If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a human being. You’re always human; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This is an indisputable fact. So why don’t companies market to you in a human way?
Marketing to people as customers and users can be effective, but remembering that people are more than those identifiers and above all, are human beings, is what will set companies apart. It’s about getting to know your audience as people with emotions as well as needs. It’s about bringing the conversation back down to a personal level, rather than one centered around product and profit. In an age where technology is advancing so quickly, communicating with your customers is easy, but connecting with them is hard.

From User Experience to Customer Experience to Human Experience

By now, every marketer, designer, and entrepreneur knows the importance of a good user experience (UX). A positive UX means that user interactions with your website, apps, and other digital channels are enjoyable, easy, and solve the consumer’s problem as efficiently as possible.
Even more important than that is your customer experience (CX). CX encompasses the entirety of a customer’s journey with your brand. A good product isn’t enough— having good customer service, fair pricing, and a positive brand reputation are all facets of the customer experience. And in an age where online reviews and customer feedback is more accessible than ever, a good CX means every step of the consumer journey needs to be positive.
But a positive UX and CX aren’t enough on their own anymore, because we aren’t just marketing to users and customers. We’re marketing to humans. And every human being has different experiences, feelings, and thoughts. Human experience (HX) is the evolution of UX and CX to a more personalized interaction; it’s the shift in focus from profit to purpose. HX focuses on how someone experiences your product or service. How does it add value and meaning to your users’ lives? What’s the emotional connection customers feel with your brand?

Becoming a Company That Creates Human Experiences

The majority of companies today operate with one common goal: to make money. For years, revenue has been the driving factor in developing marketing strategies. But it’s important to keep in mind that money is an outcome, not a purpose. Whatever product or service you are providing is a means to an end, not the end itself. The human experience is the end.
An HX-centered mindset brings customer interaction down to a more personal level. To do that, you need to start by understanding what your responsibility is to your customer. It’s not just to sell them a product; it’s to get to know them in a more human way. How can your product help them and improve their life? What is the purpose you serve for your customers? You have to go beyond price value, customer service, and usability— you must ask what human values and emotions do customers associate with your brand? How do they connect with you?
This can be difficult to ascertain in certain industries, and may require some research on your part. For example, when it comes to technology, many marketers find it difficult to see the emotion behind the product. Technology is built on data, facts, and statistics. Where’s the human element in that? To figure that out, you have to take everything a step further. You must look at the technology you produce as a foundation that supports human experiences rather than providing them outright. It’s how you implement the technology and bring it to people that make businesses and experiences better.

Why Focus on Human Experiences?

Emotion is a powerful tool when forming connections with your customers, and a good human experience means becoming a company that customers feel good about engaging with. It’s about drawing in the emotional aspects rather than the technical.  People won’t remember the data points or statistics you present, but they’ll remember how you, your products, and your services made them feel. By becoming a brand that evokes an emotional response, you’re becoming a part of the customer’s life, rather than just a dent in their wallet.
In recent years, we as consumers have become sales averse. We don’t want to feel like we’re constantly being sold to. We want to take our business to brands we trust and feel a sense of pride to buy from. If customers feel that a company has a sense of purpose and responsibility to their patrons, they are more likely to engage. By understanding your customer on a more human level, you figure out what it will take to become that brand for them. You’ll be able to show your customers that you know and understand them; that you care about what they need and how you can improve their lives. By speaking in terms of what the customer is going through rather than what you’re trying to sell them, you’ll be better equipped to make that emotional connection. And that will be what drives customer loyalty in the long run.
To move into the future, you have to understand how your product or service affects your customers. It’s no longer enough to say you have a good UX on your site, that you build great technology, or that customers love your store. What’s relevant today is how people are using and improving their lives with your product. If you really want to get to a place where you’re moving past your competition, you have to start by showing people that you’re a company that cares about more than just the bottom line. You have to understand not only how people are using your product, but how it’s changing their lives.

