Companies are fond of saying that employees are their most powerful resource, and in many ways – especially their influence on customer loyalty – that’s been well proven. But, to understand what factors leverage employee behavior, most organizations have historically relied on satisfaction and engagement surveys, typically conducted through HR. However, there is little realization that these traditional research techniques are not remotely designed to identify the often hidden factors behind this behavior. This is particularly true when endeavoring to identify employees’ level of commitment to the company, to its product and/or service value proposition, and to its customers.

Most organizations do not fully understand, or leverage, the key linkages and relationships between customer experience and employee experience/behavior. Enterprises, usually through HR, most typically focus on employee satisfaction or engagement, in the belief that high levels in either area will directly drive customer loyalty. As a result, much of the surveying is about employee happiness, meaningful work, commitment to company goals, and effective effort.

Our research and consulting experience has shown that employee satisfaction and engagement have rather incidental connection to customer behavior. Employees, though, are critical stakeholders in the delivery of experience value. So, it is vital for companies to learn where they are in creating enterprise-wide employee ambassadorship (commitment to the organization, the product/service value proposition, and the CUSTOMERS) and stakeholder-centricity.

We have found that employee surveys are not, but should be, designed to help identify how, and how effectively, the enterprise culture is helping shape employee behavior and the delivery of customer value, with employee ambassadorship as an optimal state. The questions in these ‘new age’ employee surveys address such key areas as:

– Organizational stakeholder-centric leadership.
– Cultural readiness for stakeholder-centricity
– Cultural readiness for employee ambassadorship
– Staffing decisions (hiring, training, reward/recognition, advancement,etc.) embedded in the employee experience
– Employee life cycle
– Emotional drivers of employee behavior
– Linkages between employee behavior and customer behavior

In a recent Forbes article by Christine Comaford, she reported on the results of a 2017 Temkin Group CX Management Survey of 180 organizations with $500 million in annual revenues. Though only 8% of respondents felt their employer delivered the best CX in their business sector, 55% set this as a goal within the next three years. How are they going to reach that objective? One of the most essential ways is by emphasizing the employee experience and how it directly and indirectly links to the customer experience. Among other challenges, this will require different approaches to employee surveys.

Employee research into commitment to the customer experience brings in several components which build on, but differ markedly, from traditional, or standard, employee satisfaction and engagement techniques. Here is some of our thinking on how to do this:

• For one difference, the attributes studies should actively include a significant proportion that are customer focus-related (perhaps 40% to 50% of them)

• Next, incorporate multiple overall ‘value indicators’, which examine personal commitment to the organization, degree of positive and negative word of mouth on behalf of the company’s products and services, and strength of belief in the value of these products and services to customers.

• Develop an emotional profile, i.e. how employees feel about the work they do for the company, and identify what employees desire most in their jobs

• Evaluate each of the attributes based on
a) how employees rate them, i.e. agree/disagree,
b) how much the employees want them, and c) their prioritized value to the organization.

Note that, as long as individual anonymity is assured and the survey instrument is professionally crafted for relevancy and conciseness, employee research can be conducted via an array of techniques: paper and pencil, online (through Intranet and employee communities, etc.

Internally, the organization should first do everything possible to prepare employees to provide honest and open feedback, assuring them that their insights will be the basis for real enterprise initiatives. Given that these surveys can have several potential designs (company-wide culture, initiative progress checks, in-depth to measure things like communication or process, etc.), any employee study needs to go beyond the limits of employee satisfaction (overall positivity level) and engagement (fit, alignment, and productivity). Importantly, enterprise leadership needs to actively support the process; and everything should be done to generate high response rates (a low response rate speaks volumes about the culture).

Once the survey process has been completed, employees should be thanked for their participation; and a firm schedule for feedback should be established and communicated. In analyzing results, key themes, i.e. story lines impacting the organization and employee experience, should be identified. For example, in one of our employee studies, tenure was found to be a major indicator of both positive and negative perceptions. Then, take action, focusing on strategic and tactical goals, milestones, and responsibilities. And, as with customer behavior research, rinse and repeat.

The post How To Design (And Act On) Real-World Employee Surveys appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

By EX, of course, we mean employee experience.

Customer experience optimization has, for some time, been the stated goal of many enterprises around the world. Where the role of employees in meeting that goal is concerned, however, there has been a tacit belief that the equation “happy employees = happy customers” works. Statements such as the assumption that positive employees feel satisfied; and, when satisfied, may recommend the company to others, are often cited. How real is the belief that driving employee engagement within an organization leverages customer satisfaction which, in turn, helps produce high performance for the enterprise, i.e. core tenets of the Service-Profit Chain? It’s time to re-think the assumptions of how both employee satisfaction and engagement impact customer behavior.

