“A brand ambassador is someone who, at the most basic level, represents a brand in a positive way. It is the duty of a brand ambassador to express the message of a company to consumers or people who would gain something from learning about the brand being advertised.” – slideshare.net
In the evolving market and the ever-increasing competition, businesses now need a lot more to survive – a more pronounced competitive edge, if they hope to succeed. They would need to move satisfied customers to brand ambassadors and from the definition above, of a brand ambassador it would seem like an extremely wise and sensible business move. It is vital that brands move beyond simply trying to boost awareness of themselves, and achieving mere customer satisfaction – they must build emotional connections if they want to move satisfied customers to brand ambassadors. Customers that become emotionally connected are more valuable for a brand – a study revealed that such customers are anywhere between 25% to 100% more value in terms of profitability for a brand as compared to customers who are only satisfied. With so much at stake, it would make sense to move satisfied customers to brand ambassadors through relentless effort.
The brands that are the strongest or who seem to have a large fan following are the ones that have active strategies in place to move satisfied customers to brand ambassadors. Succeeding in doing so requires clear vision, a consistent approach, and the support of everyone within the organization. All touch-points and every interaction must be such that customers feel valued, welcomed, and would be eager to reconnect with the company at one level or another. We know that when customers feel engaged with a brand, their reasons to connect with it move from being rational to emotional. When customers shop for emotional reasons, they tend to buy more and often – these customers then become the most active and willing brand ambassadors for a business. It is the onus of the brand to display a commitment and passion to connect emotionally with its customers by helping them feel comfortable, look good, stand out from the crowd, and other such emotional reasons that make customers choose one brand over another.
Companies must remember that connecting to move satisfied customers to brand ambassadors is another part of top class customer service. This requires analysis and monitoring to know how well the brand is performing with respect to an emotional connection and forming a bond with its customers. Any business would have a mix of customers – satisfied, happy and customers on the verge of becoming brand ambassadors. By keeping a check on the emotional state of its customers, a brand would be more successful in moving happy and satisfied customers to brand ambassadors. The fact is that even happy customers, may not be moved to actively talking about and engaging with your brand. The reason that many brands fail to move their customers to becoming brand ambassadors is because; they falsely believe that their emotional branding and advertising efforts would create emotional bonds.
There are a number of brands, which seem to be omnipresent – this too does not necessarily mean that they have built strong emotional connections with customers. Their ubiquitous presence is usually because they have the money and influence to be everywhere. They may have customers, but they would most probably just be satisfied customers – not brand ambassadors. The other fallacy in the world of branding is possibly that to have more brand ambassadors, a brand must be expensive, glamorous, and have other such similar adjectives describing it. As mentioned, brands that can address and focus on the emotional needs of its customers would be able to move merely satisfied customers to brand ambassadors. For example – a woman customer, could be carrying around a purse of a particular brand simply because all her friends have one too. The day she discovers another brand that would help her stand apart from all her friends, she would surely switch ‘loyalties’. It is clear that the customer would not have any emotional bonding with the current brand of purse she would be flaunting.
It is extremely critical for a brand to translate its strong brand image to a life-long true emotional connection with its customers. Companies and brands that can find ways to break away from the ‘crowd’ with regard to building emotional connections, would have more customers as brand ambassadors and many more willing to move from being merely satisfied customers to becoming brand advocates. This shows that customers trust the brand and enhances loyalty for the company. Loyalty ensures that customers come back repeatedly with business and over time become less sensitive to price. When a customer decides to become a brand ambassador, a company can know that they have reached an invaluable milestone as far as their efforts towards serving their customers is concerned. By using the experiences and efforts as a guiding principle, the company would be even more equipped to move other customers towards becoming loyal brand ambassadors.
Customers that move to becoming brand ambassadors would display what can be described as ‘authentic’ loyalty. This means that they trust your company and believe its promises on delivering on their needs and expectations consistently. Such loyalty does not depend on loyalty programs or regular freebies – instead these customers engage with the company emotionally and become extremely valuable assets, committed to making the brand a success. When merely satisfied customers move to becoming brand ambassadors, they would make every effort to grow the brand. They would use every opportunity to share positive experiences and would provide powerful testimonials about the company and the brand. With so much enthusiasm and customer brand advocacy, it would be very hard to defeat such a brand. Brand ambassadors have the potential to increase, exponentially, a company’s customer base – this advantage is far greater than any other benefit – and comes about because the brand makes them feel good, emotionally.
In the real world, building trust and sustaining it, is possibly one of the biggest challenges people and companies face. In the realm of customer service too, moving satisfied customers to brand ambassadors happens only with trust. Trust cannot be bought – so as mentioned, providing freebies, special discounts, and other ‘attractive’ offers will only get customers to ‘follow’ a brand till such time that better offers come about. This is far removed from the concept of making customers brand ambassadors. Companies must relentlessly endeavour to address and resolve the pain points of customers, reach out their innermost emotions and put together products and strategies that would make customers truly emotionally connected and become willing brand ambassadors.
The passion displayed by such customers would in turn positively affect others too and casual visitors would become increasingly interested in having a share of ‘pampering’ and emotional connection that the brand ambassadors display. It is important for a company to monitor consistently its customer base such that they can identify which customers love it enough to share their passion, with others, as brand ambassadors. The company must then focus its attention and efforts on these ‘potential brand ambassadors’, such that they move to becoming active and loyal advocates. It takes a lot of effort and time as it is for companies to do enough to shake customers into becoming happy – imagine the toil required to convert them to raving fans. Are you still waiting to put in efforts to turn your satisfied customers to brand ambassadors?
