A former chair of ad agency J. Walter Thompson once said, “Consumers build an image of a brand as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon.” Some people have a way with words, don’t they? In just 19 he’s said what others have spent books trying to get across.  The underlying message is very simple: Customers – or people you would like to call “customers” – find clues about what it would be like to do business with you in many different places. They might talk to other customers, see an advertisement or read about you in a newspaper or trade publication. But they’re also influenced by far less obvious clues – like the way your phones are answered, the greeting they get from your receptionist or the ease of navigating your website. What’s important to one person might not be important to another. Which means that you really can’t afford to overlook any possible customer ‘touchpoint.’ One touchpoint – and it’s a bit of a bugaboo with me – is voicemail. I’m not against it. I like the fact I can leave a detailed message that invites a specific response.  What bugs me is hearing someone else inform me that the person I’m calling is not available, although my call is very important to them! For most businesses this is definitely not ‘on brand’ unless, of course, one of their core values is ‘impersonal!’It’s even worse when the company professes to be big on personal service. Ya, right! How personal can it be when a senior person can’t take the time to record their own telephone greeting? For me, this is one of the most telling clues about what it would be like to do business with a particular company. It’s a red flag that might be proven wrong. But that takes time and energy that I, and probably many others, would rather not spend. So, it’s not always what you say. Sometimes it’s more about what you don’t say that has the biggest – and most negative – impact on your business.