Category: Marketing

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Engagement Marketing

A Gift to Improve Employee Engagement

This holiday, give the gift of employee engagement … and it’s free!  Employee Engagement Advice Book is a new e-book written by members of the Employee Engagement Network (EEN) and compiled by network host David Zinger.  EEN members (including me) share advice – limited to one sentence each – on how an organization can improve employee engagement.

The book contains over 200 contributions from people who are passionate about employee engagement, including several featured in this blog: Terry Seamon (see his advice on page 6); Kevin Burns (page 9); Paul Hebert (page 28); and Richard Parkes Cordock (page 35). (My contribution is also on page 35.)

Recurrent themes include communication (especially listening), valuing employees, empowering them, recognizing their efforts, and leadership involvement. It’s worth scrolling through to find the quotes that resonate with you. Pass it along and share it among your colleagues … to inspire them and/or reinforce their employee engagement efforts.

Happy Giving!

 

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Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Zappos Culture Book: Best Ever Business Reading


Zappos.com’s 2009 Culture Book is here (!) and I’m thrilled to add it to my business library – next to the previous edition that I got on my visit to Zappos last year.

The book is written by Zappos employees who share what the company culture means to them. It’s a beautifully designed and produced book, supplemented with color photos and captions that capture the true spirit of Zappos. The book includes Zappos core values, a brief time line of the company’s 10 year history, and, most important, what the people who live the Zappos culture have to say about it.

Regardless of where they work in the company (customer loyalty center, merchandising, finance, technology & project management, Kentucky warehouse, marketing, etc.), Zappos employees share how valued they feel as members of the Zappos family … how they engage in “serious fun” … how they’re empowered to do and be their best … how they live the company’s values … and how truly happy they are to work at Zappos everyday. (Would your employees say the same? Honestly, I don’t know that many companies whose employees love their workplace.)

Zappos Culture Book should be mandatory reading in every undergraduate business class, MBA, and leadership program.

Read this book to your kids at night, and I swear they’ll tell people “When I grow up, I want to work at Zappos!” This is no fairy tale – Zappos is for real.

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Engagement Marketing

Memo to Senior Management: Take Care of Your People

Memo1

I found this great quote from Dr. Judith M. Bardwick:

“When people are perceived as a cost and not a resource, when they are treated as a liability and not an asset, when no one seems to know or care that they are there, they don’t work well, and they don’t stay.”

Who are these ‘people?’

They’re your employees … your contractors, vendors, and consultants … your partners … and ultimately your brand advocates or – depending on how you treated them – your brand adversaries.

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Marketing

New Book Integrates Marketing, PR and Social Media

Just released – Marketing Public Relations: A Marketer’s Approach to Public Relations and Social Media by Gaetan Giannini, a new textbook that covers a truly integrated approach to promotion using both new and traditional media.

Wait – a textbook? Why would I be excited about a textbook? Two reasons:

  1. While the subject of public relations (PR) is usually taught in schools from either a communications or journalism perspective, this book covers PR from a marketing perspective. Gaetan, a former marketing exec who is now an assistant professor and department chair at Cedar Crest College, wrote the book because he was unable to find a suitable text that integrated current PR and marketing practice in the new media landscape.
  2. It’s a great reference for business practitioners – those new to marketing and marketing generalists who know the value of PR but don’t apply it everyday.
    According to Gaetan, this book “recognizes the similarities between PR, word-of-mouth, and social networking media and creates a framework for constructing marketing strategies that incorporate these highly credible and cost-effective tools.”

The book explains current PR applications (“Non-Media Connectors and Word-of-Mouth”) and updates traditional PR practices (“The Press Kit and Press Release,” “Selling the Story,” and “Crisis Management”). It also features a full glossary (in addition to defining key terms throughout each chapter) and index.

The book is reasonably priced for a textbook – around $90. Quite a bargain for a business reference book considering the price of a costly PR mistake.

To learn more, check out Gaetan’s book-related blog on Marketing Public Relations.

