This much is obvious: your employees are vital to the success of your business. They make the engine go. But they’re not just employees; they’re potentially vital brand touchpoints.
Depending on your business, you’ll have many types of front line and behind the scenes employees:
- Sales force
- Factory workers
- R&D staff
- Marketing personnel
- Admin folks
- Customer service reps
- Delivery workers
- IT wizards
- Legal and accounting
- and many others
Step back and consider this: could any individual performing one of these functions — front line or behind the scenes — cost us business in any conceivable way? Conversely, beyond the obvious candidates, can any individuals performing one of these functions somehow gain us more business?
The answer is likely yes to both.
All employees should be viewed as ambassadors of your brand identity – that strategic platform you and your team have slaved over which defines what your brand is and how it should be presented to your target audiences. Each holds a certain degree of power in how your brand identity is actually presented to the market. So it’s imparative that each be trained about the details of your brand identity and know what your expectations are for delivering their respective brand touchpoints. It’s not just their successfully performing their job tasks, it’s about their doing so in complete alignment with your brand identity.
A sales clerk who couldn’t be bothered to assist a shopper. A delivery driver who recklessly weaves in and out of rush hour traffic. A poorly written correspondence. An inaccurate invoice. A customer service rep who blatanly comes across as making his 999th call of the day. A service technician who leaves a mess. An inattentive — or overly so — restaurant server. A welder who misses just a couple here and there. And on and on.
These poorly delivered brand touchpoints can cost you business initially, or eventually.
Right now, today: actively inform your employees about what your brand identity is and their role in carrying it out, and then proactively manage their efforts in delivering the brand touchpoints that support that identity.
View your employees this way and you’ll be viewing a healthier P&L in no time.
