Every Touch Point Communicates
The marketplace is a social system in which customers, companies, and media interact. Communication involves the sending and receiving of messages. A company or brand can communicate with, or "touch," customers, prospects, and other stakeholders in many different ways. What many companies overlook and fail to leverage are opportunities for dialogue with customers and prospects.
Companies sometimes believe that if they don't say anything or don't respond to a customer, they have avoided sending a brand message. Wrong! A company CEO who responds to a question from the media with "No comment," actually communicates a great deal. What most people "hear" is that the CEO is scared to give the right answer or doesn't know the answer, both of which are bad messages to send. A company that chooses not to respond to a customer's complaint communicates loudly and clearly that it doesn't care about its customers and is not willing to stand behind its products.
Every thing and every person and every message that touches a customer communicates something positive or negative about the organization. The appearance of a service employee, whether neat or sloppy, says something about the company's pride in its work. The design of a product and package says modern, juvenile, feminine, old-fashioned, expensive, dull, or something else. The tone of voice on the phone or the attitude of a clerk or customer-service representative all speak to the personality and friendliness of the organization.
A company and a brand cannot not communicate. The challenge, then, is how to manage brand communication in order to accomplish business and marketing objectives cost-effectively. To answer this question requires understanding how communication—and marketing communication—work, which is what this chapter is about.
