Tag Archive for: employee engagement

Using Good Conversation to Empower your Business

A good conversation is the best way to create a loyal customer, an engaged employee, and overall, a great company. Having a good conversation leaves people feeling satisfied and confident. It boosts self-esteem and has been likened to the same high experienced when eating a favorite food or even having sex.

What makes a good conversation?

A good conversation isn’t just about the words that are said. It’s about how things are said. It’s about body language and facial expressions. Good conversations communicate so much more than just words. More than that, a good conversation can leave us delighted!

Next time you see two people talking, take a moment to look at them properly. How are they interacting? How does one react to the other? What nuances can you pick up on without even hearing what they’re saying? A good communicator knows that a good conversation is an artful balancing act between active listening and constructive speaking.

Also read this article: Retail Customer Service: Reality of Retail Industry

A good conversation is made up of a few straightforward elements:

  • Empathic and Active listening (constructive responsiveness): don’t just nod your head, but understand and participate in the conversation, this is about making others feel interesting and important.
  • Honesty: being truly invested in a conversation is reflected by whether you are showing genuine interest.

The art of carrying a good conversation is a valuable tool when it comes to a company as well. It isn’t just about creating a strong rapport between a salesperson and a customer in order to close a sale either. It’s also about encouraging communication between team members and the company and their employees.

Good communication, internally and externally, leads to a great experience for everyone.

Having a Good Conversation inside a Company

Customer Engagement starts with a conversationFor an employee, being able to have a good conversation with a manager is vital to their job satisfaction and, as a result, their performance. A good conversation allows an employee to express their concerns, needs/desires and suggestions in such a way that managers can understand them and meet them. Similarly, the manager can give voice to their own requirements and opinions, representing the company in this relationship. This two way street provides both parties with the opportunity to actively listen to each other as well as offering useful solutions for any problems. The aim of any good conversation is to leave all parties feeling validated and satisfied that they’ve both been heard and had their requirements met.

The result is a strong relationship between the employees and the company. The open line of communication lets the company empower their entire staff, turning them into engaged employees. Engaged employees are motivated to drive sales because they believe in the cause, thus increasing the bottom line and customer satisfaction. All because the company knows how to have a good conversation.

Encouraging this ongoing communication has internal effects. Employees who communicate with the company are more likely to connect with coworkers as well. This improves internal efficiency! Being a good communicator allows team members to get ahead of any issues and this strengthens the company as a whole.

Building Customer Loyalty through Good Conversation

As human beings, we like to know our needs are heard and met. As customers, this is amplified through expectation. When we got to business, we expect to receive the quality and service that was promised. We want our choices to be validated.Good conversations on the stairs

Customers are companies’ most valuable assets. We all accept that without customers, companies can’t do business and cease to exist. That’s just a simple fact, and until someone discovers how to create a business completely non-reliant on customers and breaks economics as we know it, that’s the way it’s going to be.

As a result, learning how to have a good conversation with a prospective customer is a solid way of creating a lasting relationship with that customer. Even if a sale isn’t made in the first meeting, the foundation for an ongoing relationship has been made upon which to generate future sales.

“Make a customer, not a sale,” Katherine Barchetti said. And she was right. A loyal customer is a returning customer. They’ll advocate your brand and will keep buying your product, simply because they trust you.

So, good conversations…what do we think?

Great customer service experience comes from the ability to connect through good conversation. If we need to improve the way our companies
communicate with our employees and our customers, then it’s time to put some effort into mastering the art of having a great conversation.

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The Value of an Engaged Employee: Why every company needs as many as they can get!

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An engaged employee will deliver a great customer experience. Why? Because they’re interested in what your company is all about.

Have you ever walked into a bookstore, looking for a particular book, only to be told ‘eh, I dunno, over there somewhere’ when you’ve asked where you can find it? Most of us have experienced something like this in our lives, whether in a supermarket or a hardware store. It’s always disappointing.

To illustrate the point, let me take you to a small town outside Melbourne, Australia. I used to run a cafe in the area and made a lot of use of the supermarket there, small, but serviceable. There was a whole host of different characters that worked at the store, and after a while, you knew which ones were the ‘good’ ones and which ones to avoid.

I was hunting for cinnamon one day, only to discover that their entire spice collection had disappeared over the course of the week. I asked one of the employees for help. He just shrugged, mumbled that he didn’t know, and went back to stacking the shelves. Result? I shrugged and went to the bigger Woolworths supermarket the next town over.

