Customer perception / A field note by Rob Urban
Your brand is defined
by your customer’s
perception.
You decide what the business promises and how it behaves. Customers decide what those encounters mean to them. The useful work begins when those two versions of the business do not agree.
You cannot write the
customer’s conclusion
for them.
I have described the personality I want PaperBoat Media to convey as whimsical and effective. I would like people to find me funny and intelligent. Those are intentions. They are not a customer survey, and putting them in a brand document does not make them true for every person who encounters the work.
The reader still gets to decide whether the joke landed and whether the advice helped. That is the part of branding that keeps us honest.
A business can say it is responsive. Someone who has sent three unanswered messages may form a different view. A company can describe itself as highly specialized while its website leaves a buyer unable to find the relevant capability. In the first situation, the experience may be contradicting the claim. In the second, the claim may be true but poorly demonstrated.
Those problems can sound similar in a meeting. “People do not understand our brand.” They should not automatically receive the same solution.
This is a focused way to investigate that gap. The broader choices about positioning and audience belong in brand strategy; carrying those choices across the business belongs in branding consulting.
Keep these distinct
What you intend.
What they encounter.
What they conclude.
The intended meaning
Leadership wants the business to be known for something: careful work, personal attention, specialist judgment, simplicity, speed, or another relevant quality.
Write the claim in ordinary language. “We make a difficult purchase easier to understand” gives the team more to inspect than a collection of aspirational adjectives.
The observable experience
Look at what a person can actually see and do: the explanation, response, quotation, booking, handoff, delivery, invoice, and handling of a problem.
Include the awkward moments. A promise that survives only while everything goes smoothly is a narrower promise than the homepage may suggest.
The interpretation
Ask what the person believed the experience meant. A quiet period may feel reassuring to one customer and worrying to another, depending on what they expected.
The interpretation is important evidence about that person’s experience. It still needs context before becoming a statement about the whole market.
Hypothetical example / Not a client case
“Personal service” meets
a very impersonal handoff.
Imagine a specialist print business that promises careful guidance for complicated projects. A buyer asks about a difficult material and receives a thoughtful explanation from the owner. The buyer places an order.
When the order moves to production, the new contact asks the buyer to explain the requirements again. A question about timing sits unanswered. The finished work is excellent, but the buyer describes the company as hard to work with.
The product and the relationship received different grades.
A new color palette would not transfer the project notes. A stronger claim about personal service would not establish who responds to the timing question.
I would first inspect the handoff: what information moved, what was lost, who owned the next response, and what the customer had been told to expect. If the business repairs that experience, its communication can explain the process accurately.
Now change one fact. Suppose the handoff worked well, but the website gave no explanation of the process and the customer expected daily updates that were never part of the agreement. The investigation may point toward clearer expectations as well as a review of the communication rhythm.
The same complaint can contain different causes. Ask enough to understand the sequence before commissioning the remedy.
Ask for the moment
behind the adjective.
“Professional,” “expensive,” “confusing,” and “friendly” are useful starting words. They are not complete explanations. Ask what the person saw, heard, or experienced that led to the description.
- Before the conversation: What did you think we did? What made you believe we might fit? What could you not work out?
- During the decision: Which alternatives did you consider? What almost stopped you? What information changed your mind?
- During the work: What happened differently from what you expected? At which moment did you feel confident or uncertain?
- Afterward: How would you describe us to someone with a similar need? What would you tell that person to ask before buying?
Listen to more than your most enthusiastic customers. Where practical, include people who did not buy, people who stopped returning, and the staff who hear questions before they reach leadership. Keep the context attached to each account.
A handful of conversations can reveal a useful hypothesis. It cannot establish what every customer thinks. Avoid turning three comments into a percentage for the whole market or treating a dramatic complaint as a representative sample.
For feedback about your website, Nielsen Norman Group’s guidance on interviewing users explains where interviews help and where observing people use the site is more informative. Choose the method for the question you need answered.
The question is not whether the customer used the adjective you hoped for. It is what made that adjective reasonable to them.
Keep private details private. An internal learning exercise does not make a customer’s story available for public marketing. If a comment later becomes a testimonial or case example, obtain the appropriate permission and preserve its context.
A focused working exercise
Choose one promise.
Trace one real journey.
Start with a promise important enough to affect the customer’s decision. Bring together someone who makes the claim, someone who delivers the work, and someone who hears customer feedback.
State the promise
What does the customer reasonably expect from the words we use? Identify where the promise appears, including sales conversations and proposals.
Record the encounter
What actually happened at each important moment? Use the quote, message, process, or delivery record rather than reconstructing everything from memory.
Capture the interpretation
What did the customer say it meant? Mark direct feedback separately from an employee’s inference about what the customer probably thought.
Identify the constraint
Was the problem unclear language, missing evidence, poor fit, an operational limitation, or a commitment the business cannot consistently keep?
Assign the change
Name the person responsible, the specific repair, and what you will observe afterward. A workshop should produce a decision someone can carry out.
Do not blame the colleague closest to the complaint before examining the system. Someone may understand the intended experience perfectly and lack the information, time, or authority to provide it.
Choose a repair that
fits the evidence.
If the meaning is unclear, explain it better.
Clarify the offer, audience, language, and next step. Use the words customers understand without flattening important distinctions. A specialist business may need a plain-language entrance and a deeper technical explanation, each doing a different job.
If the claim lacks evidence, make the proof accessible.
Show the relevant process, qualifications, limitations, people, or examples. Avoid replacing a weak claim with a louder version. Storytelling and authority work can make existing expertise easier to examine.
If the experience contradicts the promise, change the experience or narrow the promise.
The business may need a clearer handoff, a realistic response commitment, a better explanation of timing, or a policy decision. This is where brand work becomes an operating conversation. Communication should follow what the team can reliably deliver.
If the audience is a poor fit, improve the expectation.
Someone who needs a low-cost standard product may reasonably dislike a bespoke process with a longer lead time. That does not automatically make the process wrong. Explain the tradeoff early enough for the person to choose well.
The aim is not universal approval. It is a more accurate relationship between the business you are building, the people you want to serve, and the experience they receive.
Look for a more
specific improvement.
After the change, revisit the moments that caused confusion. Are customers asking different questions? Can staff explain the offer consistently? Are fewer suitable prospects surprised by the process? Do the relevant complaints recur?
Keep the comparison honest. A new campaign, price change, different customer mix, or capacity problem can affect the feedback. Record the change you made and the conditions around it.
A better perception is useful when it reflects a better understanding or a better experience. If the business only gets better at concealing the gap, the next difficult interaction will still expose it.
A few useful distinctions
Can a business influence customer perception?
Yes. The business controls many of the signals and experiences people interpret. It can improve clarity, evidence, behavior, and expectations. It cannot require every person to reach the same conclusion.
Does negative feedback mean we need a rebrand?
Not necessarily. Identify the event behind the feedback. A service failure, confusing quotation, poor-fit audience, or missing explanation may need a focused repair rather than a new identity.
What if customers misunderstand something we do well?
Check where the explanation breaks down and what evidence is missing. Then make the capability easier to understand and verify. Do not assume the misunderstanding is the customer’s fault.
Rob Urban / PaperBoat Media
Tell me where the
two versions of the
business disagree.
You may know only that customers seem to expect the wrong thing, or that the website does not reflect the work you actually do. You do not need to know exactly what needs solving before we talk.
Talk through the gap you are seeing ↗