Culture change is not easy. I was running a workshop with a utility client many years ago about the concept of Customer Experience. There were 20 people in the room, and we were kicking around ideas of what changes could deliver an improved experience. One young lady, much younger than her surrounding co-workers, had an idea, several actually. However, with every one of her suggestions, one of the others would say, “We already did that; it didn’t work,” implying that it wouldn’t work now, either. This cycle happened many times before she gave up. It was clear that changing the culture at this utility was going to be challenging.

It still happens today, too. I was talking to a chief marketing officer (CMO) of a multinational company the other day who wants to change the organization (and believe me, I know this organization; he’s right). I started to talk about how people within his organization needed to understand customer emotions and focus on customer-centricity. The CMO stopped me because he knew right away that it wouldn’t work for their company. I challenged him on this, explaining that if he took that view, the organization would never change. We will see what he decides.

However, I don’t think his situation is unique. We know this process is a challenge. To help prepare you mentally for it, we comprised these five rules for affecting real culture change.

1. Create or define a burning platform.
2. Recognize this is a long-term goal.
3. Be clear on your vision for the future.
4. Remember that “you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
5. Lead from the top.

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Rule #1: Create or Define a Burning Platform.

Essentially, this first rule is for you to make it clear why the organization should change. If everybody thinks business-as-usual is working, no one will bother to make any changes; it’s too inconvenient and uncomfortable. It’s the classic idea that to effect change, one must realize that the pain of change is less than the pain of staying where you are. If you don’t believe me, consider the fate of these previously successful brands: Circuit City, Sears, Blockbuster, Kodak, and probably soon, J.C. Penney. Moreover, with the pandemic and the recession and everything else that will follow looming, we could see some more big brands take a fall. However, if these former brands had a more customer-centric culture, they would probably be here today because they realized that the market is moving on and appropriately adjusted.

To illustrate what I mean, consider how diets work (or don’t work, as the case may be). Weight loss is a common goal for many people, but they often fail to do so over and over again. However, some people succeed. The difference between those that fail and those who lose weight is that people who lose weight have the goal of losing weight for a specific event, e.g., a wedding or class reunion. The special event is the burning platform, which creates a sense of urgency.

I have talked about Loss Aversion before, and one of its implications is that when you are in a gain frame, which is what most companies are in most of the time, you tend to be risk-averse, meaning you don’t want to change. However, when you get into a loss frame (aka, there is a platform on fire and it threatens to burn the whole enterprise down), your risk preferences flip, and you become more risk-seeking. In other words, you are more willing to take a chance because you can see that the status quo threatens to destroy your success.

Rule #2: Recognize that this is a long-term goal.

I’ve been in many organizations where people want to make a culture change in the next six months. In my experience, it takes a lot longer than that. You may be able to start it in six months, and even make progress, but you will still have a way to go. Cultural changes usually range from three to five years.

If you think you will achieve culture change in six months, my advice would be don’t even try it. You’re not going to see it through to completion in six months.

Rule #3: Be clear about your vision of the future.

Your articulation of the vision, the philosophy, is vital. However, it is equally crucial that you know what you want it to do. Break it down into all the new things you want to do and all of the old stuff you want to stop. Also, include how you want to measure it.

In my early career in corporate life, the philosophy flavor of the month at that particular time was Total Quality Management. I was with a big corporate telecom at the time, and we went on a training course for Total Quality Management. One of the remarkable things that came out of the training was the idea that you should have a plan and objective for every meeting. It would be best if you also articulated those things beforehand, estimate the time needed for the meeting, and then stick to it. What I like about these concepts is that these are solid, definable things you can do. Moreover, if you don’t do it, it is obvious you aren’t doing it. This level of clarity for your vision will help you achieve the same.

The culture of your organization reflects on the experience your customers have. For example, we were working with an airline that wanted to improve their experience. We discovered in getting to know their culture that internally, they referred to passengers as “self-loading freight.” In essence, this alone tells you everything you need to know about this airline. As we worked with the airline to develop a Customer Experience Statement, which defines the experience they wanted to deliver, the airline wanted to improve punctuality. However, we explained that being late was a company culture for them; they had been late to every meeting we ever had with them. While starting meetings on time has nothing to do with how quickly planes are loaded and unloaded, being late to meetings can send a powerful cultural signal within an organization that being late is acceptable.

The ability to articulate what you want people to do and what you don’t want people to do is essential here. You want to make these actions definite and measurable, too, so it’s obvious when somebody is doing it—or not doing it.

Another cultural signal I always like to check is where Customer Experience falls on the meeting agenda. If it is at the end, then that tells me a lot. What you put at the end of the list is rarely the number one priority. If you always do customer metrics last, it sends a subtle message to everyone in attendance that it is not that essential to the organization or not as critical as all the other items on the list.

Rule #4: Remember that “you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

The reality of culture changes is that they are tough, and some people will not want to go on the journey. You will encounter resistance to your plan, and it won’t always be forthright. Ultimately, you might have to sack individuals that aren’t on board with your planned cultural change.

The last corporate organization I worked at was implementing a change program involving six sectors. One sector was not on board. The guy running even placed a bet that the change program wouldn’t work. It should come as no surprise that when it was time to go live, their sector wasn’t ready because that senior person convinced everybody that it wouldn’t work.

