Episode #167: Happy Holidays! How To Massacre Your Brand Promise

The end of year holiday season is a time of great retail commercial activity around the world. Brands work well because they bring with them a promise of reliability and trust. We buy the brands over the non-brands to reduce risk and increase our certainty that our buying decision is a good one. The issue for firms is how to protect the brand image during the provision of service component of the brand promise. Those at the top in the executive suites and those deep in the guts of the organisation, in the marketing department in particular, are really “on brand” no doubt. What about the rest of the organisation? There are lessons here for all of us in sales, when the big boys and girls get it wrong.

Many years ago, on holiday, I bought a very nice watch in the Versace Piazza di Spagna store in Rome. I have been quite a Versace fan over the years and have a lot of gear from them. The leather band broke a few years ago and through the good offices of the store here in Tokyo, it was sent off to the headquarters to be repaired. Recently, the same thing happened with the leather band again, but the outcome this time was a brand destroying, rather than brand enhancing experience.

I took my watch to the main Versace store in Ginza, to have the leather band replaced. The staff member told me that they don’t have that type of leather band in stock, so get lost. I persevered and asked about the possibility of sending it to the headquarters to repair it there. A few minutes later, the shop manager informs me that they can’t do that, because the operator of the Versace store in Japan is a different company to the one in Italy, same brand but a different store ownership structure. As the buyer this is puzzling. We buy the brand, we don’t care about the inner workings of the company providing the service or about their rules and procedures. The store manager in effect tells me to buzz off.

Subsequently, I began thinking about my own business. This type of thing irritates me because the staff on the ground don’t care that I am loyal customer, because I am not a loyal customer of their shop, because I bought this watch overseas. In our own case, what systems do we have in place in Japan for serving international Dale Carnegie customers, because we are a franchise organisation with many separate companies around the globe, operating under the same brand. Are we able to take care of the buyer, regardless of where they have interacted with us in the past or currently interact with us somewhere in the world. Would my staff do the same thing and apply that Japanese company worker mentality of “no accountability”, if a problem arose?

It gets worse for Versace, because realising I am dealing with idiots in the Ginza store, who appear to be Versace staff, but actually aren’t Versace employees, I go the main website. I find the contact information and I compose a very nice note expressing my long love affair with the brand, this watch in particular and my inability to get it fixed in Japan and asking what I should do next. I get an immediate automated response telling me they have my mail and will get back to me. I wait three weeks and get nothing back from them.

This is the issue with systems to deal with problems. If the client has a problem we have to fix it. The buyer bought the brand promise and if we provide different avenues for dealing with buyer problems, then they have to work properly. The correct response from the store staff should have been “we are Versace, we individually will take responsibility for the brand, we will fix your problem and hopefully you will continue to love our brand and buy something from our Ginza store”.

It begs the question, are my staff taking full responsibility to fix problems for buyers? As the boss, you never even hear about these issues, because the matter is never drawn to your attention and you are super busy anyway. Japanese staff are all ninja at hiding problems from the boss, so you really have to work hard to find out what is really happening. So, on reflection, have I properly guided them on our philosophy toward the buyer? Am I assuming too much knowledge and when was the last time I talked to my team about this type of customer care?

A lot of money is spent on websites and all and good, but the service component behind the pepper and spice on screen has to be in place. There has to be a human being somewhere receiving the email, reading it and then taking action. Can we be sure in our own cases, that when buyers send us an email, that the people designated to receive it are doing their job? How can we check up on this type of on-line service? Do we have the protocols in place to do so? Automated responses are easy to build, but the “care” factor in the mentality of the staff servicing the client, is a lot more complex to create.

The upshot is I went back to the contact page and sent another note and again got the automated response. So far, no response from any human being, but I live in hope. How do I feel about the Versace shops in Japan, who are Versace, but aren’t really? I doubt I will ever cross their boutique portal again in my life. Will I buy the brand again? Probably not and certainly I will never buy another watch from them.

When we are the seller, what are we doing to make sure this outcome doesn’t happen to us? What are our systems? What are our checking mechanisms? What are our protocols? How well have we trained the staff to think ONE company, ONE brand, rather than a myriad of branches, with various corporate holding structures.

Brand is building trust, but when the trust is lost, the brand is lost. Vale Versace.