Employee Insight Drives Performance M ost organizations regularly survey employees, but these programs are typically limited to
measuring employee engagement, identify-
operations or policies in other parts of the company that affect their ability to serve the customer.
Most organizations not only miss the opportunity to solicit
ing the drivers of employee satisfaction, and soliciting sugges-
systematic input from their employees, even worse, they inad-
in-depth questions about the workplace, rarely do they ask the
critical observations. Surveys in which employees are solicited
tions for improving working conditions. While surveys include questions whose answers could most dramatically affect the
overall quality of the customer experience and efficiency of
operations. Companies miss the opportunity to ask, for example, “What stands in the way of providing the best possible customer service? What do you need to perform your job better? What
do you think is key to attracting and retaining the highest value
vertently create cultures that make employees reluctant to share for a 360-degree view of the company’s key performance mea-
sures can fill these voids. For example, STAT Resources, Inc. has just developed a new Employee Generated Optimization (EGOSM) survey program that is the first to use employee insight in this way.
A corporate EGO survey not only gives Care a voice that
customers?” Yet, apart from customers themselves, no one is
can be heard in the C-suite about what stands in the way of
employees on the front line — staff who also understand the
cross-company, also enlists the entire organization in reaching
better positioned to report on customer experiences than the operational challenges and constraints in providing a stellar customer experience.
Employees across the organization — from front-line
sales reps to backroom IT specialists — all may have valuable intelligence about what will drive measurable improvements in
world-class service and market dominance, but, if implemented these goals. Even surveys of just the Care departments can give an enormous leg up on operational and quality improvements. A lesson from the security industry
A major security company was eager to launch service qual-
products and service quality delivery. However, there is probably
ity improvements to increase customer satisfaction. Company
obstacles to success than the frontline of your Care organiza-
phone with customer service, the higher the customer sat-
no group in the company in a better position to identify the
are rarely asked to, and of course, have little if any control over
www.customercarenews.com
Fall 2011
tion. While Care reps can often identify these obstacles, they
research showed that the less time a customer spent on the
isfaction scores were. In response to this finding, company management offered service representatives financial incentives
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to reduce time-spent-in-queue and for decreases in total average call length. Surprisingly, while the company dramatically
increased the speed of response and call completion, customer
• Take care to align rewards and recognitions with objectives.
satisfaction plummeted — along with employee morale. Why?
Benefits of employee involvement
reason that shorter calls were associated with more satisfied
tomers can be difficult, and certainly expensive. Consumers
time-satisfaction link was often simply the result of quicker
are especially delighted or distressed. Customers are growing
Had management enlisted employees in understanding the
customers, they would have learned that reps believed that the resolution time for simpler issues. More difficult and complex
issues took more time and effort to resolve. When surveyed, employees agreed that reducing time in queue was relevant
to customer satisfaction, but that simple remedies such as
removing confusion in contract terms to reduce logjams would improve call satisfaction also. Similarly, they advocated aligning incentives with problem resolution rather than speed.
Implementing changes to contract terms had positive
Collecting rich and insightful feedback directly from cus-
are often reluctant and inattentive participants unless they increasingly weary of being asked about their experiences and perceptions in every aspect of their life — from the store that sells them pens to the restaurant where they had dinner the week before. Fortunately, it is possible to learn almost as much
by asking the right questions of employees as you can from trying to extract insights from over-surveyed consumers with little motivation to provide detailed or reflective answers.
Employees offer quick, efficient and economical perspectives
impacts on customer satisfaction, but when incentives were
that research has shown are highly consistent with those of cus-
reps and teams for percent of “first-time fixes,” customer satis-
by sensitivity to organizational constraints and challenges. This
shifted from rewards for throughput to rewards to individual faction really soared.
There are three, perhaps obvious, but frequently overlooked
lessons from this:
• Before launching any improvement program, examine
tomers themselves. In addition, employee feedback is enhanced understanding is key to identifying feasible improvements to the customer experience.
Most robust employee surveying
EGO surveys replace traditional employee surveys and
and validate all assumptions.
certainly complement — and perhaps even replace — customer
sure the true drivers of quality are understood.
pany performance in four major areas, each of which has two
• Do not confuse correlation with causation — make
surveys with a structure for a 360-degree examination of commain components (see Figure 1):
• Human Capital Optimization
HR Management: Does the com-
pany offer attractive compensation, benefits and working conditions?
Employee Loyalty & Engagement: Do employees feel valued, empowered and supported?
• Customer Centricity
Customer Retention: Do we create an environment that inspires customer loyalty? Customer
Relationship
&
Communication: How well do we
communicate with and listen to our
Fall 2011
customers?
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Customer Care News
• Product and/or Service Quality
Value Proposition: What do customers GET from our
An extra benefit of mining employee intelligence
It is now commonplace to recognize the strong relation-
products and services?
ship between employee loyalty and satisfaction and the loyalty
customers have problems or need support?
employee feedback to guide improvements becomes an improve-
Care & Support: How well do we handle issues when
• Brand & Market Dominance
Brand & Positioning: What is communicated to
the market and company stakeholders to create dominance?
Sales & Acquisition: Are we effective in acquiring new customers?
Typical results can then be displayed in a radargram
(see Figure 2). Here we see a company that is quite strong in
typical employee loyalty and HR measures, but is fairly weak in
customer relationship and communication as well as care
and satisfaction of customers. Here, the very act of soliciting ment in itself, communicating to employees that their opinions are valued. In changing the communication culture of the sys-
tem and enlisting employees as partners in change, inevitably, the end result is increased morale and satisfaction. Satisfied employees are more likely to stay put, and their tenure provides
their organization with a knowledgeable, experienced and stable workforce — the kind of workforce that is most likely to lead to happier customers. And not only does improved employee
satisfaction lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, it works the other way around too: satisfied customers improve employee satisfaction. And around and around it goes. CCN
and support, resulting in low scores in customer retention.
Susan Ellerin, Ph.D., is the founder and president of STAT
positioning, value proposition, and sales and acquisition,
for STAT. STAT has worked with many high-technology,
Why is this? The company scores well in brand and indicating that the product or service being delivered is of reasonable quality and that it is successfully acquiring good potential customers. Does the company need to introduce loy-
alty programs? Review customer care processes? Overhaul its can provide insight that would help to identify problem areas and possible fixes.
www.customercarenews.com
financial, consumer products and services organizations over the course of its 30-year history. Ellerin specializes in focusing senior management teams on interventions that have immediate
and sustainable impacts on the loyalty of high-value customers, improved operational effectiveness, and increased market domi-
Fall 2011
communications strategies? Employee feedback in these areas
Resources, Inc.; Cathryn Noyes is the director of insight research
nance. STAT can be reached at 617-340-2173 or via e-mail at cnoyes@stat-resources.com or sellerin@stat-resources.com.
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