The brand is what people think of you. It’s the same as your reputation. It’s defined by what it feels like to do business with you.

If any part of this experience is poor, then this will undermine your brand. As many companies have found to their immense cost, social media allows people to share a poor experience with a vast audience with devastating effects.

So it’s important to make sure that your brand proposition is backed up by everything that the customer experiences.

The best way of doing this, and protecting your brand’s reputation, is to conduct a customer journey audit.

The customer journey audit objective

The objective of the audit is to identify every interaction between the customer and the brand, to make sure that it is consistent with the brand’s promise, and to identify any interactions that might undermine the brand and which need attention.

To do this, list every occasion that the customer, or the people who might become your customers, encounter the brand. This should include everything from the customer’s first experience of the brand, right through to the purchase and the after-sales experience.

For each of these occasions, ask six questions:

1. What has led to this point? (What happened before this point?)
2. What does the customer experience at this point?
3. Is this experience consistent with the brand promise?
4. What do we want them to do next?
5. What does the customer need at this point?
6. What happens next?

Cast the net wide

Call centre scripts. Standard letters from the Renewals department. Attempting to order spares.

The customer will encounter the brand in ways that the marketing team might never have known about, so it’s important to involve your colleagues across a range of departments. They’ll appreciate being asked, and their input will be valuable.

A good way to get their expertise is to run a workshop.

How to run the workshop

Book a day for this, and get a nice big room with lots of wall space for post-it notes. Get people to list as many interactions as they can think of. Invite them to think about the whole customer journey, and not just the bit that their department is responsible for.

Next, jot these interactions on post-it notes.

Then, work with the team to put them in chronological order, with the earliest interaction first.

Once you’ve completed this step, consider each interaction in turn, asking the six questions listed above.

If you’re not sure what the experience of one or the interactions is like, get someone to pretend to be a customer and try it. Call the call centre. Go into a store and ask for help. Then, get them to report back to the team.

Moments of truth

Try to agree which of the interactions are especially important – the ‘moments of truth’ that have a particularly big impact on the customer’s experience of the brand.

Moment of truth happen when an interaction is particularly intimate. Reading or viewing an advert isn’t intimate. Phoning the reception desk at a hotel to complain about the noise from an adjacent room is.

For example, a firm of solicitors might notice that the experience when a corporate client first visits their offices and walks up to the reception desk is especially important, because the way that the receptionist greets them creates an unshakeable first impression.

Behaviour matters

When asking whether the experience is consistent with the brand promise, consider how the brand behaves as well as how it performs. Most people prefer the experience of doing business with a company that behaves ethically and which demonstrates a purpose that goes beyond simply selling its products.

So if a customer becomes aware that one of the staff is being treated badly, or a supplier hasn’t been paid, then this will damage the brand.

Fixing any problems

Appoint brand ambassadors within each department. Ideally, these should be the people who have participated in the workshop. Invite them to recommend improvements for any interactions that fail to deliver the experience that the brand promises.

Make sure that they can ask for the resources that they need. For example, someone might suggest that a standard letter, or a flyer, is poorly worded and isn’t in the correct tone of voice. They probably won’t have the right experience to re-write it themselves, so make sure that they can ask for a copywriter and are given the right support to brief the copywriter.

Of course, you’ll remain responsible for the delivery of all of this. But by using brand ambassadors, you’re reinforcing the message that every department has a role in protecting the brand, as well as getting some valuable assistance.

Following it up

Get the team back together every six months or so. Go through the list that they produced, and ask whether anyone knows of any new processes or interactions that should be investigated. Do a quick check of the interactions that you listed at the workshop: are they still delivering the brand promise? Has anything changed?

By doing this, you’ll reassure yourself and your board that the brand is still being protected.

Want help?

If you’d like help with producing this audit, please get in touch for a chat.