Better experiences – every customer and employee wants them, businesses want to provide them, and solutions providers promise them. But how does one actually track something as elusive as an “experience”? The following is an introduction to how we help companies measure their delivered experiences.

At PeopleMetrics, we focus on tracking both behavioral and emotional outcomes. And while this approach can be a bit more complicated to explain, the composite score is proven to be more reliable than a single item score. In fact, when we compared our 2008 Most Engaged Customers data to our 2010 data, we found that a five point increase in Engagement correlated with a 56% cumulative share price appreciation.

This composite Engagement score is made up of four outcome questions, and we call the score REAP (as in “REAP the benefits” of an engaged customer base).

(R): Retention

Why: Engaged customers will spend more with you over their lifetime than with your competitors, and engaged employees will continue working for you

 (E): Effort

Why: Engaged customers will actually go out of their way to do business with you and are often willing to spend more to benefit from your products and services. Engaged employees feel inspired by their work environment to go above and beyond for customers.

(A): Advocacy

Why: Engaged customers spread the good word, making it easier and cheaper for you to attract new customers. Engaged employees recommend you as an employer allowing you to better compete for talent.

(P): Passion

Why: Engaged customers are passionate about the brand – so passionate that they may even spend time actively promoting the brand to others or defending the brand if others speak negatively about it. Engaged employees love the experience of working for you.

The composite of these four questions is the “ultimate score” or the “people metric.” It provides a snapshot of your most valuable assets: the people who purchase from you and work for you.

Additional Resources:

Introduction to Voice of the Employee

Introduction to Voice of the Customer

Taking Action on Customer Feedback

Photo courtesy of: Paul

In a report titled, “The Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready?” EMC stated that in 2010 alone, 1.2 zettabytes of digital information was created. This is equal to:

• The digital information created by every man, woman, and child on Earth “Tweeting” continuously for 100 years

• 75 billion fully-loaded 16 GB Apple iPads (which would fill the entire area of Wembley Stadium to the brim 41 times)

• A full-length episode of FOX TV’s “24″ running continuously for 125 million years

 And as this forest of data grows, so does the technology available to measure and manage it, and the effects are overwhelming. In “Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds,” Scott Berkun shares an example of a broken down Winnebago spiraling out of control at 95mp and the driver asking the passengers where they would like to stop for dinner. He writes,

As ridiculous as this scenario sounds, it happens all the time. People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think.

In our customer and employee experience work we are seeing many business leaders exhausted with business intelligence. It’s not difficult to collect satisfaction surveys and come up with good ideas on how to improve the quality of delivered experiences. The difficulty lies in sorting through that data and finding what your customers care about most, and then focusing attention on those items. Here are three ways we are seeing customer experience leaders navigate the forest of data, to find the insights that drive change:

1. Moving past the “ultimate metric”

Customer satisfaction scores, NPS, even our own Engagement Metric – REAP, have dominated the customer and employee experience scene. These numbers are valuable and useful but can be limiting. While these metrics can tell you if you improved and by how much, they can’t tell how, and most importantly, they can’t tell you why. Many leaders are taking an increased interest in looking at the behaviors, experiences, or interactions that impact shifts in the ultimate metric.

2. Aligning around a set of core metrics

Key driver analysis allows leaders to see into the ultimate metric. If your ultimate score has decreased, looking at your key drivers will offer insight into why this happened, and clearly define the items most in need of attention.

For many of our clients, we set up models of their drivers. These models provide a set of core metrics that an organization can rally around. In quarterly reporting, we will walk through changes in these drivers and use customer comments to bring the drivers to life. This practice allows business leaders to truly understand the customer experience ecosystem.

3. Improved ability to ignore extraneous data

As our clients begin seeing results based on taking action on the drivers, many of them are increasingly ok with not wasting time on the extraneous data. Typical “satisfaction” questions around things like cleanliness and hold times are often axed as leaders see the value in forgoing the 70 page report for a 1 page summary that can be shared across the company. Because once there is unity on what to think about, it is often clear how best to approach the problem (Click to tweet).

The next few years are only going to bring more data. Leaders will feel a rising pressure to measure and manage everything that can possibly be measured. But the winner will not be the person with the most data; the winner will be the one with the wisdom to know what to think about. And by tuning out all of the data noise, will be receptive to hearing the piece of insight that matters most.

Additional Resources:

Taking Action on Customer Feedback

An Effective Treatment Plan for the Average Customer Experience

Photo courtesy of: Dan

Last year we launched our first annual Brand Ambassador Awards. We have found over the past 10 plus years of working in customer and employee engagement that every company has individuals in it who continually go above and beyond for clients. Using customer feedback we uncover their stories.

These employees have an empathetic understanding of the customer experience. They find ways for clients to save money. They get to know their businesses. They make customers smile.  They deliver. They create the human connection that brings the brand to life. They are the people the Brand Ambassador Awards recognize.

Last year we had the opportunity to talk with each of our 2011 winners about their customer service philosophy – why they do what they do. In each of these conversations we heard three key themes:

The company has a customer service philosophy that aligns with their own

Our Brand Ambassadors didn’t hesitate to acknowledge the customer-centric cultures that they worked in, and they were proud to be a part of them.  Further support: we found in our 2011 Employee Engagement Trends study that employees who work for customer-centric companies show much higher levels of Engagement.

The Point: If you want to get more Brand Ambassadors, emphasize the customer experience and align your company’s culture around it.

The individual feels a sense of pride, engagement, and personal responsibility

Our winner’s spoke about connecting on a human level, treating customers as they would want to be treated; the meaning that great customer service gives to life; and the personal responsibility that goes along with being the face of a company.

The Point: Brand Ambassadors care deeply about how their work impacts people, and sharing customer feedback is a valuable way to encourage them and their co-workers to continue doing exceptional work.

They rely on their team to help them deliver exceptional experiences

Each of our winners spoke about how they could not deliver great experiences without their team. In fact, one of our winners seemed genuinely confused by the personal recognition, insisting there was no way he could have done it alone.

The Point: If someone is constantly highlighting their own contributions, assume that while they might still being doing good work for your customers and clients, they are probably not a Brand Ambassador.

As you work toward achieving your customer experience goals in 2012, make sure to identify and celebrate your Brand Ambassadors. These individuals know what makes your customers completely happy. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from their wisdom.

And watch out for our soon to be announced winners of the 2012 awards.

Additional Resources:

Unleash the Power of Your Brand Ambassadors

Outsourcing Inspiration: How Customer Feedback Creates Meaning at Work

Voice of the Customer Fact Sheet

Photo courtesy of: Michal Marcol

Engaging employees can be a daunting task, and with all of the jargon out there, it’s easy to get lost and not know what next steps to take.  In this post, we examine the eight dimensions of our Employee Engagement model, illustrated with real-life examples of companies who embody what these drivers are all about.

First, Resources and Rewards are the functional aspects of Employee Engagement. They are fundamental to the contract between an employee and a business.  Resources and Rewards need to be competitive and fair – without these basics, you cannot hope to satisfy, let alone, engage your employees. Pretty simple.

