Do You Have Engaged Workgroups?

Can you "strongly agree" with the following eight questions?

1. The leadership in our organization can explicitly state the value our company brings to customers, in one or two sentences.

2. The leadership in our organization proactively helps employees understand the value we bring to customers.

3. Employees in our organization can explicitly state the value we bring to customers, in one or two sentences.

4. Employees in our organization seem aligned to the company's core values (what we stand for).

5. Employees in our organization are empowered to share with customers what value we bring, in their own words and style.

6. Overall, employees in our organization do a good job of communicating what value we provide, with each other and with customers.

7. In our organization, Marketing and HR work together to ensure the value we provide is communicated consistently across all possible channels of customer contact.

8. Our organization does a good job of measuring employee engagement (alignment, culture, etc.).

If you can "strongly agree," you're on your way to connecting your company's values with the values of your customers. A strong culture is the cornerstone of a strong brand.

If you can't say "yes!" to them all, you have some work to do. Here's how to start developing engaged workgroups:

Help employees understand your brand message. And make it simple, it's your "story."

Give employees the tools to communicate the message effectively and consistently.

Show employees you trust them to represent your brand in the marketplace. Heck, Zappo's lets employees step into a video booth to shoot their own commercials promoting cool new products they endorse!

You can try to influence what your brand becomes through advertising, design and marketing, But it's ultimately decided by those who interact with your culture.

Walgreen's Strategy Paying Off

In my last post, I noted that Walgreen's has embarked on the people-based strategy of training pharmacists to spend more time helping patients with chronic illnesses.

Building relationships with customers, to proactively drive customer engagement vs. delivering reactive customer service, leads to strong and sustainable growth, at least in my book (literally).

A strategy like this sounds good in the boardroom and looks good on paper, but means nothing if it doesn't drive results, right?

Early results are in, and they couldn't be better. Here's what The Wall Street Journal just reported this week:

"Walgreen Co. said June same-store sales rose 2 percent, a reversal from two straight months of decline, as discretionary sales in the front end of the store improved. Overall, sales jumped 8.4 percent, to $5.67 billion" for the company."

This is a sound example of how employees who are aligned with your brand can create real relationships with customers, based on shared values. By improving each "moment of impression" a customer has with a pharmacist--or any employee in the Walgreen's organization--the ripple effect spurs growth in the different products and services a brand offers.

I will keep you updated on AmEx and Comcast, two other companies I applauded in my last post for installing people-centric strategies for growth.

Moving From Customer Service to Customer Relationships: The Way to Grow.

Walgreen's is training pharmacists to spend more time helping patients with chronic illnesses.

American Express is expanding a program aimed at getting agents to build better relationships with customers.

Comcast is putting call-center reps through new training and instructing supervisors to coach their agents more.

These are Brandtenders in action: moving from "customer service" to "customer engagement."



Over 25% of the 1,400-plus companies surveyed by Accenture said that customer service is the first area to get increased funding as the economy recovers, according to The Wall Street Journal. More importantly, these companies are changing how they perceive and approach customer service.

Customer service is reactive and transactional: taking customer orders and dealing with customer frustrations. The Brandtender approach is proactive, linking employees who are interested in the brand they work for—because of their company's unique culture (the DNA of a brand)—with customers who value their relationships with those employees.

I've found that the most customer-satisfying brands in the world do three things:

1. Help employees understand and become interested in the brand. (Don't over-engineer the brand message, make it simple and allow employees to relay it to customers in their own style.)



2. Give employees the tools to communicate the brand message at every turn, making every moment of impression with customers a strong one. (They should know what to say and when, consistently and effectively.)



3. Trust employees to represent the brand in the marketplace. ("Empowerment" is an overused word. It's about trust. If you don't trust employees, they know it and won't trust your brand. And if your employees can't represent your brand, then who can?)