If you consider the teachings from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, you have to choose your battles. You can’t win every battle, so you need to select the crucial ones. From a business perspective, that can mean breaking a few eggs to make your Customer Experience omelet. In other words, you might have to fire someone who isn’t on board, particularly if that person is a high-profile, senior person. If you remove them, that sends a signal that you’re serious about your program for change. I wouldn’t fire people just as a matter of course, but if they’re undermining what you’re doing, you do have to get rid of them. Which leads me to…

Rule #5: Lead from the top.

Good leadership provides an excellent employee experience and the employee experience you provide is essential. In fact, my book, Happy Employees Make Happy Customers explains in great detail how this works. Regarding culture, one of the points I make in the book is that people often stay in jobs because of great managers, and leave because of poor ones.

Your words and actions have to be the same. If you want to make that cultural change, you have to live it and demonstrate to people that you live it, even when (and particularly when) it’s causing you some pain. Principles are great, but they mean nothing unless you sacrifice something for them. Make sure that you’re doing what you’re asking your teams to do.

A vital part of that is to look at your schedule. If you say the organization needs to be more customer-centric and spend more time with customers, look at your schedule and see where you’re doing that. Otherwise, your words ring hollow to those who follow you. It goes back to the importance of these subtle signals. If you say one thing and do another, it undermines that culture change.

The first call center I managed many years ago had 550 people in Bristol, England. The call center was in one building, but their manager before me had his office in another building entirely. The effect was that the team never saw their manager in person at all. There were offices at the call center building; he just wasn’t in them.

When I took over, I wanted to make the point about being accessible. I would j sit out on the floor with everybody else. From a cultural perspective, I was saying I was equal to everybody else. Moreover, I stayed as long as the call center was open. I wanted to make myself available to the team and these tactics were my way of sending that signal to people. In a way, the most essential signal we can send is how we use our own time.

These five rules can help you in your efforts to effect change at your organization. By creating urgency with a burning platform, you prioritize the need for change. Then, working with the long-term in mind, you can present a clear vision for the culture you envision for your organization and work out what you should (and shouldn’t) do in that new environment. Recognize there could be some battles, and maybe some people you need to move on because they’re not going to be part of the new culture. Perhaps most importantly, you must match your words and actions because the little things matter and will resound around the organization.

To hear more about this idea in more detail, listen to the complete podcast here.

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of six bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post The Five Rules for Affecting Real Culture Change appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

We discussed this phenomenon in a recent podcast and how we all do this. For example, I think the Luton Town Football Club is the best team in the world. The team demonstrates how football (aka, soccer, for those unfamiliar with the British version of the word) should be played. Or they do in my mind anyway. 

However, my mind is at odds with itself. If I am honest, I also know Luton Town Football Club is not that great. While they are in the Championship tier, which is the second of the four levels of the English Football League, the team probably should play in the third tier, called League One. As bad as that assessment sounds for the team, Luton Town Football Club is doing well compared to their history. Not so long ago, my team dropped out of the professional tiers altogether and played semi-professional teams. The Semi-professional league means that somebody, who was a postman in the morning, turns up to play football in the afternoon. 

Many sports fans are familiar with this dichotomy. Your love for the team makes them the best, and your “hope springs eternal” that this year will be their year. However, at the same time, you know deep down that it probably isn’t. 

These contradictory beliefs cause discomfort for us. The two simultaneously-held and conflicting views create tension for us. If we could admit that one of our ideas is wrong, it would relieve that tension. Nonetheless, we still hold onto the contradictions despite feeling uncomfortable about it. 

One time, a gentleman who worked at an oil company picked me up for a speaking engagement in Austin, Texas. Our conversation from the airport led to him telling me how environmentally-friendly he was. However, we had this conversation in the most massive pickup truck I have ever seen that he owns, not to mention that he works for an oil company. 

It’s a funny story, and we can all laugh at his lack of self-awareness in this instance, but he isn’t alone. We all create Cognitive Dissonance. Conflicts abound all the time in all of us. 

We have several common ways we resolve these conflicts and relieve that tension. One way we reduce the conflict is to align our behavior with our beliefs. Another way is to do the opposite, meaning we update our ideas to be consistent with what we see out in the world. 

However, this type of resolution is less common than it probably should be. Moreover, resolving your conflict by changing either your thoughts or actions is a bit dull to study. Psychologists have instead focused on the dysfunctional ways that we address this conflict. The third way people resolve Cognitive Dissonance is to change their perception of the beliefs, which means rationalizing your actions. 

These contradictory beliefs cause discomfort for us. The two simultaneously-held and conflicting views create tension for us. If we could admit that one of our ideas is wrong, it would relieve that tension.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory and the Real World

The Cognitive Dissonance Theory is the work of psychologist Leon Festinger. His book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, was published in 1957. Most psychologists run experiments and analyze results across conditions, and Festinger did that, too. However, he also did some anthropological work with a UFO cult in Chicago around that time called The Seekers to see how the cult resolved Cognitive Dissonance about an imminent apocalypse they forecasted but didn’t happen. 

Here’s who The Seekers were and what happened. The cult’s leader, Mrs. Keech, thought she was receiving messages from aliens. The messages told her that the aliens were coming to take them, the “true believers,” away in their spaceship on a specific date. Many of the cult members were all in, leaving their spouses, selling all their possessions, and eventually turning up in a field in rural Illinois to wait for the Rapture. They waited and waited, but the aliens never showed.