The intrinsic aspects are where it starts to get a bit more complicated…

Recognition in Accounting

One of our clients in the Accounting industry has the goal to deliver unmatched client service by aligning all employees around the company’s five core values. Using a homegrown “Twitter-like” application, employees nominate colleagues for doing something exceptional relating to these values. Throughout the year rewards and recognition will be given based on these nominations, and at the end one lucky employee will win a Mazda Miata 5 for their contributions.

Customer Focus at BUPA

BUPA is a health insurance company in the UK that is absolutely committed to their customers. Last year they won the Plain English Campaign Award for their gobbledygook-free website. In providing easy to understand information, BUPA has also built a culture of empathy toward the customer experience.

And this culture extends beyond the website. At the CXPA event this past October, our EVP Kate Feather learned of an interesting approach taken by BUPA to bring the customer front and center in the business. Specifically, the story goes that every BUPA customer service agent is given a budget to do something nice for their customers. One employee spent her budget on clothes for a baby born prematurely. In the retelling of this story the employee had tears in her eyes as she described how it felt to have the opportunity to touch someone’s life so closely.

Fun at American Hotel Register

The Fun dimension has a tendency to confuse the more practical among us. But the fun dimension captures so much more than holiday parties and water cooler chit chat about weekend plans. It’s about a sense of belonging, shared vision, and creativity. Another one of our own clients, American Hotel Register, provides every conceivable product for hospitality and specialty industries – including funeral homes. They take pride in having an open, quirky culture. The founder regularly walks the halls, greets people by name, gives employees hugs; they have daily guess the answer to the Snapple cap questions; and in January American will be hosting its second annual American Idol Competition at their annual Hospitality Expo.

Recently they had the opportunity to provide the producers of Glee with funeral urns for an upcoming episode, one of the American Hotel employees commented that American Hotel “puts the ‘FUN’ in FUNeral.” The directors liked it so much the little play on words made it into the Glee script.  

Growth at Lovett

Unless you live in Portland, Oregon, you probably haven’t heard of Lovett. Lovett has built an impressive company by focusing on employee Growth. They have built a solid training curriculum involving mentor-style orientation, options to learn skills in other departments, and even life skills like financial planning and investing. Lovett understands how important it is to have a team of smart, customer-focused employees who understand the company’s big picture vision. Even more surprising is that Lovett isn’t a cutting-edge management consulting firm, or an HR group; they do plumbing. And their staff retention rate is 100%.

Trust at Wegmans

The Trust dimension is really about trust in senior leadership – that they have employees’ best interests in mind and respect and value their work. At Wegman’s, this means involving store-level employees in the kinds of decisions typically made at higher levels, and avoiding creating policies addressing every possible scenario. The company’s philosophy is, “Employees first, customers second,” and by putting their employees first, their employees put the customers first – and Wegman’s boasts one of the best retention rates in the country and some of the highest customer ratings among grocery stores.

Purpose in Healthcare

Purpose is linked to a sense of accomplishment in work, the knowledge that a person’s work is having a positive impact on internal and external customers. Medtronic is a medical device manufacturer. They provide the opportunity for their engineers, technicians, and salespeople to attend surgical procedures so they can see the results of their work.

One of our Healthcare clients also has a great tactic for embedding a sense of purpose in their work. The patients they serve have central nervous system disorders; our client displays patient artwork throughout their hallways as well as printing mini reprints on the back of their business cards as a daily reminder of their commitment to improving the lives of the patients they serve.

What Drives Engagement at Your Company?

It’s overwhelming for any leader to think about tackling all of these dimensions at once. So we recommend starting small. Focus on one dimension that you can do (or perhaps are already doing) and build it out – whether it is getting your employees closer to your customer, building internal growth plans, or recognizing employees who do great work.

And, of course, if you are ready for some professional help, contact us. Our expertise lies in helping clients identify what their employees care about the most so they can focus action on the items that will have the greatest impact on their employees’ experiences.

Additional Resources:

Why Do Employees Deliver Great Customer Experiences? It’s Not ALL About the Money!

Using the Voice of Your Employee (VoE) to Improve the Employee Experience

Case for a Voice of the Employee (VoE) Solution

If there is one master customer experience rule, I think it would be this: solve your customers’ problems. Every change, every action, every improvement should have the end goal of solving a customer problem. So how does this apply to the Pharma industry?

Pharma’s Past

Pharmaceutical companies served what seemed to be a fairly straightforward purpose: providing customers with information and access to newer and better drugs.  And this worked for a long time. However, over the past few years, it is estimated that the Pharmaceutical industry has experienced a 30% industry-wide reduction in sales force numbers.  What worked in the past isn’t cutting it anymore.

Between increasing government regulation, a decreasing amount of physician face-time, and a barrage of multi-million dollar lawsuits, Pharma companies cannot survive, and thus continue to help their customers, without shifting from being product-centric to patient-centric.  

Pharma’s Present

Pharma’s customer base is made of up people who have one pressing problem: the patient. Their jobs are exhausting and involve long hours, high risk, changing rules and regulations, and the constant stress of carrying patients’ health and lives in their hands. Pharma’s opportunity then lies in their ability to stop selling to, and start partnering with, their customers to solve their biggest problem: how to better serve the patient.

An oversimplified view of the patient experience looks something like the figure at right. It is a combination of a patient’s interactions with their healthcare provider, their insurance company, and the therapy itself. The opportunity for Pharma lies in the overlap of all of these interactions. If Pharma is able to break down these walls and make it easier to prescribe, easier to gain insurance reimbursements, and easier for patients to access and take the treatment they need, then they have solved their customers’ most pressing problem.

Pharma’s Future

Over the past few months, we have met with people involved in Healthcare Compliance and Legal, Sales Force Effectiveness, Learning & Development, Incentive Compensation, and Access Services across a variety of different Pharmaceutical companies. The conversations vary based on the group’s particular patient touch point, b. Some groups are interested in improving patient and customer education, some are interested in building better relationships between sales reps and physicians, and some are interested in improving access processes. But all share the common goal of improving the patient experience by shifting from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach.

This shift in focus is transforming the Pharma industry. Instead of sales reps fighting the losing battle of gaining physician face-time, entire companies will align around improving the service delivered to patients. For example, we have heard talk of concierge services, a completely customer-centric approach that focuses on delivering customized solutions to the patient – the right product, at the right time, through the right channel.

Focusing solely on the product – providing awareness and information – isn’t enough anymore.  Customized solutions are what Pharma customers need now. For Pharma companies to survive, and thrive, they need to bend to the medical professionals who are done with the sales pitch and ready for the experience of working with a trusted partner.

2011 has been a great year for all of us here at PeopleMetrics as well as the Customer Experience space at large. And so in honor of the close of this year and a start of the new one, we’d like to share four customer experience themes we uncovered this past year.

Building a Customer-centric Culture

A key theme throughout 2011 was the importance of engaging employees and managers in order to engage customers and clients.  The ability to align everybody, from senior management to front-line employees, around the desired customer experience is essential to the success of any customer experience transformation journey.

