Interconnecting Brand Experiences Digitally

Your company, your product and service, are a brand. Your brand is a combination of visual arts and markings, logo, mottos and sayings, persons and representatives. Your brand has a message. Your brand hopefully makes and keeps its promises. A brand is a culmination of experiences.

Technology affords businesses an opportunity to connect those experiences digitally. A great example is a technology both my bank and financial software implemented this week on their iOS apps: touch ID authentication.

Touch ID on the iPhone 6 allows your thumb print to act as a security passphrase. It securely uses this biometric to allow access to the phone itself and these applications. It's a great feature of the iPhone.

When I think about experiences with these brands, though, touch ID offers something more than reasonable platform security. It's an ease-of-use - a convenience that enhances my user experience - that only strengthens my relationship with those brands. It's now easier for me than ever to access account data, tools, and resources, offered by these companies, and doing so cements my loyalty.

Meanwhile, on other apps where I access financial information, I still have to provide passwords. A manual process that takes a little longer and is less convenient, and that idea "Less Convenient" now interconnects my idea about that brand. 

I feel the same way about digital cash registers running on something like iPads as compared to traditional POS / registers. It takes seemingly forever to provide a credit card, swipe it, insert a code, walk through the cash back stuff, confirm the PIN, and execute the transaction on a traditional register. Then I have to wait for a printed receipt! Meanwhile, on the iPad, I swipe, tip, and go; the receipt is emailed to me. And in the future, I'll just be able to wave my phone in front of the register. Wow, what a convenience. What a pleasant experience.

Small and mid-range businesses have an opportunity to leverage inexpensive technology to create better, digitally-interconnected experiences, that enhance brand and cement loyalty. I think this is a fun exercise for management:

How are our technology solutions (both back stage employees and front stage consumers) providing for a fun, easy, compelling, or convenient experience?

If the answer is "Not sure" or "how is this relevant?", I think management is missing a huge opportunity to strategically apply technology to create such experiences, and to thereby differentiate their brand from competitors. In modern technology, it's the small digital interconnectedness of things that lends much larger (synergetic) capability and intelligence, and, offers compelling brand experiences.

R

Change Sucks. Get Over It.

I'm so sick of change. 

Nobody cares who moved your cheese and I'm certainly not going to help you find it. That's your responsibility.

Funny thing: I'm always hearing about how organizations embrace change. Companies are a legal entity - they can't "embrace change"; people embrace change. And it's really unambiguous. They either accept something or they don't; they either adapt or they don't; they try and will succeed or will fail. Remember Master Yoda: "Do. Or do not. There is no try."

So it comes down to you. You're either in or out. Don't waste my time mired in some stupid middle-ground.

Change is pretty much a constant in today's working life. Get over it. It's sure as crap stuff is going to change on you. Personally and professionally, if you're confronted with a challenge and you shy away from it, what does this say about you? Are you that weak, undisciplined, unconfident? It says a lot about your confidence; your willingness to grow and expand your understanding of problems; your ability to embrace a different mode of thinking. And none of that speaks well about you as an employee or as a business owner.

And here's the rub: if you're not embracing change, your competitor is. With each incremental adaptation to new risks, new technologies, and new ways of doing business, they're preparing to eat your lunch. All of your lunches. Forever. So change - now - and stop bitching about it so you can keep your seat at the table.

R

How Does Your Technology Shape Experiences?

How does your customer experience your business? How does tech help facilitate or exacerbate that experience? 

Is your website mobile aware? That is to say easy to view on mobile devices, click-to-call options, immediate capability to chat or leave a message, or, self-service an appointment? 

On the other hand, is it not? Where mobile users have to resize the screen, cut-n-paste a phone number, or email you to contact you?

When people visit your service counter, how quickly does it take them to check out? Do they have to perform an endless array of clicks and checks and confirmations? Or is it slick, fast, painless? Is there a counter at all? 

What kind of experience do you give when invoicing your customer? Are they presented with a variety of online and offline payment options? Do you make it easy for them to review their invoices, dispute them, review their statements, pay you? Or are you still expecting a check to be dropped in the mail? Or cash to be exchanged? Or physical check to be written?

When doing business with you, are you taking their order by pen and paper, or, electronically? Or, do you have to wait, crack open a laptop, login, perform a bunch of rituals to open a document, edit it, and finally get down to business? How is the process of conducting your business elevated by technology, or, distracted by it?

How does your use (or ignorance) of technology shape consumer expectation? Do they expect you to be slow, make mistakes, deal only in paper receipts? Or can they expect you to be faster, respect their time, pass receipts electronically? How are you changing your business processes to meet changing consumer expectations?  

What kind of consumer experiences are you creating anyway? How does that impact your brand? What people are saying about you?

R