Marketing Coordinator for a small but very profitable credit union one of our missions is to give “outstanding service”. Having worked in member service and observing it on a daily basis I know we only give “good” service the majority of the time and “outstanding” service about 20% of the time. On our website we have a poll. Sometimes the questions are business related to get a sampling of what our members are looking for in new products. Sometimes they are just silly and fun. One month I asked a simple question: “When you come into the credit union are you greeted with a smile?” The VP who I answered to thought it was a great question to ask but the CEO felt that it invited negative responses so he would go to the site and put a lot of “yes” votes in to manipulate the results. I felt we had a missed opportunity. I told him that we always tout “outstanding” service yet he was afraid to really get a sampling of how our members felt by asking a very basic question. I expect that maybe 60 to 65% of our members would have answered that they did get a smile but if 35 to 40% are not, we need to know so it can be discussed and improved upon. Just being smiled at is far from “outstanding” service and if we aren’t consistant with that (and I know for a fact that we aren’t) then that one area of our brand is a lie.