Tag: management

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Customer service Engagement

You Can Forget the Customer Experience

Not that it doesn’t matter, because it does. But you can forget the customer experience IF you neglect to take care of the employee experience.

Here are several favorite quotes that capture the essence of the employee-customer experience connection.

“Paradoxically, to achieve an emotionally connecting customer experience, employees come first, ahead of the customer.”  Tom Peters

“When you improve your employees’ lives, they work harder and ultimately improve your customers’ lives.”  Jeanne Bliss

“The only reason your business is successful is because every interaction between employees and customers is positive. This only happens when employees are treated super well.”  Ann Rhoades

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.”  Stephen R. Covey

“We can’t expect to win in the marketplace until we’re winning in the workplace … That means employee engagement is job one.”  Douglas Conant

“There is no way to deliver a great Customer Experience with miserable employees.”  Steve Cannon

As McKinsey & Company’s Sylvie Bardaune, Sebastien Lacroix, and Nicolas Maechler write in their article, When the Customer Experience Starts at Home:

“The closer a company can align its commitment to customer-centricity with the interests of its employees, the closer it will get to achieving its customer-strategy goals.” 

 

 

Categories
Engagement

3 Questions that Determine Whether Employees Choose to Engage

Workplace engagement is a both a responsibility and choice shared by employees and employers:

  • Employees are responsible for their own engagement in that they choose to show up in their jobs ready, willing, and able to do their best work, and
  • Employers are responsible for choosing to foster an engaging workplace where employees are enabled to do their best work.

What drives an employee’s decision to be engaged at work is based on how that person answers these three questions:

  1. What’s in it for me besides a paycheck?
    This is a primary consideration that gets to the heart of why an employee chooses to stay with an employer based on the nature of the work involved, how meaningful it is, quality of organizational culture, and benefits.
  2. What difference do I make?
    Employees want to know how their efforts contribute to the organization’s mission and goals. This involves having a clear line-of-sight as to how their work impacts the people they serve (customers, clients, patients, members, guests, etc.) co-workers, stakeholders, the community where the organization is located, and the organization’s overall success. Think of the NASA janitor who wasn’t just cleaning floors — he was helping to put a man on the moon.
  3. Does my employer care about me and my work?
    Employees also want their employers to recognize and respect their roles within the organization and support them with the tools necessary to do the best job possible.

Takeaway questions for managers
What are you currently doing to positively or negatively impact your employees’ choice to stay engaged?

And what will you do about it?

Categories
Engagement

5 Ways Nonprofits Can Effectively Engage Employees and Volunteers

“Mission matters. The people behind the mission also matter, and their passion for the mission can never be taken for granted.”  [from Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits.]                                       

This is why engaging staff members and volunteers involves special care beyond just a “recruit ‘em & recognize ‘em” approach.

How do nonprofit leaders and managers effectively attract, develop, and retain talent? They succeed by intentionally creating a positive workplace culture. Here’s how.

1. Learn about your employees and volunteers: who they are, their interest in serving your organization, and their expectations of working with you. Ask them:

  • What appealed to you to join our organization?
  • What inspires you most about being here?
  • What do you expect to give and get from serving as an employee or volunteer?
  • Would you recommend this organization to others?

Also conduct exit interviews with people who voluntarily leave your organization so you can learn more about their employee or volunteer experience.

2. Clarify and clearly communicate what your organization expects from its staff and volunteers and what they can expect from you. Be honest about what everyone’s commitment entails.

3. Provide the necessary tools and information people need to best serve your nonprofit. This includes orientation and training; sharing the mission, vision, strategic plans, and goals; program overviews and updates; etc. Also consider how operational or policy changes may impact staff and volunteer efforts, and communicate any changes and the rationale behind them in a timely manner.

4. Recognize and acknowledge your employees’ and volunteers’ value. While designated “holidays” like Employee Appreciation Day and National Volunteer Week provide an opportunity to celebrate the people who serve your organization, it’s important to let them know they’re appreciated throughout the year.