For several decades, corporations and employee consulting and research companies, have been focused on engagement, essentially the fit, alignment, and productivity of human resources in achieving company objectives. Though usually left up to HRD, the fundamental premise of engagement has been that it is good for business – citing higher quality, greater efficiency, innovation, lower turnover, workplace camaraderie, and the like. More advanced organizations have recognized and reaped the strategic benefits of going beyond engagement; and that is what we will address here.

When we discuss building on the foundation of engagement, what we really mean is the opportunity – for customers, for employees, and for enterprises – represented by ambassadorship and employee experience design. At the core of employee experience is the recognition of how employee behavior connects, directly and indirectly, to customer behavior.

There’s a cold reality to face. Most organizations do not fully understand, or leverage, the key linkages between customer experience and employee experience/behavior. Enterprises typically focus on employee satisfaction or engagement, in the belief that high levels in either area will directly drive customer loyalty. Our research and consulting experience has shown that employee satisfaction and engagement have rather incidental and tactical connection to customer behavior. Employees, though, are critical stakeholders in the delivery of experience value. So, it is vital for companies to learn where they are in creating enterprise-wide employee ambassadorship (commitment to the organization, the product/service value proposition, and the customers) and stakeholder-centricity.

To assist both individuals and managers in helping determine readiness to move from employee satisfaction and engagement to ambassadorship, we have designed a brief, but insightful, self-assessment survey. This survey feeds into a database of responses which, once completed, is shared with the respondent.

The self assessment has been designed to help identify how, and how effectively, enterprise culture helps shape employee behavior and the delivery of customer value, with employee ambassadorship as an optimal state. The questions address such key areas as organizational readiness, consideration of the employee emotional investment, employee life cycle, and leadership.
One of the key things we’ve learned from analyses of the self-assessment surveys, and also through our interactions with clients, is that employee perceptions of emotional value, particularly where their job experience is concerned, are given relatively little consideration within the enterprise. This has serious consequences, both short-term and long-term.

More specifically, we’ve learned that:

1) Despite the strong proven connection between employee and customer experience, HR employee initiatives often operate in a silo, separated from customer-related enterprise goals

2) Understanding the emotional investment and commitment of employees to customers is rarely given attention, much less a priority

3) Employees are infrequently, if ever, even asked about how their experience (training, operating parameters, reward and recognition, etc) connects to customer experience and value delivery

4) There is little recognition that employees, like customers, have a defined life cycle

5) Building humanity into the enterprise cultural DNA, though well-documented to yield excellent financial results (in part through customer loyalty behavior and employee contribution/retention), has seen slow adoption, despite over 30 years of employee engagement initiatives.

Employee experience has evolved, but not quickly enough. Employee fit, utility, and productivity are important, but not enough. Organizations need to have more actionable insight into what motivates employees. If companies are truly serious about optimizing CX, then more attention and resources must be devoted to EX.

The post Why Must Leaders and Their Companies Now Give More Attention (and Resources) to EX? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

A recent article on corporate customer-centricity by a prominent market research firm made the case for this type of culture as “the most effective way to meet customers’ changing needs.” The article’s author, though, quoted a study his company had conducted, saying that fewer than half of the CX professionals included felt that their colleagues shared this belief.

The author had several suggestions for building customer-centricity. These included getting C-level executive, customer-facing employee, and middle manager buy-in. Also recommended were a) more proactive, catalytic behavior by CX pros and b) forming closer ties with HR, to help build more customer-centric focus among these three groups.

If customer-centric culture-building and customer-focused initiatives were the only end goals, perhaps these approaches would be sufficient. Here’s the principal challenge: Customer-centric cultures and customer-focused initiatives are rarely enterprise-wide, inclusive of every employee in the enterprise. Customer-centricity, in short, is not pervasively ‘people first’. Only a culture of stakeholder-centricity can be defined in that way.

To be a truly ‘people first’ enterprise, making both employee experience and customer experience an obsession, culture and operational processes are critical. My paradigm example is, or was, MBNA America. In 2006, when it was sold to Bank of America, MBNA was an enterprise of 25,000 employees, the U.S.’ second largest credit card issuer, and an organization noted for both low cardholder and employee turnover. The company’s cultural mantra, shown in the image above, was ‘Think of yourself as a customer.’ Having guided clients through MBNA’s corporate HQ in Wilmington, DE, this slogan was written over each doorway, printed on payroll checks, embossed on desks – – in other words, it was EVERYWHERE and so always top of mind to employees and anyone visiting MBNA offices.

Perhaps more important, MBNA was a people-first culture, with an array of approaches to benefit the experiences of both employees and customers. When the company became part of Bank of America, the MBNA employees publicly thanked Charles Cawley, who founded the company, for all he had done on their behalf (see above). When have you ever seen such a mass valentine card from to an executive?

