How to elevate the brand experience through customer service

Image by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels

An often overlooked element of brand design, the brand experience is the overall and lasting impression a customer has of the brand and business. Whether it’s a service or product, every single interaction from the initial marketing of the brand, through to point of purchase and after-sale customer service counts towards the brand experience and the overall customer journey.

A good customer journey starts with good graphic design.

The brand design builds the relationship with the customer on an emotional level through a series of touch points, telling the brand story, building trust and increasing brand awareness. But whilst communicating the story is key, clarity and legibility are essential to keep a customer on board.

Imagine you want to buy something from a brand you have seen recommended on Instagram, but when you head to their website it is slow and confusing. You can’t read the text as the contrast of colours isn’t great enough and the typeface is too fussy. You give up and leave without purchasing the product you were keen on a few moments ago. Bad graphic design can lose customers.

Whilst important, the brand experience doesn’t stop at the marketing materials. To ensure a holistically good brand experience for the customer, we must also consider the personal interactions that the customer has with the brand: the customer service.

Good customer service is essential.

Whether the customer buys a product or service, in person or online, we need to think about how the brand makes them feel. A positive customer service builds loyalty and furthers the emotional connection to the brand. When customers have a good experience, it improves their overall perception of the brand and can build advocacy. We want to shout about the brands that make us feel good.

Good customer service can be what sets your business apart from the rest.

Consistently good customer service is an element of the brand experience that can be hard to scale-up. As the big brands opt for AI solutions, for example, self checkouts in supermarkets and bots instead of real people online, smaller businesses really do have the power to win brand loyalty through customer service in a way that big brands may not be able to afford to.

In this piece I chat with retail leadership expert Sam Bowden about how brands can elevate their brand experience through their customer service.

With 18 years of retail leadership experience, Sam is on a mission to elevate the customer experience on the high street. Having won the Harrods Award for Customer Excellence and led UK operations for two global customer experience companies, Sam understands what it takes to turn everyday retail interactions into memorable moments that drive sales and loyalty.

Do the unexpected

Maintaining good customer service is important, but in order to stand out from competitors, we need to do more than the expected - we need to do something different. This is what Sam calls the pattern interrupt.

“Everyone has a preconceived notion of what to expect when walking into a specific retailer… car dealership I’m expecting the hard sell, jewellery shop I’m expecting to be quietly watched by sales ambassadors. Independent retailers have the world in their hands when it comes to this; it’s easy to give a great experience with just one shop, so much harder to scale (I know from experience). There’s a newsagent right near me that changed ownership recently; the difference is night and day…he opened the door, moved his point of sale to the front, gave my daughter a lollipop and asked my name…and remembered it. No matter what business you are in, it can cost you nothing to make small tweaks to your customer experience to blow people’s minds.”

First impressions count

The first impression, Sam argues, is the most important aspect of the customer experience.

“As human beings, we make a split-second decision whether we are going to like something or have a good time or not. You have seven seconds to create a good first impression, so as a brand or business this is what you should focus on. Pattern interrupt, greet fast, and ask an open question - those are the three things to focus on.”

Make the customer feel something

When we think of how memories are formed, it is emotion that enables us to remember something clearly. This can be a good or a bad emotion. For example, many people will remember where they were and what they were doing the day that it was announced that Princess Diana had died.

In customer service, it is the positive emotions that we need to harness in order to increase the memorability of our brand. Sam explains that one way we can do this is through the telling of stories and the amplification of the senses.

“Timothy Oulton, the incredible brand I ran the UK for many years, does a brilliant job at emotional experience. Everything is a story: each product, the history of the brand, the history of the founder, Tim. Customers get an emotional experience on every visit, romanced by the stories and encapsulated by the sensory experience.”

Timothy Oulton - Tottenham Court Road

Create a brand-led experience

The customer experience can be a real opportunity to further the emotional connection between the consumer and the brand. In aligning our customer experience to the brand values and purpose, we can continue to tell the brand story, increasing the perception of the brand and furthering that connection. Sam explains that Lego is a brand that does this well:

“Lego is my favourite. I’m a big kid at heart...I think we all are really, and visiting the Lego store you are visiting somewhere that you are actively encouraged to play. The human senses are so important in creating an exceptional experience, and Lego does touch, sight, and sound so well. Touch is important as it’s been scientifically proven that you feel ownership of whatever you touch (there are buckets of Lego to play with everywhere). Sound is important as it creates the store ambience (chatting, laughter, team members interacting and playing), and then finally sight is so key, as they rightfully say, a picture tells 1000 words. (Lego have those great big beautiful models throughout).”

The Lego Store, Birmingham

End on a high

The final impression counts as much as the first, so even after the sale, high quality customer service can continue to build a lasting impression of the brand. This is what Sam calls the Final Kiss:

“Customers always remember how you made them feel, if the first and last impression of you are great the rest looks after its self. What reason are you giving them to remember you by? A small gift, a great compliment, a local tip! End on a high, it’s so important.”

Learn from the best

We can look to brands we love as consumers for clues on how to give our customers a positive and memorable customer experience. For example, Apple consistently put the consumer first enabling an increased perception of the value of the brand through the sense of exclusivity and expertise.

“I know I can get a better spec laptop for much cheaper, but I go into the Apple shop and I feel like I’m part of an exclusive club (although they are one of the biggest brands in the world). I get greeted at the door, I can touch and play with everything, and I get asked the right questions. For a giant company like Apple, they have hit the nail on the head in terms of scaling the experience.”

Sam Bowden is Director of Enjoy the Journey, where he brings luxury-level service techniques to high street retailers through practical, in-person training. His workshops focus on customer experience, sales performance, and team wellbeing, helping teams not just sell, but create experiences that keep customers coming back.