HR Practices to Boost Employee Engagement and Customer Engagement

Best Practices to Boost Employee Engagement and Customer Engagement 

Employee Engagement is central to long-term business success. Excellence in organizational and Human Resource practices results in higher levels of retention, productivity, and better service quality. Unfortunately, few companies are successfully engaging their employees. Research shows that 84% of employees plan to look for a new job in 2011; that’s no surprise, when only 27% of employees are actively engaged on the job. An unsteady job market may have been sufficient in retaining employees over the past two years, but this is no longer true. It is imperative to take targeted actions to ensure you hold onto your best talent.

Among other research, our annual Most Engaged Customers report has shown that the easiest way to get a customer to fall in love with a company is for them to experience exceptional service delivered by Engaged Employees. In other words, Engaged Employees who are passionate about their work inspire the customers they touch to be highly engaged as well. High Employee Engagement fosters high Customer Engagement. In turn, Customer Engagement impacts bottom-line metrics including stock price, profit rates, and ROI.

This makes sense in today’s challenging economic climate, where the customer experience is a company’s competitive advantage. Behavioral economists tell us that just 30% of the average purchasing decision is rational—the other 70% is emotional. Most of us decide where to spend our money by how we feel in the store—how we feel while talking to that front-line employee. Nonchalant, apathetic employees create a less-than-stellar customer experience. Actively disengaged employees create actively disengaged customers.

At the same time, every company has Brand Ambassadors—people who provide such amazing customer service that they act as living advertisements for the brand. One experience with an exceptional employee is often enough to create a Passionate Promoter—a customer who will bring in new business through enthusiastic recommendations to family and friends.

How can you foster Employee Engagement and create more Brand Ambassadors? Well, here are a few tips we’ve culled during our ten years working with companies:

Start a conversation with employees. One of the most effective ways to pre-empt the dreaded mass exodus of top talent is to start listening to them. Before launching into an in-depth employee survey initiative that can take many months of leadership approvals, buy-in and planning, online or electronic focus groups can be a quick, cost-effective and valuable way to learn what is on employees’ minds and what they think you can do to fix some of the issues negatively impacting Engagement and future retention of staff.

Measure and Identify Priorities. Of course, there are tremendous benefits to employee surveys as well. They give leadership an understanding of the extent of the issues and how many employees perceive opportunities for improvement in company procedures, culture, and work practices. Later, ongoing “check in” surveys can help employers understand shifts in employee priorities and opinions.

Listen to Customers to find Brand Ambassadors. A strong Voice of the Customer program goes hand-in-hand with a strong Voice of the Employee program. Our online dashboard automatically sends a targeted “Brand Ambassador” alert when a customer praises an individual employee by name. This allows you to study what these employees do differently that so engages your customers.

Take action on your unique Employee Engagement drivers. The building blocks of Employee Engagement tend to be consistent across sectors, companies and job roles; however, the importance of those building blocks will vary across and within companies. Compensation and benefits are clearly important drivers of engagement across all companies, but they may not actually be the most influential variables in your company. Are your employees looking for more fun on the job? Or are they yearning for more meaning in their work? Fun in the form of on-the-job line dances works at Texas Roadhouse, but it probably wouldn’t work in an accounting firm. Avoid cookie-cutter solutions; instead, use ongoing Employee Engagement Management questionnaires to stay plugged in to your employees’ needs and dreams.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz has said, “The relationship we have with our people and the culture of our company is our most sustainable competitive advantage.” Through Voice of the Employee and Voice of the Customer, you can discover organizational practices to create Passionate Promoters and Raving Fans among both your employees and your customers. And in doing so ensure that in the coming months your best employees will choose to continue to work for you and not your competition.

Topics: Employee Experience, Customer Experience