Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience

Are your employees making or breaking the customer experience? Customer engagement is a crucial component to growth and success within the retail sector. Your employees are the key to customer engagement they can easily make or break the customer experience. According to the Gallup State of the American Workplace report, When organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240 percent boost in performancerelated business outcomes compared to an organization with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers. This study is one of many reporting that employee engagement is critical to ensuring a positive customer experience. Moreover, employee engagement is increasingly crucial in today s evolving omnichannel retail world, as customers expect a seamless experience across all available channels. WHEN ORGANIZATIONS SUCCESSFULLY ENGAGE THEIR CUSTOMERS AND THEIR EMPLOYEES, THEY EXPERIENCE A 240% BOOST IN PERFORMANCE Allen has built a practice around developing innovative learning solutions that enhance employee engagement. Fortune 500 companies such as Macy s, Sears, Toyota, ebay, Domino s and many others have worked with Allen to develop custom training solutions that meet their most critical needs. Allen s fresh approach, which has been perfected over 30 years, will have a lasting impact on employee engagement and your overall customer experience. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 2

The retail world is changing. Allen can help you stay on top of the changes. In today s world, the customer experience extends far beyond the brick-and-mortar retail store. Customers want and expect business to provide a unified omnichannel shopping experience. One challenge retailers face more and more often is showrooming, when a customer visits a physical store to look at a product and later buy it online. Now customers are flipping that script and have begun researching product features, reviews and prices online to then go buy in-store, which is known as webrooming. Your customer-facing employees must be ready to engage customers everywhere. Whether you are strictly brick and mortar, an e-retailer, or a combination of both, you should expect your customers to be thinking omnichannel. All of your employees, especially ones on the front line, need to be trained and ready to provide the level of service that today s new consumer expects. Retailers who adopt an approach that engages employees across all channels will have a key competitive advantage. Customers want engaged employees who will provide a seamless and positive shopping experience. In the following pages, you ll learn the Allen approach to enhance employee engagement, including: Many companies look at training too narrowly. They think it s just about product knowledge and sales skills. They don t realize that the right education will boost employee engagement and a more engaged employee will lead to more sales. RON ZAMIR, CEO Critical strategies to boost employee engagement and performance. Innovative learning tools, including ANSWER analysis, performance mapping and behavioral changing strategies. BRICK & MORTAR Best practices that create lasting and measurable results for our clients. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 3

Critical strategies to boost employee engagement and performance 1. BRAND BUY-IN Your employees must be genuine brand advocates of your company and products. Your brand extends far beyond digital signage or store layout. Your brand is intertwined with your culture and environment, and is central to everything you do. Because of this, it is vital to establish a brand that resonates with your employees and customers. Keys to boost brand buy-in: Confident employees have knowledge of your company, brand, products and channels. They are armed with the necessary knowledge and tools to effectively help your customers. Encourage and incentivize your employees to experience the brand and products. Teach your employees how they impact the brand. Use your brand to motivate your employees during the education process. 2. CONFIDENCE AND KNOWLEDGE Confident employees have knowledge of your company, brand, products and channels. They are armed with the necessary knowledge and tools to effectively help your customers. Many organizations are looking for ways to revitalize their educational strategies to boost employee knowledge. Allen s innovative learning solutions have helped clients like Domino s and Avon, who saw a lasting and measurable increase in employee engagement. Keys to enhance your educational strategy: Make it short. Make it repeatable. Make it relevant. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 4

3. MOTIVATION AND EMPOWERMENT Everyone is motivated differently. Some are motivated by money, while others are motivated by recognition or altruistic actions. An employee who is incentivized correctly will be motivated to perform for you and will quickly become engaged with your company. Empowering your employees to do their jobs is also key to creating an engaged workforce. Employees must feel trusted to represent your company and to help your customers. They must understand that they have a direct impact to the organization s overall growth and success, as well as to the customer experience. By providing your employees with the tools and opportunities to perform their roles, you set them up for success and increase overall engagement. Keys to boost motivation and empowerment: Give your employees a voice in the educational process. Ensure employee education is accessible throughout their employment. Build an educational process that reflects your employees learning needs. Tools we use to boost employee engagement There is a link between It is clear that engaged employees are essential to the customer experience. As noted, employee engagement begins when you arm them with the correct knowledge to be successful in their roles. Unfortunately, many organizations approach employee education with a narrow mindset. These organizations believe that employee training is primarily product knowledge and sales skills. how a company treats its customers and how it treats its employees. And an engaged employee is also an engaged customer. To create an employee engagement educational strategy that delivers measurable results, we begin by conducting an in-depth ANSWER analysis. Working with your subject matter experts, we help you gain a stronger understanding of your employees needs, behaviors and motivators. RON ZAMIR, CEO Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 5