You can imagine that giving up your earthly existence for a ride on a spaceship you are sure is coming to get you and realizing that it didn’t create significant Cognitive Dissonance. As a result, Festinger and his team could observe what happened with the cult members next. 

There were different reactions to the situation. Some cult members resolved the dissonance by stopping their beliefs. They admitted they were wrong, left the cult, and attempted to restart their lives. However, other cult members resolved the dissonance by committing to it more intensely and changing their perception of their beliefs. These reinvigorated cult members started proselytizing, trying to attract new members. Perhaps the argument was that if this group could believe hard enough, it would make it so. 

I have been guilty of similar thinking—but not about spaceships coming to whisk me away to outer space. Some of you might remember that I love Apple products. But before it was all about Apple for me, it was all about Sony. There was a design that Sony used that held my fascination. I bought everything Sony made, computers, Walkman, TVs, and so on. However, I noticed that as my relationship went on with them, Sony could use some improvements in their usability. As the usability interface worsened, I started to make excuses for them as a loyal customer. Over time, however, I admitted that Sony was not that good anymore, and I moved on to greener pastures.

When we talk about Cognitive Dissonance objectively, it indicates a stickiness where we want to hold onto our beliefs. So, we will minimize by explaining away bad experiences if we’re loyal to the brand. By contrast, if we were all robots, our first disappointing experience with a brand that we were faithful to should then reduce our evaluation of the brand. A linear map could show where every good experience increased our evaluation and where negative experiences decreased it. However, we are not robots, and our maps look different. 

Another form of dissonance reduction takes place where we change the story. Then, once we flip our beliefs, we can then adjust our memories of our own opinions. We do it to get things to line up in our heads. For example, I could revise my account of my erstwhile relationship with Sony by changing my belief that Sony was a good brand and replacing it with the idea that it was not as good as I thought it was. Moreover, I could further amend that recollection to state that I was never overly enthusiastic about Sony in the first place. 

Cognitive Dissonance also happens internally at an organization. Marketing makes a brand promise in advertising, but then the organization doesn’t follow through with it in reality. It creates a conflict for customers, which is terrible for your customer-facing employees on the front lines. In turn, many employees will get fed up with the contradictions and leave in search of greener pastures. Therefore, resolving Cognitive Dissonance is imperative for those in leadership roles at an organization.

So, what should you do about Cognitive Dissonance?

As far as practical applications, I have a few suggestions:

1. Recognize that Cognitive Dissonance is uncomfortable for people. This psychological concept is at play in people’s thinking all the time. If you are customer-facing, understanding that your customers are often dealing with it and recognizing how it changes their behavior is essential. Leadership should look for ways of resolving it for customer-facing positions, whether that means changing policies or operational directives or something else in your organization. 
2. Find Cognitive Dissonance reductions strategies that you or your organization will use. Find ways to ease the discomfort for your customers in their buying decisions by appealing to what they say they need but delivering what they really want. For example, when someone like the oil-company employee wants to buy an environmentally-friendly car, but only looks interested in the enormous trucks, highlight the ways the giant vehicle is environmentally-friendly for its class. Using empathetic humor could be another way to alleviate the dissonance-induced tension that people feel.
3. Remember that customers can’t always tell you what they want. I have said it before, and I will say it again: people don’t always tell you what they want because they don’t know themselves. You have to dig a little deeper, under the surface, to discover what is motivating their behavior and possibly creating dissonance. Our Emotional Signature Research takes into account what people say and what emotions they feel to identify what drives an organization’s value. It can help you find out what customers really want and not just what they say they do.

So, What Next?

Cognitive Dissonance is everywhere. Many of the psychological concepts we regularly discuss in this newsletter are a form of it somehow or another. It is helpful to think of it as a broad umbrella theory with many more specific phenomena under it. Moreover, it’s everywhere because we all participate in activities that create it, and we all take action to resolve the discomfort Cognitive Dissonance causes. 

In situations with human thinking and recall, there’s also only one thing happening. There is also an element of Confirmation Bias, which, you might recall, is our tendency to turn new evidence into that which supports our previously-held beliefs. In other words, I have this view; therefore, I’m going to look out for the things that confirm it. Furthermore, our Intuitive System, which is the type of thinking we use that is fast and automatic, is looking for patterns. So, it notices one part of the experience was terrible, and so was this other part, and then that other thing was bad, too, so maybe that means the provider is not as good as they used to be. 

So, remember, as you’re trying to use this concept and apply it, the desire to reduce Cognitive Dissonance is universal. Moreover, there are many different ways to do it. However, it is essential to reduce the occurrences of it where you can. While there will be a hardcore group of hyper-enthusiastic people who will never change their behavior, most people will resolve the dissonance they feel in your experience. It will often be by abandoning the brand or, in some cases, even turning against the brand to go to your competition. 

To hear more about this idea in more detail, listen to the complete podcast here.

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of six bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Why We Think Things Are Good When They Are Bad appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

A recent article by a major employee research and engagement consulting organization led with the above headline. They were reporting on results of their national workforce tracking poll, the highlight of which was that employee engagement had risen 1.2% between January and February, 2015 (to 32.9%) and that this new level was the highest engagement rate reported in the past three years.