5. Proactively listen to your staff and volunteers – ask for their feedback and ideas – and respond appropriately.

Nonprofit employees and volunteers are precious resources. Treat them carefully and with the respect they deserve.

Categories
Customer service Marketing

How Careful are You with Your Brand?

Your brand is conveyed in everything you do to communicate and deliver your product/service offerings; i.e., what and how people think about your brand is based on the experiences they have with your business.

This story illustrates how a business manager formed her impression of a company’s brand when seeking a new payroll processing firm.

“I created a short list of companies and decided to do a bit of research before contacting any of them. My research was to simply visit each applicable website.

Turns out one of them had so many typos I immediately deleted them from the shortlist. Perhaps I should have contacted someone to tell them about the numerous errors, but I suspected they probably wouldn’t care. After all, if they cared there wouldn’t have been any typos, especially on their home page.

My thought process was this: if their website is so grammatically messed up, what will they do with our payroll?”

Organizations in all sectors — B2B, B2C, and nonprofits — need to be vigilant with their brands. In a study of mobile customers, 55% agreed with the statement “A frustrating experience on a website hurts my opinion of the brand overall.” That’s just one segment of customers, and it’s just one channel of brand communication.

Details, details, details …

While a brand is an intangible concept, its impact on the company’s bottom line is tangible. A spectrum of even minor product problems, customer service missteps, and communication errors can impact people’s perceptions of a company’s brand and its ultimate ability to attract or lose customers.

“The most successful people know that you either pay attention to the details now or you will absolutely pay the consequences later.” — Steve Keating, The Wisdom of Brown M&M’s

Can you afford to be careless with your brand?

 

 

 

 

Categories
Engagement

Keep This in Mind When You’re Planning to Restructure

The Reorganization
by David Zinger

They moved us,
yet we were not moved.

They changed us,
yet we remained the same.

Boxes on pyramidal charts
yanked off the shelf
like Cheerios from a grocery store.

They morphed us
into a matrix.
Duties reassigned as we searched
for our coffee mug that failed to move with us.

They pushed.
We stiffened.
Memos menaced as washroom whispers hissed.

Bounce back.
Start over.
Invite us.
Involve us.
Trust us.

We move together,
not chess pieces at war
checking each other into corners,
we play on the same board.

– From David Zinger’s book of poems on workplace engagement, Assorted Zingers, illustrated by cartoonist John Junson.

 

 

 

Categories
Engagement

After Onboarding, How to Prevent the Descent into Disengagement

New employees are easy to engage given the fair amount of attention they receive at the outset. They’re likely to be welcomed with open arms and treated to meetings with executives who explain the company’s mission, vision and goals; reinforce their value to the company; and introduce them to their respective departments to meet their managers and co-workers. Knowing where they fit in the organization and how they can contribute, these new employees are anxious and eager to get started.

This level of attention wanes the longer employees are on the job, and that’s when the potential for becoming disengaged sets in due to organizational complacency; i.e., “You know what you’re supposed to do, so do it. We’ll be in touch eventually.” To illustrate, I often ask participants in my internal marketing workshops how they get reminded of their fit and value in their respective organizations. Many of them acknowledge that their job descriptions are out of date. They also admit that job-related expectations and goals are typically discussed only during the annual performance review – an event about as welcome as a root canal.

More than organizational complacency

Another contributing factor involves marketplace dynamics. Evolving customer needs, competition, financial pressures, etc., also prompt changes in company goals and strategies. Yet revised strategies and adjusted expectations of employees may not be communicated top-down to everyone in the organization. Employees know things are changing within the company – but they don’t know the reasons for it and what they’re supposed to do about it.

To learn what’s going on in the company, some employees will take the initiative to approach their managers. Over time, however, they become frustrated if they have to continually seek out company and job-related information beyond the grapevine. Other employees just hunker down as they quietly disengage.

You can avoid this situation and keep employees engaged with this basic two-pronged approach:

  • proactively share what’s happening in the company and why
  • continually reinforce employees’ alignment and fit within the organization, including how their efforts individually and collectively contribute to the bottom line.

