Chapter 13

Delivering Consistency

Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.

—Bruce Springsteen

In the real world, consistency is all about providing the same kind of experience each time somebody walks into the store or interacts with the brand. In the case of Ogilvie’s, the consistency becomes a hallmark of the business (and part of its authenticity). This may be via the phone, an advertisement, or in the digital world, via the website, social media, and other channels.

As we mentioned in Chapter 12, consistency is an element of authenticity. When visitors encounter organizations that have different approaches and messages in different channels, it is hard to have a clear picture of the brand and message. According to Forrester Research, “Today’s digital landscape is distributed across a fractured array of services and devices. It’s also increasingly entangled with physical touchpoints and environments. With customers able to interact through multiple channels at any given moment—and often using multiple touchpoints in pursuit of a single goal—companies need to ensure that they present a coherent face across all interactions.”1

According to Forrester, creating consistency is the number one thing that organizations should focus on when trying to improve their digital experiences. And when those experiences aren’t consistent? It seems like a lot of different companies all working under the same name!

The problem that many companies face today with providing a consistent experience is that they focus only on the individual touchpoints—how did the customer feel during a call? What was the customer’s reaction during an email exchange? But in the digital world, the touchpoints that businesses have with their customers can be seemingly endless. In that kind of world, how can an organization remain consistent?

Digital Experiences Are Really Real-World Experiences

For the sake of argument and understanding, we separate digital from real world, but as we discussed in Chapter 1, the distinction blurs.

In Forrester’s 10 Ways to Improve Digital Experiences, we learn that digital experiences must align to core expectations that people hold for their real-world experiences.2 (See Figure 13.1.)

Figure 13.1 Effective Digital Experiences Must Align with Three Types of Customer Perceptions

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Words like “enjoyable,” “easy,” and “meeting needs” describe everything from buying a car, going to the dentist, entering a website, accessing mobile apps, playing games, and all other digital experiences.

In the real world, there is only one relationship cycle because there is only one “store experience.” However, digital not only complicates that store experience but also introduces a myriad of additional touchpoints that further add to the complexity.

More Touchpoints = More Complexity

The allure of the digital world for marketers—more channels through which to push more content more easily—is also their undoing. Marketing can quickly become fragmented as organizations attempt to push their messages out through all of those channels. With each new channel a marketer adopts as part of their outbound or inbound marketing efforts, the total customer experience becomes that much more complex.

According to Alex Rawson, Ewan Duncon, and Conor Jones in their Harvard Business Review article “The Truth About Customer Experience,” organizations fail when they focus on individual touchpoints rather than the holistic customer experience.3

Ogilvie’s cannot afford to have a different experience at each touchpoint. From the cash register to the greeter to the associate in the Paint Department, the customer experience is continually reinforced. It’s consistent. Moreover, when a new “counter” opens up in the store, say for Home Networking Products, it too will exemplify the consistency of the customer experience.

The Role of Context

In the real world, consistency is fairly easy to practice (although few organizations do). For example, if Ms. Reed walks into Ogilvie’s, there is history there, as we discussed before in Chapter 8. The collective “store” knows Mrs. Appleyard, understands her relationship needs, and interacts with her based on her history. If she moves from one section to the next, associates can communicate with one another. “Bob? Mrs. Appleyard is heading to plumbing. Have Joe meet her there.”

Not only is the customer experience consistent throughout the store, but also it is consistent in how each of the associates engages and interacts with the customer. It’s end-to-end consistency!

In the digital world, consistency is accomplished through context.

Context is critical to understanding what customers want. However, it is also critical to understanding how customers are interacting with us.

Think about a routine service event—say a product query—from the point of view of both the company and the customer. The company may receive millions of phone calls about the product and must handle each one well. But if asked about the experience months after, a customer would never describe such a call as simply a “product question.” Understanding the context of a call is key. A customer might have been trying to ensure uninterrupted service after moving, make sense of renewal options at the end of a contract, or fix a nagging technical problem.4

Context helps an organization not only understand the “what” but the “why,” as well. Of course, trying to figure out the why is hard. In the real world it may start with the question, “How can I help you?” or “Why are you calling today?” But in the digital world, that’s much harder. Sure, we may implement “click to chat” features or, heaven forbid, an automatic chat popup box (these are really attempts to simulate the physical retail environment of stopping a browsing customer and asking him or her if we can help). But in the previous discussion of context, we explored some of the ways to gather information about a visitor, such as personalization software. This enables us to simulate that physical world. It would be like having cameras on the store all the time, every aisle, every shelf, watching customers as they behaved in their store. Eventually, that information may help develop a sense of what the customer is looking for . . . and why they are shopping there in the first place.

