If you need any convincing that employees play a vital role in building a brand, talk to Michael Williams, who wrote this seething letter to Delta Airlines yesterday.  To give you the flavor of his letter, here is the opening paragraph:

“Please allow me to share my experience with one of your standout customer service agents, today. Feel free to use this incident in the unquestionably effectual training program this person must have completed. If I may be so bold, I'd recommend titling this exercise; ‘The ROI of Hiring Ass Hats.'”

Michael went on to talk about his previous years of loyalty to the airline, which was all erased by this one, single experience with a Delta customer care rep. While we don't know what was really at fault in this case – the rep's poor judgment or his/her inability to do what was right for the customer because of Delta policies – in the end it doesn't matter.  As we point out in our article just published on brandchannel, “employees have the power to either reinforce or break a brand's promise every time they interact with a customer, shareholder or even another employee.” Unfortunately for Delta (and Michael), Michael's experience resulted in a broken brand promise and a lost customer.  Delta would benefit by learning from the likes of Virgin Media and Red Hat, two companies featured in our article, who have successfully engaged employees in living their brand. « back