Onboarding new groups of employees may be once-and-done, but communicating the company’s purpose, its future, and how employees can make a positive impact, is ongoing.

“Don’t make your employees guess about whether they’re doing enough or fulfilling [the company’s] expectations… Make people feel like they are in the loop,  and they’ll feel more engaged… ”
– Alan E. Hall

 

Categories
Engagement

“Maniacal Operations” and Other Sad but True Tales

When it comes to management and organizational dysfunction, there’s little that surprises me anymore.

  • Asking a colleague about work, I got this description of the company’s new president: “I know all about his first marriage, his second marriage, his grandchildren, etc., but he doesn’t know anything about me. He dominates executive meetings with his talking but checks his cell phone when others are speaking.”
  • A participant in one of my recent workshops asked the group for ideas on how to help communicate the company’s top 20 strategic goals to employees.
  • A client told me she’s concerned about her daughter approaching job burnout. While the young woman loves her work, she’s trying to survive what she describes as a stressful environment of “maniacal operations.”

In an “ideal” world …

There’s so such thing. Here are more true office tales that may leave you shaking your head:

In the real world …

I’ve learned it’s healthier not to expend precious energy getting upset about such examples. It’s better to turn to people like Scott Adams (Dilbert creator), E. L. Kersten (Despair, Inc. founder), and Robert I. Sutton (author of The Asshole Survival Guide and The No Asshole Rule), who provide comic relief and guidance to help us cope with “maniacal operations” and other types of workplace absurdity.

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

Engaging Workplace Wisdom — Tips on What Works to Engage Others

While I typically speak about employee/volunteer engagement with people currently active in the workforce, the prospect of being with an audience of retirees was too good to pass up.

My recent session for Penn State Lehigh Valley’s SAGE Lecture Series was designed with a dual purpose: 1) share the current state of workplace engagement and 2) tap into the rich reservoir of the audience’s job experiences to be shared with students. Twenty-six students also participated as part of their Intercultural Community-Building class – a first-year experience course that introduces students “to the concepts of identity and multiculturalism, and encourage them to engage in interactive discussions with others,” according to Kristy Weidner Hove, instructor and Institutional Planning Coordinator at Lehigh Valley Penn State.

After discussing the importance of engagement and what leads people to engage or disengage on the job, the audience broke into small groups of retirees and students to share their experiences in the workplace. Each breakout group then identified and shared their top three tips on engaging employees, volunteers, and co-workers.

Here are the resulting tips, compiled and organized by Kristy Hove, that reflect a variety of leadership, management, and collaborative practices based on actual experience.

TOP TIPS ON WHAT WORKS TO ENGAGE PEOPLE
AS EMPLOYEES, VOLUNTEERS, AND COWORKERS
Penn State Lehigh Valley SAGE Workshop

LISTEN

  • Don’t just hear what others have to say but listen to them and retain what they say.
  • At all levels, the person must be able to listen as a sign of respect.

COMMUNICATE

  • Respond to others in a way that indicates you understand them.
  • Communicate among each other and comment whenever the person did well.
  • Find a way that works to communicate with the group; i.e., face-to-face or online.

ACKNOWLEDGE AND REWARD

  • Acknowledge people at all levels, both intrinsically and concrete incentives.
  • Give credit to the person who comes up with the idea; mention his or her name in front of the group or boss.
  • Create an environment for recognizing and rewarding achievement.

KNOW NAMES AND ROLES

  • Learn people’s names.
  • For new employees or volunteers, ask the people they’ll be working with to introduce themselves and what they do.

BE ACCOMMODATING

  • Ask volunteers what they’d like to do. Explain you’ll try to accommodate if you can. Leaders need to be prepared for alternative, unexpected requests.

INSPIRE TEAMWORK

  • Team work makes the dream work.
  • Group activities and communication help with teamwork.

CREATE A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT

  • Create an environment where employees enjoy what they are doing.
  • Attitude – people will mirror what they see.