As part of this, earlier this year, we announced our Brand Ambassador Award Winners, the individuals in our top performing client companies, who garner high levels of customer recognition and praise.  We also had the opportunity to interview these individuals and heard from each and every one of them that the work environment and culture is a key part of their motivation to deliver great experiences to their customers. In July we conducted an independent study on Employee Engagement where we found that employees working for customer-centric organizations are more engaged with their work and give extra effort as a result.

Customer-centricity will never happen without employee buy-in. As Elizabeth Boehm said at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum, “Your culture is what your employees do when you’re not in the room.”

Walking in Your Customer’s Shoes

We believe that customer feedback technology is essential in helping companies to understand, measure, and manage customer experiences. This technology allows companies to systematically listen and respond to their customers. However, we also know that without a real commitment to improving these experiences, this feedback just becomes more unused data. A 2011 trend we have noticed is the desire to move beyond the NPS or loyalty number and seek to understand the, “why?” behind these ratings.  The goal is to truly connect with the customer– not just the score.

Mike Sachs, General Manager, CRM & Owner Loyalty at Volkswagen of America spoke at the NACCM conference earlier this fall and shared his novel approach to helping VW executives truly connect with the customer experience.   One of the benefits (and ironies) of being a leader in the automotive business is that you are never actually a customer – you never have to purchase a car.  What this means, according to Mike, is that VW leaders are prevented from experiencing how it feels to buy a car from a VW dealership.   So, Mike plans to implement an initiative in 2012 that will have every executive go through the car buying journey (that will then be donated to charity) so they are better able to understand the experiences their customers are having every day in their dealerships.

Finding Your Best Customers

This year we noticed an increasing number of our clients taking an interest in our “Market” and “Recognize” alerts (part of our Voice of the Customer technology). Both of these alerts focus on what your customers and clients love about doing business with you. Leaders are realizing that knowing what makes you great in your customers’ eyes is marketing gold.

At the NACCM Conference, Becky Carroll (@bcarroll7) spoke about her efforts to build an online community of Verizon’s best customers who are willing to offer and test new ideas. Becky shared that 90% of Verizon’s latest releases have been suggested, or refined by Verizon customers. Evidence of the deep value in finding, and capitalizing, on your very best customers.

Sharing Ownership of the Customer Experience

At Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum Kerry Bodine introduced “The Customer Experience Ecosystem,” which she defined as: “The complex set of relationships among your company’s employees, partners, and customers that determines the quality of all customer interactions.” In other words, the customer does not belong to one department or function.  Every brochure that is produced,  every bit of code that is written, every employee that is hired is part of this ecosystem and ultimately everybody impacts the customer.

Many of our own clients are asking for ideas on how to share customer feedback with more employees because an annual executive presentation is simply not enough anymore. Customer feedback is powerful and inspirational, and to change the ecosystem, these stories (whether quantitative or qualitative) need to be shared.

It’s been an exciting year, and we’re looking forward to what 2012 has to offer.

Happy New Year!

At PeopleMetrics, we include one question that often strikes new clients as being rather odd, especially clients in the B2B space: “I love working with [company].” Respondents are asked to rate their level of agreement with this statement. Why do we include it? Because it adds a depth to the client/provider relationship that cannot be attained through a simple NPS score.  This question cuts through all the usual business jargon, formalities, and contracts and asks a completely emotional human question – how does the company make you feel?

Why It Matters

In our Most Engaged Customers Study it became quite clear that while clients are willing to continue working (68%) and recommend their supplier (65%), they are much less likely to report loving the experience of working with them (55%). This love question raises the bar on what makes an engaging experience, and by including it we have found that “Fully Engaged” becomes a strong indicator of client spend.  Clients in the Accounting industry who Strongly Agreed with all four engagement measures* spent, on average, 50% more with their preferred vendor than the Actively Disengaged, proving that when a client loves the experience of working with you, they will show it.

How to Make Them Love You

In our research we have found six drivers of Engagement. Each of these drivers is vital in creating an engaging client experience; for the accounting client, Extra Effort is most important (when employees go above and beyond for clients).  In our Most Engaged Customers study we went on to analyze open ended responses to further identify what “extra effort” means to accounting clients. We boiled it down to three employee behaviors:

1. Employee provides proactive advice, expertise, and guidance. Notice how it is impossible to deliver this without knowing your client’s industry. Making Extra Effort to understand the environment in which your client is working means that you will move from being an easily replaceable commodity to a valued partner.

2. Employee demonstrates an understanding of the client’s unique culture.  Many of the stories talked about how people at the accounting firm stepped in and helped deliver when coworkers became sick or clients were particularly demanding.  This kind of “above and beyond” service can only happen if a partner is willing to put in the time to learn not only what their client does but also what their processes are for getting it done.

3. Employee has a positive attitude towards the organization for which they work. Speaking well of your employer is associated with employee engagement, and this simple act is perceived by the client important in creating a positive experience.
Going above and beyond in these areas shows that your client’s problems are your problems, and that you are committed to making them successful. And really, isn’t that what love is all about?

 
*Engagement is measured based upon the responses to the following four questions: 1.) Given the choice I would do business with [Company] again 2.) I would go out of my way to do business with [Company] again 3.) I would recommend [Company] to a colleague or business partner 4.) I love doing business with [Company]. A Fully Engaged Client Strongly Agrees with each of these statements.

Additional Resources:
2010 Most Engaged Customers Study: Accounting Focus (email info@peoplemetrics.com to request a copy)
Customer Experience Assessment Tool

 
Photo courtesy of: Renjith Krishnan

Shopping for insurance tends to be one of life’s less enjoyable moments – it’s difficult, time-consuming, and simply stressful. Data from our Most Engaged Customer study shows that the average Insurance engagement (ignoring the outlier that is USAA) is 42%, 9 points below the Engagement average across industries, as seen in the chart below.

Changing the Insurance Experience
According to a recent Accenture survey, 91% of insurers “believe that future growth depends on providing a special customer experience.” So it would appear that the industry has realized the current system is flawed and is actively interested in bridging the gap between average and exceptional. But what does an “exceptional customer experience” look like in the insurance industry? This the question we ask in the Most Engaged Customers study and we found that, regardless of industry, Customer Engagement is built from the following dimensions:

1. The Offer: Products, services, and/or experiences that customers really want

2. Care: A company culture that cares for and values customers

3. Consistency: Excellent service at every touch point

4. Trust: If something goes wrong, the customer has faith the company will put it right

5. Effort: Employees who exert extra effort and go above and beyond

6. Genuine: Authentic service from real people

The “hot button” issue for insurance customers is Effort – employees going above and beyond for the customer. This is especially true during Moments of Truth such as policy purchase, renewals and claims. Quotes we collected from our study illustrate the impact of Extra Effort perfectly:

“They went out of their way to find us discounts, cut back on what we really didn’t need in insurance.” (Progressive)

“They have always guided me to the best products for my point in life.” (USAA)

“My reps take their time going over questions. They also helped me to tow my vehicle. They went out of their way to offer to Google a tow company, provided me the number & called to confirm the company would be able to tow my vehicle in 30 minutes. THEY ARE AWESOME!” (Allstate)

Aligning the Company
68% of the insurers in Accenture’s study say they plan to increase spending on analytics, including data that will help them improve the customer experience. This is the first step in building a better offer and demonstrating care for customers. But it can’t stop there.

The next step will be aligning managers around this new mission to ensure consistency and nurture trust. And finally, based on our research, we predict that the true differentiator will be building a company culture that inspires front-line employees to give extra effort and allows them the freedom to be genuine in their interactions with policyholders.

To truly implement lasting change, every level of the company will need to be on board and playing their part in building better, more engaging, more memorable customer experiences.

Additional Resources:
Request a copy of the complete Most Engaged Customers Study with the Insurance Industry Focus
An Effective Treatment Plan for the Average Customer Experience
PeopleMetrics Voice of the Customer Solution

“The truth of the matter is, true differentiation – sustainable differentiation – is rarely a function of well-roundedness;” writes Harvard professor Youngme Moon, “it is typically a function of lopsidedness.”  (Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd). Youngme Moon illustrates this with stories about IKEA – a throwaway brand in a traditionally permanent industry, Dove – using pictures of average women in a traditionally photoshopped, airbrushed industry, and Google – creating a stripped down search interface in an industry cramming search pages with every button and pop-up imaginable. And while we all understand intuitively the answer to the question “Why do these brands work?,” it becomes much more difficult to answer this question about ourselves. 

The following are five ways your customer feedback should be helping you to answer the question: What makes my company great?

Know why your clients love working with you

At PeopleMetrics we use our own Voice of the Customer technology to collect client feedback after the completion of every project or at key milestones throughout an ongoing relationship. Recently our CEO sat down with the data from  our own surveys over the past few years to evaluate the open-ended comments related to what people love about working with us. He quickly identified the two things that clients love about us – we think (we know their business, are subject matter experts, provide actionable insights, and anticipate potential problem areas) and we care (we are exceptionally responsive, flexible and easy to work with, go above and beyond, and focus on quality).  If you are collecting feedback from your customers, you can go through the same exercise to uncover the core of what makes you special to the customers who keep coming back.

Know who your best customers are

When companies first begin collecting customer feedback the knee-jerk reaction is to focus on fixing the negative comments. And while this is important, it shouldn’t come at the expense of focusing on your best customers. We refer to these people as your Passionate Promoters. They want to work with you, they recommend you, they gladly spend their money with you. Keep these people happy, and when you mess-up, fix it fast.

Know who your best employees are

Behind every loyal customer are exceptional employees or, as we call them, Brand Ambassadors. Do you know which of your employees are creating your best customers? And are you actively learning from them to help coach and enhance the skills of your other employees?

Find out what your best clients want more of

We find in every industry that Fully Engaged customers and clients want to spend more money with a business that engages them. Our VoC solution includes a space for respondents to indicate if there is something further they would like from the business. Many times clients aren’t aware of all the services you offer and this provides an opportunity for you to educate them about your full suite of offerings and a space for them to tell you about  a need you may not, previously, have unearthed. One of our clients uncovered a $100,000 opportunity by asking this question in their customer survey.

Track the drivers of your success

When measuring Customer Engagement it is easy to obsess over the “master metric” the one number that indicates organizational success. But doing so can detract from focusing on the unique elements that drive engagement for your customers. Our Most Engaged Customers Study outlines six drivers of Customer Engagement and then highlights sector-level differences. We also do this on a company basis and help our clients track in real-time how they are delivering on these items. Doing so ensures that they focus, not on keeping up with the competitive herd, but rather that they are consistently delivering the exceptional experiences that their clients depend on them for.

Creating truly engaging customer experiences will require that you get a bit lopsided. It also means that you, your employees, your clients, and your prospects will know exactly what it is that makes your company great.

“Differentiation is a way of thinking. It’s a mindset. It’s a commitment. A commitment to engage with people – not in a manner in which they are merely unaccustomed, but in a manner that they will value, respect, and yes, perhaps even celebrate.” – Youngme Moon

Additional Resources:

Designing a Differentiated Customer Experience – Where to Begin?

Case for a Professional Voice of the Customer Solution

Interested in learning more about how PeopleMetrics VoC solution can help your company create differentiated experiences? Contact us

Photo courtesy of: goldsaint

People call them “satisfied,” “loyal,” or “happy campers,” we call them “Fully Engaged.” All of us are referring to a customer who loves doing business with you.  And whatever you choose to call them, the point remains - positive experiences create happy customers, and dissapointing experiences create a substantial lost opportunity.

This insightful infographic by KISSmetrics blends research from Gallup, Harris International, PeopleMetrics, and others to create a beginner’s guide to the value of great customer experiences.

(click here to view the complete infographic)

To learn more about how we help clients create Engaging customer experiences check out our 2010 Most Engaged Customers Study.

Employee engagement surveys have become an HR staple. In spite of their prevalence, a recent survey by TLNT and HRmarketer revealed that many of these surveys are a wasted effort:

45% of respondents feel that the survey being used by their organization had little or no value for managers or employees

48% of senior managers feel these surveys are highly valuable, only 19% of other respondents felt the same

48% of respondents believe that the surveys are not providing an honest or accurate employee assessment

Our own research has shown that when employee engagement surveys are conducted, and no follow up action is taken, employee engagement actually drops. And it looks like this may be happening quite often. 58% of respondents state that data gathered from these surveys does not or only slightly helps managers know what behaviors or practices to change in order to positively influence the employee experience. It’s obvious the current system is broken.

For leaders interested in not being a part of the 58% collecting useless or nearly useless data, the following are a few things to consider:

Make the Employee Experience part of your business strategy vs. an annual event

At the recent Customer Experience Professionals Association Event, it became apparent that an increasing number of companies are beginning to look at how the Customer Experience (Cx) and Employee Experience (Ex) are related. This means that having a workforce that actually finds meaning and purpose in their work is no longer just an HR problem; it’s a strategic problem.

Ask questions like “Why?” and “Where should I focus?” vs. “How many?” and “How do we compare?”

Understanding why and where to focus will help leaders take real, meaningful actions to change Ex. Driver analysis paired with open-ended comments from employees can arm your managers with a simple, clear understanding of what needs to improve and what they can do to boost engagement.

Focus on internal improvements vs. external benchmarks

Benchmarks are concerned with averages, aggregates, and incremental scores. But a survey that is used as part of an overall Ex plan will focus on action – looking at work group priorities and helping managers develop targeted, realistic plans.  Over time your best benchmarks are historical – an assessment of how successful your actions have been to move the needle – more than an external comparison that has little or no meaning to the actual experience your own employees are having. 

In “Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd,” Harvard Marketing Professor, Youngme Moon writes, “A funny thing happens the minute you begin to capture comparative differences on paper: There is a natural inclination for folks in the comparative set to focus on eliminating those differences, rather than accentuating them.” And while she is writing to Marketing, the same rules apply to HR – focusing on where you compare to others in your industry will, at best, help you create employee experiences that are essentially exactly like that of your closest competition.

Don’t assume your employees only care about how they personally experience your business

Your average employee engagement survey focuses on work experience issues and topics of satisfaction and engagement. But the average employee is hugely motivated by how their work impacts the customer experience. With that in mind, for an employee engagement survey to be truly impactful it also needs to gather information on how well the company enables employees to solve the customer’s problems or support others who are doing so and identify areas where barriers could be removed to improve both the external and  internal customer experiences.

If your goal is to measure employee engagement, then the traditional employee engagement survey should continue working for you. If your goal, however, is to provide your managers with a clear action plan on how to improve employee engagement then it may be time to consider a more holistic approach to the employee experience.

Download The Business Case for a Voice of the Employee Solution or email me at Janessa.lantz@peoplemetrics.com to receive a copy

Additional Resources:

Voice of the Employee Fact Sheet

Calculating the Cost of Employee Disengagement

Employee Engagement: Helping Employees Find Meaning on the Job

Photo courtesy of: Idea Go

We love the “wow” moments of customer service – when a committed employee goes above and beyond to make someone’s day or when a company goes out of its way to correct a service failure. But a customer experience strategy that relies only on superhero moments of great customer service is little more than a nice-sounding dream. A customer experience strategy must focus on creating experiences that are replicable and consistently great. To do this we have outlined seven important areas to evaluate:

Alignment

In our work we often see a Cx “champion” emerge who works tirelessly to get their colleagues and leaders excited about improving experiences.  But this person can’t do it alone. Why? Because the customer experience can’t be owned by one person or department when every person, technology, department, and process that is put in place influences how a customer interacts with your business.

Customer Experience

Take a moment to think about how your customers and clients currently interact with you. Where do these interactions happen? What is the quality of these touch points? How does it feel to do business with you? And how should it feel to do business with you?

Employee Experience

Think about the last time you worked with someone who was good at their job, than compare that to the last time you worked with someone who was good at their job and genuinely loved the work they were doing. The former isn’t delivering a poor experience, but you will always choose to work with the latter. Your employees make or break the customer experience so it’s important to find out what you can do to ensure that your employees love their work.

Break Points

Be willing to admit where you are currently failing your customers. Look at data, talk to your employees, and find where these areas are – and then fix them.

Feedback

Feedback can be tricky business – ask too little and you make uninformed decisions, ask too much and you annoy your customers, ask the wrong questions and you may make the wrong moves. When it comes to dealing with the customer experience we have a few simple rules:

1. Only ask questions that you are willing and able to take action on
2. Avoid asking your customers questions that your employees have the answers to
3. Never ask your customers something you already know
4. Share feedback liberally

HR

Find the people who are already delivering the “wow” moments to your customers, your Brand Ambassadors, and learn from them. Identify the behaviors that make your customers fall in love with you – Is it great product? Prompt responses? An account manager who calls to wish them a happy birthday? – and when you have these answers then work with HR to embed customer-focused practices into hiring, promotion, and rewards structures.

Culture

Improving customer experiences is a journey. With that in mind, it becomes especially important for companies just beginning these journeys to implement measures that will maintain momentum. Things like sharing stories, establishing metrics that will track success, and rewarding the big and small successes  will ensure that your Cx initiatives today will continue to improve tomorrow.

And in the spirit of, “Never ask your customers something you already know,” we developed a Customer Experience Assessment Tool to help you evaluate how consistently your customers are enjoying great experiences with your business (you can also email me at janessa.lantz@peoplemetrics.com to request a copy).

Additional Resources:

Designing a Differentiated Customer Experience – Where to Begin?

Average vs. Great: Why the Quality of Customer Service Matters

The Experience Economy: How Today’s Customers Choose Discretionary Spending

Photo courtesy of: Suat Eman

For decades, it was assumed that employees were motivated only by extrinsic factors such as pay, resources, and health plans. While those traditional benefits are certainly still a motivating factor for most workers, more and more research is showing that employee engagement also has a lot to do with how people feel at work.

The PeopleMetrics’ 2011 Employee Engagement Trends Report found that since 2007 pay raises have been minimal, but the emotional factors such as trust, opportunities for growth, recognition, and a strong customer focus have improved. Today’s employees are reporting more satisfaction with these emotional aspects of their work than they did a few years ago.

One of the most often cited emotional drivers of employee engagement is a sense of purpose. To encourage a sense of meaning among your employees (and thereby increase employee engagement), consider the tips listed below.

Look Beyond Mere Survival; Highlight the Big Picture. If your focus as a leader is on simply making it until next week or next quarter, your employees will have a difficult time seeing the bigger purpose behind their roles. One way to improve this situation is to discuss each employee’s impact during performance reviews. For instance, the person who manages accounts payable at a dentist’s office may see himself as little more than a fancy bill-paying system, until his or her manager points out that his important accounting work keeps everyone organized enough to create a good setting for healing.

Share Positive Customer Feedback with Employees. The 2011 PeopleMetrics Employee Engagement Trends Report found that employees want to be part of the customer experience solution. Just sharing customer feedback with employees can make them more engaged, especially when the feedback is positive. We found that 55% of employees who receive customer recognition are engaged, as compared with just 12% of employees who do not receive customer recognition. Similarly, employees whose managers tell them they have done a good job serving customers are 1.5 times more likely to agree with the statement, “I get a sense of purpose from my work.” Sharing customer feedback can be a powerful addition to any Voice of the Employee program.

Study Your Most Engaged Employees.
High employee engagement is contagious for both customers (who tend to be more engaged when they interact with enthusiastic employees) and for other employees. In this sense, an investment in a Voice of the Employee program is an investment in customer engagement.  We suggest choosing a Voice of the Customer solution that can help you identify which employees are consistently earning praise from customers. Next, you can study how those employees find meaning in their work, and train the rest of your workers to follow suit.

PeopleMetrics is not the only research group that has found a link between employee engagement and a sense of meaning. For instance, the Director of Research at Harvard Business School, Teresa Amabile, recently reported on her studies of employee engagement, saying that the most influential factor was, “making progress in meaningful work.” Amabile and her partners defined meaningful work as “work where the person is contributing something of real value, something they care about.” By implementing the actions described above, you can embed purpose and meaning into the employee experience.

Additional Resources:
Integrating Employee Engagement into the Performance Management Process
Calculating the Cost of Employee Disengagement
Average vs. Great: Why the Quality of Service Matters

Many Voice of the Customer programs fail to deliver business results. One reason for this is that companies often measure outdated metrics, such as customer satisfaction. Bloomberg Business Week and others have reported that as many as 60% of customers describe themselves as “satisfied” right before leaving a company, meaning that customer satisfaction is not a driver of loyalty.

However, even if companies are measuring statistics that actually link to profit, stock prices, and other business outcomes (such as Customer Engagement), they are often unsuccessful at improving the customer experience. A recent Forrester Research study that analyzed the customer experience provided by 133 companies with revenues over $500 million found that just 10% had earned “excellent” service ratings.

Below, we take a look at several common failures of Voice of the Customer programs—and along the way, we explain how to create a Voice of Customer program that will successfully improve your business results. The following three hallmarks of an effective Voice of Customer program are worth emulating.

1. Process for Taking Action.
Andrew McInnes at Forrester Research provides more details on why Voice of the Customer programs fail. First, he points out that most VoC programs lack tools for taking action on customer feedback. Forrester’s 2011 customer experience research has found that 65% of companies with VoC programs “don’t systematically take action based on customer insights.”

In other words, although these companies are gathering customer feedback, they do not have tools to close-the-loop on this feedback. Fortunately, some research companies have built tools for taking action on customer feedback into their Voice of the Customer programs.

2. Accessibility of Customer Insight.
Forrester also found that 65% of surveyed companies reported that their Voice of Customer program did not make it easy to access customer insights. All the customer feedback in the world is useless if no one in the company can easily access it. Your VoC system should include an easy way to tier customer feedback, allowing appropriate managers or even frontline employees to have access to this information.

3. Customer Insights Tailored for Different Internal Groups.
Not every employee in your company needs access to your Voice of the Customer data. Furthermore, different departments will want to use the same information in different ways. The marketing department might want quick access to customer testimonials, the leadership team might wonder what product ideas customers had offered in their survey responses, and HR may want to use positive feedback to motivate and Engage Employees. A 2010 survey by Temkin Group discovered that, out of 105 companies with formal Voice of the Customer systems in place, 63% were still “figuring out what to collect, and how.” Fortunately, as described above, you can improve your business results simply by paying attention to how you’re gathering input, and what you do with the resulting customer feedback data – bringing a higher degree of awareness to your Voice of the Customer strategy. serves to improve it.

Additional Resources:
Voice of the Customer (VoC) Results: What to Expect from Your VoC Program
Voice of the Customer Software: 8 Things to Look For
Outsourcing Inspiration: How Customer Feedback Creates Meaning at Work

[photo: Plings]

There are certain moments of truth in any retail purchasing experience that heavily influence customer engagement. Strategy gurus recommend mapping out every touch point where customers interact with a company in order to understand the customer experience throughout the purchase cycle. A Voice of the Customer program can help you understand how engagement ebbs and flows during the three phases of a customer’s life-cycle described below.

Pre-Purchase

Your brand reputation precedes you. The customer life-cycle begins long before a customer actually sets foot in your store. Companies often rely on advertising to influence customers in the pre-purchase stage. We have found that customer recommendations are the most effective form of advertising, since 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know (Nielsen, 2009). A strong customer engagement strategy for retailers should involve methods of encouraging current customers to provide recommendations.

Once they realize that they actually want a certain product, retail consumers begin researching their purchasing options. Of course, many of us make sporadic retail purchases, but it isn’t unusual for customers to carefully investigate the market. For instance, studies have found that 75% of consumers conduct in-depth research before purchasing electronics. The more positive reviews there are for your brand, products, and services, the more likely a customer in the researching, pre-purchase stage is to choose your company. Regularly collecting customer feedback will allow you to gather real customer comments on your products – share these comments with your marketing department to help them understand what Passionate Promoters love about what you have to offer.

Purchase

This is usually the most influential moment in the purchasing life-cycle. Although most retailers assume that price and product quality are the main drivers of the purchasing decision,  our research has found that these metrics are less “sticky” than emotional components. Customers have no qualms about hopping from brand to brand for a lower price or a better product. However, once they are emotionally invested in a brand, they are less likely to switch to a different company. In this sense, the moment of purchase is an opportunity to create a positive emotional bond between the customer and the employee delivering your company’s service or product.

Uplifting, exceptional customer service isn’t easy to deliver—in fact, it usually requires a unique solution for each company. Therefore, your customer engagement strategy should include a Voice of the Customer program, to help you understand how customers feel as they interact with your employees, and a Voice of the Employee program, to capitalize on insights employees can deliver about the customer experience.

Post-Purchase

Especially in this digitally rich age, customers have plenty of distractions. They are unlikely to think back on their experience with you unless you provide a reminder. This can be as simple as an automatically sent thank-you note, or as complex as following up large retail purchases with a personal phone call. For larger retailers, loyalty programs may be a fruitful method of encouraging repeat purchases. However, you can’t really know what kind of post-purchase care your customers want unless you ask them—that’s where a Voice of the Customer program comes in handy. From a customer engagement strategy perspective, the post-purchase part of the customer life-cycle is important because it is when you will gather the data that will drive your future as a retail company.

Additional Resources:
The Driving Factors of Engagement for Apparel Customers
Who Your Customers Trust, and How to Advertise To Them
The Experience Economy: How Today’s Consumers Choose Discretionary Spending

[photo: Baggu via andrewarchy at Flickr]

Voice of the Customer programs shouldn’t leave customers hanging. Too often, companies gather feedback without sharing research results, with a predictable outcome: survey participants feel less inclined to participate in future surveys. This isn’t just a market research problem. Sure, the available respondent pool shrinks as consumers become frustrated with cliffhanger research. But even more importantly from a business perspective is the effect lack of follow-up has on customer engagement. Poor feedback management sends customers the message that you are willing to use them to get ahead—that you are less concerned with their time and effort than you are with meeting your research quotas.

Below, we’ve listed several techniques you can use to close the feedback loop with customers by following up post-survey.

Social Media Sharing
Social media is a lighthearted, easy way to let customers know that you’re listening. Plus, it’s easy to tell customers at the end of a survey that they can follow your Twitter or Facebook feed to learn about survey results. Finally, because social media outlets are public, they can achieve another Voice of the Customer goal: letting your customer base know that you’re dedicated to improving the customer experience.

Newsletters for Respondents
The downside of social media content is that it usually doesn’t last too long. For customers who are especially motivated by seeing their feedback become policy, consider publishing a private newsletter just for survey respondents. One example of well-executed feedback management comes from Marriot, which maintains a private community for respondents called My Marriot Voice. Additionally, Marriot creates regular newsletters telling customer respondents about the survey results and the innovations they inspire.

Individual Action Based on Feedback.
The most advanced feedback management model available today takes anonymity out of the research process. This is especially appropriate for B2B firms allowing htem to harness individuals’ feedback to improve client relationships. For instance, if a client’s survey responses express dissatisfaction with the way that an audit is delivered or a tax return prepared, a Voice of the Customer program can forward this feedback to the appropriate account manager. Our VoC solution sends a Recover Alert to the relevant employees when a respondent’s responses indicate he or she has received less-than-stellar service – and the problem can be quickly resolved

But it’s not just about solving service failures. A good VoC system should also alert you to opportunities for business growth, let you know when an employee has gone above and beyond, gather new ideas from your clients, and also find the clients who are your absolute biggest fans. The problem that many customers have with market research, is that their voice will never be heard on an individual level – so what’s the point?.  By taking quick, appropriate follow-up on feedback companies increase the likelihood that this same client will return and willingly offer their feedback again.

It isn’t unusual for customers to receive several survey offers over the course of a single day. The restaurant where Jill ate for lunch offers her a small incentive for completing a survey via a 1-800 number. The hotel where she stayed last night on a business trip sends her an email survey. Which survey Jill chooses to complete has a good deal to do with how each company “closes the feedback loop” by sharing results with her. No one likes to feel that they’ve wasted their time, or that their opinions don’t really matter. Yet companies send this message every day by keeping market research results totally in-house. By sharing your Voice of Customer program results with your customer base, you are protecting both your market research resources and your customer engagement levels.

Additional Resources:
Benefits of Responding Immediately to Customer Feedback
Bringing Customer Satisfaction Experience Research to Front-Line Employees
Customer Alerts: Turning Customer Feedback into Immediate Sales

[photo: Wikipedia]

There are some elements of the customer experience that are unique to a given industry – things like baggage fees, claims departments, and billing practices. But there are some universal customer experience truths that apply regardless of the industry you happen to work in. This post examines three of these truths as uncovered through our partnership with one of our clients, Service Inspired Restaurants®.

Service Inspired Restaurants®, with casual dining concept restaurants operating in the U.S. and Canada, strives to deliver engaging guest experiences through outstanding service. Service Inspired Restaurants® implements our Voice of the Guest solution to improve current levels of customer service. Their goal is to use continuous guest feedback to weave Voice of the Customer (VoC) into the daily operations of the restaurant.

Truth #1: Customers will pay more for great service

In a recent survey conducted by American Express, 70% of consumers said they are willing to spend more for exceptional service.  Any market researcher knows that the difference between what customers say they will do and what they actually do can be disheartening. However, the unique tipping structure of the restaurant industry provides a tidy method to test this theory.

In our VoC solution customers are asked if anyone went above and beyond for them. If yes, they are prompted to offer that person’s name and a description of what they did. Meanwhile we used Point of Sale (POS) data to group guests according to the size of their tips (i.e., bottom third, middle third, and top third). Looking at this data, we find that 41% of guests who recognized their server for above and beyond service left a large (top third) tip.

In addition, we effectively linked a Recognize Alert to a 10% increase in tip size. So while it may not be safe to assume that any industry can improve service and raise prices by 10%, we can safely surmise that customers notice, appreciate, and are willing to pay for exceptional experiences.

Truth #2: Recognition is contagious

Service Inspired Restaurants® began using these positive alerts to recognize exceptional employees. Some managers posted these alerts in public places, while others shared them in staff meetings. One manager planned a special event for the first server to reach 100 Recognition Alerts.

Across 8,000 guest surveys collected over the first few months of the program, 34% included a Recognition Alert – about one in three guests recognized their server for delivering great service. 8,000 surveys later, this number had risen to 40%, an 18% increase relative to the starting point.

Our 2011 Employee Engagement Trends Report examined this very human aspect of work and motivation. We found that employees who receive recognition from customers are 4.5 times as likely to be engaged compared to those who do not (55% Engaged vs. just 12% respectively). One characteristic of an engaged employee is a willingness to go out of their way for a customer, which increases the chances of a customer recognizing them.

Truth #3: The whole experience matters

Using multivariate regression analysis, we were able to uncover the impact of the different elements of the restaurant experience. But really, it only takes a few minutes of reading Yelp! reviews to figure out the winning recipe of an exceptional dining experience: atmosphere, food, and service. Controlling for the other elements we found a 5 percentage point boost in Customer Engagement attributable to server recognition alone. However, when all the elements of a high quality guest experience are working in tandem, server recognition boosts Customer Engagement a substantial 18 points.

Forrester Analyst Kerry Bodine refers to this idea as the Customer Experience Ecosystem, stating, “Companies that want to improve their customer experience need to understand the intertwined and ever evolving relationships among their internal employees, external partners, and customers.” In the case of a restaurant, it can be the state of the bathrooms or the consistency of the tomatoes used in the house salad. In the state of a professional services company, it can be the ease of accessing information or the accuracy of billing. Regardless, Service Inspired Restaurants® is a clear example of how powerful it can be when all elements of the experience align with the customer’s expectations.

This is certainly not a comprehensive list of customer experience truths. What customer experience truths have you found that hold true regardless of industry?

Additional Resources:
Service Inspired Restaurants® Case Study
The Driving Factor of Engagement among Restaurant Clientele
Outsourcing Inspiration: How Customer Feedback Creates Meaning at Work

[photo: Jenny Downing]

Within the customer engagement field, “social media” has become a sort of catchphrase for the latest, shiniest voice of customer program technology. Every day seems to bring the publication of a slew of press releases announcing the latest social media customer engagement gadget. These tools promise to integrate tweets, Facebook posts, comments, and every other bit of social media data with a company’s customer feedback program.

In the ideal company everything would be integrated to perfection. Unfortunately, business leaders work in a real world where everything must be prioritized. We recently wrote an article explaining the importance of designing a customer experience strategy that aligns with the overall business strategy. The same rules apply for social media. To effectively use social media it must be considered as a part of the big picture. The following are a few considerations for leaders evaluating how social media fits into their Voice of the Customer program and into the grand overarching strategy of their business.

1. News travels fast on social media. This might be the biggest understatement of the year, but it is important to note this up front. Social media tools are like magnets for anyone interested in the customer experience because it has changed the way that many of us receive news and interact with companies. Pew Internet Research has found that, on average, each American has 634 ties in their overall network.

News travels fast when people are instantly connected via their ever-present Smartphones, iPads, and other internet-faring gadgets. With Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn just a few clicks away at any time, customers understand that they have the power to quickly share their experience with others. Certain extremely Internet-savvy consumers (the “Technorati”) are exceptionally skilled at quickly spreading (usually negative) feedback. These social media kings and queens know how to amp up the volume and expand their reach. Furthermore, the press is extremely tuned into social media. This provides another level of amplification for whatever is trending online. Because of this, having a social media presence is valuable regardless of industry.

2. Social media may not accurately represent your core customer base. Twitter and Facebook are excellent outlets for “squeaky wheels”—the loudest, angriest, or most popular consumers. It is easy for company leaders to become distracted by these kinds of social media users, which are not to be confused with your best customers. (Indeed, depending on your industry, your best customers may not even have a Twitter or Facebook account). Moreover, social media collectors often provide too much information for company leaders to use effectively.

As customer experience guru Bruce Temkin explained in a recent blog post, a common customer experience management mistake is to assume that more data is always better. Another is to completely focus on one measurement while neglecting to see the big picture. Temkin calls this mistake “Falling in love with a metric.” If your firm falls in love with social media trends, it is likely to follow tweets and Facebook posts without really understanding the entire customer experience picture.

3. Know your size and industry.  While huge business-to-consumer companies can see benefits from tracking global brand trends in social media outlets, social media trackers are less useful for smaller business-to-business firms, simply because niche B2B firms are less likely to be discussed on social media platforms. (From a market research perspective, social media cannot provide a large enough respondent pool to provide accurate surveying results.)

If your goal is to systematically improve the customer experience and boost customer engagement, it is best to continue asking for customer feedback, rather than focusing on social media aggregation. While a review of recent social media comments on your brand may provide a sort of temporary scatter chart, an effective Voice of Customer program will provide a much clearer line graph, showing the overall trend for loyal, engaged customers.

We’re huge fans of feedback and have been collecting it from customers and employees alike for over a decade. We also use social media to connect with people, share ideas, and listen in on what our industry is talking about (Say, “hi” @peoplemetrics). While social media is important, fun, and interesting – it will never replace consistent feedback, systematic follow-up, and a solid business strategy.

Additional Resources:
Voice of the Customer (VOC) Results: What to Expect from your VoC Program
Voice of the Customer Software: 8 Things to Look For
Customer Engagement in a Down Economy: How to Survive Today and Thrive Tomorrow

[photo: Nutadanai Apikhomboonwaroot]

A shift is underway in the performance management world. Some HR directors, c-suite leaders, and organizational researchers espouse the idea that employee engagement should be an integral part of the performance review process. This approach would augment the traditional performance review, in which an employer delivers a critique of an employee’s performance. A paper recently published in the Human Resources Management Review argued that employers should manage and attempt to improve employee engagement as a part of the review process. The paper’s writers imply that a Voice of the Employee program that boosts employee engagement will generally boost overall staff performance as well.

In their paper, Professor Alan Saks from the University of Toronto and Professor Jamie Gruman of the University of Guelph contend that many organizations can see improved employee performance by managing employee engagement. Gruman and Saks found that “engagement helps predict job performance,” which in turn impacts the bottom line. As professor Jamie Gruman of the University of Guelph explains, “Employees who feel engaged in their tasks do a better job, are less likely to make mistakes, and bring more energy, dedication and vigor into their performance.” Characteristics of employee engagement include excellent focus, absorption in one’s work, and a feeling of overall integration at work, according to Saks and Gruman.

Based both on the research conducted by Saks and Gruman and our own findings, here are a few things management can do to integrate employee engagement into the review process:

Conduct regular Voice of the Employee reviews.
Too many employee engagement programs fizzle after an initial exploratory, baseline study. To build employee engagement over time, you must conduct regular employee surveys. Otherwise, there is no way to track your progress. Moreover, management will find it’s much easier to enact company changes with reliable, continuous employee feedback data.

Research and Improve Work Setting.

In their research, Saks and Gruman found that the following psychological conditions foster employee engagement:

Meaningfulness. Engagement is more likely when employees feel that their work is important, valuable, and meaningful.

Safety. An engaged employee feels that it is safe to do his/her job without fear of damaging his/her career, self-image, or status.

Availability. Engaged employees are not only responding to external stimuli at work; they are also employing a range of their own internal physical, emotional, and psychological resources.

Your performance review for each employee can also include a measurement of these psychological conditions. Do your employees feel safe and valued at work, so that they can maximize their own skills?

Personalize your Employee Engagement Efforts.
A cookie-cutter Voice of the Employee program will be less effective than one tailored for specific organizations and individuals. Remember that every employee needs something slightly different to feel engaged. As Saks explains, “Some employees might need more autonomy in their work, more challenge, more input, or perhaps more support or training.” Folding your employee engagement efforts into the review process makes it more likely that you’ll have the chance to sit down with each employee and figure out what he or she needs to do his or her best work.

Gruman and Saks point out one final benefit of conducting employee engagement research while conducting performance reviews: Doing so sends the message that the firm truly values employee engagement.

Additional Resources:
3 Common Causes of Employee Disengagement
Calculating the Cost of Employee Disengagement
How Disengaged Employees Create Disengaged Customers

The right Voice of the Customer software can help you better understand your customers. However, because Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a fairly new term, not all software developers know how to create effective solutions. For this reason, we recommend Voice of the Customer software applications that have been designed by customer experience professionals. Below, you’ll find eight characteristics of superb Voice of the Customer software. Use this list to help you decide on a customer engagement software provider.

1) Fosters online and offline customer engagement.
Since it has several meanings, the term customer engagement can muddy discussions of Voice of the Customer software.  Some use customer engagement to refer only to how visitors interact with your site. These individuals would be focusing on conversions, time on your website, and other indicators of how engaged a customer felt with your website. However, customer engagement can also refer to how customers interact with your brand in general. If you’re hoping to find a technological solution to help you improve the customer experience across multiple channels, be sure that your Voice of the Customer software will be helpful for offline interactions as well.

2) Easy to use.
Customer Engagement software shouldn’t require you to set aside excessive time for training for your employees. Instead, look for Voice of the Customer software with dashboards that anyone can feel confident using in only a couple of hours. Of course, as a company leader you will probably be the guinea pig for your customer engagement software, so as you test potential solutions, imagine how your managers and front-line employees might feel using each system.

3) Real-time results in online environment.
Modern customer engagement software shouldn’t force you to wait hours or days for your customer feedback data. Rather, Voice of the Customer software should be sophisticated enough to provide real-time results. Leading companies are using synchronous web-based customer engagement software to immediately follow up on unsavory customer feedback. Empower your employees to do the same by choosing VoC software that provides customer feedback data in real-time.

4) Automatically built-in systems for helping managers take action on customer feedback.
Thankfully, the days of inaccessible mountains of customer feedback data have passed. Your Voice of the Customer software shouldn’t just give you data on your customer engagement scores; it should also include built-in triggers to help your employees respond to customers. For instance, an effective customer engagement solution might automatically send out an alert when a customer’s survey responses indicate that she is considering switching brands.

5) Ability to set different access levels for different employees.
As a busy manager, you need help tracking and responding to customer feedback. However, it’s probably unwise to open your customer feedback data to every employee; doing so could overwhelm your staffers and put your company security at risk. Instead, Voice of the Customer software should include built-in accessibility restrictions. Company leaders should be able to decide which employees will have access to which customer feedback data.

6) Compatibility with CRM systems.
Maximize your Voice of the Customer program by ensuring that your customer engagement software can interface seamlessly with your other customer solutions, such as CRM programs.

7) Library of Best-Practices knowledge on how to improve customer experience.
Sure, you could hire a full-time customer experience specialist to review and summarize the latest thinking in Voice of the Customer studies. Or you could save a bundle by choosing a VoC software solution that includes an online library of proprietary information on how to improve the customer experience.

8) Ability to impact the employee experience.  Our 2011 Employee Engagement Trends Report found that using customer feedback to recognize employees who go above and beyond for customers is a powerful driver of Employee Engagement. Any investment made in collecting customer feedback should be with a vendor who is equally well versed in measuring and managing the employee experience and in using customer feedback to improve employee experiences.

Additional Resources:
The Experience Economy: How Today’s Customers Choose Discretionary Spending
How to Measure Customer Satisfaction: Our Best Practices for Determining Customer Love
Bringing Customer Satisfaction/ Experience Research to Front-Line Employees

[photo: Jamiesrabbits]