In my recent employee ambassadorship webinar, three seminal books which offer strategies and stories were identified: Firms of Endearment (2007), Conscious Capitalism (2013), and Everybody Matters (2017). These books emphasized the important linkage between customer experience and employee experience; and they are all strongly recommended. In part, he authors built on ambassadorial ideas expressed in two editions of The Customer Comes Second (1992 and 2002), by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane Peters. At the time of its writing, Rosenbluth was the CEO of Rosenbluth Travel, one of the largest private travel management companies in the world (now part of Amex Travel Services); so, he had plenty of first-hand, well-informed immersion in both customer experience and employee experience.

Per Ralph Walkling (professor of corporate governance and accountability, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University), having a stakeholder-centric culture suggests that management considers the well-being of every entity touched by the business – employees, shareholders, suppliers, customers the community, etc. – when making decisions. In doing so, positive relationships can be maintained, while achieving attractive economic, social, and cultural results.

Stakeholder-centric companies:

– Prioritize the influence of each group. This often begins with employees

– Identify and evaluate the needs and interests of each group, through targeted surveys and group processes.

– Harmonize the interests of each group, to minimize conflict

– Develop strategies for each group, so that measurable outcome value can be created

For me, the real meaning of ‘people-first’ stakeholder-centricity was expressed in The Customer Comes Second: “Companies are only fooling themselves when they believe that ‘The Customer Comes First.’ People do not inherently put the customer first, and they certainly don’t do it because their employer expects it. We’re not saying choose your people over your customers. We’re saying focus on your people because of your customers. That way, everybody wins.” Companies able to consistently do this have gotten the culture and operations right, and can keep them right by staying on course, on Labor Day and everyday.

The post Getting Company Culture and Operations Right, and Keeping Them Right: What It Really Means to Be Stakeholder-Centric This Labor Day appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Most organizations do not fully understand, or leverage, the key linkages between customer experience and employee experience/behavior. Enterprises typically focus on employee satisfaction or engagement, in the belief that high levels in either area will directly drive customer loyalty. Our research and consulting experience has shown that employee satisfaction and engagement have rather incidental connection to customer behavior. Employees, though, are critical stakeholders in the delivery of experience value. So, it is vital for companies to learn where they are in creating enterprise-wide employee ambassadorship (commitment to the organization, the product/service value proposition, and the customers) and stakeholder-centricity.

Companies want, and need, to know how they are performing on key stakeholder centricity elements, and we have developed a 6 factor, 25 question survey: The question categories are:

1. Recognize that employees’ behavior, like customers, has both emotional and rational and emotional underpinnings (4 questions)

2. Consider the ways that employees make decisions on how to act (toward other employees and to customers (5 questions)

3. Consider stakeholder-centric cultural effects on employee behavior (5 questions)

4. Consider the differences (and connections) between employee satisfaction, employee engagement and employee ambassadorship (4 questions)

5. Consider that employees, like customers, have a defined life cycle (5 questions)

6. Consider the dual roles of organizational readiness and leadership in shaping employee ambassadorship behavior (2 questions)

This self assessment has been designed to help identify how, and how effectively, enterprise culture helps shape employee behavior and the delivery of customer value, with employee ambassadorship as an optimal state. The questions address such key areas as organizational readiness, employee life cycle, and leadership.

The questionnaire looks different than any other cultural, employee satisfaction, or employee engagement survey you may have seen or participated in; and it’s not an accident. Here is a brief look at some of the most important things we have learned from the survey results:

– Some of the lowest agreement scores we have seen deal with the degree to which organizations understand the influence of employee emotional state and experience on customer behavior, and the extent to which these emotions create or destroy both employee and customer value

– Newer employees tend to be treated differently than longer-tenured employees in terms of training, advancement opportunities, etc. One result of less attention being paid to longer-tenured employees, which our research has uncovered, is that they tend to have less positivity in both emotions and perspectives.

– Organizations consider themselves to be largely product-centric and sales-centric, and focus on assumed linkage between employee satisfaction and customer loyalty. In addition, organizations focus on creating high employee and customer satisfaction, which is principally about attitudes rather than behaviors

– There is rather low belief that company leadership directs HR to shape and support employee ambassadorial behavior

We have long chronicled the causation and strong correlation between employee ambassadorship, employee commitment and loyalty, customer experience and value delivery, and downstream customer behavior. For enterprise cultures today and to paraphrase Robert Frost’s famous poem, ‘The Road Not Taken’, ambassadorship and ‘people first’ may be the road less traveled for many companies, but organizations will find that traveling it makes all the difference.

The post Why Should You Care If Your Company Is Or Isn’t Built Around Stakeholder-Centricity? Here Are Some Key Factors To Consider. appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

This past July 23rd, Southwest Airlines passenger Stacy Hurt called the airline’s customer service desk at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Her luggage, containing medication for helping with the side effects of the colon cancer chemo therapy, had failed to arrive on a flight from Nashville. She panicked because the medication would be vital, post-treatment, for the chemo she had scheduled for the next day. She immediately called Southwest’s customer service line at the airport.

