Internal brand advocacy and customer experience are inextricably linked. In every industry, brands operate with the targeted aim of building brand loyalty to support whatever goals the business is driving towards. Before any brand can make consumers fall in love, however, it is imperative that brands focus their efforts inward towards their first, and arguably most important stakeholder – their internal audience. These are the employees, team members and partners who act as mouthpieces and representatives for all that the brand stands for.
An organisation’s employees should be nurtured and groomed into being brand ambassadors, and this requires an organisation to provide an environment which inspires them to derive pride for the work that they do and the organisation they work for. This requires intention, and active commitment to making sure that the organisation’s reputation, what it stands for, the quality of its products and most importantly its service, leaves employees with no other option but to stand up for their brand externally.
Getting brand alignment right by establishing that healthy mutually beneficial relationship between internal brand ambassadors and customers requires a strategy that focuses heavily on tying in the internal culture with the business’ overall objectives. This is critical to driving optimal rewards in the form of sales and revenue from the overall brand story. But more importantly it’s critical in ensuring that the people who workday-in and day-out with the brand not only understand the business’ vision and the business’ “why”, but they own it as their own. They love it, live it and incorporate it in everything they do, inside and outside of the office.
When it comes to the Pay-TV industry, achieving this sense of brand love nirvana is a feat in its own, for many reasons. Television content often feels like a basic need, which many ultimately wish to pay as little as possible to consume. Television is where we get our news, our nightly escape from our lives through movies, series, and reality series. It’s a one-stop-shop for most, and as the cost for providing Pay-TV services increases with the rising cost of content and business operations each year, for many the need for value for money when it comes to TV subscriptions rises as well.
As we at MultiChoice Botswana gear up for probably the greatest sporting event on the global sporting calendar, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, the importance of building that alignment between our internal partners and what we are promising our customers, is heightened exponentially. This has led us to build on our innovative solutions that give customers the opportunity to get what they need from our product easier and quicker.
Sporting events such as the World Cup often see a huge peak in viewership across the world and in preparation for the new subscribers that are likely to be coming onboard to enjoy all 64 games of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022TM we’ve implemented solutions such as Self-Activation, which removes one step from the customer activation process that ordinarily would require queuing at our branches or agencies. It allows customers to self-activate using the free MyDStv App wherever, whenever. For existing customers, knowing the wide range of customers we have, we’ve added a new USSD code which allows individuals with or without Smartphones to manage their DStv accounts easier. These are just two ways in which are enhancing customers’ experience whilst making it easier for our employees, our brand ambassadors, to serve and cater to customers; building that brand advocacy.
Great customer experiences lead to positive emotions and sentiments associated with your brand, and these positive emotions have a ripple effect of easier interactions with service providers, which drives productivity and at the end of the cycle, will contribute to revenue growth. Thinking about customer experience as a part of your overall brand experience lets you think broader, with a wider net on what ‘experience’ really means. After all, while we might know the difference, many customers don’t distinguish between the two.
When a brand works hard to ensure that brand advocacy and customer experience are aligned with its overall business strategy, this assists in ensuring sustainability and business longevity. Everything from staff training to communication strategies should go into forming and continuously improving the customer experience, and when all these tools are working seamlessly together, they are able to positively impact sales and revenue.
More and more companies expect their employees to build and strengthen the brand by engaging in brand advocacy behaviour, which reflects the display of favorable communication of their brand’s values and offerings toward customers during service encounters. While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it needs to be done with great intention and alignment with the business strategy.
This article is by Thembile Legwaila, Multichoice Botswana Corporate Affairs Manager
