Welcome to Touchpoint Insights, MCorp Consulting’s Monthly Brand and Customer Experience Newsletter
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Let's be honest.
Seriously. With our customers, and with ourselves. Honest about who we are, what we can deliver, how we’re better / worse / different...how we’ve screwed up, and how we plan to fix it.
Without this insight into our organizations, the best we can do is hope that the brand experience we deliver will match up to customer expectations and perceptions.
So how do we go about gaining these insights, and then delivering on them? MCorp’s approach is simple: ask your customers, and look at your organization through their eyes.
This month’s Touchpoint Insights looks at the issue from a few perspectives, and – we sincerely hope – delivers more than a few insights in the process.
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Understanding Touchpoints and your Customer Relationship Lifecycle
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As customers experience the touchpoints that occur as they interact with your organization, they are driven closer to you, or further away. This white paper helps you see where – and how – to better leverage your touchpoints to drive the right customers (and more of them) closer to your organization.
Download the
whitepaper >>
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Quick Wins:
Touchpoint Mapping Workshops
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Give your team a framework to drive better touchpoint management and delivery with a fun and challenging one-day Workshop.
Click here to learn more with MCorp’s Touchpoint Mapping Workshops.
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MCorp Consulting
is a research, brand and strategy consultancy that maps and improves the touchpoints between organizations and their customers, delivering better brand, marketing and customer experience.
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In this Issue: We’re all about personal responsibility in the short cold days of February.
1.) “Trust me”? Um, no thanks, I’d rather go on a blind date with a snake-toting used car salesman. What lessons can business take away from politicians and Wall Street? These days, it’s more about what NOT to do than what to emulate. Keep your brand promises real, your staff in the loop, and your brand gaps at bay. (Article)
2.) If you don’t define yourself? Your customers will. So go ahead, brand big! How often does a breakthrough idea, service or company come along? Once in a blue moon. That leaves us mere mortals to carve out a new niche -- or be just a little better -- than the competition. Whether you offer a little more or dream a little bigger, you can always brand yourself a lot better. (Article)
3.) Focus Groups...like democracy...are all too often the vocal rabble leading the charge, ignoring the silent majority. While we’d best not mess with the Constitution, we can try to ensure that Focus Groups are kept to their rightful place in research. For brainstorming? Great! To test something you’re pretty sure you know on a narrowly defined audience? Proceed. But if you’re trying to quantify / validate / understand something big, like say, a brand, then stick with methodologies you can validate and defend. (Article)
4.) You know that Emerson quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines”? Add Branders to that list, please. We’re consistent and we’re proud! Because nothing will expose a pretend brand promise as lethally (and as quickly) as an inconsistent experience. (Article)
5.) If you’re Mark Sanford, really, we don’t need to hear any more from you. But a sincere apology coming from Toyota’s CEO? Well, we bought it. How about you? And so we’ve come full circle to politicians and their crocodile tears vs. what we took to be a true show of humility by Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda. What do you think? (Article)
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Brand Strategy Gaps? Just Turn on CSPAN...
Can we go ten minutes without encountering a politician apologizing for his peccadilloes? Or a financial supermarket alienating its increasingly broke clients with tin-eared excuses and non apologies? With a little care and follow-through, you can avoid the pitfalls and brand gaffes that today’s elected officials and financial services firms seem to thrive on. Click here to continue to full article >>
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More on Differentiation: Building an Aspirational Brand on Today’s Brand Experience
Brands don’t happen in a vacuum or in smoky back rooms. They can be crafted from value exercises, customer interviews, SWOTs and an arsenal of tools that will help you to create your brand map. But don’t forget about the vision [and creativity] “thing” ...not every great idea is already taken. Click here to continue to full article >>
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Is There a Place for Focus Groups in Brand Research?
Who am I to question a Nobel prize-winning physicist? Especially one astute enough to remind us that, “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” Yeah. What Werner Heisenberg said. Click here to continue to full article >>
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A Brand Experience Primer: Everything Matters
When is a 5th-place Google ranking not a good thing? When you’ve searched “financial service firm gaffe” and www.jpmorganchase.com turns up front and center. Today’s myriad touchpoints, whether personal, automated, electronic or telephonic, represent a brand consistency minefield. It’s no longer just about a helpful salesperson, but about your people, processes, ads, add-ons and algorithms aligning. Click here continue to full article >>
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Humility: A New Brand Attribute?
“Grasping for salvation” is a pretty powerful statement coming from the head of a company that earned $18.8 billion just two years ago. Somehow I can’t envision anyone at AIG (Enron, Merrill, Lehman, Blackwater, ad infinitum) using that turn of phrase. Did we get played? See for yourself.....
Click here to continue to full article >>
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mcorpconsulting.com | San Francisco, Vancouver | Phone: 1-866-526-2655 Fax: 1-415-526-2650
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Touchpoint Mapping®, Loyalty Mapping®, Brand MappingSM, and Customer Experience MappingSM, are registered trademarks of MCorp Consulting. All other trademarks and all trademarked content both contained in this email and linked to from this newsletter remain the property of their respective organizations.
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