Employee Retention Strategies

A group of customer strategists recently considered various ways to keep an established customer experience program visible.  All of their programs are fairly mature and they share a common challenge of keeping employees engaged and motivated to take action.

Here are some of best practices identified to avoid these obstacles and keep the VoC initiative front and center:

1. Build Customer feedback into incentive compensation. This is a great motivator to keep employees engaged.  Tips: ensure all employees are impacted, incorporate customer feedback as a fairly small percentage of the incentive plan, and make sure the metric does in fact impact compensation.
    
2. Recognize employees. It’s important to recognize employees to let them know the work they do is valued.  For example, some companies post positive customer comments on intranets or internal blogs when employees are mentioned by name for providing outstanding customer service.  (Be aware of any internal restrictions, privacy issues, and the potential need to remove derogatory comments.)
    
3. Communicate progress. It is essential to communicate progress to keep employees engaged.  One way is to ensure data collection frequency provides visibility into progress on key indicators.  Another option is to define internal metrics that are customer oriented.  Providing regular updates will help to maintain focus on the customer experience.

These are just a few suggestions on ways your Customer Experience Program can stand out at your organization.  What other ideas do you have?

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President
 

In a series of meetings and conversations this week, there was much discussion about discomfort, and the notion that uncomfortable situations are often a signal of opportunity.  The topic reminded me of a past blog post, Can you feel your underwear?, in which I talked about the need to push out of our comfort zones from an account management perspective. 

The same thinking applies much more broadly – really to all aspects of our lives.  Situations that make us uncomfortable are typically situations that we are unfamiliar with – they require us to stretch, to learn, to try something new and risk failing. And let’s face it, as much as we can learn from failure, it’s not something anybody enjoys.

And yet we all know that there are levels of discomfort that need to be accepted and even welcomed in order to grow.  This is particularly true in business situations where we are looking to innovate, an activity that is not only necessary for long-term sustainability, but also one that companies are increasingly being pushed into by customers who are clamoring to introduce their voice to innovation processes.  In these cases, the discomfort extends beyond the personal, to a more organizational level of discomfort, but one that, if accepted, can lead to breakthrough developments in products, services, and processes, and ultimately to happier customers and growth.

To capture this upside, it helps to get proactive in identifying opportunities that, while they may be uncomfortable, come with the promise of significant and mutually beneficial rewards.  After all, if we all just keep doing exactly what we’re doing now, things will get pretty boring.

Image Source Page (and nice blog on extending the comfort zone to the eek zone:
http://vladdolezal.com/blog/2011/build-confidence-gradually/

Walker recently set out to answer the question, "What drives partner preference?" Or, asked a different way, "Why do partners recommend one product or brand over others?" 

As we analyzed data from more than 20,000 partner surveys across multiple IT OEMs, one of the findings that emerged is partners have similar needs as customers.  

As we reviewed the drivers of partner preference and compared them to the drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty, we noticed some similarities:

• Partners and customers prefer OEMs that offer reliable products. This area, more than any other, including the financial incentives that OEMs provide to their channel, has the greatest impact on partner preference and is a common top driver of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Partners and customers want to work with companies that are easy to do business with. While this is a nebulous concept, partners and customers generally consider the people and the processes they interact with when evaluating a company as being easy to do business with.

As we sifted through all of the data, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if OEMs adapted their voice of customer (VoC) best practices to their partner relationships. Best practices such as soliciting partner input, creating partner-specific action plans for vulnerable relationships, and leveraging partner feedback to prioritize improvement initiatives. Would that help them grow market share? Would this help them solidify their customer retention strategies?

Based on the work that we've done, the answer is yes.

Customer strategists continue to look for creative ways to share their message and to inform others. They are looking for ways to demonstrate why customer focus is important to the business strategy and how customers feel about the organization.

The communication gets complex because the audience is varied, ranging from external groups like customers and shareholders, to internal teams like sales managers, account managers, product developers, product marketing, service reps, executives...the list goes on and on.

