They’re looking for someone who gets them.

Get to know what’s important to them. Almost universally (90%), customers agree that the companies delivering the best service products and experiences are the ones “who truly understand my needs.” (Service Marketing Brand Vulnerability Study, Mullen, 2009.) It’s not about “customer-centricity” lip service either – your best customers will see right through that – it’s about adopting truly customer-centric behavior.

You are not boring if you keep the basics covered. Don’t lose sight of the basics that probably made your business great from the start – like making it easy for customers to choose you and stay with you. According to our Brand Vulnerability Study, 89% of consumers agree that “the best service providers make it easy to do business with them,” and they operate with a keen understanding that “consistency is the name of the game.”

Define your stand out qualities, and you will be noticed. With more than 50% of consumers saying “most service providers’ products are the same,” it’s never been more important to define what sets you apart from the competition (Service Marketing Brand Vulnerability Study, Mullen, 2009). And don’t be shy about communicating that point of difference.

The virtual “you” should match the real “you.” When it comes to marketing, few things are more rewarded than the truth and more punished than inflated claims and over-promises. 83% of customers surveyed said one of their greatest disappointments with service providers is having their expectations raised based on the provider’s advertising or website only to be let down by the actual experience (Service Marketing Brand Vulnerability Study, Mullen, 2009). “It is futile for marketing to do an excellent job if they are, for example, to be let down by the customer service team, billing system or an executive who drags the brand through the gossip columns of the newspapers,” said Joe Stanhope, Vice President, Alterian, crm2day.com. So make sure your core marketing messages accurately portray your company and what you have to offer consumers.

Breaking up has gotten easier to do. More than half of consumers surveyed feel that service providers simply do not value them as customers. Our research indicates that increasingly, consumers are willing to breakup with a current service provider unless they see a real indication of change in that provider’s attitude and behavior. Some consumers are even working with their provider to find a compromise. “What I have learned is that these companies are really receptive to working with me to keep me as a customer,” said Alan Weinkrantz on ABCnews.com. Perhaps your customer’s personal ad really reads: “looking for someone who gets and values me.”

We put together a micro-site with more detail on how service brands can attract and retain their best customers. My colleague Taylor Bryant, Chief Strategy Officer, at Mullen, is also a great resource on this subject.

• What’s your plan for branding from the inside out? Are your employees steeped in the brand? They better be, because the strongest service brands today are built on an employee base that can consistently articulate the brand’s promise and values.  If that’s not the case, ask how your company can do a more effective job of engaging, activating and instilling pride in your employees.  By developing a unique online photo mosaic of employees that recognized their contributions and connected their work values to the brand’s core values,  CSC made huge strides in galvanizing it’s global workforce.

• Have you moved from a marketing in isolation to a multi-functional marketing mentality? When your best customers’ “enterprise-wide experience” is so central to business success, it’s all the more critical to realize that the entire company – across all functions – is on the marketing team. Have you taken down the internal walls and invited your HR and IT folks onto your brand management team?

• Have you scripted the desired brand experience at all points of contact? It’s one thing for employees to be able to articulate the brand promise it’s another thing for them to bring it to life consistently. Your brand “lives” (or not) with each customer at each touch point, everyday. Scripting the experience is key to brand consistency and can help transform a negative service experience into positive long-term outcome.

• Are you effectively pre-selling the desired brand experience? Given the inherent inconsistencies of delivering the desired experience, are you appropriately managing customer expectations as to what the experience can and should be? Are those same expectations being used to motivate your employees? Managing both sides of the expectations and experience equation is key to narrowing the gap between the perception and reality of your brand experience.

• Are you listening to and appropriately participating in your brand’s online conversation? The exploding social marketing landscape enables your customers (past, present and future) to have an influential voice on what your brand is or isn’t and whether your brand can be trusted or not to live up to its promises. Leveraging new communication channels to both listen to and engage in a proactive brand-building dialog is no longer optional. And the real-time earning, restoring and protecting of “brand trust” is increasingly essential for on-going service marketing success. Say what you want about Starbucks
  

  Are you actively participating in online conversations about your brand?

  challenges of the past two years, they have done a tremendous job of listening to and appropriately participating in the online discussions about their brand.

Now more than ever, service brands and businesses are being confronted by heightened customer expectations and frustrations, new customer empowering technologies, fragile customer loyalties and unexpected competitive offerings. Asking the right questions now just might be the difference between future success versus failure.