NOTA AICEX: Torniamo con un nuovo articolo a parlare del legame tra Customer Experience e Employee Engagement. Anche il miglior programma di Customer Experience fallirà se non c’è il giusto “buy-in” da parte dell’organizzazione.
After listening to interviews from three previous winners of the UK Customer Experience Awards at a seminar hosted by the Cranfield School of Management,there was one common theme that emerged in all three interviews – and that was how important it is to engage your team in your customer experience strategy from the word go!
Michael Conway, MD at Clothes2Order, a company which supplies clothing for uniforms, explained how customer experience always comes ahead of short term profits. The whole team is focused on how they can improve the experience for their customers. He involves everyone in the process and discussion, no matter where they are in the business. One of the schemes the company run ‘The Remarkable Ideas Awards’, encourages all staff to develop ways to surprise and delight their customers. Members of staff are asked to present their ideas and if any of the ideas are adopted as remarkable (something a customer will ‘remark’ on), the member of staff will receive a voucher. An example of this was when a member of the operations department suggested taking a photo of every order in production to send to the customer so they could see their order before it was sent out to them. This received great feedback and was retweeted on social media.
In the second interview Mark Hill, Managing Director from ResponseTex – a company who provide Customer Experience Software, talks about the levers you need to pull to keep improving your Customer Experience journey. However, the point he keeps coming back to is the importance of engaging with your employees. If you don’t have buy in – whether it be from top down, bottom up or sideways, the programme won’t go forward, it will die… When you launch your Customer Experience programme buy-in is essential. You need a voice on the board and representatives in every channel you engage with customers. You need to ask yourself – are you engaging with your employees, are you asking them what they think, are you co-creating with them on initiatives you could introduce to counter pain points within the customer engagement journey?
In the third interview, Marketing Director Jak May explained how Currency Index, winners in the Social Media Category, used social media to raise their profile. He engaged his team in ‘Operation Bluebird’, he got the whole team involved in using a range of tools to engage with their customers such as YouTube, hootsuite, tweetdeck and yatterbox, as well as filming and sharing their Daily Market reports on YouTube.
So, the theme here is getting your employees involved. Only they can engage themselves in your business and once they do, the results are amazing. Surveys and measurements on employee engagement are interesting and can provide the basis for budgets or appraisals, but as well as analysing the data – just get out there and get involved with your team. They will appreciate your support and care and in turn, as we all know, this will translate in the care and support they show to their customers.
Posted by Neil Skehel from Awards International Ltd on 19th May 2014.
AICEX
Associazione Italiana Customer Experience 