Sarah Rowan, a customer service staffer for Southwest at the Pittsburgh airport, took the call. She immediately understood the seriousness of the issue for the passenger. Her father had died a few years ago from leukemia, and Sarah was moved to help Stacy in any way she could.

For those of us who have experienced lost, delayed or mishandled luggage events, we expect that the airline involved will deliver it by courier as soon as it arrives at the airport. This, however, was a far more emotional situation for the passenger. Rowan finally located the luggage after midnight; however, the last courier had already gone for the night

Rowan did not hesitate with her next move. She put the bag in her car and drove it to Hurt’s home, even though it was 3 a.m., leaving it on her front doorstep.

The post Great EX (Employee Ambassadorship) and CX (Customer Advocacy) Story: The Southwest Airlines Rep and the Passenger With Cancer appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Most organizations do not fully understand, or leverage, the key linkages and relationships between customer experience and employee experience/behavior. Enterprises typically focus on employee satisfaction or engagement, in the belief that high levels in either area will directly drive customer loyalty. As a result, much of the surveying is about employee happiness, fit, alignment, meaningful work, commitment to company goals, and productivity.

Our research and consulting experience has shown that employee satisfaction and engagement have rather incidental connection to customer behavior. Employees, though, are critical stakeholders in the delivery of experience value. So, it is vital for companies to learn where they are in creating enterprise-wide employee ambassadorship (commitment to the organization, the product/service value proposition, and the CUSTOMERS) and stakeholder-centricity

We have found that employee surveys are not, but should be, designed to help identify how, and how effectively, the enterprise culture is helping shape employee behavior and the delivery of customer value, with employee ambassadorship as an optimal state. The questions in these ‘new age’ employee surveys address such key areas as::

– Organizational stakeholder-centric leadership.
– Cultural readiness for stakeholder-centricity
– Cultural readiness for employee ambassadorship
– Staffing decisions (hiring, training, reward/recognition, advancement,etc.) embedded in the employee experience
– Employee life cycle
– Emotional drivers of employee behavior
– Linkages between employee behavior and customer behavior

In a recent Forbes article by Christine Comaford, she reported on the results of a 2017 Temkin Group CX Management Survey of 180 organizations with $500 million in annual revenues. Though only 8% of respondents felt their employer delivered the best CX in their business sector, 55% set this as a goal within the next three years. How are they going to reach that objective? One of the most essential ways is by emphasizing the employee experience and how it directly and indirectly links to the customer experience. Among other challenges, this will require different approaches to employee surveys.

Employee research into commitment to the customer experience brings in several components which build on, but differ markedly, from traditional, or standard, employee satisfaction and engagement techniques. Here is some of our thinking on how to do this:

• For one difference, the attributes studies should actively include a significant proportion that are customer focus-related (perhaps 40% to 50% of them)

• Next, incorporate multiple overall ‘value indicators’, which examine personal commitment to the organization, degree of positive and negative word of mouth on behalf of the company’s products and services, and strength of belief in the value of these products and services to customers.

• Develop an emotional profile, i.e. how employees feel about the work they do for the company, and identify what employees desire most in their jobs

• Evaluate each of the attributes based on
a) how employees rate them, i.e. agree/disagree,
b) how much the employees want them, and c) their prioritized value to the organization.

Here are some highlights, from a recent employee ambassadorship study conducted on behalf of the customer service operation of a major insurer:

• In prior engagement studies, our client had identified poorly performed employee attributes. They put some initiatives in place based on this research, with little real result. Our research, however, uncovered previously unidentified subconscious employee priorities: Customer focus and ‘bonding’ elements had particular promise for the organization. Dedication to provide value to customers, using employee feedback for improvement within the department, leveraging teamwork, recognizing that employees have an effect on customer behavior, and enabling employees with more personal decision-making in their jobs. These, we determined, would provide the most enterprise value.

• Conversely, lack of freedom to express ideas, poor implementation of ideas, insufficient cross-training, feeling little value as a team member, lack of feedback, feeling that leadership has less commitment to service value than the rank-and-file, and low belief that other groups within the company have equal customer focus were undermining, even destroying, employee value to the enterprise.

• Our client had the belief that very few of the over 500 customer service operation employees included in the study had tenure of more than ten years; however, employees with this length of service represented close to one-quarter of all who participated. More important, tenure had a significant impact on degree of employee commitment. Commitment to the organization and customers declined after one year of service, went further downhill at five years, was even lower at ten years, and remained low among those with over ten years of service.

These are profound insights, representing level of commitment to customer value delivery. So, how committed are your company’s employees to optimizing CX? This can begin to be revealed through a self-assessment survey questionnaire, an examination of what the enterprise is doing for stakeholder-centricity, and how well employee experience is connected to the customer experience.

The post Is Your Company Surveying Employees For Their Commitment To Customers and CX? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

One of my favorite movies about business in general, and employee behavior in particular, is Office Space. The film is full of bad management-staff relationship and motivation examples, and management’s myopic need for process execution for its own sake, not the enrichment or benefit of employees, and irrespective of the impact that they will, or won’t, have on customers.