The consulting organization went on to conclude from these findings that “Recent trends suggest that improvements in engagement coincide with improvement in unemployment and underemployment.”, with the bottom line statement that “A decline in the percentage of unemployed and underemployed Americans may have some influence on the percentage of engaged workers.  As the job market becomes more competitive, it is possible that companies are putting more effort into engaging their current workers.”  At best, this conclusion feels like a major s-t-r-e-t-c-h of correlation analysis results.

This same organization believes that “Employee engagement is a leading indicator of future business success….”; and, to the degree that engagement level can impact staff turnover and productivity, both key contributors to profitability, this is a fair statement. However, when this organization, and others in the employee engagement research, training and consultation space, makes claims that engagement, in and of itself, contributes to customer value and loyalty behavior, two important questions need to be asked.  Those question are:

1)  Really? and,

2) Where’s the consistent proof for individual companies?

Just as satisfaction has little proven connection to customer behavior, employee engagement was not designed to drive customer behavior. To build on this statement, let’s begin by looking at the results of satisfaction on downstream customer action.  Beyond extremely macro connection to sales, customer satisfaction (as expressed through the ACSI) has been shown to have little direct connection to purchase behavior, to the tune of 0.0% to 0.1% correlation. Many companies are still measuring customer sat in hopes that learning about its drivers will help build customer loyalty, but satisfaction isn’t contemporary regarding decision-making or reflective of what is going on in the customer’s real, emotional world.

‘Employee engagement’ has many meanings and interpretations, but relatively little of it has to do, by conceptual definition, specifically with impact on customer behavior.  Thorough analysis conducted by The Conference Board in 2006 showed that, among twelve leading engagement research companies, twenty-six key drivers of engagement could be identified, of which eight were common to all:

• Trust and integrity – How well do managers communicate and ‘walk the talk‘?

• Nature of the job – Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?

• Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Do employees understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance?

• Career growth opportunities – Are there opportunities for growth within the company?

• Pride about the company – How much self-esteem do the employees feel by being associated with their company?

• Coworkers/team members – How much influence do they exert on the employee’s level of engagement?

• Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee’s skills?

• Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value relationship(s) with manager(s), and is there trust and credibility between the levels?

Typically, there is little or no mention/inclusion of ‘customer’ or ‘customer focus’ elements either in measurement or analysis of employee engagement.  Though customer experience, and resultant behavior, is impacted by engagement, it is more tangential and inferential than purposeful in nature.

As noted, employee engagement can impact corporate profitability at the macro level (as much as three to four times higher for top-scoring engagement companies compared to those on the bottom half of companies using this measure); and that’s one of the really valuable results it provides.  A major 2012 collaborative secondary research effort, Engage for Success, by the University of Bath School of Management and Marks and Spencer in the U.K. concluded, as we’ve seen with other research into the benefits of employee engagement: “As well as performance and productivity, employee engagement impacts positively on levels of absenteeism, on retention, and on levels of innovation….”

Where customer behavior changes are reported as a result of employee engagement, they were (like satisfaction’s impact on customer behavior) also at macro and rather weak tea, incidental levels:  “An earlier (2006) Gallup report that examined over 23,000 business units showed that companies with engagement levels in the top quartile averaged 12% higher customer advocacy than those in the bottom quartile.”  Like the “So what?” question, the consistent financial impact of engagement on individual companies and their customers, i.e. on a micro level, needs to be addressed, understood and reported.

Now, we come to employee ambassadorship and how it builds on the useful alignment and productivity represented by engagement.  Employee ambassadorship, or employee brand ambassadorship, has direct connections to – yet is distinctive from – both employee satisfaction and employee engagement.  Its impact on customer behavior can be, and has been, proven at the individual company level.  As a research framework, and method for understanding employee behavior, its overarching objective is to identify the most active and positive (and inactive and negative) level of employee commitment to the company’s product and service value promise, to the company itself, and to optimizing the customer experience. The ambassadorship thesis, with its component elements, can be displayed as follows:

• Commitment to company – Commitment to, and being positive about, the company (through personal satisfaction, fulfillment, and an expression of pride), and to being a contributing, loyal, and fully aligned, member of the culture

• Commitment to value proposition – Commitment to, and alignment with, the mission and goals of the company, as expressed through perceived excellence (benefits and solutions) provided by products and/or services

• Commitment to customers – Full commitment (by all employees and the enterprise)to understanding customer needs, and to performing in a manner which provides customers with optimal experiences and relationships, as well as delivering the highest level of product and/or service value

Ambassadorship is linked to the key productivity and empowerment elements of employee satisfaction, engagement, and alignment research, and related training and operating approaches.  However, it more directly contributes to business results, experience optimization, and value delivery because its key concept is building customer bonds through direct and indirect employee interaction.  As companies strive to become more customer-centric in all things they do, we believe that the emphasis on building strong employee ambassadorship will continue to increase as a core objective.

‘Happy people give you happy customers’, is the foundation insight that now drives many employee engagement initiatives including our founder, Colin Shaw, who lived by this when he was SVP of Customer Experience & leading 3,500 people. Now he will be presenting a FREE webinar “Employee Engagement & Ambassadorship, Optimizing Their Impact on the Customer Experience”, Michel Lowenstein. Register here.

