Improve your brand by well designed touch points
Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr
I recently received a poorly drafted mail from a company whose service I was interested in. The mail looked like the dogs breakfast. Absolutely terrible!!! They then followed it up with a help document which looked like it had been created just as an afterthought (and the reason for sending this document was there was no intuitive help in the system they were selling).
The funny thing was their systems were good. They had obviously put in a lot of time into the technology but absolutely neglected the design, UI and branding. What a wasted opportunity!!!
This is a story I come across over and over, in the real world and more so in the virtual world.
Lets list out what we call touch points for the web
- Mails
- Sales
- Auto generated
- Followups
- Sales Presentations hosted on website
- Case studies or other study documents sent to clients
- Website itself
- Help/Support Documents
- Customer Support Interactions (Online - chat or tickets)
- Newsletters
There might be a few more I missed but the above are the important ones.
Common problems I see in these touchpoints
- Spelling mistakes, broken links: This is one which bothers me the most. How careless are you that you would allow mistakes to go in mails to existing or prospective clients.
- Lazy casual language: You are talking to a customer not texting your best friend!! Smarten up the language. Engage the customer with a well written message. Be witty if called for but for god sake don't be obtuse.
- Lack of any branding elements: No logo, home colours, taglines or any element that might drive home your brand identity and fix it in the clients mind. Brand brand brand!!!
- Tech Speak: Have you read some help or support material and wondered what the heck are they talking about!!! Customer material written by a techie will be often filled with jargon and technical terms only they would understand. The client needs simple well written information in laymans terms.
- Do No Boring: Google's motto is 'Do no evil' . Your motto should be 'Do no boring'. Delivering document or presentations that look like Leo Tolstoy's 'war and peace' is the easiest way to put a customer to sleep and lose the business. Make it concise, to the point and wonderfully creative. Be wacky, witty and funny. Don't be boring.
- Emulate the greats: There are a lot of giants to chose from whose communications are bang on excellent. Study them, dont copy them, emulate them. See how they do it and then adapt some of it for you with your own twist. (Again, dont copy, that just shows lack of imagination).
This should be enough for you to atleast change your point of view. The rest it upto you.
Remember - 'DO NO BORING'.
Cheers,
Ron