A perfect example of this is an encounter in Chotchkie’s restaurant between Stan, the micro-managing manager and Joanna, one of the wait staff (played by Jennifer Aniston), about the amount of ‘flair’ she is wearing on her uniform:

STAN: We need to talk. Do you know what this is about?
JOANNA: My, uh, flair.
STAN: Yeah. Or, uh, your lack of flair, because I’m counting and I only see fifteen pieces. Let me ask you a question, Joanna.
JOANNA: Umm-hmm.
STAN: What do you think of a person who only does the bare minimum?
JOANNA: Huh. What do I think? Let me tell you what I think, Stan. If you want me to wear thirty-seven pieces of flair like your pretty boy Brian over there, then why don’t you just make the minimum thirty-seven pieces of flair?
STAN: Well, I thought I remember you saying you wanted to express yourself.
JOANNA: Yeah. Yeah. Y’know what? I do. I do want to express myself. Ok? And I don’t need thirty-seven pieces of flair to do it. All right? There’s my flair! And this is me expressing myself. There it is! I hate this job! I hate this goddamn job and I don’t need it!!

Hmmm….that interaction didn’t go particularly well. I recently observed something similar while shopping at a local supermarket. The chain was having a canned goods promotion, supported by print and electronic media advertising; and employees were wearing multiple buttons about the promotion to reinforce the initiative in-store. What I witnessed was a manager brow-beating a check-out clerk in front of customers because he only had one promotional button on his shirt. If the manager had ever seen Office Space, the lessons of negative employee experience and dopey company rules were lost on him.

Here is the reality: As demonstrated again and again, if all employees are not committed to, and supportive of, CX initiatives, the enterprise – in any industry, in any locale – will suffer. HR execs and consultants would say that what is needed is a higher level of employee engagement. Engagement is principally about fit, alignment, and productivity; so, more is needed to optimize customer experience.

There is an amply proven, powerful linkage between employee commitment to the company, the brand value proposition, and the customer and their employers’ actual business (financial) and marketplace outcomes, particularly where CX is concerned. Also, there is a direct connection 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.

In addition, when considering, and measuring, the pivotal elements of staff performance and productivity, most companies are focused on employee attitudes around satisfaction, company loyalty, alignment with goals and objectives (such as corporate citizenship), and what they consider to be levels of engagement. These contribute, to be sure; but, historically, they only superficially and weakly correlate what employees think and do to actual customer behavior. How Joanna was performing at Chotchkie’s, and how customers were viewing their experiences, is a great example.

Again, 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.” Having studied drivers of customer advocacy behavior for over a decade, the relationship between engagement and advocacy is marginal and superficial

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 – the concepts behind 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 fully stated 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, 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 stakeholder-centric in all things they do, we believe that the emphasis on building strong employee ambassadorship will continue to increase as a core objective.

The post CX Initiatives: What if Employees Are Not On Board? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Target Corporation has had a number of challenges over the past few years, from abruptly closing all of their Canadian stores to a 2016 earnings shortfall, plummeting stock price, and a rather negative sales outlook for 2017 (first quarter EPS was 6% lower than first quarter 2016). The company is forecasting a single digit sales decline for the full year.

So, how does Target intend to bring about a performance turnaround? The company is taking aim at a revised store experience for customers. Target has invested $220 million to remodel and renovate 28 stores in North Texas. According to Target spokespeople, the remodels will emphasize “inspiration, discovery, style, and ease”. Among the changes:

– Top-to-bottom overhauls, with new design/style elements and product presentations (based on what customers said they liked about Target’s new stores)

– Two entrances, one that promotes exclusive and seasonal items, the second for Online Order Pickup and quick purchases, such as for groceries (see below)

– More attractive merchandise presentations, including “updated mannequins and fixtures in apparel, home and beauty”.

– Easier in-store shopping flow, with aisle modification designed to encourage customers to browse through apparel, accessories, and other products.

– Updated, more engaging grocery department, with “grab-and-go food and beverage options”, with fresher products, more choice, and greater convenience

– Target’s Online Order Pickup located at front of store, for faster, more efficient, check-out

– Wine and beers shops inside the store

In all, Target plans to fully redesign 110 (out of their 1,800) stores in 2017 and 500 in the next three years. This is a significant corporate initiative, with cash investment running into the billions of dollars.

Apart from design, product, and other store elements, Target is also investing in technology which will enable store employees to more efficiently search inventory and also take payment from mobile point-of-sale devices.

While all of this reads well, the planned modifications are the kind of inside-the-dots, rather conservative approaches most would expect from a mass discount retailer in search of customer experience enhancements. Here’s my question, and my key issue. Beyond these “inspiration, discovery, style and ease” changes, how is Target, in parallel, evolving its store culture to generate more interaction with, and commitment by, employees?