Republished with permission from CustomerThink.com

The post “U.S. Employee Engagement Reaches Three-Year High.” Where Customer Experience and Value Delivery Are Concerned, Shouldn’t We Ask: ‘So What?’ appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Neil had a reputation of being a tough boss. He set high standards and expected people to achieve them. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. I was nervous. The meeting went well. I told Neil what I thought about the organization both good and bad. And it seemed to hit the right chord–Neil offered me the role of running Marketing then and there.

To say I felt surprised would be an understatement.

After working for him for a while, I realized Neil spotted hidden talent in people, talent they didn’t see themselves. I was no exception; he saw something in me I didn’t see myself. He gave me the confidence to express myself and encouraged me to take risks. It turned out to be the break and the environment I needed to find my stride as a leader.

Neil wasn’t an easy boss as he was demanding, and rightly so.  He was tough, but in a good way. He removed me from my comfort zone. He set high standards and expected me to deliver. He forced me to do my best work, and never accepted anything less than my best effort. His style of management was inclusive, but also you knew who was boss. He had an ethos of debate and then decision. His phrase (which I often use today) was, “Once we agree, we do.”

But let me be clear: to the outside world he was a tough businessman. To his team, on the other hand, he was protective, understanding, and loyal. He would put his neck on the line for you.

I remember on one occasion I had taken a risk and things had gone wrong. He didn’t chastise me but instead applauded me for trying. Then, he went out of his way to protect me, putting himself in harm’s way politically as he did so. As a result, I would have walked over hot coals for Neil.

He took great pleasure in seeing the people he spotted moved on to bigger and better things. He moved me from Marketing to Customer Service, which was quite a surprise for people. This position, incidentally, set me on the path to Customer Experience.

Despite his tough exterior, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for one of his team. He was exceptionally loyal and protective of everyone. These traits inspired loyalty from his team. In some ways, you could say he established a cult. Now I realize the word cult normally has a negative connotation, but it can be good. In other words, if you were a square peg, Neil made sure you were in a square hole.

Key things I learned from Neil:

• Take a risk on people; it can pay huge dividends.
• Be fanatically loyal to your team.
• Be approachable.
• Be demanding and push people to do their best work.
• Build a ‘cult’ in your team.
• Think outside the square.

To this day, I believe a great part of what success I have, is down to Neil for which I thank him. I hear him in the back of my head when I am managing my team or presenting to an audience or listening to a client. I ask myself what Neil would do when faced with a tough decision. I hear him questioning my reasoning when I argue a point with myself. His wisdom, fierce loyalty, and demanding demeanor shaped me into the leader I am today. I can only hope to live up to his estimations of my ability and be the leader he always believed I could be.

Who in your career has made the greatest impact? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Cracking Employee Engagement Through Leadership
• Virgin Shows Links Between Employee Experience and Customer Experience
• Employee Culture: Why Amazon is on Top and Bank of America Isn’t

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter@ColinShaw_CX

The post What My Boss Taught Me about Leadership appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

When the stock market tanks like it did recently, most CEOs would be worried about their revenue also falling (not to mention falling figures from those CEO bonuses we all hear so much about).  Most are likely to suggest people need to work harder to weather the storm.

Not Schultz.

In a memo early September, Schultz decided to address the emotions both his employees and Customers feel in a falling market like the one we bore witness to earlier in the month.

To his employees, he said, “…although we are not immune from the global stock market selloff that has now made its way to Wall Street, my confidence in our company and in all of you has never been greater.”

About how we wanted his partners (retail employees) to treat Customers he said:

“Today’s financial market volatility, combined with great political uncertainty both at home and abroad, will undoubtedly have an effect on consumer confidence and perhaps even our customers’ attitudes and behavior. Our customers are likely to experience an increased level of anxiety and concern. Please recognize this and – as you always have – remember that our success is not an entitlement, but something we need to earn, every day. Let’s be very sensitive to the pressures our customers may be feeling, and do everything we can to individually and collectively exceed their expectations.”

I talk a lot about Customer-centricity of organizations. We use a model called Naïve to Natural that measures how an organization is oriented toward Customers, with the Naïve not having a Customer focus and the Natural having the most Customer focus. This communication to employees shows me a customer centric company that is lead by the top down on this principle.

I love the line that says, “success is not an entitlement, but something we need to earn, every day.” Never truer words were spoken, particularly when you are addressing Customer Experience.

Customer Experiences happen in the moment, and these moments happen every day, every hour of operation, in every channel. In all of these moments, an employee can make or break a Customer Experience. This is why training and employee engagement are so key to its success. They need the tools and tactics at their disposal when these moments occur.

It is also why it so important to have the buy-in of your senior management and leadership teams for your Customer Experience agenda. This important training takes time and money, two things on which most leaders have a lot of opinions, especially about how they will be spent. Without this commitment, you could end up with a great plan that everyone ignores because it isn’t the priority at the moment.

I also like how his retail employees are considered partners. How employees feel about their job shows in the Customer Experiences they provide. When they feel they are a valued member of the team, it shows. Schultz understands this in the way he refers to them and also with key phrases like “my confidence in all of you.”

Schultz understands that Employees and Customers feel emotions caused by the world around them and these emotions affect their behavior. He values his Customers enough to care how they feel coming into his experience and takes steps to help his employees have the appropriate tools to react. He also leads his Customer-centric culture by example. He works to ensure employees felt valued and cared for so they will continue to deliver the experience that makes Customer feel valued and cared for. When it comes to Customer-centricity, there is no question that he gets it.

