Everything Speaks: First Impressions Matter

Video Advertising for Local Businesses

Solving Business Challenges with Video (Part 3 of 3)

“Everything speaks.”  -Bruce Jones, Senior Programming Director, Disney Institute

In our last two posts, we’ve covered that every business has a story to tell, and shared why it’s important to consult professionals when it comes to creative execution. Now, we’ll talk about how everything that is associated with your company speaks to your brand and your value proposition.

First impressions matter.

A business’s approaches, office space, employee demeanor and website all tell a story about the company in the perceptions they relay. Those familiar with the Disney approach realize that they don’t simply provide world-class customer service, they recognize that everything that a customer sees, hears, or touches impacts the experience.

Writing in Zendesk, 20-year Disney veteran Dennis Snow defines three key principles at the heart of service driven organizations like Disney.

1. Perform with a relationship mindset, not a task mindset:

You can walk into any business and witness people hard at work on their tasks. And when employees are stressed, more often than not, they’re doubling down on their tasks. But this makes the customer into one more task and leaves them feeling processed and like they haven’t made an emotional connection. When employees focus on their customer relationships instead, customers tend to feel valued.

To engage the customer in a relationship, tell them your story.

2. Pay attention to the details:

Every detail of the customer experience either adds or detracts from the brand. This includes the quality, cleanliness, and aesthetic of a physical space as well as “attitudinal” elements like tone of voice, quality of email, user friendliness of a process, and so on. When you look around at the details, are they sharing the same story?

For this reason alone, your story should be a carefully planned, meticulously produced piece that drives emotion– and results. If everything speaks, then the details of production—a winning concept, shot composition, framing, color balance, sound—will also speak to your level of professionalism, or care, and will directly reflect the care that you place on your brand.

3. Create moments of Wow

In a hierarchy of what your customers expect from your customer service, the baseline is accuracy and availability. Once you’ve achieved that, you earn the right to begin creating “wow” moments. Little “wow” moments may not always be consciously noticed by customers, but they still register and have a cumulative effect.

There are always plenty of opportunities to create “wow” moments of surprise and delight in telling your story. That’s what good storytellers do.

So, details communicate messages to customers. So with our customer relationships and brand proposition at stake, we know we get one chance to make a good first impression.

With that in mind, Cox Media Production’s creative professionals can advise you how to create stories that drive objectives for maximum effectiveness, that bear careful attention to execution and technical excellence, and that can create those “wow” moments that surprise and delight.

Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.