I’m an active grocery and discount department store customer. Among stores I frequent are Target, Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, and Costco. Where employees, and their commitment to customers, are concerned, the Target store experience will (likely) never equal Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, or Costco, but, Target could certainly take some lessons from the store cultures of these successful retailers.

Because Target will now be looking to place increased focus on groceries, I’ll use Wegmans,Trader Joe’s, and Costco as my reference points. Rochester, New York-based Wegmans, has succeeded in creating an almost cult-like bond with its customers. The company, which is well-known for its food selection and quality (you can even custom blend your own trail mix), and for its empowered, well-trained and proactive employees, has been named the best supermarket chain in America by Consumer Reports; and, yes, it certainly might be the best retailer on the planet.

1. Wegmans. Wegmans has constructed and sustained a stakeholder-centric culture where the customer truly comes first, and customer experience is the barometer by which it measures success. For example, the retail grocery industry (and the discount department store industry) is normally associated with fairly passive and reactive customer service; but, like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s, Wegmans’ employees readily make themselves available to help customers (who Wegmans refers to as “guests”) find what they want, and often make recommendations for what they think the customers would like. Do Target’s store employees do anything like that? If so, I’ve never heard of anyone experiencing it, nor have I.

Speaking on a personal level, at Wegmans shopping is not a chore and is often pleasurable. Stores are attractively laid out, almost like an old-world open-air market. There are tea bars, multiple eat-in options, and chef-prepared breads and meals to take home. When shopping there, rather than rush through, the inviting atmosphere makes it enjoyable to take my time, relax and experience what the store has to offer. Better for me, and better for Wegmans. Will the reimagined Target store experience do that?

Wegmans also does other things to set itself apart, and in positive ways. From a merchandising and reputation perspective, they are seen as active members of the communities in which they operate. They were one of the first chains to purchase from local vendors. Does Target do that? Don’t think so.

The chain supports local causes and events. Wegmans represents conscious capitalism, in the truest sense of the term, further building the bond between the enterprise and the customers, many of whom consider Wegmans ‘their store’

They also offer new technologies, such as the interactive recipe and shopping list feature on their web site, and an iPhone app that helps shoppers organize their purchase list on an aisle-by-aisle basis in the store – all to enhance the shopping experience. Is Target including that in their technological upgrades? Don’t think so.

2. Trader Joe’s. Shopping at Trader Joe’s is truly a branded customer experience. Each store has a light-hearted South Seas island theme throughout, including the Hawaiian shirt garb of store staff. Employees at their Monrovia, CA headquarters often served as a ‘tasting panel’, and they help determine which new products will be stocked in the stores; and, with tasting locations at each store, customers get to give the final stamp of approval, or rejection, by ‘voting with their taste buds.’ This is also a device for bonding with customers at the store level. Even though Trader Joe’s stocks about 3,000 items, compared to the average supermarket’s 30,000 items, sales per square foot are typically two to three times that of chain supermarkets.

What has made Trader Joe’s so successful — apart from wage and benefits packages, and opportunities for advancement, well above most companies in the supermarket industry – is the sense that employees are the brand, its communication style and fun, upbeat culture. Employees are selected and trained to multitask, and everyone seems to enjoy what they do. They deliver a great branded customer experience, and they stay (voluntary turnover is only 4 percent) because they enjoy working there and because the organization is thriving.

3. Costco. Going to Costco is not an especially exotic experience, and yet shoppers often describe their visits as “fun.” Costco pays their employees a lot more on average than most retailers, enabling the company to keep turnover much lower than other retailers. Employee behavior, often identified as smiling, friendly and helpful, actively contributes to positive in-store customer experience; and this helps enable Costco to maintain focus on their original strategy – low margins, low overhead, big profits.

So, in Target’s revamped store customer experience experiment, which will soon be rolled out as a major test and downstream strategy, is the store culture, and linkage between customer experience and employee experience as Wegmans, Costco and Trader Joe’s do so well, also being included? Is this strategy on-target or off-target?

The post Target’s Revamped Store Customer Experience Experiments: Culturally, Are They On-Target or Off-Target? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Whenever the subject of employee satisfaction and engagement arises, it is often difficult to differentiate between them. If you believe that “a satisfied employee IS an engaged employee.” It’s likely that you can’t articulate a distinction.

A satisfied employee can pretty much be described as one who is relatively happy or more than complacent about their day-to-day job experience: the work, pay, benefits, possibilities for growth, promotions and possibly more – – like training, work environment, and reward and recognition. These employees start their work day, they perform their job at acceptable levels, and they go home. Although satisfied employees are generally supportive of the business, they likely won’t go beyond doing the basics of their job descriptions.

An engaged employee, to follow the accepted definition of HR professionals and consultants, is aligned with the goals of the organization and is highly productive. These employees have some potential to impact the customer experience; and there is documented, often incidental, evidence of correlation between the two. However, there is little proven direct causation, the specific, defined linkage of employee thinking and behavior to customer loyalty and advocacy.

