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In what Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine call the \u201cCustomer Experience Ecosystem\u201d, engaging employees who are both visible to customers and those behind the scenes (i.e., all employees) can directly impact the customer journey and customer experience<\/a> initiatives. Tapping internal knowledge and expertise through \u2018voice of the employee\u2019 programs has seen increased acceptance in recent years. Through such programs, employees can offer ideas for improving the customer experience, co-create, offer perspectives on the ideas of others, and help track these ideas from the first spark to final implementation.<\/p>\n Innovative, social techniques are core to employee VOC programs. Just as captive customer MROCs can provide excellent information, much the same can be said for employee MROCs. Very often, this is a partnership between Marketing and HR. Though at present they are far less prevalent, employees MROC\u2019s represent tremendous, cost-effective learning and insight potential.<\/p>\n Almost identical to consumer and customer MROCs, employee market research communities offer every enterprise the opportunity to:<\/p>\n \u2013 Create a dialogue \u2013 Employees can offer their perspectives in a non-threatening, secure environment. Most MROCs provide the option to sign-up anonymously, and interact with the online community manager. In addition, company stakeholders can listen in, or review transcripts, to go deeper into employee and employee-customer issues, with breaking continuity<\/p>\n \u2013 Generate cross-enterprise insights \u2013 Building from the perspective that every employee has roles and responsibilities in delivering value and optimizing the customer experience, organizations can provide actionable, objective bottom-up information. In addition, ideas can be tested on this basis.<\/p>\n \u2013 Have tremendous flexibility \u2013 Employee communities, and research subject panels, can be run for set periods of time or on an open-ended basis. This gives the organization and the employees a great deal of contribution flexibility. Depending on what the organization needs, community research participation by employees can be open-ended or have fixed end dates.<\/p>\n One of the greatest benefits of employee MROCs is that the processes and mechanics of these communities enables employees to be more empowered, to feel that they are heard, and that they are helping guide in decisions important to the organization. At the same time, employee communities are social entities for their corporate sponsors, enabling companies to build relationships and provide more fulfilling and engaging experiences.<\/p>\n An excellent example of an organization which drives customer and employee advocacy through social engagement is TD Bank. Wendy Arnott, TD Bank\u2019s VP of Social Media and Digital Marketing, has built a social media program from the inside out. For several years, TD Bank has been able to connect employees across business segments and geographies, as well as leverage employee knowledge, build communities of interest, recognize and collaborate, and ultimately deliver business values. As she has stated, \u201cWe wanted to give a voice to our employees and open up two-way conversation.\u201d In an industry like banking, often considered a business of inches played over years, this is both great for employee experience optimization, and competitive differentiation<\/p>\n You Also Might Like…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Republished with permission from CustomerThink.com
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