Does your CEO get it, too?

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• 5 Reasons Your KPIs Are Hurting Your Customer Experience

• Starbucks: Real Concern or Just Good Marketing?

• 7 Signs That Your Executive Team is Not on Board With Your Customer Experience Agenda

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post Starbucks CEO Gets It, Does Yours? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Foresee, a Customer Experience analytics firm, examined the results of two studies that used their analytics technology last fall. The first was looking at the employee experience for American workers at all levels of employment. The second examined the retail experience of 40,000 Customers. What they discovered was Customer Satisfaction was highest in retailers with high employee engagement. Furthermore, this translated into increased revenues for those stores by referrals; return visits and purchases from other channels. To see the full article, click here.

Clearly, the idea that employee engagement isn’t as important as Customer Experience is one whose time has passed. It’s critical to address both deliberately to create and experience that is good for both employees and Customers.

Combining the Customer and the Employee Experience

So how can you do this? The first step is defining the experience you want for both. Here’s a hint: It’s the same one. In other words, if you want your Customers to feel they can trust you, they are valued, and their experience was easy, then your employees should say that senior management trusts them, values them, and their experiences was easy, too. When you achieve this state, the Customer Experience program and employee engagement program are aligned and implemented simultaneously.

Employee engagement is the latest buzz phrase in the industry. It occurs when employees feel a strong commitment to the company’s mission, and motivated to contribute to the company’s success. Furthermore, engaged employees enjoy personal satisfaction for doing so.

Like Customer engagement, getting Employee Engagement rarely happens by accident. It is deliberately designed into the culture and is carried out by the leaders in the organization. In other words, if you want employee engagement, you have to design a work experience that produces it. Therefore the same principles about how you deal with a Customer Experience apply to how you deal with an Employee Experience.

One of the tools we deploy to help organizations create a better Employee Experience is an Emotional Signature for employees. An Emotional Signature for employees is how your Employees feel about their work experience, more specifically, the emotions they associate with work. If we are trying to create engaged employees, we need to discover what emotions drives the most value for them by undertaking some form of research, like that which we do for the emotional signature for Customers. Using these identified values, we then design emotionally engaging experiences for employees.

Many organizations we first meet do not trust their employees. Employee empowerment is woefully inadequate. When this happens, the employer sends a strong message that says, “We don’t trust you to make the right decision.” This is never a catalyst for employee engagement. By giving employees the tools to do the job and then getting out of their way while they do it, you create empowerment and foster employee engagement.

For my last corporate gig, I always said, “Happy people give you happy Customers.” Based on the findings by Foresee, I might now amend that to say, “Happy People give you Happy Customers that spend more money!” Who doesn’t want that?

Are your Customer Experience and Employee Experiences combined and complementary?

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Virgin Shows Links Between Employee Experience and Customer Experience
• Employee Culture: Why Amazon is On Top and Bank of America Isn’t
• Improving Your CX One Employee at a Time

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX

The post The Big Mistake Most Organizations Make with Employee Engagement appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Aetna made headlines when they gave their lowest-paid workers a raise to $16/hr. Who are these lowest paid workers? They are the call center employees, or, in other words, some of the most (if not the most) Customer-facing employees. And these employees aren’t facing happy Customers either. One of the employees described how many of the callers they talk to are angry and the calls can be challenging. Their job is to help calm Customers down, and then help them better understand their insurance policy.

However, the challenges of their job weren’t the only thing that caused these stresses for employees in a day. Personal challenges affect how employees feel at work. An example of these personal challenges can be not making the bills or needing help to feed their families. The executive team at Aetna discovered that many of their call center employees were in public assistance programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.

Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini believes the investment in his employees will improve their state of mind at work, and because of that, improve their productivity levels. He made the move “to make sure that they were bringing their best selves to work every day.” While he can’t say for sure if it will increase profits, he felt it was the right thing to do. Bertolini believes it is important to do this, to help restore the middle class by paying employees a fair wage. In fact, he sends packets to other CEOs to encourage them to do the same thing with their compensation plans.

Investing In Employees Helps Prevent Emotional Burnout

So, why is raising wages for employees key to creating a good Customer Experience? It comes down to emotional labor. In a service-based job like the one where these call center workers are employed, they are required to manage their own emotions to project a certain image on behalf of the company, a concept known as emotional labor. In many ways, the company culture and emotional labor expectations dictate how they want their employees “to feel” while they are at work.

You know as well as I do if you have stress at home, it translates over to work. In the case of a low-wage earning employee on public assistance because he or she has medical bills or can’t feed the family, it’s safe to say the employee suffered significant emotional distractions at work. When employees are distracted, they can’t manage their emotions as well. It makes it significantly harder to maintain the emotional management required for the job.

I always say that happy Employees make happy Customers. This is not just a quaint slogan; it’s a fact. When an employee is friendly and smiling, it’s contagious. It spreads, like a happy virus and it infects Customers.

However, it takes energy on behalf of the employee to sustain the happy demeanor they display to Customers. And if they don’t have the resources to maintain it or time to recover, they will burn out over time, suffering from emotional exhaustion.

