Your Brand Image

In these challenging economic times it is more important than ever to provide world class service. The old adage that keeping a customer is a lot cheaper than getting a new one rings even truer today. In a world of endless phone menus and computer voice recognition programs it seems that some organizations take their customers for granted. The organizations that don’t take their customers for granted are positioned to capture market share once the economy turns around.

When developing brand images for the customer service function or department I always ask my clients to tell me about their customer service efforts. The questions I ask go something like this:

- Does your customer service reinforce your brand?
- What makes your customer service unique?
- Are your customer service efforts authentic?
- Does your customer service function have the support and buy-in from top management?
- How do your customers rate your service?
- Is your service better than your competitors? If so, why or how? If not why?
- Do you track or measure the level of customer service you provide?

If you can’t answer these questions or answer them in a satisfactory way then your organization has some work to do. If you don’t get a handle on your customer service image then you are opening the door to your competition.

You may be asking why does a photographer want to know these things? You might say that the photographer is here just to make some images of our customer service department for the web page or our brochures. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, my “secret sauce” is to make images that are authentic and unique to help reinforce a brand. Without knowing what is authentic and unique makes my job much harder. Secondly, I am not into creating fiction, as that is what they have stock photography for.

Neil McKenzie Photography

• Promote to Article