Services : How To Increase Brand Value ?

Most businesses (businesses that offer pure services/intangible value only) consider the following two ways when it comes to branding, adding value to their brands.

1.      Branding Through Mass Media
2.      Increasing Brand Value Through Employees

We talked about branding through mass media in our previous articles, in this post I am going talk about how you can add value to your brand (service) through your employees.

Now why employees, well because employees makes up major portion of any service brand, they are the ones who deliver that intangible value to your target market to earn you more in terms of money, market share, brand awareness, brand value so on and so forth.

Okay Got it, What’s Next ?!

According to a study, decrease in customer trust in a brand results in brand value decrease for that brand (1) and according to the same study customer trust can be restored by improving employee performance consequently resulting in improved brand value.

Now the question is “How can you improve employee performance?”

Well basically there are three means through which you can improve your employee’s performance

Three Means

1.      Training and development
2.      Compensation and Reward
3.      Business Culture and Environment

Now I am not going to leave you here; Rather I am going tell you how to coordinate all these three means to improve employee performance. Carefully consider the following figure!

Providing training in such a way that would help them to improve customer satisfaction, customer experience with your brand, resulting in customer retention and loyalty.

Similarly training and developing them according to your business culture, means, approaches your business use for setting and achieving its goals, objectives, standard procedures, policies, do’s & don’ts so on and so forth, likewise training and developing your employees in such a manner that they become the best fit with your business work environment.

Finally assess and then compensate and reward your employees accordingly, now how you are supposed to do that? That’s up to you!

Okay got it, but how would I know if things (3 means) are working, I am moving in right direction?

Well to know “Where things are heading, Are you on the right track, What you need to tweak, Where and when you need to take big decisions, Are these three means contributing anything in terms of employee performance enhancement?”, follow the following framework.

Assess these three means (any approach/system developed on the basis of the 3 means) from time to time according to the above framework, determine if any of these means have any shortcomings or breaches.

For instance, are there specific shortcomings in training and development that are resulting in poor performance, poor skills, misconduct, misbehavior etc from employees or it is some kind of breach/violation by those responsible for conducting training and development or who look after/supervise the system/process/approach (any approach/system developed on the basis of the aforementioned 3 means).

Once the cause (shortcoming/breach) is determined in the approach/system (any approach/system developed on the basis of the aforementioned 3 means) go for the relevant fix.

And once the best action/tweak is made, reassess the system/approach, determine if it is delivering the intended results, if not; start again by determining the cause and then taking the relevant action. Keep on doing that until you get the desired results!

Remember that your best action should be morally, reasonably, contextually right one, according to business ethics.

And that’s how you would know if you are moving in the right direction.

That's it, now I would love to hear from you guys :) 

You may also like to read Five Solid Reasons Why Small Businesses Needs Branding

You may also like to read Brand Positioning : How to Add Value to Your Brand

References:

1.        Kuehner-Herbert, K. (2009), “A growing defection: more clients ready to switch as trust wanes”, American Banker: The Financial Services Daily, available at: /-1_americanbanker_ may1409_interbrand.pdf . www.interbrand.com/. . ./-1_AmericanBanker_May1409_ Interbrand.pdf (accessed 29 June 2009).