Businesses need to improve their customer experience to increase sales volume. They can’t do that without a strong brand that knows where it stands, where it wants to go, and how to get there. To do that, you need your employees to be authentic brand ambassadors.
Previously, the term “brand ambassador“ referred to someone hired by a business to promote its brand. However, the term has now been expanded to include any employee of a company since marketing professionals have realised the immense and often untapped potential of an engaged workforce. When your employee is the ambassador they believe in the brand, defend it and care about its reputation
A customer‘s experience of your brand may begin with an advertisement they see on television or on Facebook, which plants the seed of your brand and gets them interested. While your marketing team would have a solid understanding of your brand and implement it effectively, it doesn‘t stop there.
In store, everyone who has been involved in construction, design, and display must have been engaged with the brand as well. If anyone within the chain thinks “that’s good enough”, they are not an authentic brand ambassador, unless “that’s good enough” is one of your core values.
Employees who interact directly with customers or clients are perhaps the most important brand ambassadors. It is they who have the greatest impact on the customer. This person should identify with your brand at such an innate level that their own unique personality becomes part of the brand objective. Lorna Jane has done this brilliantly and with credibility; typically, you cannot tell what the staff member’s personality is and what the brand is. Authentic brand ambassadors don’t have to “sell”, their enthusiasm for the brand is so natural it closes the sale without even trying.
Find out if you have brand ambassadors on your team by implementing Mystery Shopping and Customer Satisfaction programs. Discover who among you deserves praise and who would benefit from more engagement. Also, ask your employees their opinion. We’ve done it at Above Benchmark. We identified that we have true brand ambassadors working with us by asking them to answer a short survey about their relationship with our company. We were stunned and thrilled by the results! Take the plunge and identify your authentic brand ambassadors.
