Tag: internal communication

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Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing & Emotional Connections (Part 3)

The final segment in this series builds on my last post with questions that help employees feel connected to an organization through its mission.

In Gallup’s in-depth management study featured in the book First, Break All the Rules, researchers Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman discovered 12 key questions that measure an organization’s strength.  Many of the questions relate directly to employee engagement.  For example:

  • Do I know what is expected of me at work?
  • At work, do I have the opportunity to be what I do best every day?
  • Does my supervisor seem to care about me as a person?
  • At work, do my opinions seem to count?
  • Does the company mission make me feel my job is important?

Employee who can respond positively to these questions are likely to feel a strong connection to their organization (including their co-workers and customers).

Can you feel the love now?

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Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing & Emotional Connections (Part 2)

As a follow up to my last post on connecting with employees, here is how you can convey the message that your employees are part of something meaningful.

You need to be able to answer these questions:

  • What is your organization’s mission and purpose?
  • How can employees contribute to fulfilling the mission?
  • And how can they be made to feel part of something special?

If you need a model for this, just ask the people who work in nonprofit organizations.  They’re usually passionate about what they do, and it’s not for the money (especially since nonprofits don’t usually pay much.)  Most likely they are there for the mission.

Like nonprofits, some for-profits are able to effectively address these questions.  Otherwise, corporate America would have a lot of vacancies to fill!

So mission-fit and values are critical parts of the “big picture” in helping employees understand how & where they can find meaning in an organization (regardless of whether it’s in a nonprofit or for-profit).

More to come in my next post …

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Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing & Emotional Connections (Part 1)

Have you noticed the emotion quotient is big these days?  In marketing circles you hear lots of talk about getting consumers to “love” your brand … making an emotional connection with customers … and creating “passionate” brand evangelists, etc. (Can you feel the love?)

This is all well & good, as long as you start FIRST with your employees – because if they don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.  And you can’t buy employee engagement with just a paycheck.

As Stan Slapp so aptly put it: “Don’t try to use money as a means to emotionally connect with your employees … Bribery won’t do it.”

So, what will? To connect with employees, you need to create:

  • a sense of common purpose
  • a sense of belonging, and
  • a sense of being part of something special.

How? By constantly communicating and demonstrating that your employees are part of something meaningful.

To be continued …

[Note: I found Stan’s quote in the proceedings from the 2003 Compete through Service symposium hosted by Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership.  The proceedings from the 2003 and other symposiums are available from Avnet, Inc.]

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Customer service Musings

Go Figure!

OK, so it’s not a perfect world. Even in successful, customer-centric organizations there are still pockets of staff who don’t recognize or respect their internal customers.  It’s hard to believe, though, how certain areas can get away with this.

One of my colleagues works for a company that is part of a larger organization.  When we met recently, she shared her frustration about a particular (more like peculiar) department in the parent company. In dealing with some of the staff there, her requests for assistance are typically met with one of three responses.  “Sometimes we’re mildly ignored, ” she told me, “and other times we’re barely tolerated or just dismissed.”

We pondered this situation over lunch, including various efforts to bring it to management’s attention at the parent company (to no avail).  And we concluded that it’s just one of corporate life’s little mysteries.

The good news is the rest of the organization is genuinely committed to customer satisfaction.  And the even better news is my colleague and her associates don’t let this one department affect how they treat their own internal (& external) customers.  Way to go!

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Engagement

Executive Firing – Can You Hear Me Now?

Current and would-be CEO’s would be wise to check out Leadership IQ’s recent study on why CEOs get fired.  I found this recently on Michelangelo Celli’s Inside the Loop blog.

Here are the top reasons for giving CEOs the ax:

  • mismanaging change
  • ignoring customers
  • tolerating low performers
  • denying reality
  • too much talk & not enough action.

mc’s post focuses on the importance of maintaining communication with customers (i.e., ignore customers at your own risk), and I wholeheartedly agree.

What’s also imperative is that CEO’s maintain communication with employees, including soliciting and listening to employee input.  The “too much talk & not enough action” is the finding that resonates the most with me.

I’ve heard too many stories of executive searches gone wrong because the winning CEO candidate gave “good talk” (enough to impress the search committee) and then after getting hired, just kept talking.  These are the guys who spend their first few weeks/months on the job getting to know everyone on staff by telling them their vision/new plans for the organization.

Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk …

There’s nothing wrong with that – people do want to know what the new guy is going to do – as long as the new CEO spends as much time listening as he does talking.  Unfortunately, some CEOs waltz in with their ideas without first assessing the situation … which involves listening.  (You remember that old cliche about why we were created with “two ears and only one mouth” … )

So here’s some advice for those in new CEO positions: listen first, listen well, and talk later.

And my advice to the staff of the new CEO who comes in talking without listening?  Update your resumes & start networking.

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Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing’s Voice – What Are You Saying? (Continued)

As a follow up to my last post, I wanted to address the question: how do you project a positive voice to the customer?

Before I get into the answer, let’s start with why it’s important to have a positive voice. Whether you’re communicating through a company blog, corporate newsletter, or face-to-face time with employees, customers can tell the tone of your company’s “voice.”

Customers (like employees) have this incredible, innate sense to cut through the customer-focus BS/rhetoric* to know whether or not you genuinely care about them. *Please note: it’s only BS/rhetoric if it’s lip-service and not a true part of your organization’s culture.  And therein lies the secret.

