Customers are benchmarking you against the best customer service experience they’ve ever had
In this blog created for Distinctive People HR Consultancy, Jo Leckie, owner, and lead consultant at Big Picture Training, explores the gap between brand identity and brand image.
“Are tenants customers”?
I didn’t think I’d still be having this debate but a few weeks ago, I was challenged by a delegate during an on-line customer service training workshop.
Tenant, client, resident whatever label you use, the people who pay rent to receive your services are your customers, and whenever you interact with them, you are providing them with a customer service experience.
When customers interact with you, they are benchmarking the service they receive against organisations, like Amazon, who are continuously raising the bar of what a good customer service experience looks and feels like.
Most housing providers publish a mission statement that promotes their desire to provide thriving communities, to put the customer at the heart of the service, to make a difference and to hear the customer voice. Their core values include words like respect, integrity, honesty, and support.
Their mission statement, vision and core values are components of their brand identity. Their brand identity being their Why. Who they are, what they do and why they do it.
“They want you to believe they’re a competent, caring organisation but it’s window dressing.”
For some organisations there is a gap between brand identity, how they want to be perceived and brand image, how they are perceived. This was bought into stark reality by a tenant on a qualitative workshop I facilitated recently, who said “They want you to believe they’re a competent, caring organisation, but it’s window dressing”.
The Housing White Paper, A Charter for Social Housing Residents, is a direct response to customer feedback designed to improve accountability, quality, and transparent relationships with residents.
The Independent Housing Ombudsman recently underwent an overhaul with new powers to help improve awareness, accessibility, and speed of complaint resolution. They published a new complaint handling code and complaint handling failure orders are posted on the website.
Several organisations whose brand identity indicates an empathetic, supportive, and respectful customer service response, have been the subject of complaint handling failure orders. An indicator of a gap between their brand identity and brand image.
What it boils down to is this; Customers are benchmarking housing providers against the best customer experience they’ve ever had. Housing providers are in a race to up their game and, whilst the sector’s come a long way, the bar keeps getting higher.
Digital innovation won’t automatically deliver a good customer service experience
The speed of digital innovation to the customer experience has been phenomenal, particularly during the Pandemic. The sector has been extremely agile. However, digital innovation won’t automatically deliver a good customer service experience or close the gap between brand identity and brand image.
Closing the gap between brand identity and brand image
The responsibility for closing the gap between brand identity and brand image sits with employees, Chief Executive, and the Board down. Everyone living the corporate values through their behaviours and demonstrating them all the time, through the language they use, in every customer interaction, internal and external.
A mission statement, a vision, should be like a golden thread, pulling together and guiding the actions and behaviours of everyone in the organisation. Every team and every individual being able to evidence and talk about how their work connects and contributes to the organisation’s purpose.
When you align your culture to your purpose and values, you narrow the gap between your brand identity, how you want to be perceived and your brand image, how you are perceived. Then, and only then, will you stand a chance of lifting the bar and becoming the benchmark for the best experience a customer has ever had.