In a business-to-business company, customers may not actually touch or see the product daily. Many different contacts drive these customer experiences. They could be a problem with your service, or an operational item like billing or procedure changes. How would they describe their experience with your company?

A pure focus on operations can cause you to miss the vital role of human contact with your customers. Customer experiences with employees over the lifetime of your relationships with them will have a huge impact. These contacts will influence satisfaction, loyalty, and willingness to recommend your company. Indeed, those perceptions will directly affect your opportunity to deliver more products and services to them.

You must clearly define, understand and influence the manner in which you interact with your customers. Your objective is to build a unique relationship with your customers. A relationship based on experiences, interactions, and explicit behaviors to build trust and community.

You may think that your product is a commodity that is easily replaceable by a lower priced provider. How can you build a unique relationship with customers? One way is to add more products or services to your portfolio. This expands your relevance to more of your customer’s business. That may work, to a degree, but answer a key question about the customers’ experience with your company. If that experience is not that great with one simple product, how will it be with multiple products?

How do you want your employees to behave with your customers? How do you want customers to experience the contacts with your people? Does your company communicate a particular personality in its brand promise? Common values and behavioral guidelines used by companies include traditional aspects like ‘professional’ and ‘trustworthy’ and ‘reliable’ and ‘customer oriented’. Indeed, these are foundational requirements of every company.

What is missing? A personality. Personality elements include terms like bold, approachable, formal, fun, caring, casual, agreeable, conscientious, open, and energetic, amongst others. These elements define the personality style of your company. The behaviors your customer will experience in their business relationships with you.

Let’s say you defined your personality as bold, approachable, casual, and solutions oriented. How would your sales representatives act at important pitches to new prospects? Would they wear dark blue pin striped suits with black brief cases and slick multi-media PowerPoint presentations? Would they deliver their pitch as a long slow scripted monologue? Would they force the customer to wait until it was over before asking any questions? Would they arrogantly assume they know exactly what the customer wants before even talking with them?

I hope that you answered “no” to all of these questions. You want your sales representatives' behavior to match your brand personality. What would your marketing message and your web site look like? What style of writing would be used in marketing materials? Would it be college graduate level English in a very formal business-like tone? Would the language be conversational, informal, and meant for any 8th grade reader to understand? Most likely the answer is the latter. How would employees behave and dress at trade shows? How does the customer service center they answer the phone? What message do customers hear when they are on hold?

Your personality must show up in the appearance of your company in all of its physical representations. Moreover, it must show up in the communication and behavior of every employee. This does not mean each person’s unique personality, but rather the general consistent personality of your company. I worked with a transaction services provider that defined their brand personality as bold, energetic, friendly, and playful. Playful!?! How can a serious business delivering a service to customers that directly affects their financial performance be playful?

Do not confuse excellent business operational performance with behaviors and personality. Both serve to define the relationships between your employees and your customers. The transaction services company trained thousands of employees on how to be more open and friendly. They learned how to have fun at work with each other and with their customers.

Their sales people did not use PowerPoint. Instead, they used props, dressed up to act out roles, and played puzzle games with their prospects. Engaging the customer in a fun game about their business up front is a very quick way to establish a rapport. It also demonstrates that you know something about their business in a relaxed style. More importantly it demonstrates that you are able to listen and be approachable.

Southwest Airlines has delivered industry leading performance and customer satisfaction for years. Yet, the experience that their customers have with their employees is fun, engaging, and casual. This behavior seems to be evident among many of the different types of employees that customers may interact with. There can be no doubt that they are highly focused on excellent performance. Their friendly personality inspires confidence and a more relaxed flying experience for their customers.

I am not suggesting that your company personality should build on this style. I do encourage you to stretch and consider aspects that are different from your experience in your company or your industry. Nobody ever became unique by choosing to be just like everyone else.

The most important aspect in all this is to create a plan. Define and implement the steps needed for the behavior of every employee (yes, every) to match the personality you have selected. Focus on the relationship with the customer over and above the operational performance. You can cement a bond that goes far deeper into the psyche and overall perception of your value to that customer.

If you create a personality that is unique from your competitors, you will have created a significant barrier for any competitor. Your customer will have to consider undoing a deep ‘personal’ relationship with you, even though they might want that service for a nickel less. This buys you loyalty and time to respond to that competitor’s efforts from the inside – where you have the greatest influence.


Patrick Smyth is a leadership navigator and advisor to leaders of high growth and emerging businesses. He creates compelling visions and comprehensive strategic plans, and coaches on effective leadership and management practices. He is a recognized speaker, trainer, coach, and international business strategist and author of the book Elephant Walk: Balancing Business Performance and Brand Strategy for the Long Haul.
http://www.innovationhabitude.com