Is Your Brand in Good Hands?

Recently we bought some new garden furniture. Like so much else it could only be ordered online for home delivery. But there was an issue with that delivery.

The response from the customer service manager was this: ‘Once the items leave our warehouse, they are no longer under our control’.

Hang on a minute, I thought. As far as I was concerned, I’d bought their brand of furniture and it would be their brand when I received it. They should still take responsibility for it. Regardless of how it was dispatched.

To give the company their due, when I pointed this out, their response was excellent. They immediately sorted the problem.

But it highlighted a bigger issue. Brands are like precious vases, which can easily be dropped if they get into the wrong hands. And this can often happen through third parties.

There’s no intended criticism of those parties here. My simple suggestion is that they should be properly briefed to represent your brand in the right way. This is often a difficult ask but it’s still possible to achieve.

Here are some examples of these third parties and what can happen if they are not fully briefed:

- Security people, particularly those working 24/7. If a customer calls outside of your company’s normal hours, how do they answer the phone? How can they be more helpful, rather than just saying call back after 9am on Monday, for instance?

- Front desk staff. Many office blocks have third-party staff who sign visitors in before they go up to a company’s own reception. They say first impressions count. So, what happens here? Are visitors on the ground floor greeted in the way that you would wish?

- Logistics providers. This is a big one, given that online shopping is so predominant and couriers, for instance, are representing a multitude of brands. Many providers also have to use agency workers when volumes are high. The answer here is not to scrimp on which companies to use. We can all name the better ones from our own experiences.

- Maintenance staff. They can also create a first impression. When engaging staff at a major NHS hospital, we included their gardeners as potential brand advocates too. Visiting hospitals is often stressful and when the initial greeting is something like ‘You can’t park there mate’ it can only add to that stress.

- Call centres. The assumption here is that you’ve been able to get beyond the bots (another stress point) and actually talk to someone. If it’s a contracted-out centre, how can they avoid the impression that they want to get you off the line as soon as possible? This is because they’re performance managed on the number of calls they complete on each shift.

There will be many other examples of third-party brand representatives according to which type of organisation you are in. The best approach is to audit each one as follows:

- Where do they fit within the customer journey?

- How can they affect the customer experience positively?

- What’s the best way to engage them (which often involves engagement activities outside of normal hours)?

- Are there ways you can share your brand story and ambitions with them – just enough so they can see how they can contribute to this?

- How can they be motivated to represent your brand most effectively?

All of this may seem to be impossible to achieve - both practically and through expecting third-party people to take on something which they don’t see as being within their role. You may not be able to get to all front-line players directly – so team leaders will need to come into play here. Perseverance and persuasion will certainly both be needed throughout any engagement process.

On a final positive note, if a brand is already strong, it can overcome the hiccups that third parties can cause. Like a car which is normally super reliable (I hesitate to name a particular model here though!) you can forgive a mechanical niggle. But if a brand already has a weak image and poor reputation, beware of incremental damage from further shortfalls.