In part because of today’s greater emphasis on the emotional components of customer experience and customer value delivery, and how this must be an enterprise cultural priority, employees have become center stage in optimizing customer behavior. Company goals now include building a corps of employees who perform at proactive, customer-centric levels beyond engagement and satisfaction. These “employee ambassadors” have three key behavioral traits:

• Commitment to the 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 the product/service 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 the customers – Commitment 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

In content we’ve produced (webinars, white papers, posts, and a new book on the subject) the concept and value of employee ambassadorship, functioning within more humanistic and proactive organizations, has been fully laid out. In looking at the progression from satisfaction to engagement to ambassadorship, we have examined research conducted over the past three decades What we have observed are studies that examined some contributing factors of employee experience and value, such as reward and recognition, job fit, career opportunities, work environment, and departmental and management relationships. But the critical component often totally missing from all of this material is the definitive linkage and commitment to customers.

Employee ambassadorship identifies new categories and key drivers of employee subconscious emotional and rational commitment, while it is also liked with the emotional and rational aspects of customer commitment.

When offering results of research on employee satisfaction and engagement, companies will often emphasize things like brand image and social media activity as part of employee training and responsibility. Brand image and reputation are definitely important, as is staff willingness and capability to use digital media in support of their employer, But just because those employees have a solid understanding of the brand does not mean they will deliver on the product or service promise the enterprise has made to customers. Brand image needs to be complimented and supported by a culture and set of processes dedicated to both employee and customer experience. That brand promise has to be delivered by customers every time they interact with the company. Contribution to customer experience also needs to be baked into the organizational DNA and into every employee’s job description.

Our employee research employee is built around identifying drivers of ambassadorship. It brings in several components which build on, but differ markedly, from traditional, or standard, employee satisfaction and engagement techniques:

– For one difference, the attributes we examine actively include a significant proportion that are customer focus-related. We’ve seen employee surveys where there are no customer-related value elements.

– Next, we incorporate multiple overall ‘value indicators’, key factors which examine personal commitment to the organization, degree of positive and negative word of mouth on behalf of the company’s products and services, and strength of belief in the value of these products and services to customers.

– We also develop an emotional profile, i.e. how employees feel about the work they do for the company, and identify what employees desire most in their jobs

– Finally, we evaluate each of the attributes based on a) how employees rate them, i.e. agree/disagree, b) how much the employees want them, i.e their stated desirability, and c) their prioritized value to the organization.

Consider how frequently your customers interact with your employees, either directly or indirectly. Whether it is through a computer screen in a customer service chat, on the telephone, or in person, every employee, whether customer-facing or not, should be an enthusiastic and committed representative for the brand. If employee satisfaction and employee engagement are not designed to meet this critical objective of the customer experience, there will be a sub-optimal downstream result with regard to customer behavior.

In any group of employees, irrespective whether it’s a service department, technical specialists, or a branch office, there will be differing levels of commitment to the employer’s brand and the company itself, its value proposition, and its customers. If employees are negative to the point of undermining, and even sabotaging customer experience value, they will actively work against business goals. However, if employees are ambassadors, and whether they interact with customers directly, indirectly, or even not at all, they will better service and support customers.

For companies to create and sustain higher levels of employee ambassadorship, it’s also essential that the employee experience be given as much emphasis as the customer experience. If ambassadorship is to flourish, there must be value, and a sense of shared purpose, for the employee as well as the company and customer – in the form of recognition, reward (financial and training), and career opportunities. Combined, the ambassadorship concept, research protocol, and job experience applications can lead and enable any organization to be more stakeholder-centric and dynamic. Often this journey begins with the recognition of its value by enterprise leaders, essential to plant the seeds of ambassadorship.

The post Employee Ambassadorship: CX Focus Built On Neither Employee Satisfaction Nor Employee Engagement appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.

Until about a decade ago, most CX and value delivery metrics were built around tangible and quality-related elements of value – price, consistency, speed, completeness, accuracy, durability, and the like. However, it was understood that value is not just rational. Perception consists of the rational and the emotional, and even those elements which are tangible and functional have emotional underpinnings.

To offer a better gauge of perceived value and customer experience, and better understand purchase decision drivers, it was necessary to put greater emphasis on the emotional. Accordingly, my colleague Colin Shaw, working closely with the London Business and its Chair of Consumer Psychology, extensively tested emotional levers. After two years of research, the result was the Hierarchy of Emotional Value.

Since 2005, over 50,000 respondents, in 49 countries and multiple b2b and b2c industries have participated in research incorporating the Hierarchy model emotions. Some additional stats: We have asked approximately 4.5 million total survey questions, with several million devoted to emotions and feelings related to experience. It is core to our Emotional SignatureR stakeholder experience research protocol.

