The before and after experience is the real test of a brand
A new restaurant, announcing its arrival with great fanfare opens in town. The slick marketing carried out by the restaurant, fuelled potential customers’ anticipation of an unique dining experience: That’s the ‘Before’.
Soon after the opening, diners are welcomed with impersonal greetings like “hi guys”, “how many?” or “just one?” or discover an unimpressive menu lineup or hear the server say the dreaded, “ Sorry, that is not available” or where the fried chicken and ribs ordered as mains is a letdown. That’s the “After”.
Sadly, despite the restaurant’s high profile build-up, it turns out to be all sound and fury signifying nothing but disappointment. When the “After” is poor or not at the same level of the “Before”, brand-consumer connection is lost and is usually accompanied with a “unpleasant” feeling.
People compare the image they had about a brand, a hotel or a person before and after dealing with them, believing their promise and buying their products and / or services. The overall experience can turn out to be either positive or negative. When it comes to the promise of any brand: “experience” is the only real test.
The before and after tagging is at the crux of what leads to someone staying loyal to a brand or switching to another brand, (usually termed “Brand Switching”). Brand switching means that the consumer was dissatisfied by the brand experience and his / her ultimate opinion and approval of the brand is now much lower than the preliminary image he / she had in mind - before dealing with the brand.
Brand switching for example, can mean purchasing a mobile phone of a different brand or stopping dealing with certain banks or not going to a particular hotel brand or restaurant.
A classic example is where companies, by and large keep moving their advertising spend from one advertising agency to another almost every year or two. Agencies want the client, come what may, and so they over-promise and once they win over the client, they under-deliver - because they don’t have the skills to manage the client’s campaigns for long. It’s a typical sweet and sour story.
We humans find out through repetition, because that’s generally how we learn to recognise the unknown. When we encounter positive experiences (e.g. a restaurant that provided an exceptional experience)., we seek them out again and again. Soon, we embrace them (those brands), as part of the routines in our daily lives. This is when a consistency connection, rather, an ‘emotional connection’ occurs with a brand or individual. So, when an inconsistent experience occurs to our routine, especially from a brand that we have come to trust, it upsets us and we then negatively connect the brand with either frustration or anger.
Dominant brands always deliver an above the ordinary experience. Even if for once, they stumble by disappointing a customer in some way or another, the extended relationship and a track record of having delivered consistently until then, will make the customer less unforgiving. Powerful brands also act promptly to recover the customer’s trust from service or product mis-steps, in a manner that re-establishes and sometimes raising the customer – brand relationship, to even a greater level. The Ritz Carlton for instance has honed its recovery processes to the point where the recovery itself feels like a rational extension of the company’s customer experience…transforming the tragic to magic.
Brands that get it right… all the time, are fully aware that despite staying ahead, it is an infinite race because the guest experience is a moving target. One of the main concerns of hoteliers is the question “how do you improve it when the guest expectations are constantly changing?”
Let me address that some other time.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex- Hotelier
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