My wife called me the other day and, as I occasionally do, I answered her call as I would one from a customer. “Hello, this is Dustin.” I said. I have caller ID, so I usually know it is her before I answer and I will just greet her with “Hey.” But for some reason she likes the professional greeting. This puzzled me for a while as I wondered why she would want to be treated just like anyone else. Then it hit me that she doesn’t hear me greet customers and vendors on the phone. To her the professional greeting is different, not the same. It’s easy to understand if I consider things from her perspective.

Therein lies an issue that many companies and organizations face. We view consistency as repetition. What we repeat hundreds of times a day may be just one touch point for a customer. That one phone call, that one greeting at the register, that one email, that one delivery which we repeat over and over again is just “one” to the customer. This becomes an issue when we start to get tired of consistency. We start to think, “If I’m sick of this, the customers probably are too.” So, we change the way we greet our customers, we change our slogan, we change our advertising, we change our logo. Chances are though, your customers haven’t even had a chance to pick up on a pattern yet. Just as they start to understand your brand, the carpet is yanked out from underneath them and they start all over.

But sometimes we need to do things differently in order to stand out from the crowd, sometimes circumstances require a unique response or employees aren’t comfortable with the “standard way” of doing things. This is where understanding your brand is helpful. By knowing your core values as an organization, you can respond to circumstances or perform your duties in a more authentic way without damaging the corporate brand. You find ways to do the same thing differently. But change should not be just for the sake of change. In validating the need for change, make sure you consider things from the customer’s perspective.