In addition, we can integrate meaningful interactivity as touchpoints throughout any digital experience. A survey question here. A button click there. Every interaction can help build a picture of the “why” and enable us to put each visitor’s behavior into context.

Context Leads to Consistency

Once we have a picture of the context, we can start to apply consistency rules. Remember, there are two layers of consistency. One layer, the top layer, focuses on brand and the messaging. Is everyone wearing the same orange vest? The other layer looks at “why.” Why are people walking down certain aisles? Why are they picking up certain products? When we incorporate personalization software into our digital experiences, we can make sure that not only is the “look and feel” consistent (i.e., the red vests at a Lowe’s store or the white uniforms and hats at In-N-Out Burger), but also that the way that our digital experience acts and responds to each individual user (i.e., the “why”) is consistent.

Having the context about a consumer’s behavior ultimately enables us to develop consistency (in those two layers), which will promote engagement and relationship building. But it also enables something else. Something powerful.

Consistency Is about Assembling, Not Portraying

The challenge that most organizations will face in a fragmented digital world (where audiences are bouncing around different screens to interact with the organization and its brand) is consistency. Unfortunately, it will become even more of a challenge if organizations continue to approach consistency with old-school techniques.

Prior to digital, most organizations built a single brand image and then reflected that in every channel they could. It was about “the same experience, everywhere.” But that’s not the way the digital world works. Many channels not only operate differently in terms of engagement, but have different requirements for branding.

According to Marc Shillum, consistency in the digital world is about patterns:

Consistency in human behavior is not derived from repetition alone; it is about the formation and recognition of coherent patterns. Patterns are the way our brains perceive actions, thoughts, memory, and behavior to ultimately inform belief. They allow for differences while creating a whole. Patterns are unique in the fact that they create consistency around difference and variation. Creating a believable and consistent brand begins with the creation of coherent patterns.

Instead of adhering to a single, centralized big idea, a brand must create coherence around multiple, smaller ideas. Embracing small ideas is a powerful way to navigate a rapidly evolving, connected world. Small ideas are fresh and immediate. Flexible and accurate, they can be defined in the immediacy of the present context, allowing brands to respond quickly in moments of crisis or celebration.5

The key here is that consistency is not “created” by an organization. It is a principle that an organization embraces by connecting all of the ways that consumers engage together. The consumer needs to see the patterns, at which point the experiences they have with an organization will generate a feeling of consistency. It will all “fit together like a puzzle.” Marc sums it up well: “A brand pattern creates more value than repetition. It provides coherence among disparate mediums and continued relevance that can adapt and respond to its audience. A brand pattern connects a product to an experience and an audience, allowing the brand to continually grow.”

Precision Marketing in the Age of Context

According to Wikipedia, “Precision marketing is a marketing technique that suggests successful marketing is to retain, cross-sell, and upsell existing customers. Precision marketing emphasizes relevance as part of the technique. To achieve relevance, Precision Marketing marketers solicit personal preferences directly from recipients. They also collect and analyze behavioral and transactional data.”6

A by-product of delivering a consistent digital experience is the accumulation of all that behavior and personalization data. It is possible that as visitors move through our site, we can target ads or call-to-action messaging that appeal to them specifically. It is also possible that we can use the data to deliver outreach campaigns that include targeted content. Of course, we must be careful here. Remember that the ultimate purpose of consistency is to help foster relationship building by exuding authenticity. If we spam visitors with ads, emails, and other messages, relationships can quickly turn to the negative.

