Front-line Employees Can Make or Break Your Brand – Especially When You Go Social
I once read something in a customer service textbook that advised managers to treat employees the way you want your employees to treat customers. I found that to be a very powerful statement that will probably stick with me forever. After all, nothing says “We don’t really care” about our employees like not sharing your customer messaging and offers with employees, ideally before the employees are stampeded by coupon-toting customers.
I am writing about getting front-line employees cued in your social media efforts because of a request from my new friend Edgar Diaz. When I put of a call-for-suggestions for blog topics on Twitter a few weeks ago (for my next entry) Edgar responded that he liked “The thought of integrating both front-line employees & top execs into social media efforts for a well-rounded campaign.”
At the end of the day, a well-crafted promotional piece, an innovative website and hip store don’t do squat for the customer if the person they’re most likely to interact with is not up to speed on what’s going on. Making employees empowered and knowledgeable on information that affects customers should be a top priority for every organization. You have to keep employees engaged. If you’ve not heard of internal marketing before, you’re not alone. In order to give you the best explanation, I visited Sybil Stershic’s blog, Quality Service Marketing:
“Internal Marketing is the ongoing process whereby an organization aligns, motivates and empowers employees at all functions and levels to consistently deliver a positive customer experience that helps achieve business objectives.”
Now that you’re using social networking channels to engage with prospects, customers and vendors, you need to keep your front-line employees up to speed. Aside from making employees feel insignificant, failing to communicate top-down marketing initiatives directly with employees makes for some bad morale – and ultimately, a bad customer experience. Now, I’m certainly not advocating that employees be notified every time you tweet or post a video on your Facebook page, but they need to know if a major campaign is being launched, big changes are going to take effect and/or you’re having some sort of special offer through your social networks.
When you get a chance, check out the Starbuck’s Gossip blog. On it, a FourSquare Mayor discusses the fact that he was supposed to receive a special discount for being Mayor, but the employee working at the counter was not informed of the discount. This was obviously not a well-executed plan on behalf of Starbuck’s. One, employees were not properly notified of this type of special. Two, an obviously loyal, frequent customer who is socially active was disappointed by the clumsy transaction. This tells me that while Starbucks had a great idea (in theory) to offer discounts to its brand advocates it missed the mark with the customer service/transactional aspect of it.
I wrote the initial draft for this post on Monday and was out of the office yesterday. A good friend and fellow social junkie Jillian Koeneman and I headed up to Saugatuck, Michigan for a day of working and fun. We checked in on FourSquare as we stopped in several local businesses. After one such check-in, I was notified that there was a FourSquare Special nearby at a local bar/restaurant. While I would not necessarily have chosen this place for lunch, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to see if the staff was aware of the promotion (and appetizers were half-price with the special). I had the sneaking suspicion that the very thing experienced by the Starbucks Mayor would happen to us as well.
When the waitress approached us to ask what we would like to order, we each showed her the offer from the restaurant on our cell phones. She didn’t know what it was and seemed unsure of what to do, so she deferred to another waitress nearby. The second waitress was very suspicious and her interaction with us – including her attitude and body language – told us she thought we were trying to scam her. Fortunately, the bartender was nearby. She discussed it with the surly waitress and called the owner, who told her that the deal was in fact legit. We later asked the bartender what the owner had said, and she told us he said that he had forgotten to inform staff of the special. Like I mentioned earlier in this post, your company can have the best ideas for a campaign, new product or service or even coupon, but without letting your front-line employees in on it you risk creating disengaged employees, which in turn create bad or mediocre customer experiences.
When it’s all said and done, the experience your company creates for its customers is not in your commercials, or what your upper management wants to project. It’s created by interactions with Mary working at the counter and Ryan answering the phone. These everyday interactions are what make you who you are as a company. So do yourself, your employees and your customers a favor and keep employees informed of any and all specials, deals, new products and/or services. If they don’t know what’s going on, you’re going to frustrate these valuable employees and create uncomfortable experiences for your customers.
Missy, this is a great article! Thank you so much for writing this and for mentioning my name. There are so many articles out there about the need to get top execs on board with social media efforts, but I rarely hear about the the importance of educating and gaining buy-in from front line workers too.
The part where you talk about employee/customer interactions creating the experience for the customer is very true. I had a great Foursquare mayor experience at a local business. When I showed them my phone and announced I was the mayor, the waitstaff dropped everything and waited on me hand and foot. They treated me like royalty and one person even called me “boss.”
To this day I’m not sure if it was great scripting or if they were just really excited to finally have a mayor (apparently they had been waiting for quite a while). Either way, the front-line staff knew there was a Foursquare special going on, and they knew what to do to implement it. Like I said, it was a great experience.
Thanks again for posting.
Edgar – thank you for the inspiration and idea. It was just perfect how I had drafted the article and then got to put my theory into practice yesterday. I am really glad you had a great FourSquare experience. Was this at Between the Buns? If so, which location? Thanks for commenting!
Great examples, Missy, of how companies miss the mark by not keeping their employees in the marketing loop. Uninformed employees (some even “surly” and “suspicious” as you cited here) who aren’t prepared to deliver on the promise can create memorable brand experiences for customers – of the negative kind. Internal marketing is based on the simple premise that if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers!
PS. Thanks for the mention.
Thanks for the comment, Sybil. I really enjoyed you coming to speak at the Michiana AMA Luncheon and this was definitely an influence in this topic as well; your presentation really made an impression on me.