When this infographic came through my twitter feed, I couldn't help but think of different ways customer strategists can use this type of an approach to reach their audience. Here are some of the things that came to mind:

Communications to customers: Customers want to know that their feedback is being put to use. An infographic can be used to share some of the insights you learned from their feedback.

Reach an entire sales organization: Sales teams are geographically dispersed, requiring the use of technology to reach them and let's face it, sales teams want simple. They are busy serving customers and want to spend their time that way. Let's give them something that is easy and enjoyable to digest.

The broad organization: I can visualize an infographic that is focused on communicating how customer feedback is being used for customer retention strategies. It would include statistics like the financial benefit of Loyal customers and demonstrate how customer feedback can be used to predict future customer behaviors.   

What do the cloud, social media, and lean innovation have in common? Each are impacting voice of the customer programs and changing the way we measure, manage, and deliver an exceptional and differentiated customer experience.

Cloud computing: The cloud changes the way customers buy products. Customers move from product ownership to product subscription. In doing this, the switching barriers are lessened for the customer and the company is rewarded with recurring revenue. Cloud-based companies need to adapt their voice of the customer program to focus on predicting customer renewals.

Social media: Customers don't need to wait for a company to conduct a customer survey research program to share their thoughts and feelings. With social media, customers have channels to share their feedback with the company, not to mention their closest friends, fans, and followers. Companies are reacting to this trend by monitoring the discussion and engaging in the conversation on public and private social media forums. This has resulted in a voice of the customer platform that companies are still trying to understand.

Lean innovation: Have you ever thought that product development happens in a bubble with engineers, scientists, and innovators isolated in a building and left to their own devices? This paradigm is shifting and the voice of the customer is becoming more important throughout the product development cycle. In this article, Ravi Aron, senior fellow from Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation implies, "[Lean] begins its journey when an organization attempts to hear the voice of the customer." As the innovation process looks to adopt lean principles to reduce time and costs, one essential ingredient is the customer perspective, putting the customer perspective in greater demand.

In a world where the only constant is change, our voice of the customer programs must be adaptable to support our ever changing customer retention strategies.

Are Accessible customers worth the effort? After all, they are an odd mix -- they like you, but don't plan to keep giving you their business. There are a couple ways these customer relationships can be valuable and shouldn't be shunned too quickly.

In the context of the Loyalty Matrix accessible customers have a positive attitude (how they feel about working with your company), but show negative behavior (what they actually plan to do). When you think about, it is a little strange. Why would a customer have a good attitude, but not plan to keep coming back?

It usually means something has changed and they no longer need your product or service. For instance, let's say you have a favorite coffee shop. You like the people, the atmosphere, and the products. But then you move a few miles away. Even though you like going there, it is simply too far out of your way and there are other good options that are much more convenient.

Here are two reason to continue to cultivate accessible customers.

• First, accessible customers will recommend you. Who knows how their positive comments will help you secure new customers in the future?
• Second, you may have other solutions to offer to them. Particularly in a business-to-business situations it's smart to check in with these customers to make sure they are familiar with your entire range of solutions. They may discover another reason to work with you or may direct you to another contact and provide a personal endorsement.

Accessible customers are typically a small percentage of a company's overall customer base, but they can still be important in helping you grow your business.


Patrick Gibbons
Principal, SVP
Walker

Several weeks ago I shared a blog from Slingshot SEO's CEO, Jay Love, about the advantages of a four day work week.   He is back at it with another great blog about employee recognition.   I would recommend reading the entire post but I have posted his five types of recognition below.  What most companies do is maybe one or two of these.  Why not do ALL of these, they should not cost that much and will have a huge impact on employee loyalty.

