Empowering Associates to Enhance Customer Experience and Efficiencies
Jasmine Green shared her organization’s approach to creating a more customer-centric culture and some of the methods used to build programs and involve associates in the process. This included building a portal where employees submitted ideas for improvement.
Key takeaways included:
- A blueprint and process to gain insights and perspectives from within your own walls
- Guidance on effectively analyzing and sharing key findings with applicable business units
- A concrete approach to prioritize opportunities and create action items and next steps
- Insight on impactful metrics to measure improvement
Green described challenges and successes in building, testing, and measuring these programs and shared some of the results. As she noted, “Enhancing the customer experience is everyone’s job. This involves listening to associates, customers, and intermediaries. Our strategy is to improve experiences through a collaborative effort.”
KEY INSIGHTS
- Look for ways to strengthen the bond between the brand and the customer
- Create a blueprint and process to gain insights and perspectives from within your own walls
- Prioritize opportunities and create action items and next steps
- Measure improvements through metrics
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
- Information is given, but the company decides what to do with it
- Business unit leaders make decisions about employees who are acknowledged
- More than 1,000 ideas were submitted and 28% were implemented
- One idea brought in over a million dollars in benefits
- Intentionality is key
- Free form feedback from associate = their voice is heard unfiltered
- No marks against associates for giving feedback
- Metrics and measurements included percentage of items going through, how many associates were using, percentage of businesses implementing
PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS
Journey to capture associate feedback
- Keep associates involved in development
- Let them tell you what’s wrong and what could be improved
- Give positive reinforcement when they speak up about what is wrong
Always measure information through metrics
- Build a Voice of the Associate program to drive better outcomes via a tool called The Voice, which is becoming more widely available
- Information is shared with the goal of improving experiences of all
- Simple and user-friendly for associates
- As a result, associates are happier and more engaged
- Research findings back up employees are happier when they are engaged in problem solving and when they feel heard
Collaboration and activation
- Gather and listen to associate feedback
- Analyze associate feedback
- Analyze what you learn from associate feedback and apply it
- Every company has areas that they need to improve
Amplify the Voice of the Customer
- Listen to the voice of the customer whether it’s the Voice tool, social media, complaints
- Do not ignore associate feedback!
Communication and recognition
- Give kudos to associates. Let associates tell leaders who they want to see recognized
- Recognizing others’ work has a positive effect
- Keep customers and associates in the loop about what is improving
Empower associates for better outcomes
- Enables streamlined operations
- Complements lean team practices
- Advances customer-centric vision
- Increases associate engagement
- Accept feedback without judgement and without penalizing people
BEST PRACTICES
- Remain in constant communication with associates about ideas submitted whether selected or not, so they feel heard and part of the process
- Free form feedback is key so you can hear the voice of the agent without filter
- Keep everyone in the loop
FINAL THOUGHT
Some great ways to strengthen the bond between the brand and the consumer can come from within the company. Listen to those opinions to get the best results for the company and the customer.
