Some people make promises to customers. Other people deliver on those promises.

We focus on the people who deliver.

Building a brand means linking people and what they do to the brand strategy and brand promise. Linking people requires intense communication in ways a lot of business leaders haven't thought about.

When most leaders first talk about improving communication in their organizations, their minds often jump to improving top down formal communication such as memos, employee publications and videos.

Communication, naturally, is all of this. But it's much more.

Communication represents all the ways we send, receive, and process information. It's the things we say and the things we don't say. It's what we do and what we don't do. You can't not communicate.

Every one of us is bombarded by tens of thousands of signs, signals, cues and messages every day. Our mind processes the bombardment without us having to tell it to. It simply�does it. It factors in the sum total of our experience, what we've learned, where we've been, our anxieties, fears, happy moments, sad times, disappointments and periods of unparalleled joy. It filters all that through what we really believe, our values and preferences. It quickly processes that information and then it tells us what to do. On the basis of all those communication cues and signals, we decide. Then we act.

We call a customer. Or, we delay calling a customer.

We say, "May I take your order?" like we mean it. Or, we say, "May I take your order?" like the customer's an intrusion.

We go out of our way to get a product to a customer in time for her new store opening. Or, we send the product when we get good and ready to send it.

We make sure we do everything by the customer. Or, we make sure we do everything by the book.

Each one of these actions follows smack on the heels of a decision moment, a period of time when we decide what to do, what action to take. We base our actions on how we process these decision moments. The communication that bombards every corner of the company drives our decision moments.

When communication is managed well, we decide and act in ways that help the business succeed. When communication isn't managed well, we don't.

This happens for everyone in the organization. Everything we do�all of our actions�flow naturally and directly from how well communication has been managed. The customer feels it and reacts by buying our products and services or someone else's.

Here's what the Employee-Customer Linkage Chain looks like. It lies at the core of managing internal communication to build a brand.

Segment 1: In the upper left segment, people are bombarded by cues, signals, symbols and messages that come in the form of what's said and what's done.

Segment 2: In the upper middle segment, the bombardment creates perceptions in our minds about what's important and what's not�our values, where we should focus our attention and energy, what really matters. These perceptions drive each decision moment each of us has thousands of times every day.

Segment 3: In the upper right segment, we act on those perceptions. Our actions create products that work or don't work. Our actions deliver a high or low level of service. They move products to market quickly or slowly. They increase or decrease costs.

Segment 4: In the lower right segment, customers encounter our organization in many different ways. Each encounter is a touchpoint, where customers come into contact with us. They use our products and services. They receive our bills. They drive by our billboards. They talk to our employees in the customer service department. They see how we act. They notice our attitude. They watch us get the job done on time, before we promised. They watch us get the job done two days late.

Segment 5: In the lower middle segment, the touchpoints are adding up. Customers form opinions about our image, our brand, and us. Our brand represents a promise. Reliability. Quality. Service. Low cost. No hassle. User-friendly. Our image and brand are based in large part on the touchpoints that occur between our people and their actions and our customers.

Segment 6: In the lower left segment, increasingly fickle customers make decisions about their future relationship with us. They come back and do more business with us or move on to someone else who delivers a better promise or does a better job of delivering on their promise.

Companies that are good at building their brands know that they're really managing all the things people in the company do to help fulfill the brand promise.