ANSWER Analysis? 1. AUDIENCE Understanding your learning audience will help you determine how best to engage them. We ask questions like: What motivates these learners to learn and to apply knowledge from each training initiative? How best do they learn? What time constraints do they have? We put the learner front and center to determine their needs and motivators. 2. NEEDS To be successful, every training initiative must not only address how best to communicate with the audience, it must also be designed around the business need. We look at what gaps exist between the status quo and the business objective. Then we assess how to fill those gaps to meet your goals. 3. SUCCESSES It s important to know where you ve succeeded in the past, as it s easier to build on successes than to continually battle your failures. We help you identify and use your unique strengths to your advantage. 4. WEAKNESSES We help you discover what lessons learned from past mistakes can help you determine a better approach. By recognizing your weaknesses, you can identify and remove hurdles in your path. 5. EXISTING CONTENT AND EXPERTISE Your content and information can help you establish updates, gaps, and accuracy in your processes. We will use your content to help develop an educational strategy that works for your needs. 6. RESULTS We help you define what success looks like for you and look for ways to get there. We also gather evaluation data to measure the results so you can prove your business objectives were met. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 6

Performance Mapping: Identify key phrases to listen for CRITICAL THINKING Recognize cues of non-verbal communication Decide when to use open and closed-ended questions BUSINESS GOALS Improve customer service to 80% compliance DESIRED BEHAVIOR Listen, observe, and question effectively SKILL MASTERY Listen actively Observe behaviors/factors that could impact the sale Ask appropriate questions to determine the need MOTIVATION Gain confidence in recommending a solution to a need A performance map analyzes what motivates learners, what they need to do, and what they need to know in order to change their behaviors. The performance map examines several factors and ultimately helps us determine which training strategies and activities are best to drive change and produce lasting, measurable results. While each performance map is highly unique and contextually relevant to each company, we rely on 30 years of data to help decipher what your company needs. Our experience helps you learn from your peers as well as integrates best practices from other industries. The first stage of the performance mapping process is to determine a distinct business goal. We do this by identifying problems, solutions and ultimately defining what your specific business goal should be. The second step of the performance mapping process is to identify the desired behaviors that are required to reach the business goal. We will work with you to determine what your employees are doing right and what changes are necessary. The third step of the performance mapping process is to identify the following three critical employee attributes: 1. MOTIVATION Discovering what motivates your employees will help you determine how to properly incentivize them. Do your employees want a monetary reward, a paid day off, or recognition in front of their peers? We work with managers to determine the best ways to incentivize your diverse team. 2. SKILLS MASTERY Arming your employees with the essential skills and knowledge will enhance performance and engagement. We work with you to determine what skills require improvement and will drive measurable results. 3. CRITICAL THINKING To be successful, employees must have critical thinking skills that help them become adept problem-solvers who can think through situations clearly and develop solutions. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 7