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Marketing

Help for Marketers Dealing with the “New Different”

My friend and marketing research colleague Chris Bonney has written a thought-provoking white paper, The View from the Front, in which he shares his impressions and suggestions for navigating what he calls the “New Different” marketplace.

As I’m highlighting just a few excerpts here, I encourage you to read the complete paper. Better yet, share it within your organization and use it to spark discussion, especially on how to compete successfully in the new year and beyond.

Advice for Marketers and Business Leaders

  • “You can’t sit this recession out. Despite the obvious reasons for tightening your belt, this is not the time to be timid … Let your competitors sit this one out. Let them allow consumers to forget about them by not communicating regularly, or by taking ‘safer’ approaches in their products, pricing, and marketing communications. Market share you pick up now is going to reflect in your bottom line when you need it most.”
  • “Stop playing the victim. Before long, someone’s going to make a breakthrough that’s going to put us all to shame. It’ll become obvious that while we were staying the course, whoever’s behind this breakthrough will have been working hard to figure out where the winds are and sail ahead. I don’t want to be embarrassed by this. Do you?”
  • “You’ve still got to get close to the consumer [and] Get out. Ask Questions. Listen.You can only do so much of this by e-mail, Instant Message or Facebook or Twitter. You’ve got to get close and in a context where there’s time and safe space for the consumer to unwind, explain and give you the kind of context and color that tells you how to connect with them.”
  • “You’ve got to constantly re-invent [and] Don’t kill the creatives. They can be found in every one of your departments if you’ll just let them loose to push the edges, test the limits, stretch the envelope and otherwise provoke you with new, scary ideas. Tempting as it may be to consider such people nonessential during tough times … they can be the sources of your future success.”

According to Chris,

“Perhaps the biggest challenge facing many organizations, and the most important thing you can do to successfully embrace the New Different is to learn to let go and be brave in developing new ideas, new products, new services and new ways of distributing your ideas, products, and services. Use the technologies of today. Respect the changing consumer perspective. And recognize that by the time you’ve done all this conditions will have probably changed again. That’s how it is these days.”

And I imagine that’s how it will be for quite a while.

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Marketing

Do It Yourself Marketing for Entrepreneurs

In the past several months, I’ve seen a tremendous increase in the number of new business filings listed in my local business journal. It’s no surprise, given the current economy. (Background: I started my business during the recession in the late 1980’s.)

So for all new (and wannabe) entrepreneurs, here’s a great resource. Dana VanDen Heuvel (aka Marketing Savant) created a 30 day do-it-yourself marketing e-course for entrepreneurs. Dana posted the series earlier in the summer and has offered a complete e-course recap of the program’s marketing ideas and action items. Here’s a sample of the easy-to-digest content:

  • Building your database (day 6)
  • Engaging in meaningful (rather than mindless) marketing (day 10)
  • Becoming “slightly famous” (day 23)

It’s also a great resource for long-time entrepreneurs who need a marketing boost.

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Interview with Chip Bell on Internal Customer Service

Chip Bell has been writing about customer service for as long as I can remember. An internationally renowned consultant, speaker and author, he has written several customer service classics, including his latest book, Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers, co-authored with John Patterson. [Note: see my review of his new book.]

I asked Chip to share his expertise and insight on the topic of internal customer service.

QSM: What do you see as the relationship between internal customer service and external customer service?

Chip: The requirement for remarkable external service is exactly the same for internal service. The quality of the service the external customer gets is a match set with the service that is delivered to colleagues internally. Go to the “back of the house” of any Ritz-Carlton hotel and you will observe the exact same service between associates that you will see the front desk clerk deliver to a hotel guest. Internal service reflects the organization’s true commitment to remarkable service.

Service between internal units is sometimes like getting service from a monopoly service provider. If you don’t like the service from your Department of Motor Vehicles, you can’t take your business elsewhere. Likewise, if you get poor service from the HR department as an employee, you often cannot go to another HR department like you might abandon a Sears for a Nordstrom. However, it is important to remember that almost all internal units could be outsourced. Job security does not always come with being the sole source, especially in challenging economic times.

