Shirley Chisolm once said:
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”
Our job as entrepreneurs is to serve our ideal customers. But they won’t know if you can help them unless you first get clear on who you are as a brand and what they can expect from you.
How will you show up for them?
What will their experience be like when they engage with your brand?
That’s what a brand promise tells them.
We all know some of the most famous brand promises…
“Nationwide is on your side.”
“Save money. Live better.” (Walmart)
“15 minutes can save you 15% or more on your car insurance.” (GEICO)
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m a big quotes girl. And I recently heard a quote from one of the co-founders of the iconic Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Horst Schulze. He said,
The brand promise for the luxury hotel chain is rooted in their Gold Standard which is: “We pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guests who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambience.”
Ritz-Carlton has taken their brand promise and infused it into every part of their organization. It’s part of their DNA. It’s in their culture. It’s in their hiring and training practices. It’s in their quality control. It’s in their customer experiences.
Here are a few examples:
- They call both their employees and guests “ladies and gentlemen.” (Their company motto is “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”
- Employees are empowered to not only create unique and memorable experiences for the guests, but to identify any area that needs improvement and resolve the root cause so that the problem is fixed permanently. This alone is so powerful! Everyone from management to housekeeping can make decisions up to $2,000 to keep the customer. Even though it may seem counterintuitive, this is a great way to reduce costs by eliminating waste and inefficiencies and it allows everyone to take ownership of living out the promise.
- New employees are trained on the brand promise and Gold Standard (core values) before they even learn how to do their job functions for the first few days after they start. Then those values are taught at the beginning of every shift meeting at every property to make sure that it gets ingrained into the heartbeat of every team member.
I was so impressed to learn about how The Ritz-Carlton carries out its brand promise. And now I’m reading even more about it in Horst Schulze’s book, “Excellence Wins.“
So how do you come up with your own brand promise?
I’ve come up with the characteristics that you need to include when developing yours and you can get yours in my FREE download The 5 C’s to Creating Your Perfect Brand Promise.
You can also check out the video below where I talk more about why you need one, give you some examples, and walk you through how to establish your brand promise in 15 minutes or less.
And I’d love to hear your brand promise once you’ve come up with it. Email me at hello@nikkibradley.net or leave me a note in the Comments below.
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