A company that values both its customers AND the employees who serve them creates a transparent culture. How employees are treated translates into the way customers are treated … and this sends a strong message about your organization.

So projecting a positive voice stems from internal marketing and comes from within – from leaders who are truly customer- and employee-focused.

What message is your organization sending?

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing’s Voice – What Are You Saying?

An essential element of internal marketing involves connecting employees with customers – finding ways to reach out to your customers and proactively listen to them. Employees need to hear the “voice of the customer” to gain insight into customer needs and how they can be better served.

In addition, employees also need to provide the “voice to the customer” … a term I found recently in an interview with my friend & diva marketer Toby Bloomberg.  Toby talks about companies who use multi-author blogs to give customers “a broader look at the voices inside the company.”

What a great reminder that the voice of the employees in an organization is also important! The stronger the rapport between employees and customers, the stronger the relationship between the customers and the organization/brand.

Assuming that the voice to the customer is a positive one. (To be continued … )

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Engagement Marketing

Low Tech Communications (Or “Everything Old is New Again”)

In today’s world of high-tech, constantly “on” communications, I find it fascinating and somewhat amusing to know that some executives are creatively reverting to low-tech forms of communication to reach their employees.

A great example is the “desk drop” cited in Herb Baum’s book, The Transparent Leader.  When he wants to share important information or a new company product with employees, the information is dropped on each person’s desk … a more personal and effective approach than using e-mail.

And in The Cornucopia Group’s e-newsletter, The Loop, I read about a company that implemented a “no e-mail day” once a month to encourage people within the firm to actually talk to each other.  What a concept!

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing’s Critical Connections (Part 3 – continued)

When connecting employees with customers, it’s important to focus on ALL employees, not just those with customer contact who are usually the recipients of most customer-focused training.

So, how do you make this connection with non-contact employees?

A great example is Celestial Seasonings, the herbal tea company.  They created a composite of their typical consumer and personified her  —  she’s known as “Tracy Jones.”  When staff consider product or packaging changes, they ask” What would Tracy Jones think?  How will this affect her?”

Here are some other ways to link non-contact staff and customers:

  • Visit customers — send non-contact employees to accompany sales reps or business development staff when they call on customers.  Let them see and hear “the voice of the customer” up close & personal.
  • Ambassador program — at one of the former Bell telecomm companies, non-sales employees volunteered to serve as “ambassadors.”  They visited customers on a quarterly basis to check in on how the customers were doing … to let them know the company cared about them.
  • Adopt-a-Customer — a professional association with chapters across the country used a variation of this in their “adopt-a-member” program.  Association headquarters staff (e.g., in accounting, membership, information services, the mail room, etc.) adopted chapters and were placed on their contact lists.  Staff then received information on their adopted chapter’s programs, membership changes, publicity, etc. … to learn first-hand how the chapters served their association members.  And the chapters benefited by having a direct contact at the headquarters office.

The key is to find ways to make a tangible connection to customers, so your employees (regardless of their level of contact) will see them as real people, not just faceless names or account numbers.

Your customers will also benefit by being able to put a face or voice on their contact with your organization.

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing’s Critical Connections (Part 3)

So far this posting series has focused on connecting employees to their organizations as well as within their organizations.  This week I’ll address the last of Internal Marketing’s Critical Connections — connecting employees with customers.

Customer-Focus is Key

It’s no secret that customers judge an organization and its brand by how well they’re treated by everyone in the organization they come in contact with.  When asked why consumers switched companies, one study found that nearly 70% left because they felt the attention they got from the company was poor or they hardly got any attention at all!

Connecting employees with customers — ensuring employees are customer-focused — is a key component of internal marketing.

What does being customer-focused really mean?

It’s understanding your customers (including knowing who they are and what they want from your company), and it’s being attentive and responsive to their needs.  To achieve even a basic level of customer-focus, employees need to be educated about your customers.  They need to know:

  • Who your customers are
  • Why they come to your organization in the first place
  • How they feel about your organization — from customer complaints, feedback, and satisfaction surveys.  (See Pop Quiz: Customers 101.)

The more your employees know about your customers, they better they can serve them.  So don’t forget to get employee input on how to improve customer satisfaction.

Here’s a thought-provoking starter question you can use in staff meetings.  Ask employees: If you were head of this organization, what are the three things you would do to improve customer service or satisfaction?

Some other ways to connect employees with customers:

  • Host an “Open House” where you invite customers to your place of business to meet & mingle with staff.  I remember hearing about a small company that would host small groups of clients on Friday afternoons (tied-in with the firm’s casual day) for a social hour.
  • On a much larger scale, General Motors Saturn car division hosts an annual get together of Saturn car owners.
  • One of my favorite examples is QuadGraphics, a Wisconsin-based printing firm that hosts a three-day “camp” where customers attend educational seminars and fun events to learn about printing processes… they also learn more about the company and connect with its staff.
  • At some catalog companies, employees will “mystery shop” the competition.  They actually shop their competitors to learn what it’s like to call & place an order (either by phone or online), check out merchandise quality, or see what’s involved in handling a return.  The value of this exercise (where appropriate & applicable) is that employees develop empathy for the customer experience + gain insight on how to improve their company’s own operations.

These internal marketing tools can be used with all employees, not just those with customer contact.  But non-contact staff pose a unique challenge — in what additional ways can you connect them to customers?

I’ll cover that in the last post of this series.