Trends: Brand Butlers Deliver Exquisite Customer Service

I love watching and reporting on trends. Trendwatching’s April brief reports on the Brand Butler, “why serving is the new selling” trend.

Interested in trends, too? Here’s the Source: www.trendwatching.com. One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.

Being a Brand Butler means becoming a servant to your customers.

For me and my company, that means being there whenever they need us. We might construct marketing plans, potish blog posts, tidy social media profiesl, write letters, drive traffic, put out fires, retell their stories or speak for them when they need a voice.

What is a Butler?
Maybe you’ll recognize some characters on this list of fictional butlers.. Butler is also a utility for automating repetitive tasks in Mac OS X by Peter Maurer. Download Butler for Mac. Butler is also a university in Indianapolis that won the NCCA western division last Saturday.

There’s so much great information in the Brand Butler brief, including dozens of real life examples, that I know you’ll want to read it in detail after you take in these highlights I selected to share with you.

Build a Brand Butler omnipresence online and offline.

Online: To get ideas, scan the iPhone App Store, Google’s Android Market, and Blackberry’s App World.

Offline: One popular offline Brand Butler tactic is to open permanent or temporary branded public spaces tied to events or locations. At these Brand Butler stations, brands interact and assist visitors and customers with brand-relevant services.

Brand Butler relationships allow for built-in feedback and co-creation in eight categories
1. Transparency & ‘In the know’
2. Saving money
3. Finding
4. Connectivity
5. Health, nutrition & exercise
6. Skills & advice
7. Eco
8. Tools & amenities

Brand Butlers in Action from Trendwatching’s Report

Van Cleef & Arpels offers a day in Paris iPhone app with a gudie through ‘a poetic ballad in Paris,’ discovering romantic venues around the city.

Beck’s Gig Finder app map and GPS finds local music gigs.

Chevrolet teamed up with the 2010 SXSW festival to offer the Chevy Volt Recharge Lounge with where visitors could enjoy refreshments and recharge their electronic devices. The brand also offered a ‘Catch a Chevy’ service, which offered festival-goers lifts around Austin.

In 2007, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and Nutricia opened the free Schiphol Babycare Lounge, featuring seven circular “cabins”. Facilities include a changing area, baby baths and a microwave for heating food.

A hands-on start would be to establish the themes your brand is about, and dream up an integrated ‘suite’ of Brand Butler services, both online and offline.

Source: www.trendwatching.com. One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.

Sometimes butlers rescue their masters from fires as Alfred did in Batman Begins.
“Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Quite often, we serve as storytellers who solve mysteries as Wadsworth, who plays a butler, in the movie Clue. How do you serve as a brand butler for your customers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vjJRWQQXA8

So, what we can get you today?

Image source: Thanks to shutterstock.com for granting usage rights in exchange for credit, which I am happy to give.