Do Internal Branding Efforts Help Ensure Positive Service Delivery Experiences?

Abstract

Think of your last visit to a big box retailer. Did that experience live up to your expectations? Did the employees you encounter deliver great service? Or was your service experience something that would drive you to a competitor down the road? Branding is a major focus for all companies in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace. Firms have to continually focus on how to shape—and protect— the image of their brand. Indeed, companies have to play “brand defense,” monitoring social media for feedback that could quickly sour a brand’s image. For service companies, the branding equation is complicated and less controllable due to the human element involved in service delivery. All the positive “feel good” advertising in the world that builds-up a customer’s brand perception can be ruined in an instant if he or she encounters a “feel bad” employee. The importance of each customer’s interaction with every service employee was captured by Jan Carlzon, the former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines (Carlzon, 1987). Central to the airline’s operational turnaround was the fact that Carlzon focused on making certain that Scandinavian Airlines’ customers had the best experience possible when they interacted with each employee during their individual journeys. He termed these interactions “moments of truth,” in which customers form their unique impressions—positive or negative—of the company and its brand through their interactions with employee. Scholars have noted that it is difficult for service company executives to overcome the inherent challenge of managing these “moments of truth” that enable front-line employees to spark a positive connection with customers (Beaujean, Davidson, & Madge, 2006) and how little research has been done on such interactions (Punjaisri & Wilson, 2007). Indeed, while we typically think of corporate branding efforts as aimed at external audiences, a recent research study examined the recently developed concept of internal branding. The study, coauthored by Thomas Baker and Adam Rapp (both of the University of Alabama), Tracy Meyer (University of North Carolina Wilmington), and Ryan Mullins (Clemson University), provides new insights into the importance of internal branding efforts in influencing a company’s critical frontline employees to provide brand-reinforcing levels of service.