In this post, we are addressing the perceived value influence of emotions and memory on b2b and b2c customers. Recognize, though, that emotions can apply equally to employees.

Back to the Hierarchy. The model has a total of 20 net stakeholder emotions. Eight of these are negative, which we define as Value Destroyers:

– Dissatisfied
– Frustrated
– Disappointed
– Irritated
– Stressed
– Unhappy
– Neglected
– Hurried

We recognize that the perception of value can be compromised at any stage of a customer’s life and in any element of the customer experience. If these emotions have a powerful and lasting effect, they can undermine perceived benefit and contribute to churn. It’s essential that existence of these emotions be identified so that relationship risk can be mitigated or eliminated.

The Hierarchy identifies 12 Positive Emotions:

– Happy
– Pleased
– Trusting
– Valued
– Cared For
– Safe
– Focused
– Indulgent
– Stimulated
– Exploratory
– Interested
– Energetic

Of these, 5 of the emotions – Interested, Energetic, Exploratory, Indulgent, and Stimulated – are what is described as “Attention”, that is only mildly positive and short-term in their effect on perception and decision making. Moving up the Hierarchy, 5 of the emotions – Trusting, Valued, Cared For, Safe, and Focused – are more leveraging, actively contributing to building and sustaining customer relationships.

At the peak of the Hierarchy pyramid is a set of 2 emotions – Happy and Pleased – defined as the Advocacy Cluster. It is here that great, differentiated (and often unique) and memorable CX lives.

For my key example of practical creation of customer advocacy, I’m reprising material on my exposure to lagniappe, and what it can do for any company, irrespective of size, industry, or location.

If you’re not familiar with lagniappe, I’ll briefly explain what it is. When my wife and I visited Southern Louisiana a couple of years ago, we noticed that a lot of retailers differentiated themselves by doing a little something extra for customers. One experience that stood out was our dinner at Restaurant R’evolution at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the French Quarter. If you don’t order dessert (we didn’t, because we were too full from the appetizer and main course), the waiter brings a multi-drawer red Peruvian jewelry box. Each drawer has a different little candy, cookie, or pastry inside. It’s cost-free, delightful and memorable. It’s experience lagniappe.

Here’s the reality about experience lagniappe: It isn’t new. The idea of providing customers with a little extra value has been known for over a century. “We picked up one excellent word”, wrote Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi (1883), “a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word -‘lagniappe’…. It is Spanish, so they said.” Twain encapsulated the history of “lagniappe” quite nicely. English speakers learned the word from French-speaking Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish word la ñapa. Twain went on to describe how New Orleansians completed shop transactions by saying “Give me something for lagniappe,” to which the shopkeeper would respond with “a bit of licorice-root, a cheap cigar or a spool of thread.”

Maybe Twain thought that lagniappe was a unique and memorable retail transaction concept, but customers would be hard-pressed to find it consistently in experiences they receive from most b2b and b2c organizations, from anywhere in the U.S. or the world. It is rarely conceived or offered. This is a reason why so many of the emotions in the Hierarchy are negative or mildly positive.

Creating advocacy-level emotions of pleasure and happiness requires staying on top of customer expectations by proactively engaging with them across multiple channels – Email, Website, In-store and more. Moreover, virtually any company can do experience lagniappe. How?

1) Make the small investment in enhancing employee experience, and have them focus on customer value. Empower and enable employees to be more mindful of delivering what customers need and want, irrespective of level or function within the company.

2) Make the small investment to identify and understand what customers value on an emotional, not just physical, level, and determine what is memorable about the experience.

3) Overpromise and overdeliver, consistently, on experience.

4) Where customers and experience are concerned, think ‘human’, i.e. TD Bank’s “Bank Human Again” marketing campaign.

5) Recognize that company and product/service image and reputation are integral to customer perception of value.

6) Work to build and institutionalize customer value delivery, i.e. conscious customer-centricity, into the enterprise DNA

It’s also important, even critical, that enterprise leaders recognize the value of emotionally positive and unique experience delivery. Experience lagniappe is out there. It doesn’t require very much in the way of financial investment, innovation or ingenuity. Just a willingness to ‘think customer’, and consistently execute just a bit outside the box.

I’ve written about Vernon Hill, who founded Commerce Bank in the U.S. and Metro Bank in the U.K. He understands lagniappe. From my blog covering what Metro does to distinguish its banking experience: “…what further distinguishes Metro are some of the little touches – free lollipops on the counter for the kids, and water bowls for customers’ dogs. As Hill has noted: “There are always some economic case studies that prove cutting costs or raising fees makes sense. But there’s never been one that says being nice to dogs or being open seven days a week makes sense. It’s about building fans of your service, not customers. Great companies build fans who become loyal, remain loyal, and bring their friends.” Lagniappe works.

The post The 20 Stakeholder Experience Emotions: Which Are Most Positive and Value-Enhancing, and Which Are Most Negative and Value-Destroying? appeared first on Beyond Philosophy.