Creating Soul and Personality for Your Business (Part 2)

By Jo-Anne Oliveri, ireviloution intelligence, Brisbane, Australia

Let’s continue from my last blog. 

If it’s all about the client experience, and it is (just ask your clients), then how do you create a memorable and enjoyable client experience? Remember that it has to be a “real” experience because clients can spot fakes and phoneys from a mile away. Therefore your team must internalise your business personality – it must become the natural way that they interact with clients and teammates as well as how they represent your brand and your service.

Step one in creating a happy client experience; inject soul into your business by finding your personality. Don’t be another ‘Me too’ business – find out what type of personality you want to portray to your clients. It doesn’t have to be fun and zany, although fun and zany may very well suit your company. Consider personality styles like classy, funky, professional, happy, colourful…the list is endless. However, you can’t fake a personality. It has to be real, genuine, and sincere. Your company has to be you. Brainstorm with your team. What is your personality? Only then can you know it, live it and be it.

Once you know what your business personality is, you have the foundation to design your business premises, uniforms, marketing and in fact anything that represents your company right down to the font you choose to use to reflect this personality. By doing this your team will by way of nature automatically begin to internalize your business personality. This strategy is evident in companies like Disney, Virgin, Starbucks – companies we recognize as having that special something we have come to know, love, and even better still…talk about!

Once you have discovered and created your own special and unique personality it will be easier to understand and therefore create the type of experience you wish your clients to experience.

Disney created the happiest place on earth and in doing so created a magical experience. Starbucks simply created “The Starbucks Experience.” They knew through business by design what nature of experience they wanted to create for their clients. Who would have thought that a coffee shop could create such an internationally recognized and sought after brand just by offering an experience? Well there is a little bit more to it than that, but for those millions of Starbucks fans around the world, me included, we go to Starbucks for our own particular flavour and size of coffee and because we have come to rely on the customer service standard we know will be consistent no matter where we might be in the world. When you know what you aim to achieve, you know how to achieve it. Therefore, there is no way we can create a happy client experience if that is not part of your business model.

Yes, even without business by design clients may commend you for the wonderful experience they have just had. Sadly, this praise is likely not consistent if service is not consistent across your team and client base – other team members could be letting your whole team (and company) down. And every time this happens it diminishes your brand and well as your reputation more and more.

Step two therefore is to design the style and feel of the client experience you wish to deliver –  ‘that special something’ when they step inside your business, see your brand and connect with your team. That special something that you just can’t seem to put your finger on, yet you know it’s there. Disney refers to it as “Feeling the Perfection.”

By understanding what your company personality is you are then in a position to align the client experience with your personality. For example if you had a personality that portrayed funk and panache, then to create a customer experience of  ”good old fashioned values” just wouldn’t coalesce. Design the experience you wish to create. It could be perfection, happy, memorable, gratifying, delightful, magical whatever the experience, once selected a method in which to deliver it needs to be developed…and that’s a whole new article.

Remember, to protect your brand and create repeat and referral clients you have to make things happen and not let things happen. Don’t become just another ‘Me2’ business. Design your business with purpose to have personality, soul and a consistent level of client service whereby the whole team is working to the same standards with the same level of enthusiasm and pulse.