Brand: Culture, Brand, Design: All Should Serve the Customer Experience

So, what do “culture,” “brand,” and “design” have in common?

One answer is: They all have an impact on customer experience (CX, in marketing lingo) and that impact, at best, is “holistic” or “end-to-end.”

It has taken awhile for the world of digital design to grasp that truth–and longer to grasp that CX includes the “user experience” (UX, of course!), which had dominated the digital design field. UX is how the user or customer interfaces with and experiences your website. And how that experience is shaped by content, ease of navigation, mobile versus desktop access, and a host of other factors.

In fact, of course, the customer experience with your brand is a single journey outside and within the digital context. A favorite example is Apple: “The Apple Store is, of course, an offline destination, but that doesn’t mean that the user experience of the store hasn’t been designed down to the last detail. The store is just one part of Apple’s wider engagement strategy, driving awareness of the business.”

It is even claimed that Apple’s success put the concept of “designing” the CX from end-to-end on the map. When a Tangram team approaches the challenges of your product or service—your brand—among the first questions have to do with the CX. And that brings us to the concept of your firm’s “culture.”

Is that culture focused on the “touch points” where each department, employee, and design decision comes in contact with the CX? Not just on your website or sales floor, but in shipping, for example? What is the customer’s experience in opening the package (in addition to seeing the product)? Is the quality of that experience a conscious concern of the shipping department? Probably not unless your company’s culture emphasizes the CX as a system-wide responsibility.

The Apple store example suggests how interior design can and must arise out of understanding of CX. Tangram wants that understanding to go beyond the intuitive level to incorporate hard data and analysis. The right software system can lead your entire firm toward a shared awareness of CX–integrating data on prospects, sales, marketing campaigns, social media statistics, billing, customer support, and much more.

Call it company “culture,” comprehensive “branding,” or “design.” To a remarkable degree, all three should begin, intersect, and payoff in the same place: your customer’s experience.

We would be pleased to discuss how we can partner with you to enhance the entire customer experience of your brand.