In my experience, for a brand to work, to resonate, it must be true, and it must come from within. And the customer experience must align with the brand promise that we are delivering to our audiences through marketing. It’s important to understand the complete life cycle of the customer experience – from that initial contact via a media platform, to the actual transaction online and/or in person. If the customer experience is not aligned with the promise we’re making, our customers will opt out, despite all the investment in marketing and media strategies designed to engage target audiences. Oftentimes, that means the customer experience also needs to be optimized.
Tasked with building the brand for Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) in 2016, I, along with the Director of Admissions, first turned our attention to understanding, and then optimizing the customer experience. This started with in-depth interviews with front-line representatives across the college, qualitative and quantitative research, and an in-depth process analysis. The result was a complex onboarding process map (so complex, it took the entirety of a room to view). As it turns out, the onboarding process for potential SLCC students required them to make 35 decisions along the way (meanwhile our advertising was promising an experience that was much different). To that end, marketing and admissions worked together with stakeholders across the college to reduce those decisions down to four. Yep, four. We also turned 11 different application platforms into one intuitive application. To say implementing these onboarding optimizations was a challenge is an understatement – it was herculean.
But it was worth it. With an optimized customer experience in place, one that aligned with the brand promise we were making, the effectiveness of our messaging and campaigns soared, and ultimately, our lead generation efforts gained momentum too.
Michael Navarre 