Mike Phillips, Director of Professional Services Group, Cvent, will be one of the featured speakers during a session at the 7th Annual Loyalty Expo, presented by Loyalty360 – The Loyalty Marketer’s Association. The event will be held March 17-19, 2014, at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida.
Phillips participated in an engaging Q&A with Loyalty360 to discuss the employee engagement and employee experiences.
Q: What do you see as missed opportunities for companies regarding employee engagement?
From our point-of-view, engagement is all about empowerment to act and align with the organization’s goals. When employees take action to solve customer problems, this is a key “moment-of-truth” that can be used to teach what the employee is empowered to do in alignment with larger goals and to recognize proactive behavior. The tendency is for organizations to take a more punitive approach – where no action or the wrong action is punished. Employees who feel empowered and recognized for taking action are more engaged than their peers.
Q: How should customer and employee engagement work together?
To some degree, the above answer is one example. Employees at key customer “touch points” can make or break a customer relationship based on their perceived empowerment to act on behalf of the organization relative to customer needs. If they act professionally and knowledgeably, they engender greater customer loyalty and engagement. Analysis of where there are gaps in employee engagement levels tend to point to concurrently lower customer engagement. Knowing what should be done depends on the drivers of employee and customer engagement at each organization. There are approaches to such analysis that can simultaneously determine what these drivers are. Once action is taken to address these attributes, engagement levels on both sides of the relationship move upward.
Q: With so much talk about companies trying to perfect their customer experiences, what do you see as some of the keys in this area?
Increasingly, the evidence points to perfecting employee experiences (especially “front line” employee experiences) as the most effective way to improve the customer experience. There is a whole host of what I call “hygiene” factors that are necessary to initially attract and engage customers (product/service utility and value, channel availability, ease of purchase, etc.). These are necessary to foster a customer’s emotional attachment to a brand, product or service and the organization that produces it, but continuous relationships with customers typically depend on the employees that customers interact. Their knowledge, commitment and enthusiasm are more likely to affect customers in an emotionally positive way.
Q: How do you define customer loyalty and has that definition changed in recent years?
The best definition I have seen thus far is the following: “The measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work.” And the definition of loyalty has changed markedly over the past few years. We used to equate satisfaction with loyalty and then the likelihood to recommend to someone else. Both of these definitions have proved less useful as time has passed.
With recent macro-economic trends and the maturation of easy access information sources, traditional rationally-based definitions of loyalty have lost relevance. Now that customers have a much greater ability to acquire information at low or no cost to them, they have the ability to have greater knowledge about their range of choices. As a result, it is more likely that customers will evaluate their choices on rational grounds but choose on emotional grounds.
Q: What advice would you offer companies aspiring to greater employee engagement?
After understanding the need, organizations must:
Accurately measure levels of engagement:
What are the components of engagement?
How do my levels compare to industry levels?
How does engagement differ by division, department, region, management level, etc.?
Assess what factors are driving engagement/disengagement:
How do the drivers of engagement differ across various units and levels?
Are current programs focused on engagement or something less?
Take action!
Recognize and reward engagement (share stories, recognize good work, reinforce positives)
Remediate areas of disengagement (create clarity, revise messaging, re-focus training)