Think of your brand as a person, trying to forge a relationship with your customer. First impressions count. Consistency counts. Friendships are built off of authenticity, and knowing what to expect from an interaction. Your brand – and the experiences you provide that reinforce that brand – is what allows you to build relationships with your customers. And relationships breed loyalty.
When a person is inauthentic and gives you a different experience every time you interact with them, it doesn’t help build that friendship or that trust. In the same way, your brand must portray itself with fierce authenticity and consistency. Your brand and its message shouldn’t change depending on the day, the situation, or to whom you’re talking. This doesn’t make your customers feel like they know you, it makes them question who your company really is.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t adjust messaging for an audience. You can, and should, develop personas for your various customers and adjust what you say and how you interact with them. But if you are always true to your promise and values, then you are still true to your brand. And you’re giving consumers something to connect to and attaining that ultimate goal of loyalty.
After building a relationship, customer spend grows alongside trust. Eventually, loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones.
Loyalty transcends satisfaction. It’s satisfaction on steroids. Consumers that are brand loyal are not only doing business with you, they are sharing your products and brand stories with their friends and family – for free. But to get to that level, it takes time and experience after experience that reinforces your brand and message.
Over 58% of CMOs feel that creating a strong brand experience delivers a powerful impact when it comes to connecting their audience to their brand and increasing brand advocacy. The time and effort you dedicate to shaping your customers’ experiences pays off.
Brands are emotional. When customers know you and know what to expect from you, it feels like coming home. Consumers don’t often find that connection with a brand. But when they do, they reward it. On a lifetime value basis, emotionally connected customers are more than twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers.
When I walk or drive by a Barnes & Noble, for example, I instantly recall the regular visits my late grandfather and I made to the store when I was a kid. The logo, the colors, the dark wooden shelves, and especially the mingled smells of fresh coffee and newspaper never fail to bring back those good memories. Because of this emotional connection, I end up walking into nearly every Barnes & Noble location I encounter. Loyalty.
 
To read more about generating loyalty through your brand and CX design, take a look at our interactive guide.

Some companies make the mistake of believing that perception of their brand is completely defined by their brand identity–the logo, typefaces, colors, voice, imagery, etc., they have chosen to represent themselves. In reality, your brand only gives half of the picture.
Your brand tells how you would like to be perceived, but it’s your customers – and their experiences – that will define you. How do you execute on the brand you’ve built? How do you clearly demonstrate your brand through the quality of the experiences you provide?
Careful consideration must go into creating a CX design that will not only complement your brand, but also delight your customers into coming back for more. It requires getting into the mindset of your target audience and figuring out how they think, what they want, and how they will feel about the interactions they have with your brand.
Here are a couple of thoughts to consider when shaping and aligning your brand identity and CX:

Your Brand is Made of Moments

The sum of every customer interaction is what will shape your brand and decide the fate of your business. What a brand claims to be must have parity with the experience it delivers.
Let’s say you’re driving to lunch and notice a new with a pizza paddle and an Italian flag on the sign and decide to try it out. You walk in only to find out that what looked like an Italian restaurant is actually a sushi bar. Now, maybe you’re flexible and decide that sushi also sounds good, but you can’t deny that the experience did not match the expectation the restaurant’s branding had set in your mind.
Whatever your brand stands for is what customers will expect from their interactions in-store, online, through an ad, or on a customer service call. If each of these experiences doesn’t consistently deliver on your promise and values you have a problem. Companies who have a great CX live it and deliver on it in every moment.
Also, remember that first impressions matter. 48% of consumers are more likely to become loyal to a brand during the first purchase or experience, so make sure that your first touchpoint with a new customer is putting your best foot forward.