When customers (internal or external) do not have a choice, and get poor service, they often take out their frustration on the front line person. It suggests perhaps an even higher standard from units or organizations that are the only game in town.

QSM: Based on your extensive experience in the field, what would you site as an example of great internal customer service?

Chip: Several exemplars come to mind. Sewell Automotive (Dallas) has been the #1 car seller in the nation across most of their brands—Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, GMC, etc. One of their secrets is the terrific partnership between sales and service. Other examples include USAA (San Antonio), the insurance company that caters to the military, retired military and military dependents. Zappos.com and Amazon.com are both best in class as e-tailers for their great handouts and superior internal service.

QSM: Who should be responsible for internal customer service?

Chip: The same people who are responsible for external customer service—everyone! Customer-centric and customer-focused organizations, like the ones already named, make every employee responsible for remarkable service. A service ethic is hardwired into their organizational DNA. I asked a waitress in a Ritz-Carlton hotel restaurant what she liked most about her job. “Working here at the Ritz has made me a better wife and parent,” she said. “The values that we practice at the hotel with each other and with the guests are the values that make all relationships special.”

QSM: What advice do you have for companies struggling with maintaining customer service (both internal and external) in an environment with reduced resources?

Chip: As cash-strapped customers seek service, they expect more and more value for their hard-earned funds. Customers may not always be able to judge the quality of the products they buy or the fairness of the price they have to pay, but they are always gifted at judging the quality of their service experience. It is the front-line that creates that experience.

When companies started making cuts, they should remember to spare the most important variable in their customer’s definition of value. Front-line employees should be respected, heard, trained, empowered, and affirmed for their crucial contribution to the company’s reputation. It is important to remember that employees learn how to serve customers by the way they are served by their leaders.

QSM: Thank you, Chip!

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Who is More Engaged: Nonprofit or Forprofit Employees?

An interesting question that I’m finding is a challenge to answer. My initial presumption was nonprofit staff would be more engaged because their work is mission-driven. However, I’ve also known nonprofit employees who are minimally engaged because their workplace situation turned out to be negative. So I started a quest to find research on nonprofit employment engagement and discovered there’s not much out there.

What I was able to find came from Gallup, and it surprised me. Jessica Tyler, Practice Manager in Employee Engagement, shared comparative data from Gallup’s global database with results showing employees in the nonprofit segment were actually less “engaged” and slightly more “actively disengaged” than employees in the overall database.

Commenting on this, Gallup consultant Bill McEwen noted: “It certainly appears that the employees of not-for-profit organizations, while perhaps attracted by a strong sense of mission, are often less (rather than more) engaged than the average employee. Of course, this varies by organization … as some of them are super in recognizing and energizing those who work for them, while others may pay great attention to their mission and relatively little attention to the people called upon to fulfill it.”

As Jessica aptly noted: “Connecting to the mission is just one of the [many] critical elements involved in a person or team’s engagement.” But it’s clearly not enough.

[Thanks, Jessica and Bill, for your help with this post.]

Special request

While most employee engagement research seems to include the healthcare and government sectors, I haven’t found data on other nonprofits that include social & human services, arts & cultural organizations, professional associations, education, and membership-based organizations. If you’re aware of any, please let me know.

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Engagement Marketing

Interview with Barry Nelson on Employee Communications & Commitment

Corporate communications expert Barry Nelson, retired founder of The Story Board, is a strong advocate of workplace journalism – a business communications approach that addresses employee concerns along with business concerns. With economic turmoil taking a toll on employee engagement, I wanted to get Barry’s perspective on how we can use employee communications to make a difference.

QSM: What’s the most important message that companies need to send to their employees to minimize disengagement?

Barry: The whole trick of getting through hard and trying change with your people still behind you emotionally is to establish a mutually caring human connection with them. Business reasoning and economic motivation aren’t unimportant, they’re just not the most powerful tools. To establish such a connection, the company can’t simply tell, but must show its staff that the company’s top management cares about them as human beings, not just work assets. That means a company must set up institutional infrastructure — policies, systems, programs — that average workers can recognize as promoting their welfare. This goodwill toward workers can’t be whimsical or dependent on the style of a boss who may be gone tomorrow — it has to emanate from and be embedded in the company itself.

