“My personal information is wrong on my account” I told the assistant on the phone. As an individual giving a large financial company trust and authority over my financial matters, having my name misspelled on my account seemed like a BIG deal.

After 3 phone calls and several months, I finally got the name on the account corrected. Each month when my statement would come in, looking at the investment performance of the company was blurred by the name on the account not being corrected. After all, when the end of the year came and I received a statement for taxes, there was a possibility of having to correct tax documents or possible flagging for an audit.

The company that I was working with promised a “structured and consistent financial plan” and “the highest fiduciary responsibility over your investments”. These were brand promises which as far as I could tell the company did actually achieve very well. However, there was nothing in the brand promise that committed to accuracy, quick resolution to problems, or quality checking. And while it didn’t need to be overtly communicated to me, communicating these values to the employees may have been a way to get the issue corrected more expediently.

Unlike in life where we don’t want to spend too much time crying over spilled milk or other “small things”, in business your clients will definitely recognize the small things. And these small things too often end up making it difficult for a client or prospect to really fully understand how your company differentiates themselves.

At a financial company where I recently worked, I was in a conversation with a commercial banking client. The commercial banking client was very happy with the service he was receiving from his commercial banker and was satisfied with the line of credit he had on his business account. He told me clearly “Everything on the business account is great. I pay your company over $60,000 a year in interest and fees, but feel it is a reasonable amount. However, what I don’t understand is why your company charges me $15 per month on a low balance on my checking account”. The commercial banker immediately made a call to get the charges reversed, but this “small thing” was something that had bothered the client for years.

To help companies focus on the small things that otherwise hurt the overall brand, companies can take a few important actions:

1. Add a brand promise to your values that overtly communicates accuracy and integrity in the process. By stating what you will be doing, it is more likely that clients will recognize that your company is focused on upholding themselves in these areas. Statements such as “We are highly diligent on accuracy to create confidence in our clients”.
2. Identify areas within the business that are too important to get wrong. Not everything in the business is necessary to give a high level of interrogation, but there are definitely some areas that need to have the highest level of compliance and testing.
3. Create clear policies and procedures for completing processes. While many companies feel that their processes are trained and supported, when changes are made to the process many times more tenured employees are unaware of the new processes. Having these procedures and processes documented and refreshing employees is an effort well worth the cost.
4. Reward employees that find and resolve issues. Create an environment where employees are expected to not only resolve issues when they are presented, but to communicate the issues and possible break-downs that lead to the issue.
5. Expect employees to act like owners of the business. Encouraging your own employees to open an account or use the company’s product, they will be able to experience what your clients are experiencing. If a client is seeing a typo in a piece of content or inaccuracies in data on statements, if your employees are also involved the issue may be found prior to a client bringing it to your attention.

Taking the time to focus on how your brand may be impacted by small issues is time worth taking. Just like making sure your belt matches your shoes, if your company brand depends on small things to amplify the message, you should definitely sweat the small stuff.