1. Quarterly reviews. Mandate one-on-one feedback sessions between each supervisor and team member on a quarterly basis. To ensure these are effective, have each manager carve out one hour for each employee. (At Slingshot SEO, we review the status of each quarterly goal and career objective, as well as take the time to chat to know each other better. The goals and any progress are summarized in a simple feedback form.)
2. Peer recognition. Each month, I solicit open nominations for Slingshot SEO’s Outstanding Team Member of the Month. Each employee with at least 60 seconds to spare can e-mail me with their recommendations. Although just two are publicly honored at each monthly meeting, many others are encouraged by this program: I always forward the e-mails of the remarkable kudos to all the nominees along with a few comments of my own.
3. Team highlights. Insist on your department heads sharing stories from their departments and highlighting the achievements of team members at the monthly All-Company Meeting. Lively presentations that include photographs, videos and client comments make this one even better!
4. Yearly awards ceremony. Hold an Annual Award Event for your organization. (We award a Rookie of the Year, Most Improved, Innovator of the Year and Employee of the Year, plus we invite our Customer of the Year and Partner of the Year to make the event memorable.)
5. Spontaneous kudos. Insist that every supervisor works hard to catch a team member doing something right or special as they wander around or peruse communications. When they do, have them point it out in front of the person’s peers or via departmental e-mail. (The more often the better, but beware… large smiles might take over your office.)

Love, J. “5 Ways to Reward Your All-Stars”. Inc., February, 8, 2012.  http://admin.inc.com/2012/02/08/5-ways-to-reward-your-all-stars/

Too many companies focus on the employees that are struggling or a "problem" and completely forget about the top performers.  In fact, most companies would be better served giving time and attention to the top performers as they will have a greater return to the company.  

In this video, Allison Melangton, CEO of the XLVI Super Bowl Host Committeee, shares some of her lessons learned while planning and organizing the 2012 Super Bowl.

Allison's advice serves as a nice reminder for those in charge of developing and executing customer retention strategies. Consider these tips:

Be Bold: Allison says, "If you really believe in something, be bold about it, even though you might have some doubters." Are your customer strategies bold? If not, why?

Make it Different: Allison talks about how they decided to use a different approach to submit the bid for the Super Bowl. Instead of sending the bid to the NFL owners via UPS, they decided to have 8th graders deliver the bid. Are your customer retention strategies unique or are you delivering the same customer experience as others?  

Don't Let Logistics Stand in the Way: As a customer strategist, we often face logistical challenges such as, how are we going to train our entire sales organization, or how can we get the right customer names and contact information for our customer survey research program. We can no longer let logistical challenges stand in our way. What logistics are holding you back?

Focus on Your Strengths: Whether or not someone tells you that, "all of your work is self-inflicted," we must focus first on our strengths. What strengths are your customer retention stratgies focused on?

Taking action is the most commonly mentioned obstacle when discussing voice-of-the-customer strategies. In many organizations, particularly those that are large and complex, it is incredibly difficult to weave through all the obstacles to turn customer insights into action and results.

Sometimes it helps to think of the key elements that make action possible. Here are four key elements that would apply to almost any organization:

ORGANIZATION – You need the right team structure to effectively deploy your customer strategies. This refers to everyone involved in the process of collecting, analyzing, reporting, delivering, and acting on customer insights. A solid structure needs to be in place to make sure voice-of-the-customer strategies are actionable.

PROCESS – Organizations must have systematic ways to improve customer processes. Customer advocates must develop procedures, methods, and tools to ensure customer insights drive improvement, whether it is to correct a problem, discover a new solution, expedite a procedure, or grow a relationship.

COMMUNICATION – Effective communication needs to ignite the right action. In today’s business environment there’s an incredible amount of clutter. Any business has a multitude of initiatives making it difficult to ensure voice-of-the-customer strategies are seen as important and relevant. Effective communication has become critical to make sure people are aware of customer initiatives, understand their role, and believe in them so they will ultimately take action.

MOTIVATION – Customer strategists must provide the right motivation for action. In some cases incentives are involved. Other times it’s driven by operational metrics. Whatever the case may be, understanding how to motivate the users of customer feedback is a key element to any voice-of-the-customer strategy.

Large organizations can quickly get bogged down and distracted. Keeping these four elements front and center can help customer strategists stay focused on driving action and results.