The Experience Economy Requires a New Way of Thinking

We are living in the Experience Economy today. What that means is that Customers want the companies they do business with to make it worth their while, to give them more value and a better experience than the past. It is not enough to have a great product, price, and placement. You now must have a great experience to go with that product. And who provides that experience? The employees do.

Therefore, linking Employee Engagement and Customer Experience is key to getting the Experience you want for your Customers. In other words, it’s not enough to win the Customers over; you need to win your employees over, also. Investing in your employees, giving them a foundation for a positive emotional state at work is a basic element of creating that positive emotional experience for Customers. Ignore the employees’ emotional needs, and they will ignore the Experience expectations you need them to deliver.

How can you invest in your employees today?

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Employee Culture: Why Amazon is on Top and Bank of America Isn’t

• Engaging Millennial Employees

• Improving your CX One Employee at a Time

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post The High Cost of Emotional Labor appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

I have written before of the link between a company’s employee experience and the Customer Experience they deliver on a company’s behalf.  Despite much evidence that points to this link, many organizations continue to keep the two areas separate in their efforts. However, the separate area strategy is not the direct path to success for either.

The Virgin parental leave policy is for parents in the first year following the birth of biological children or after adopting children. The year applies to one family, meaning that if both father and mother work at Virgin, they must take turns on leave over that year with their child. The full benefit, meaning 100% pay is available to employees that have been with Virgin for at least four years.

Many of you reading this might be shaking your heads wondering how on earth they are going to turn a profit with employee benefit packages like this in place? It is a fair question, and it stands to reason that the expenses associated with this new policy are high. However, Branson isn’t concerned about this. According to Branson’s statement about the policy, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your business.”

The paternity policy at Virgin reflects two critical elements for the link between Employee Experience and Customer Experience. First, it shows Virgin values employees and wants them to feel like their employer cares about their personal lives and needs. Secondly, it shows that Virgin understands that an employee’s personal emotional state carries over into the emotional state they present to and create for Customers.

Valuing Employees is the Foundation for Employee Ambassadorship

Let’s take a closer look at the first element. The idea that your company values you and cares about your life is an important foundation for employee experience. Furthermore, this kind of relationship is the gateway to employee ambassadorship, a term that describes the most dedicated employees at an organization. Employee Ambassadors are the employees that are the most active and committed to the company’s product and service value promise. They not only go above and beyond to deliver on these service values, but they influence the other employees around them to do the same. Without this foundation of trust between employer and employee, there can be no ambassadors, and these ambassadors are a key factor in creating the Customer Experience you want for your brand.

Emotions Play Big Roles in Both Employee and Customer Experiences

The second element reflected here shows Virgin understands how the emotions of the people involved in both Employee Experience and Customer Experience are essential to having a good Experience. By creating a generous employee benefit for the new parents, Virgin shows they recognize the emotional state of their employees is an important part of what Virgin considers success at their organization. Virgin knows that emotions play a large part in how the day-to-day interactions transpire and evoking the right ones is essential to having a good experience, whether looking at the Employee’s Experience or the Customer’s.

I always say that happy Employees make happy Customers. It is not just a quaint slogan; it’s a fact. When an employee is friendly and smiling, it’s contagious. It spreads, like a happy virus and it infects Customers. However, it takes energy on behalf of the employee to sustain the happy demeanor they display to Customers. Employers that recognize this and build it into their Employee Experience as part of their plans for a better Customer Experience are far more likely to achieve the results they want to move forward in the Experience Economy.

What can you do to create this type of employee environment in your organization? If you don’t know, just look to the leaders like Richard Branson. In other words, when it comes to your employees, maybe it’s time you started thinking like a Virgin.

Don’t miss Michael Lowenstein, thought leadership principal at Beyond Philosophy, as he provides valuable perspectives on B2B and B2C loyalty programs and offers practical and proven methods for developing consistent loyalty programs. Reserve your spot at this informative webinar presented Thursday, June 17th, 2015.

Special early-bird registration offer: Free Whitepaper Download, “Loyalty Programs vs. Loyalty Behavior: Do Marketers Get What They Intend?”

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Employee Culture: Why Amazon is on Top and Bank of America Isn’t
• Engaging Millennial Employees
• Improving your CX One Employee at a Time

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Virgin Shows Links Between Employee Experience and Customer Experience appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Both members of this marriage have a voice. The Voice of the Customer (VOC) refers to the feedback you get regarding a Customer’s expectations and their experience with your organization. The Voice of the Employee (VOE) refers to how employees participate in the decisions at your organization. If you employ an effective listening program to each, the voices will tell you exactly how one affects the other.

In the past couple of years, more organizations have been listening to their Customers. More have realized that the best way to decide what to do to make a Customer’s Experience better is to figure out what your Customers expect, what they appreciate, and what they want to avoid.

These same organizations would be wise to listen to their employees as well. Too many ignore their own employees’ opinions. The VOE is just as pertinent as the VOC, and for organizations wishing to improve their Customer Experience, an invaluable asset for specific action to take.

Who better to tell you ways to improve the various moments of your current Experience then the people who have those moments with Customers every day? You may not like what they say but invariably they know the problems you are causing Customers and also know how to fix it. Who better to see the problems and pitfalls in your process creating negative emotions for the Customers than the people who walk that process day in and day out?

