Consistency. The Key to Delivering a Differentiated Customer Experience.
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James O'Gara emphasizes the importance of consistent messaging across all communication channels to create a coherent customer experience, stating that words significantly shape brand perception. He discusses the necessity of a structured messaging architecture to ensure alignment in the company's story, urging organizations to be intentional and disciplined in their communications. The document highlights that over half of companies struggle with inconsistent messaging, which damages brand trust and negatively impacts customer interactions.
Consistency. The Key to Delivering a Differentiated Customer Experience.
- 1. June 6, 2016 James O’Gara CEO / Founder, OnMessage Insight Agents, a strategy consultancy, described the critical nature of consistent messaging when they noted, “… clear and consistent messaging across all channels is vital in providing an authentic, believable and coherent customer experience.” What this means is ... for your message to be a difference maker, your story must be delivered consistently throughout the customer journey. It also means ... where, when and how you communicate your story must be viewed as strategic at every level of the organization. The secret to developing a clear, compelling and consistent story is being disciplined and intentional. Your goal is to achieve complete alignment and consistency between your strategy, story and ultimately your customer’s experience. For this to happen, you need to get the entire leadership team and eventually your entire employee population to understand one simple truth: words matter. The words you use play a critical role in the perception your company creates in the minds of your customers. In fact, Insight Agents found that almost 50 percent of a brand’s image is attributed to what it says and how it says it. Converting consistency from a weakness to an advantage. Most companies wonder why their message isn’t resonating or connecting with employees or customers. Well, more often than not, it’s because the message is not being delivered consistently. As a result, the message never gets through. Consistency of message is a significant problem that CMOs and executives must address. In fact, Black Sun LLC, a strategic communications firm, recently completed a study that showed inconsistent messaging within corporate websites and annual reports in more than half (64 percent) of Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 companies. The study focused on basic building block messages like who the company is, what they do, the value they deliver and what makes them different. Why is consistency so important? Because, inconsistent messaging creates confusion for both employees and customers. Lack of clarity and consistency damages the brand, reduces trust, and, in the end, negatively impacts your customer experience. Delivering a consistent story isn’t just problematic in print and digital communication. It is also a huge barrier in face-to-face conversations with customers. A recent report published by CEB shows 53 percent of sales executives say that consistent messaging in the sales process is a significant challenge. Establishing the building blocks of a consistent story. The ability to deliver a consistent message can be the difference maker in the customer experience. It can be the difference in delivering a highly trusted and memorable experience … or a confusing and fragmented customer journey. A recent article in the Journal of Business Strategy explains just how important it is to develop and deliver a consistent “strategically aligned” message throughout the customer experience … “Taking a focused and deliberate approach in crafting a corporate story will enable companies to align leaders, engage employees and create distinct competitive positioning.” The problem is, most companies spend more time looking for ways to deliver their message than actually ensuring what they are saying is relevant and consistent. The key to consistency is being disciplined and diligent when it comes to communicating your strategy and your story throughout the customer experience. But how do you decide the right words to use? Consistency. The Key to Delivering a Differentiated Customer Experience.
- 2. I recommend building a Messaging Architecture. This architecture consists of the building blocks that consistently frame the organization’s story in the mind of its target audience. These building blocks include: Who we are: A simply told statement of carefully selected, intentional words that describe the type of company and the market segment in which it plays. Our positioning statement: A single sentence that captures the unique brand position the company wants to own in the minds of its customers. What we do: Specific words that define, organize and describe the core products, services and solutions the company offers. Value we deliver: No more than three words that capture the value the company delivers, connecting the dots with customer pain points, needs and aspirations. What makes us different: No more than three phrases used to define own-able and defensible attributes that differentiate the company from competitors. These elements, intentionally defined and documented, establish the building blocks of a consistent corporate story. They are the statements and words every employee within the company must use to frame clear, compelling and consistent messaging across all communication channels. Delivering your story consistently throughout the customer experience. While having a clearly defined Messaging Architecture is critical, it just includes the basic building blocks. Many CMOs and executives stop here and wonder why corporate messaging breaks down across communication channels and customer -facing areas of the organization. They think if they have a brand promise, positioning statement and value proposition, the story is complete. It’s not. The basic building blocks within the Messaging Architecture will only go so far when stakeholders need to build corporate presentations, sales tools, call center scripts, website content and other vital communication vehicles that are crucial in the customer experience. The fact is, stakeholders that play a role in the customer experience need more. They need a single, comprehensive resource that contains the entire company story — a document that contains compartmentalized messaging content and storytelling tools that can be used in customer-facing situations. David Rich, head of marketing at Robert Dyas, once said, “The words a business uses in its branding play a pivotal role in creating context around each touchpoint, the cornerstone to customers developing trust.” Rich went on to say, “Words — nuances in phrases — are absolutely paramount … if you don’t have consistency in your wording, you will never have a coherent platform for communication.” To deliver a consistent story throughout the customer experience – companies need a platform. More specifically, a complete Messaging and Storytelling Platform. While a Messaging Architecture is crucial and serves as the foundation from which you frame your story – a comprehensive Messaging and Storytelling Platform is required to drive consistent communication throughout the customer experience. Next week, I’ll share more details on what it takes to produce this powerful platform and how you can use it to drive consistency in the customer journey. More Information: In the meantime, learn more about the power of a consistent story by visiting www.itsonmessage.com/resource. “Words — nuances in phrases — are absolutely paramount … if you don’t have consistency in your wording, you will never have a coherent platform for communication.” — David Rich