The New Customer-Centric Organization is the Engaged One
Do you know your company’s engagement scores? The measure has been around for decades and assesses employee fulfillment on the job. It’s not just an HR tool—it’s a benchmark that can benefit both your employees and customers.
For your brand to become a ‘lovemark’—that is, a brand that creates such a special, emotional bond with its customers that they are not able to live without it—your employees must have an important role in delivering customers’ expectations and in shaping that relationship. This is where engagement comes in.
What is engagement?
By “engaged” employee, we mean someone who is highly involved and enthusiastic about his or her work, cares about the organization’s future, and is ready to exceed expectations to ensure its success. It makes sense then that a fully engaged workforce can create value and a competitive advantage (likewise, a lack of engagement can also destroy value.)
Linking Engagement and Customer Experience
In its research on creating customer-obsessed cultures, the Qualtrics XM Institute found that 77% of employees going above and beyond in customer experience do so because it is personally satisfying. When asked why they cared about customer reviews, 84% of respondents said it was for personal satisfaction, 31% for recognition, and only 19% because it affected their compensation. Being proud of where you work also made a difference, with employees feeling this way being 2.3 times more likely to make a customer experience their number one priority than those who did not.
The evidence is growing. Take it from Rogers, one of Canada’s largest telecoms. Their team linked customer and financial measures to customer and employee experience data, and found which elements of the employee experience created more satisfied customers and increased store sales. These findings helped refine the company’s employee engagement investments, such as boosting training or ways to reduce attrition, to improve their KPIs.
So what can your organization do to leverage this?
Creating a Customer-Centric Culture
Being customer-centric means fostering a culture that allows your employees to become ambassadors of your workplace, your products, and what your brand stands for. From our research, the following checklist will give you a quick health check of how your employees are living your values:
Freedom to act: Micromanaging and strictly enforcing rules are the enemies of a CCC. Trust your employees to make the right call at the right time when the customer experience hangs in the balance, and you will be rewarded with a more human organization and richer customer connection.
Transparency: Don’t withhold information, and provide your staff with the right information and training. This will ensure a consistent customer experience.
Rewards: Are your rewards strategies aligned with your CX improvements? Compensation and employee stock ownership plans work, but recognition goes a long way. Think of how you can highlight employee successes in HR communications and at company town halls to keep the customer experience top of mind.
Looking ahead
From the employee experience, all the way to the customer, organizations should deliver a consistent message along the experiential path by building a culture aligned with their marketing approach. In the future, marketing and HR will need to work closely in order to deliver a seamless experience. It’s not enough for your customers to love your brand—to make it sustainable, your employees should embrace it too.