Customer promise development

A customer promise is the glue that holds all elements of your customer strategy together

What is a customer promise?

A customer promise is not an advertising strapline or a brand promise. It is a description of what your customers can expect from your organisation over the coming years. It’s purpose is to keep the organisation on track. It should drive executive investment decisions; align employee behaviour; provide a blueprint for managing performance, priority setting and coaching; shape the design of new products, services, processes and technology. It should be aspirational. If you can deliver it today, your Promise is not ambitious enough.

Developing your customer promise

Your promise should be developed from a profound understanding of target customers and what they really value, both now and in future. It should also be shaped by strengths and the heritage – the DNA – that already exist within the organisation. As with other strategic decisions, senior management will shape and approve the promise and demonstrate it’s importance by using it to communicate the company’s priorities. Development should always involve some lengthy, robust debate, but what should result is a clear statement of what your company will be known for over the coming years. Your promise should be aspirational, trustworthy and at the same time achievable in order to create a solid foundation for the implementation of your customer experience strategy.

Making an emotional connection

Your customer promise should be unique to you. It should enable your organisation to make an emotional as well as a functional connection with customers, helping you put your business beyond the reach of competitors. We know ‘satisfied’ customers often leave so the test for any promise is does it move your target customers beyond ‘satisfaction’ to ‘advocacy’?

In addition to customer promise development, we also offer customer experience design and organisational alignment.