A well validated body of research shows that companies where employees believe their organization (not just their direct supervisor) supports their best interests, are overwhelmingly more likely to enjoy high, across-the-board levels of employee loyalty and commitment than those where that perception is lacking. But for employees to get and maintain such a perception, they need a continuing stream of evidence that it’s so. This presents an opportunity for internal communication programs to systematically provide the needed evidence. That’s why I’ve always urged that at least a portion of the content in ongoing internal communications should be about issues employees experience in the work environment, and what the employer is doing to help. It can’t be all about management’s view of the world.

QSM: What internal communication trends do you see emerging in the coming year (or two)?

Barry: Really hard to say, but I would hope that the immensely more difficult job of maintaining employee commitment in these hard times, when work-force and perhaps pay reductions may be unavoidable, might drive our more resourceful colleagues toward more empathetic, less management-centric forms of communication. The rise of social media clearly offers that potential, as overall communication becomes more multi-directional and democratic. But without an underlying philosophy that management doesn’t have all the answers, that employee views matter greatly, even on issues not perceived from the top as central to the strategic agenda (but which could be disrupting efficiency and sapping worker vitality) — without this more humble institutional mindset, the mere implementation of new communication toys won’t do much good.

QSM: What advice do you have for smaller organizations who don’t have anyone formally responsible for employee communications?

Barry: Such an organization these days is almost surely one with a small enough work force that a high level of personal contact by the top leaders is either happening or at least possible. I’d advise those leaders, and the HR or administrative staff who support them, to remember that you lead people mainly by their feelings. And those feelings won’t run in your favor unless you show your people, often and sometimes very deliberately — going out of your way if necessary — that you genuinely care about them. There’s no more powerful communication, or one more likely to be repaid, than an act or expression of love. You don’t need a communication degree to send that message. But you do need to really feel it.

QSM: This is great advice for every manager and business communicator. Thank you, Barry!

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Employee Recognition Backfires

As a follow up to my last post on Employee Appreciation Day, I was reminded of a positive-turned-negative recognition experience I had earlier in my career.

The positive recognition came from the American Marketing Association in appreciation of my service as a volunteer leader. AMA’s executive staff acknowledged its volunteer leaders (at both the national and chapter board levels) with a letter of thanks. In addition, staff asked for the name of the chief contact where the volunteer was employed so AMA could acknowledge the company’s support as well. (AMA was smart to realize that in many cases volunteers relied on company resources and/or were allowed time to be involved in such professional development activities.)

The message conveyed in this letter was basically: We appreciate the leadership contributions of your employee [name] who served as [volunteer leadership position] … and we appreciate your support of their efforts in advancing marketing practice.”

What did you say your name was?

The bank I worked for was undergoing a merger, so I gave AMA the name of the CEO of the merged bank. I even forgot about this recognition until several months later when my boss showed me a copy of AMA’s letter that had been sent to the bank CEO. Not knowing who I was (or even taking the time to find out and respond), he wrote a note across the top of the letter: “What’s this about?” The letter was sent to HR, forwarded to the senior VP in charge of the region where I worked, sent to my boss’s boss, and eventually landed on my boss’s desk. My boss then asked me to provide a write-up about my AMA involvement for the higher-ups … and I never heard about it again.

Come on, how difficult would it have been for the CEO or one of his regional officers to have followed up with a note or phone call? (Someone in the executive suite could have at least whited-out the “What’s this about?” at the top of the letter, scribbled “Nice job” in its place, and sent me a copy.)

My husband teased me as I wrote this post, “Get over it, already!” I did a long time ago. I just wanted to share this story because it reminded me that effective recognition doesn’t have to be expensive or extensive in terms of what it involves. The irony here is that AMA’s letter gave my employer an easy way to recognize an employee … but the CEO didn’t care. That was the message I took away from this experience.

Your turn

Have you ever been in a situation where employee recognition backfired? Would love to hear about it.