ENCOURAGE SOCIALIZATION

  • Recognize the value of socialization. Some groups value the “journey” and inclusion as much as achievement.
  • Provide opportunities for social introductions.
  • Social gatherings can help with comfortability/familiarity .
  • Encourage openness among employees.
  • Find a friend at work.

PAY RESPECT

  • Show sincere respect and interest in people.
  • Management should maintain distance and yet be open to employees and their ideas.
  • Recognize abilities and limitations of the employees.
  • Act responsibly.
  • Treat everyone equally (Golden Rule).

Special thanks to Diane McAloon, Community & Alumni Outreach, and Kristy Hove for helping with this special workshop, and to all retirees and students for their active participation.

Categories
Engagement

Who is Actually Responsible for Workplace Engagement?

Need to create an engaged workplace? While workshops, webinars, and articles abound on the subject, it takes more than just buying into the value and practice of engagement to be effective. It’s also important to understand who is actually responsible for engagement in the workplace.

Engagement is a responsibility shared by both employees and employers:

  • Employees are responsible for their own engagement in that they need to show up on the job ready, willing, and able to do their best work, and
  • Employers are responsible for creating and maintaining an engaging workplace where employees want to and are enabled to do their best work.

This responsibility also involves choice. Here is what several thought leaders say on the subject.

Quotes on individual employee engagement

“You are the boss of you. That means you get to decide/choose what your attitude is and how you react. Choose wisely.” Alexandria Trusov

“…you have to want to be engaged. There has to be deep-seated desire in your heart and mind to participate, to be involved, and to make a difference. If the desire isn’t there, no person or book can plant it within you.” Timothy R. Clark

“Wellbeing at work is based on our intentions, actions, and connections. It is not an employer program, policy, or work perk. What are you waiting for? Walk through the door and let work make you well.” David Zinger

Quotes on employer engagement

“Working to create a positive culture where people choose to join, stay, develop and perform is part & parcel of any HRD or CEO agenda.” Tony Jackson

“On what high-performing companies should be striving to create: a great place for great people to do great work.” – Marilyn Carlson Nelson

“Engagement will happen if and when an organization sees engagement as something done WITH people, not something done TO people.” Paul Hebert

Quotes on the employee-employer engagement relationship

“When employees feel that the company takes their interest to heart, then the employees will take company interests to heart.” Dr. Noelle Nelson

“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just as an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” Anne M. Mulcahy

“If the employees come first, then they’re happy. A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders. It’s not one of the enduring green mysteries of all time, it is just the way it works.” Herb Kelleher

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Can You Treat Customers Like Employees and Employees Like Customers?

Curiosity. A hunger to explore what works and what doesn’t. Respectively challenging others’ ideas. These are among the many reasons I enjoy speaking with groups of young adults preparing for leadership roles.

I recall one such gathering that involved an open discussion on marketing. We talked about dealing with difficult customers (it’s OK to terminate a relationship with customers when there’s no longer a good fit) and engaging employees with internal marketing (how to apply marketing inside a company to educate, motivate, and engage employees to deliver the brand promise).

“Excuse me,” asked one of the attendees, “but I think you have it backwards. You talk about ‘firing’ customers as if they are employees, and you also talk about ‘marketing’ to employees as if they are customers? How can this be?”

An excellent question … and one whose answer is based on understanding customers’ and employees’ respective roles and their value to a business and each other.

Customers pay for a firm’s products/services, which means they contribute the revenue that helps pay employee salaries. No customers =  no operating income = no business = no employees.

Employees serve customers by providing the products/services offered by the firm. No employees = no business to compete in the market = no customers.

A company needs to apply both marketing and management strategies to developing positive, loyal relationships with employees and customers so it can:

  1. attract, engage, and retain the right employees who are competent and committed to serving customers, and
  2. attract, engage, and retain the right customers whose needs will be best and profitably served by employees.

The takeaway: Yes, you can market to employees and you can manage customers. Done effectively, you’ll be able to work with the best of both.