Customer Brand Experience

The Link between Customer Service and Brand

Employees are the most powerful marketing assets a business can have. Ensuring that your associates deliver the very best possible brand experience to customers and prospects is essential in determining your success. Consider the following:

I was recently at my local branch of Citi Bank to pay a sizable chunk on my credit card. As a business owner who sometimes juggles cash flow, I was not paying the entire balance this month, but I was happy with what I was paying. As the teller looked at my check, she declared in a loud voice, “Wow, you’re paying X dollars!”

While I was not pleased to have my business announced in the bank, I realized there were not a lot of other customers, so how compromised could my privacy really be? Then a tee-shirt clad guy who was decorating the bank lobby with balloons immediately was as my side asking if I was paying off my mortgage. (I wish my mortgage was that small!)

I politely told him that I was just making a payment on my credit card. The teller then, in her same loud voice, announced my credit card balance and how much of it I was paying. I firmly, but politely, asked her if she could please respect my privacy. She declared that it didn’t matter because the balloon guy was the assistant manager. I sternly told her it didn’t matter to me who he was, I would appreciate my privacy. They both apologized, But I wasn’t buying it because I had a very similar experience in the same bank several months ago. I had let the first incident go, chalking it up to a young employee who didn’t exercise good judgment. But I shouldn’t have.

Both as a customer and as a marketing consultant, my experience is disturbing on so many levels. Here are just few:

My brand experience says that Citi Bank is reckless with my privacy — and perhaps everyone’s privacy. It tells me that this assistant manager has no more sense or discretion than this teller. Perhaps all Citi assistant managers and tellers operate this way.

Is this the way the bank operates throughout the country? Does the bank not train it’s employees well? Or is this behavior something that is trained? Are the brand and marketing people spending their time on glitzy ads and expensive direct mail campaigns, but don’t understand — or care about — the power of brand experience? Or maybe there is no tangible connection in Citi Bank between marketing and customer experience. I wonder.

It doesn’t matter to me what Citi spends on ads, direct mail, etc., or how clever its campaigns may be. Its brand image was damaged on a Saturday morning in one branch in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. For me, anyway.