Erin Stahla, Co-owner of Stahla Services, a nationwide provider of restroom, shower, and ADA trailer rentals joins Enterprise Radio. Erin will discuss how important the brand experience is for a company or small business.
Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Erin Stahla discuss the following:
(Host Eric Dye):  What does it actually mean when we say “the brand is the experience”?
(Guest Erin Stahla):  Man, I think this is so easy to get confused on, right? Because a lot of people think that if I have a nice logo, if I have this, you know, beautiful looking thing, that’s what customers are going to care about, but, I mean, let’s say Chick-fil-A, for example. What a beautiful brand. They’ve done such an amazing job with marketing there. I mean, it’s just hard to beat that, but imagine that you go through the drive thru. You want a nice chicken sandwich. Maybe get some waffle fries. Right, ’cause who can say no to those? But you get it and if the sandwich is soggy, and the fries are cold, there’s not enough salt at that point. I’m gonna guess that you don’t really care what their logo looks like because the actual service, the product was not what you had expected and not what they had promised so the brand, yes, it is definitely important. The logo is important, but it’s the wider brand – the experience that actually matters to your customer.
(Host Eric Dye):  Can you share a time when a small operational detail created a huge brand impression?
(Guest Erin Stahla):  Absolutely. I think we just try to make it such a big deal on our team that we want to go the extra mile. Even small things like man, we want to pick up the phone, right? That’s such a miss. I don’t know, not necessarily misunderstood, but just a misstep in the whole customer experience is if our customer needs something. If they’re trying to talk to us, we want to be there for them. We want to listen to what they’re actually saying. Figure out what the issue is, what the problem is and solve it as soon as possible. So that’s a a big deal as far as an operational detail. For us, that just creates a big impression is if the customer needs something, be available and make sure that you’re able to solve their issue as soon as possible.
(Host Eric Dye):  What are 2–3 simple ways a small business can immediately improve their brand experience without spending a dime on design?
(Guest Erin Stahla): Absolutely. I think a couple of things that come to mind just talking with your sales team. The first point of contact that your customer’s going to come in contact with, just letting them know your sales team know that the customer experience is something that really matters to you on a personal level that you’re a company that prizes that and just setting that expectation that the customer matters seems like it should go without saying, but honestly, the more you’re able to reiterate that and to demonstrate that and to talk to your team about that, the better. It just creates a very universal language around, OK, we care for the customer and I know that comes from every area of the business and then making sure that your operations team just understands how to handle the different scenarios they may come in contact with. If they’re out there and they don’t feel equipped to handle the situations your customer’s going to quickly notice that they’re going to quickly understand that you can’t actually follow through with what you said....