The Easiest Way to Ruin Your Brand

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Patty told me about a terrible experience she had with AT&T - and how she'll never do business with AT&T again as a result of her four week battle with customer service.

I never suspected that I'd have a similar story. But I had a run-in with AT&T customer service this week that has left me unwilling to do business with the company anymore - and I've been a loyal AT&T customer for a long time.

But our experiences aren't isolated. According to MSN Money, AT&T customer care ratings, as measured by J.D. Power, plunged from 4 out of a possible 5 stars in 2003 to 2 out of 5 this year.

AT&T is a pretty strong brand - one that has been around for a long time and spends incredible amounts of money on online and offline marketing. Yet it seems to have forgotten one of the basics of brand building: you have to deliver your brand promise at every touch point. And there are so many ways that your brand interacts with and makes an impression on customers, employees and other stakeholders. Every action, tactic and strategy that your brand uses to reach customers and stakeholders - whether through advertising, a cashier, customer service call or referral - represents a brand touch point.

AT&T's promise to its customers of continuous innovation, embodied in its most recent tagline, "Rethink Possible," implies that you'll get state-of-the-art service to go along with your technology. But clearly that isn't happening at one of its most important touch points - customer service.

So even if AT&T's advertising, offers, bills, website, technicians and R&D people deliver the brand promise but the customer service touch point doesn't, AT&T will continue to fail to deliver its brand promise. And the company will continue to lose customers - like Patty and me.

It's important for all organizations to realize that all brand touch points leave an impression of their brand on customers, employees and stakeholders - whether they want them to or not. So the question every organization needs to address is: Do you want to reinforce or strengthen what your brand stands for by identifying and controlling your brand touch points? Or do you want to risk ruining your brand and its promise?

Even big companies like AT&T can forget how easy it is to ruin their brand.