Consistency is Key

Your brand’s message and tone, which you established as part of your identity, needs be delivered consistently across all channels. The tone and message that someone gets from your website needs to match the banner ad they see and the email they receive. And that needs to be consistent with the experience they have in store and on the phone.
The delivery of your brand through timing and across channels contributes to the consistency of your CX. The channels you choose, as well as the frequency of contact, create a cadence in your communication and help to deliver on your brand promise and values.
Conflicting messaging and tone leads to mixed messages. If your tone changes often, customers may develop differing expectations about their experience, making it more difficult to satisfy your customer each time they interact with your brand. This is dangerous because 42% of Americans will stop shopping with a brand after just two bad experiences, which may include unmet expectations.
Once you align your brand with an ability to consistently deliver on it – across channels, touchpoints, and customer segments – you can create meaningful differentiation and reap the rewards of customer loyalty.
 
To read more about how to align your brand and CX, take a look at our interactive guide.

The relationship brands have with their customers is becoming more and more complex. Constantly changing technology, shifts in how customers interact with your brand, and the role that brands play in our everyday lives translates into brand behavior that doesn’t always meet customer expectations.
Aligning your brand to your customer’s expectations is priceless. However, if you really want to get there, your customers first have to understand who you are. And before that…you need to know yourself.
Having a well-executed brand strategy is a critical first step for any business that hopes to find relevance with its customers, or differentiate on customer experience. Your brand is what will evoke emotion. It’s what your customers will connect to.
A successful brand strategy is comprised of three important things:

Your Brand Promise

A well-thought-out and clearly communicated brand promise begins to set a customer’s expectations on how they will interact with your business. If your brand promise is poorly defined, inconsistent or poorly delivered, your brand can lose its integrity and customers may lose trust.
Your promise should be measurable, but at the same time, meaningful – both inside the company and out. Employees are responsible for upholding the brand promise and delivering a consistent brand experience to customers. Your employees and customers should be able to put into words the key characteristics.
Consider Geico and its promise that “15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance.” Measurable? Absolutely. Meaningful? You bet. Customers can expect that every interaction they have is going to be simple, easy, and will ultimately save them money.
In practice, creating a great brand promises is easy. But keeping your promise and fulfilling those expectations? That can be much harder.

Your Brand Values

Brand values are what you believe as a company. They are what you stand for, and the purpose behind everything you’re working towards. They are the core of your brand, and the center from which everything radiates – your design, your message, and the relationships you build.
Customers want to do business with brands that share their values. If you want to create deep and meaningful relationships that last for years, you need to clearly define your brand values so that your audience can have something to connect to; something to stay loyal to.
Nintendo is one of the nation’s most emotionally connected brands. That’s because it has always stayed true to its brand values of originality, flexibility and sincerity.
To establish your brand values, you need to understand what matters to you and what you stand for. So make a list. But be careful to avoid running with basic values (i.e. reliable, trusted). These don’t evoke emotion or help you stand out from competition, and they won’t help you build loyal customers.

Your Brand Identity

Your brand identity is the device by which you communicate your promise and your values. You may be thinking, “I already have a brand identity. I have a logo.” A logo is not your brand, nor is it your identity. It’s part of your identity, but there’s so much more.
Your identity is multiple elements – logo, typefaces, colors, aesthetics, photography, attitude, voice, and more – all working together to convey what you stand for. It’s the stage for your brand’s personality.
Disney’s brand identity is one of the most recognized in the world. From the logo to the typeface, to the “magic is real” tone of its messaging, you know the brand when you see it. It’s a brand identity with centuries of reinforcement. So much that a simple symbol of three small circles can evoke emotion from customers young and old.
Like you see with Disney, reinforcement and consistency with your brand is as important as the creation of the brand itself. Consistency allows your audience know who you are, what you have to offer, and what they can expect from you. So with any brand identity should also come brand identity guidelines. How is the identity applied throughout a variety of mediums? What are the approved color palettes, fonts and templates? Guidelines will keep the identity of the company cohesive, which makes you familiar and recognizable to your customers.
Creating a great CX starts with you. Your promise, values and identity. What you believe and what you stand for. Once you’ve found yourself, it’s time to get out there and find your customers.
 
To read more about how to align your brand and CX, take a look at our interactive guide.