Instructionally Designed Learning At the conclusion of the performance mapping process, our team builds a unique, strategic curriculum to meet your business goals. We work directly with your subject matter experts to engineer a distinct and interactive education solution that will have a lasting effect on learners and produce measurable business results. To create an educational plan that delivers quantifiable outcomes, it is important to recognize that how you deliver the message is just as essential as the message itself. At Allen, we have found proven results with instructionally designed material messaging. Many training plans simply push content to the learner, which results in content that is quickly forgotten. These plans are often presented in a monotonous, non-interactive way that neither inspires nor motivates participants. The Allen approach uses the knowledge gained from the performance mapping process to engineer robust online educational tools that deliver a highly visual, easily understandable educational message through engaging and interactive curriculum. Our blended instruction uses innovative learning strategies, such as gamification, videos and infographics, to ensure learners are highly engaged and gain lasting knowledge that will drive results. The Allen process ensures that you never lose sight of your business goals, and it helps you achieve lasting and measurable results. It is a tried-and-true process that has been integral to the success of numerous companies, such as Pizza Hut, HP, and Toyota. Moreover, this process is a win-win as it helps inspire and motivate your employees to do their best, which will ultimately impact your company s overall growth and success. An engaged employee believes in your product and brand, which is the same thing you want your customers to believe. RON ZAMIR, CEO Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 8

Learning Goes Viral Allen has worked with several organizations to build impactful learning solutions that have led to increased employee engagement. We were recently approached by an international technology company who had the critical goal of increasing its brand awareness throughout its global workforce. Because the company had experienced several mergers and acquisitions in recent years, the company had an inconsistent brand among its nearly 300,000 employees. The CEO quickly recognized that these disengaged employees were affecting the customer experience, which impacted the bottom line. The company knew it had to address employee engagement and understanding before they would see a shift in customer experience. Because of this, increasing employee engagement became a major initiative. Allen partnered with the company s marketing and customer service departments to develop a strategic global training program that enabled employees to develop cohesive brand knowledge and turn that knowledge into behaviors that measurably improved the customer experience. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 9

230,000 VOLUNTARY COURSE COMPLETIONS 10 X MORE THAN PREVIOUS TRAININGS Allen started the challenge by conducting an extensive needs analysis and in-depth performance map to determine the best learning solution. The in-depth analysis led Allen to focus on custom gamification and personalization strategies to meet the business objectives. Allen designed an open scenario game that helped employees understand how they directly impact the organization. The game incorporated highly branded interactive media. It also focused attention on how an employee s daily decisions can have a profound impact to the customer experience. Using compelling and intuitive messaging, the game ensured employees were highly engaged throughout the learning process, while being educated about the brand and helping them understand how they impact the customer experience. The incorporation of personalized elements was vital to the project s success. Allen augmented the client s existing Customer Experience Center with an engaging learning portal housing multiple courses, allowing learners to share success through social interaction. Advanced tracking allowed the learning portal to serve the audience personalized content based on job roles and choices made throughout the course. The program spread virally throughout the organization, achieving 230,000 voluntary course completions, which was 10 times more than any previous training initiative in the company s history. The company also experienced measurably improved customer engagement ratings. Though the game was not created for entertainment value, employee feedback indicated that their enjoyment and engagement during the learning process helped them to transfer an understanding of content into specific behaviors that ultimately helped the company achieve its business goal. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 10

Are you delivering the best customer experience? The research is clear: Employees directly impact the customer experience. While an engaged employee will create a positive and memorable experience, a disengaged employee will quickly ruin the experience and negatively impact your brand. Engaged employees are armed with the necessary knowledge, brand awareness, motivations and empowerment to be successful. Creating an engaged workforce is not only a key competitive advantage, but is vital to survival in today s evolving retail sector. Allen has built unique tools that enable you to isolate and modify employee behaviors. Our specific learning strategies and best practices developed during the past three decades will ensure you provide the best educational solutions that will lead to lasting and measurable results. Today s customers want and expect more from their entire retail experience. Investing in your employees is an investment in your company. By increasing employee engagement, you improve the customer experience. Your success depends on whether you and your employees deliver that experience. Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 11

About Allen For more than 30 years, Allen Communication has led the learning industry, providing pioneering educational strategies, technologies, and analytics. With extensive experience across every major industry, Allen s award-winning projects for the bestknown companies in the world drive lasting business results and documented ROI. Businesses trust Allen with their most critical learning and performance projects, because Allen aligns agencyquality media design, best-in-class instructional strategy and technology, and a proven design process centered on alignment with quantifiable business results. For more information on educational trends and practices, visit www.allencomm.com, or contact one of our learning directors. Phone: (866) 310-7800 Email: info@allencomm.com Web: AllenComm.com Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 12