Excellent Examples of Consistency

There are many companies out there developing consistency in both layers—branding (how) and messaging (why). Some big, some small. But regardless of size, these companies exemplify what it means to develop a consistent presence and engagement with their audiences. HubSpot has identified 15 companies that do a fantastic job of consistency. We’ve borrowed a couple from their list and recommend that everyone check out the full list on their blog.7

Naked Pizza

Naked Pizza is focused on offering healthier pizza by using only all-natural ingredients. Naked Pizza reinforces this promise through a refreshing style and tone seen across its marketing assets. Naked Pizza suggests it doesn’t take itself too seriously and that pizza can be guilt-free and fun (see Figure 13.2).

Figure 13.2 Naked Pizza: Having Fun with Messaging

Boloco

Much like Naked Pizza, Boston-based burrito company Boloco extends consistency across all channels (digital and real world).a The handmade touch in their branding and messaging suggests that more than tortillas and guacamole powers their business. What’s significant is that Boloco reflects the core values underlining their consistent presentation to their real-world activities—Boloco partnered with Life is Good by making a “Life is Good burrito” with 50 cents of each purchase donated to the company’s charity, Life is Good Playmakers. A nice touch, given that Boloco is a local business, as are the Boston-landmark themed gift cards. (See Figure 13.3.)

Figure 13.3 Boloco: Highlighting Its Core Values

Summing It Up

What can we say about consistency that you don’t really already know? If you aren’t consistent, you are undermining every chance you get to engage with your audience. When they don’t know what to expect, they begin to question your identity, which undermines authenticity and crumbles trust. Organizations that understand and practice consistency (like those we featured) create patterns that incorporate visual elements and messaging that consumers can put together in their heads for a holistic picture of the organization.

Helpful Takeaways

Is your brand a big monolithic structure? Are you trying to repeat it across all those digital channels (even if it doesn’t fit quite right)? Stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole and understand how to build consistency by enabling your audience to discover the patterns that lead to understanding your brand (and experience). Through that, you’ll be able to tailor it with personalization and context. Here are some helpful tips, tricks, techniques, and things you can do today. Note that these aren’t in any particular order.

• Identify your voice and stick with it. Many organizations don’t have a voice. They assume that everything has to be written in proper English without a wick of personality. But with whom do you want to do business? The robot or the guy who controls the robot? Every organization needs a voice that is unique to them. It may be through word choice. It may be through humor or innuendo. It may be visual. But organizations must understand how to speak to their audiences in a way that creates a connection.
• Break up your brand into its components. What makes up your brand? Is it your product? A font? A funny sock puppet? A way of phrasing things? You need to break your brand up into its components in order to develop consistency. Once you do this, you’ll have a library of elements from which to draw upon in any channel (without trying to re-create the whole thing every time).
• Make it easy for customers to shift from one channel to another. Your audience is moving from screen to screen, seamlessly from email to the web, from Facebook to phone, from TV to tablet. How easy are you making it for them to move? This is where registration can really help (a component of leveraging context and generating personalization). Consistency in your engagement experiences should actively facilitate touchpoint hopping and not force your audience to start cold in each new channel. For example, Amazon’s Whispernetb technology enables customers to read to any given point on their Kindles and then pick up from that very same point on a different device.8

Notes

1. Kerry Bodine, “Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Digital Experience,” Forrester blog, September 7, 2012, http://blogs.forrester.com/kerry_bodine/12-09-07-top_10_ways_to_improve_your_digital_customer_experience

2. Ibid.

3. Alex Rawson, Ewan Duncan, and Conor Jones, “The Truth About Customer Experience,” Harvard Business Review, September 2013.

4. Ibid.

5. Marc Shillum, “Branding Is About Creating Patterns, Not Repeating Messages,” FastCompany.com, June 23, 2011, www.fastcodesign.com/1664145/branding-is-about-creating-patterns-not-repeating-messages

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_marketing

7. Hannah Fleishman, “15 Businesses to Admire for Consistent, Stellar Branding,” HubSpot.com, March 6, 2013, http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34227/15-Businesses-to-Admire-for-Consistent-Stellar-Branding.aspx

8. Bodine, “Top 10 Ways.”

aOne could argue that the real world is the fifth platform. TV, PC, tablet, and smartphone represent the other four.

bYou can read more about Amazon’s Whispernet technology (and how it works) at http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/amazon-whispernet-work-12612.html.