Whether your company is a bank or a grocery store, or whether you're marketing sports cars, PCs, or ocean cruises, you're making brand promises that are supported -- or not supported -- by the people who work for you. Your employees are the ones who design and develop your products, communicate with your customers, and service what you market. Anyone in your company who has contact with your customers, however indirectly, gives meaning and dimension to your company's brand promise. Your people "live" your brand -- or at least that's what you assume.

But how well do they really understand your brand promise and what it entails? More to the point, how do you know?

As we've reported elsewhere, employees are critically important contributors to the strength and health of a company's brand relationships. (See "The Power of the Fifth P" and "People Who Need People" in the "See Also" area on this page.) They have an impact on customer relationships that can far outweigh the influence not just of your advertising but of the prices you charge and of the convenient locations you painstakingly select.

Many business books attest to the importance of human contact in building customer relationships. And yet, though most companies talk about the crucial role their employees play, survey results continue to point to the woeful experiences that are typical in today's customer encounters. Wharton's annual Baker Retail Initiative survey noted that 1 in 4 shoppers reported being totally ignored by sales associates during their most recent retail store visit. (See "Are Your Customers Dissatisfied? Try Checking Out Your Salespeople" in the "See Also" area on this page.)

If fulfilling your brand promise is truly in the hands of your employees, it stands to reason that you'd spend as much time nurturing their understanding and commitment to your brand promise as you spend crafting your ads, designing your packages, and outfitting your stores. But it seems that's rarely the case. Gallup has found that employees often feel disconnected from the brands they're asked to represent and have little knowledge of -- or enthusiasm for -- what it takes to transform customer transactions into enduring relationships.

Putting your brand in the hands…

To explore the extent to which U.S. employees are living the brands they represent, Gallup researchers conducted a nationwide survey among people who work for a variety of marketing organizations. This survey, completed in early 2007, employed the resources of The Gallup Panel, which provides a representative cross section of adult Americans.

We talked with more than 3,000 employees who work for companies that market branded products and services ranging from hotels to healthcare, including such heavily marketed categories as retail, packaged goods, and pharmaceuticals. Each employee answered a few questions that parallel the measures Gallup has used to assess the extent to which consumers connect to brands.

In this survey, however, we asked about the extent to which the employees have bonded to their company's brands. The questions addressed whether employees take pride in the brands they help market and feel they understand their company's differentiating brand promise.

The results point to some vitally important missed marketing and brand-building opportunities. Appreciable numbers of employees indicate that they have little or no clear idea about the brand they're "living" and little understanding of whatever supposedly differentiates their company's products and services from those offered by the competition.

Overall, about 4 in 10 (40.4%) employees strongly agree that "I know what my company stands for and what makes our brand different from the competition." While disagreement wasn't high (7.2%), the bulk of American employees are somewhere in the middle -- not quite certain. They may have a vague idea, but a vague idea isn't what it takes if the goal is consistent delivery on a promise.

In looking at some of the categories in which employees interact with customers regularly and directly, there's a good deal of uncertainty among employees regarding what makes the company's offerings different. Among those working in the hospitality industry, for example, about 1 in 4 employees (27.5%) strongly agree that they know what makes their company's offerings different. In sharp contrast, almost three-fourths (73.2%) of those working in beverage or packaged goods marketing strongly agree that they know what makes their brands different.

So paradoxically, in companies where most of the customer contact occurs through mechanisms such as ads, products, and packaging -- as is true, for example, in packaged goods marketing -- employees are relatively likely to feel that they know what their brands represent. But in companies where the most meaningful points of contact are through employees -- as with hotels and restaurants -- a majority of employees indicate they aren't sure about what differentiates their offerings. And yet these are the brand representatives tasked with building stronger brand connections.

Copyright Ó 2007 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal