Impactful employee engagement holds the key to transcend a company, permeating its intoxicating powers among associates, thereby boosting customer engagement and brand loyalty.
At Medallia, this is a way of life as company officials work with companies to spark keen employee engagement levels that bolster company pride in every direction.
Borge Hald, CEO and co-founder of Medallia, talked to Loyalty360 about this utterly important piece of the entire customer experience/customer loyalty puzzle.
“What we’re seeing now is we think it’s more important to understanding the impact of the customer experience,” Hald said. “I think the science behind employee engagement is well understood. A huge problem is including CEOs in the process. They need to feel part of the process and they’re helping drive change.”
It’s very important to get feedback from frontline associates, Hald noted, so companies can get real voices to the people who are designing and changing these processes.
“After the feedback, they’ll reach back out and talk to the customers,” he said. “It’s not about policing. It’s about learning and bringing those details back to the team, bringing reality into what we’re doing here.”
Hald cited a client: Farmers Insurance, which saw customer retention rise by 3 percent, increased NPS, and reduced customer complaints by 25 percent “because customers feel so much better about the information they’re receiving. You need to actually get the data and get it out to the right people. That’s one barrier. When we talk to prospects, we hear about how unusable their data is.”
When it comes to driving the customer experience to new levels, this will be the theme for the next few years.
“Significant logistical challenges that are changing with mobile,” Hald said. “We’re seeing that as a huge trend. Tons of companies will drive their program that way, and move away from the more academic measurements.”
Hald offered some of Medallia’s customer examples:
LEGO
LEGO employees are empowered and feel accountable to deliver on its mission to “inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.”
Examples of this passion exist at every level in the company from those who carry on a direct dialogue with consumers such as in LEGO consumer services and LEGO Store associates to those in LEGO offices. Every LEGO employee has access to consumer feedback through the online Medallia reporting tool and has established a systematic habit of listening and developing action plans around prioritized key insights. This drives operational improvement and generates new ideas which are escalated to LEGO senior management.
Comcast
Comcast has partnered with Medallia to listen to customers, drive culture change for employees, and remove pain points from customers. Comcast recognizes that there has been a brand issue around customer service, and approaches its journey towards improving customer experience through employee engagement. Comcast has been working with Medallia for two years.
Medallia first engaged with Comcast in 2015, for a pilot program focusing on one call center and one retail store. Enterprise-wide implementation across the company occurred in 2016. At Comcast, 130,000 employees are taking care of our customers on a daily basis; 80 percent of employees are customer facing, and Comcast is handling 1M calls per day. By instituting daily huddles in the call center environment, Comcast has given employees a voice on what needs to be fixed.
These huddles are 15-minute stand-ups based on customer feedback, where people can share and train each other. Comcast also has created an ‘elevation’ process, which is different from ‘escalation.’ An escalation is something that just gets fixed, but an elevation is a systematic issue that needs to be addressed and fixed. Comcast focuses on listening both to the employee voice and customer voice to understand what’s working and what’s not working.
Omni Hotels
Nearly 98 percent of Omni properties log into Medallia daily.
At Omni Hotels, everyone—from the frontline to the executive team—eats, breathes, and sleeps customer experience excellence. And sometimes this is taken literally. “If we happen to wake up in the middle of the night,” says one Omni executive. “The first thing we do is check our Medallia mobile app for new survey results. It could be midnight or 4 am.”
Omni has won numerous accolades for its great service, including 1to1 Media’s “Customer Champion” award. Over the past three years, the company has averaged 8.8 (on a 10-point scale) for Overall Satisfaction across all properties. For its events services, Omni boasts a 9.3 average. How does an organization maintain and improve on already-high satisfaction scores? By fostering a culture of empowerment and action:
Daily Engagement: A staggering 97.6 percent of Omni properties log into Medallia daily to access actionable, real-time data measuring customer experience. And that doesn’t include mobile app logins.
Daily Stand-Up: At every Omni property, each day begins with Medallia. The staff reviews customer feedback from the previous day, employees discuss specific problems and general trends, and managers give guidance and goals for the day.
Taking Action Online: Omni property operators manage and improve online experiences through social media. Since rolling out Medallia’s Social Feedback, Omni managers have responded to TripAdvisor posts at a rate greater than twice the industry average.