Why Are Brands Anonymous?

It is evident that most brands, especially those in banking, retail, travel and telco industries, spend a lot of time making sure their sales and service associates are warm, welcoming and personable. In retail or sales, they promote "Hello, how can I help you" buttons, train folks on how to shake hand firmly and smile, and ask them to greet customers in store with their names. All these are examples of how brands invest in making their customer facing employees “human”. 
 

Online, brands have carried this trend into various channels. Call center agents begin by saying “Hi, I’m Joe and I will help you today” taking the cue from the restaurant business. Most agents have names - real or fictitious - to address the customers. Even email support gets answered by a named person and social media managers are have specific named identity as well.  
 

So, most brands may be surprised by the claim they are anonymous. 
 

Overall, social and industry ratings have provided a solid foundation for commerce brands to build trust. The next variation of this trend has been the emergence of consumer connected brands such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. These brands are built entirely on the ratings strangers give to others services. They are different from Amazon in that the trust generated by their consumer reviews is their very product - and the basis of their brand.  What's truly fascinating is that the brands (AirBnB, Uber) become the keepers of the trust between strangers engaged in commerce. A side consequence of this effect is that these brands don’t rely as much on brand media advertising or paid search to drive commerce.  
 

The truth is that in the digital world, what they are doing is simply not enough. Take the recent example of an egregiously bad Comcast customer service call that went viral after a call agent refused to cancel a customer's account point blank for ten minutes.  Such inauthentic interactions don’t engender trust between brands and their consumers. And trust is the most important commodity missing for a brand today. A single phone call destroyed millions of dollars of Comcast brand equity.
 

But how do you build trust in today’s digital world? An interaction at a time. Trust builds through repeated, positive outcomes from digital interactions between a brand and its customers. And, anonymity of interactions does not help. We are more likely to escalate bad interactions into a public spat when they are anonymous. Today, the verdict of these brand interactions is delivered through ratings of the community of customers - through social media, ratings and reviews and other feedback forums.  
 

Let us look at how these digital interactions drive trust. The basic consumer survey tools have been on internet since inception for collecting feedback. However, consumer ratings and reviews were the first social feedback mechanism that built trust around products and services. Amazon drove this from the early days of online commerce and in industries like retail and travel this trend is now well established. In service industries, especially regulated ones like banks, telcos and utilities, direct consumer ratings have had limited success. Many banks still don’t allow consumer comments on their sites and forums. Third party companies, J.D. Powers, etc. have stepped with with industry ratings, as have various third party rating sites. 
 

Recently, even these brands has been upended with the trend of collaborative consumption economy. Here the new brands like Uber, AirBnB, TaskRabbit are allowing consumer to consumer experiences that displace the merchant-driven digital commerce.  They have taken the idea of matching consumer to services further. They have built double-sided marketplaces which rely on two core tenets: trusted identity of the participants and transparent ratings of the services and experiences delivered. 
 

As an example: AirBnB authenticates identity of both hosts and guests. This is critical to build trust. Host can decide whether they will allow a guest to stay at their home based on validated identity and past behavior of the guest. Similarly, the guest can reach the host as a real, authentic person with validated text and address information. AirBnB has combined this with the idea of rating the experience from both parties. At the end of every stay, they ask the guest three questions: Will you recommend this host? The property? And AirBnb? In that order. The host is asked: Will you let the guest stay with you again? Trust is built - an interaction at a time between two known, authenticated persons and the experiences they share. The same with Uber: the riders rate you the driver after every ride. And the lessor know fact is that drivers can rate the riders as well. 

If you are a bank, retailer or a telco today, what lessons you can draw from these successful consumer connected brands? First, consider building a trusted way to disclose the identity of your customer-facing employees - transparently - to your customers. Imagine if in every customer interaction, an employee starts by revealing who he is and connects with the customer through the channel of her choice (text, voice, video) and stays connected as long as needed, even coordinating with other employees when necessary. I bet the public spats would be fewer. Second, let your consumers rate each interaction and recommend each employee - every time, if needed. The employee would know exactly how he did and why. Third, consider showcasing these ratings and performance for other customers to see. 
 

For many companies, these policies may appear radical - even to ponder, let alone adopt. The barrier is mostly cultural since technologies to implement these policies are available. However, brands need to realize that in the connected digital world, their longevity depends on how well their employees interact with their customers. For that, the veil of anonymity that sits between a brand’s employees and its customers has to be torn.