The following week, I was back in the same little supermarket for black poppy seeds. Of course, they didn’t have it. Frustrated, I found ‘Sam’, who I knew was one of the ‘good’ employees and asked him. Sam promptly apologized and told me he’d check out the back. No luck, he apologized, but he’d keep looking and would run them down to the cafe if he found any. I went back to work, figuring I’d not see poppy seeds this side of closing time.Engaged Employee... and cake!

Less than twenty minutes later, however, Sam came into the cafe with five packs of the things. Since the local supermarket didn’t have them, he’d run down to the big supermarket and got them for me. I was both impressed and pleased as punch – no need to change my muffin recipe after all! Sam recited the little supermarket’s motto to me cheekily: “Let’s deliver.”

Sam was an engaged employee, and while he may not have been a rocket scientist, he was a genuine person who actually gave a damn about his work. To him, it didn’t matter that they didn’t pay him much, or that he often had to fill late weekend shifts when he should really have been at home with his Playstation. Sam likes doing what he does: not stacking shelves and organizing fresh fruits and vegetables, perhaps, but helping people. He made an effort to learn your name, and how you were connected to the community. For Sam, life at the supermarket was straightforward: people need something, you supply it. What’s more, you supply it with a smile.

I won’t say that this redeemed the local supermarket in its entirety. There were too many useless people working in there to make it truly a great place to shop and one engaged employee offering a better customer experience did not outweigh most of the downsides… but for the sake of convenience, and – after this experience – for the sake of Sam, I would often take the plunge and do my best to ‘shop local’.

What is an ‘Engaged Employee’?

Creating an ‘engaged employee’ isn’t something that just happens. An employee can start out being engaged, enthusiastic and ‘part of the team’, but that can change. Similarly, employees can become engaged over time. Everything depends on circumstance, and how the company treats, trains and helps their team members. We touched on this a few months back during a discussion about the importance of HR policies. In that article, we brushed up on talent retention issues and how an evolving HR policy is vital to a company’s survival:

“People stay with companies they value. The more an employee is allowed and encouraged to engage in the job, team, and company efforts, the more she sees the value. People stay with managers they trust. The more managers and employees engage in continuous communication about expectation, the more trust develops in their relationship. People stay with companies that offer opportunities for personal, even professional growth.” —  5 Links Between Talent Management and Employee Engagement, TalentCulture

Employee engagement is about trust, communication, and value. A company wants its employees to value its…well, its values; an employee wants their company to value their efforts and time. An engaged employee will be the one who has reached that level of immersion with company policy and message: they believe in what the company stands for and what it’s selling, usually because it’s in line with what they themselves believe in.

Why is an engaged employee so valuable?

An engaged employee is an employee that trusts the company they’re working for and is enthusiastic about the brand they represent. This interest shines through in their work, and, as a result, in the way they treat clients and customers. What better way to get a customer to buy a product or service an employee eagerly admits they’ve used themselves?

For example, there’s an Australian real estate investment company that operates throughout Asia, Meridien Group, and one of their regular sales pitches includes the line: “This is a good investment. I know because I’ve bought one myself. My boss has bought six.”

The rapport that’s developed between the engaged employee and the company has now spilled over into the customer experience, into the relationship between the employee and the customer.

“Trust me,” an engaged employee can say, “because I trust this company and what it stands for.” That’s a type of enthusiasm no one can fake.

The Bottom Line?

Forget marketing budgets, massive social media advertising campaigns – forget all the prime time television slots you’re still buying. Build up your employees and they will do that for you. After all, if your employees don’t believe in what you’re selling, why on earth would your customers?

An engaged employee will go the extra mile, and not because you’ve asked them to, but because they want to.

An engaged employee will go the extra mile

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Validating Customer Experiences: Why you need to do it.

Validating customer experiences is a surefire way of winning that customer over, forever. Validation and customer experiences are inextricably linked. People have needs and desires. Those needs and desires lead them to choices and decisions. We need – or want – something, and we go out and get it.

What do we mean with ‘validating customer experiences’?

A few weeks ago, customer service guru, Shep Hyken, wrote an article on the concept of customer validation. This blog article talked about how validating customer experiences is a vital part of a well-delivered customer service.

If we looked up ‘validation’ in the dictionary we’d come across something like:

“…an act, process, or instance of validating; especially : the determination of the degree of validity of a measuring device.” [Source]

In his article, Hyken uses the term ‘validation’ to describe achievement when a good sale has been made. A salesperson providing the proper advice and aid is awarded a “I’ve done well!” feeling when a sale is made, and a customer – hopefully! – leaves with a “made the right choice!” feeling.

Validation taking place here goes two ways: the salesperson feels their effort has paid off, and the customer feels that their decision making process has met their need. This achievement, the validation, is the way to generating great customer experiences.

What we’re getting at then is that ‘warm fuzzy feeling’ we all feel when we’ve done something right.

Customer Experiences, and why they should be validated

The world revolves around human needs, decisions and validation. We’re all looking for validation, whether it’s about our own choices or someone else’s. That feeling we get when we’ve accomplished something we’ve worked for boosts our self-esteem in a way nothing else can – to that end, most of us want to ‘do good’. We’ll just ignore all the procrastination we do on Facebook and all the times we binge-watched entire seasons on Netflix, that’s gratification, not validation of effort (although, in all fairness, validation delivers gratification).

A good customer experience comes when both parties – customer and salesperson – feel like their efforts have been validated. As a result, the whole purpose of customer service is to reach that point of validation. A happy customer – validated! – is likely to return and purchase again. Continually delivering what a customer desires and constantly validating their choices will generate a loyal customer, and a loyal customer is priceless.

Check out this video from Temkin Group International for some more insight:

Are you validating your customers’ experiences?

Having established that it’s important to ensure that no one feels as though they’ve wasted their time, what are you doing to improve the way your customers feel when they make their exit? Even if they’re delighted and shouting your praises from the rooftops, our work is not done. It’s important that our customers all feel that way when they leave. That’s easier said than done, really validating customer experiences is hard work. There’s no set plan or structure that you can apply to all customers across the board. Every customer needs – and deserves! – a tailored customer experience that leaves them feeling validated by the choices they have made and the level of service they have received.

Think about that, the next time a customer comes to you for a product or service.

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Don’t Just Use Customer Service Phrases: Act

How many times have we come across the phrase: “customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude”. I’ve used it myself several times for one reason: it’s true. And also because it’s a cool way of getting my point across.

Trouble is, when you say something too many times you end up losing its meaning. Like when you say ‘oil’ many times in a row; the word turns into a string of meaningless noises. (Or is that just me?) The overuse of the phrase ‘customer service isn’t a department etc’ has made it invisible. Invisibility might be useful for superheroes, but for customer-service reps it’s practically a sin.

We throw around plenty of words and phrases, and it’s become an issue.

Define ‘customer service’. Google it. It’s everywhere. As companies, we’re being told again and again that it’s time to ‘improve our customer service’ and that ‘this is the age of the customer’. ‘Be customer-centric’ is my personal favorite. In the white noise of the overwhelming evidence that ‘customer service is the future’ — another recurring phrase — the real meaning behind the term is slipping away.

So what does it mean?

If you’ve Googled ‘customer service’, you’ll know that the first definition that pops up (from Wikipedia) reads as follows:

“Customer service is the provision of services to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees “who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest”. Customer service is also often referred to when describing the culture of the organization.” (Source)

Does anyone else want to shake their monitor when they read that? I certainly do. Why? Because it could mean anything. A lack of understanding means a lack of goal. I’m not saying that this definition isn’t correct — it probably is — but what it definitely isn’t is helpful.

Customer service has a simpler definition and this is it:

“Customer Service: Helping customers meet their needs.”

That’s it. Throw out the big words, put the meaning back into the definition.

I know that ‘helping customers meet their needs’ is a lot more complicated than it actually sounds, but that’s not the point. By redefining ‘customer service’ we’ve gotten rid of the white noise and made it a responsibility again, rather than a chore.

Once people know the goal, it becomes obtainable. Suddenly, customer service really isn’t a department: it’s something anyone can do. Customer comes in and needs help? You help them. Hey, that’s customer service! That’s not your department — except that it is because no matter what industry we work in, or position we hold — from janitor to CEO and beyond — we are here to supply our customers with what they want.

That is customer service, and it isn’t a department. It’s really an attitude.

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The Importance of an Evolving HR Policy

An HR Policy exists to address the needs of people working in a company while also providing a set of rules and guidelines to maintain fair practices throughout the workplace. Think of it like a bill of rights for a company.

The truth of the world is that employers often take their employees for granted. This isn’t done deliberately, it just happens, particularly with bigger companies with a large workforce. It isn’t always easy to keep track of employee engagement and happiness and make sure that everyone’s needs are being met. That’s also not the point.

Years ago, many HR policies were written to support companies, the foundation being ‘you have a job, be grateful’, rather than actually offering strategies to help companies and employees manage their relationship. They used to be a ‘set and forget’ policy, often referred to only when strictly necessary. Luckily, this is no longer the case — or at least, not generally! As the workplace has evolved, company policies have changed as well, particularly HR policies, which impact directly on the element that makes a company function: its people.

Getting honest feedback from those directly affected helps ferret out any real world issues in the HR policy. This is particularly the case if the the policy has been designed in isolation. Questions can come up that weren’t even considered during the creation of the policy.

For example:

  • Are there different interpretations to a rule?
  • Does the policy not reflect the true needs of employees?
  • Has something been completely missed?
  • Is there something in the policy that isn’t necessary at all?

Even policies written after extensive research and polling can benefit from a regular check up by those under its purview. The big picture can get lost if people are focused purely on the details of how a company should run its employees.

Opening a dialogue about an HR policy can open undiscovered doors. It allows employees to engage with a company on a very basic level, providing insight into day-to-day aspects that might not have been considered when the policy was written. Further, it allows for policy makers to get a better understanding of the work-life balance that staff needs. A company that invests in its employees in this fashion also has a better chance of holding onto those employees in the long run, raising talent retention rates. To quote at length from Talent Culture:

“People stay with companies they value. The more an employee is allowed and encouraged to engage in job, team, and company efforts, the more she sees the value. People stay with managers they trust. The more managers and employees engage in continuous communication about expectation, the more trust develops in their relationship. People stay with companies that offer opportunities for personal, even professional growth.” —  5 Links Between Talent Management and Employee Engagement, TalentCulture

Giving employees a chance to discuss the policies that directly affect their lives is a sure fire way to get them engaged with the company, but more than that it provides some key aspects that any HR policy should have:

  1. Clarity — making sure that everyone really understands the policy; its rules, consequences, the purpose, and the rights listed in it.
  2. Work-Life Balancing — ensuring that the policy is actually meeting the needs of both the company and its employees.
  3. Evolution & Adaptation — allowing that the policy reflects changes in the workplace and workforce as those changes come about.
  4. Talent Management — allows management take the overall pulse of employee engagement and thus head off recruitment or retention issues in the long run.

To quote a colleague:

“A company should create a safe and open space for their employees to make mistakes, discuss policies and feel significant within the company in order for the business to strive to its full potential. Treat your employees well and it will echo in service towards your clients.”

Recently, AQ Services had an HR day to discuss the latest HR policies and get a better understanding of whether it was meeting the needs of our people. Questions like “What does human resource excellence mean to you?” and “Describe what you consider key to a healthy work-life balance for yourself” allowed teams to discuss whether they thought the policy was addressing the vital issues that it sought to.

It was more than that, however, this was our first step in the right direction. In 2014, AQ had a complete structural overhaul, and as a result things are now done vastly differently to what they were before. This required a new policy, and because we are who we are, that policy was open for discussion. After some initial confusion and doubt about what it is that we were meant to be discussing, we realised that this was a great opportunity for us to air our opinions about the policy. To quote one of our team:

“It is great to see that employees have a voice over HR policies. This gets us engaged, and is a good way for management to discover what we feel important.”

It wasn’t just the negatives that were discussed, although several pointed concerns were raised, but also the strengths of the policy. Implemented in January 2016, this new policy was based on experiences of the past and addresses some of the issues that came up. As a result, the new policy has made big — positive — changes to its parental leave scheme as well as bringing on board new options such a work-from-home option and other things.

There is a downside to making an HR policy subject to conversation and feedback, of course. It’s always possible that as a result of a dialogue no actual decisions or rules are ever implemented, making it a useless document that hinders more than helps. ‘Too many chefs in the kitchen will ruin the soup’ and all that.

I still maintain, however, that with the correct approach, having a system for feedback on company policies — particularly an HR policy — can be a great thing, especially in this modern day and age where the workplace is a fluctuating thing and we are no longer defined simply by the location we work, or the people we work with.

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