Patrick Gibbons
Principal/SVP
Walker

This post is the beginning of a series I'm titling, "Troy's Macro-Microblog." I use Twitter some but do not post very frequently. I struggle with the 140 character restriction, but I also find the restriction helps me be more concise and focused, something many of you know I struggle with given previous multi-part blog posts! So, I decided to launch a series of blog posts restricted to 140 words. Not sure how long I can keep this up (I just used 90 words introducing the series), but here it goes!

Post #1: Cynic vs. Skeptic in fact-based decision making
Post #2: Soft skills and the service recovery paradox
Post #3: Creating a culture of customer focused inquiry
Post #4: There is such a thing as a bad question

A cynic wants to put down any idea that is not theirs or they don’t already believe in.

A skeptic wants to find a solution but will require reasoned support that solution, even if it's theirs. That's a key differentiator: If you don’t hold your own ideas to the same standard of proof that you hold other people’s ideas, then you are a cynic.

Cynic: “That will never work because I don’t think it will work.”

Skeptic: “I think X and Y could cause a problem. Do you agree or disagree? Why?”

Fact-based decision makers have to be skeptics, but it is too easy to become a cynic, and that will destroy a healthy, fact-based problem-solving culture.

Do you ever feel that no matter what heights you achieve, your customers are never happy? Do you ever feel that as a customer you are taken for granted? If you are like most everyone, your answer to both questions is, “Yes.” And here is the really crazy thing—those feelings are happening on both sides of the same relationship!

One pretty common human emotion that causes this is the propensity to feel like the “grass is greener on the other side.”

If our customers are thinking that we take them for granted, yet we are continuing to deliver and go above and beyond, what gives? What causes such a disconnect? We may think we are pulling out all the stops to make them so happy they would never think about trying the grass on the other side, but often we are trying the wrong things in the eyes of our customers.

Every restaurant wants to give me a punch card, and I know they are trying to give me a free meal to get me to eat there more often. The problem is, I hate carrying around the punch cards and I never remember to bring them so they become more of a nuisance than a gift. They may think they are going out of their way to do something nice for me. It just isn’t anything meaningful to me.

Reach out to your customers and find out what they need from you. What would show them your efforts to go above and beyond? What could you do that would surprise them (positively!) and keep them loyal to you?

Find out what they are thinking, what they want, what they need, and deliver. You know the grass is not greener on your competitor’s side of the fence. Now prove it to your customers.

• Technical Skill (for support and design)
• Capacity/Scalability The buyer company is not only growing and changing, but may also try out a new vendor with a small piece of business before ramping up the purchase.
• Competitive Pricing - the sum of vendor costs help keep the buyers competitive in their own markets
• Reputation/Brand counts, but often more as table stakes in B2B --  such as assuring financial stability, that the vendor stands by its work, etc.

We are all cutting costs. Have to. There is simply no choice for most companies because most companies are facing greater competition for lesser total demand.

One problem this can create is a set of competing motives in the area of change management. On one hand, austerity programs create the need for more change, change that creates efficiencies and, therefore, reduces overall costs. At the same time, many of these change programs require some resources to execute. And those resources can be difficult to find.

A simple example is in the area of customer support. We all know that not solving the customer’s problem on the first call is expensive. It results in follow-on calls, potentially other type of warranty work or, in the worst case, a lost customer. While additional, higher level contact center representatives may dramatically improve “first call resolution,” the cost of adding the additional resources can be a challenge sale.

I found this graphic in my “Strategic Planning—Keep” file. The copy I have is attributed to the American Productivity and Quality Center. It is a simple graphic that puts forth the theory that you need 5 ingredients for successful change and shows the impact of missing ingredients.

A shortage of resources will lead to frustration as your people try to accomplish tasks without the right tools. Pretty intuitive. In tough times, this barrier moves way up the list. This is the barrier that I hear about most right now as companies are trying to do more with less.

The best way out of this jam is to prioritize your resource needs and focus on the changes that will be the most visible to your customers. Internal tasks or resources spent on internal non-value-added initiatives might be able to take a back seat to your customers during these times. This chart is an oldie, but it is a good reminder of the necessary ingredients and what we should expect when we fail to include them all.