And guess what? By listening to them and acting, you improve employee engagement and what the VOE is saying.

Engaged employees believe they contribute to the company’s success. They also believe in the company’s brand promise and will see to it that they go above and beyond in their efforts to ensure this promise is fulfilled. Engagement at an employee level is critical to creating a good Customer Experience.

Employees are uniquely qualified to tell you ways to improve the Customer Experience. When we undertake our Journey Mapping, we always involve front-line employees. They know what is happening and the issues that result as they speak with Customers everyday. Making their voice part of your strategic planning encourages them to take ownership of their work. During what can be a painful Customer Experience implementation process, it encourages them to meet the challenges change can present, however difficult, because they helped design it.

We can see what happens when employees’ voices are ignored. Last summer, Wal-Mart employees were striking all across the nation demanding better pay and benefits, more full-time employment opportunities, and a safe environment in which to voice their complaints to management. I’m sure many of you would agree that the experience in Wal-Mart as a Customer isn’t a shining example of what’s possible in Customer Experience today, either.

We can also see what happens when employee’s voices are valued, rewarded, and empowered. Consider the employee environment at Google. Google is routinely on the top of “Best Places to Work” lists. In fact just look at the organizations in these surveys and you’ll see they all provide a good employee experience and Customer Experience. They connect it there for all to see.

It’s great that more companies are listening to the VOC. Be sure to also listen to the VOE. As you can see, they two are inextricably linked–and equally important to creating an excellent Customer Experience.

For more important Customer Experience concepts, register for our AdvancedCustomer Experience Management (CEM) Certification Course beginning on April 20th.

Please click here to learn more.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• Are You Working for the Right Company?
• Hiring Customer Ready Employees
• Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Employees Today

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post Improving Your CX One Employee at a Time appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

The strength of a handshake conveys a lot of information. From a firm to a limp handshake, each intensity communicates pertinent conscious and subconscious clues about your personality. It doesn’t take an expert to interpret these clues either. Anyone can tell you that a limp handshake is not a great first impression.

Handshakes can also symbolize important information. For example, at the conclusion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in mid-November, the importance of handshakes took center stage. From a reluctant handshake between the prime minister of Japan and the Chinese president to the choreographed approach of Barrack Obama, handshakes became an important demonstration of the power of body language.

An article in The Economist describes the significance of both handshakes. In the case of Japan, the handshake between Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping signified the triumph of diplomacy over conflict regarding a disputed island ownership between the two countries. Also, the article describes how President Barack Obama’s approach from the left gave him a “defensive position” toward the photographers. They compared his approach across the stage to the Chinese President to a metaphor for Obama’s paying tribute to his host.

Handshakes are a form of body language, and body language is an important part of the interview, too. From your handshake to your shaking hands, your body language is also sending signals for good or ill. Fidgeting, eye contact, the position of your hands above or below the table are all details communicating clues about you to the interviewer. Sometimes without either of you realizing it, as body language often has subconscious interpretation.

Body language is something we talk a lot with our clients about when we consult them on Customer Experience. How your team presents itself to customers can become an extension of your brand. At Beyond Philosophy, we often refer to these as White Coat Moments.

A White Coat Moment is defined as a person’s appearance helps others determine that person’s ability and personality. The name refers to the famous Milgram Study where participants administered what they thought were lethal shocks to a fellow participant when prompted by the authority in the “white lab coat.” Grim origins of the term aside, the white coat moment, has evolved to represent the branding moments of an experience. Examples of these moments could be how a Ritz Carlton employee responds with, “My pleasure,” to guests’ requests, or the subconscious reaction we have when we see the blue shirt worn by the Apple Genius at their retail store.

Body language is an important part of these white coat moments, particularly for your Customer Experience. Little things from eye contact to posture can convey signals to the Customer. If you don’t consider the signals sent by body language in your Customer Experience design and related training of your team, these signals might be the wrong ones.

Two organizations that understand this are Apple and Disney. In a past post, we have looked at how Apple trains their employees how to stand and gives them specific language to use when responding to customer objections. At Disney, they also define the white coat moments of their experience in detail as well. Moreover, they assess their employees by their body language. For example, if a Disney employee is caught leaning against the wall rather than standing straight, they will be marked down in the mystery shopping survey.

If we learned anything from the APEC summit last year, it is that there is meaning in everything we see from body language. Even something as benign as a handshake can have implications intended or otherwise. Body language also influences the Customer Experience, intended or otherwise as well.

Every impression you make at an interview counts. Be sure that you consider how your handshake and other body language signals become white coat moments for your interview experience–and make sure that you are sending out the right ones! You never know…you might handshake your way into a better job.

What handshake do you have? Firm, medium, soft or limp?

“Unlocking the Hidden Customer Experience: Short Stories of Remarkable Practices that Ensure Success”is designed to help organizations take their Customer Experience to the next level. This book focuses on what it takes to evoke the best emotions from your Customer Experience and the vital role of the conscious and subconscious experience with real-world examples. It’s  available today, for only $9.99! Read more here.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• White Lab Coat Moments: How the Subconscious Interprets Your Suit’s Appearance in a Professional Context

• Dress for Success: The White Lab Coat Effect and the Subconscious Experience

• The Secret of a Great Customer Experience—Apple Case Study

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

The post You Must Do THIS at Your Job Interview appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.