1to1 - Spring 2009 - (Page 14) > PERFORMANCE Employee Engagement as a Service Strategy Signature Community uses weekly employee recognition and rewards to inspire quality service. w $100 idea that could benefit the company. Management awards employees for the best idea or action. One employee recently attended a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in which the audience was invited to text a message to the Jumbotron. The employee posted Signature’s tag line—“Love the place you live. Live in a Signature Community property.” While the awards programs keep employees motivated to provide quality service, the company’s myriad blogs work to inspire employees, keep them informed, and collect their feedback. They include a customer service blog that highlights wow awards and customer service-focused articles; an acquisitions blog; a blog for investors; the CEO Monday morning message blog; a company best practice blog, which features discussions like using energy-efficient water heaters; a marketing ideas blog that collects feedback from employees; a resident feedback blog; and a blog that offers renters’ information. Jekogian says these efforts all work toward increasing job satisfaction, which continues to rise. “One of the issues is that we are a national company so there is not a lot of face time in our organization,” Jekogian says. “This is just another way to keep our internal community happy and comfortable.” > Mila D’Antonio ant employees to wow customers? Reward them for it. Executives at Signature Community, a residential living property management company, know that rewarding employees based on customer-focused metrics will ultimately create satisfied residents. Nick Jekogian, CEO and president of Signature Community, has developed an in-depth recognition and reward program that aims to motivate employees to provide residents with a high quality of life. “I don’t need them to be better real estate people; I need them to be better customer service people,” Jekogian says. The largest part of his strategy includes regularly sharing ideas and recognizing employees who align themselves with the customer. Every week the company’s managers, leasing agents, and leasing personnel meet on a conference call geared around service. During the meeting, property managers and leasing agents share a “wow” story about how they helped a resident. Each week, the company awards the employee who shares the best wow story with a $100 check. One recent story involved a night manager who was asked by a resident to help cook steaks for his dinner date and did. Residents can also award employees (through the website) who go above and beyond for them. The meetings also invite the employees to offer an outside-the-box > CUSTOMER SERVICE Winning Over Difficult Customers Got angry customers? Good service recovery can turn them into evangelists. t’s been noted that, in some cases, companies that right perceived wrongs for customers can turn them into über-loyal consumers, to the point where they’re more likely to become company evangelists than regular customers who’ve never had a complaint. Bruce Temkin, vice president and principal analyst of customer experience at Forrester Research, says, “I do believe that good service recovery drives loyalty. When customers run into a problem, their longterm opinion of the company is very vulnerable, so a well-timed and appropriate recovery makes sense for building loyalty.” Such strategies are in play at companies like Southwest Airlines, Home Depot, and supermarket chain Publix, which regularly appear high on BusinessWeek’s annual “Customer Service Elite” list. “Those are companies that are looking at the promises they’ve made in the marketplace and are making sure the experience at every touchpoint exceeds expectations,” says Liz Miller, vice president, programs and i operations, at The CMO Council. “Southwest backs up its brand message by featuring low prices and making sure it’s very easy to book or change a flight. Home Depot’s ‘You Can Do It, We Can Help’ is built so that, no matter what level the customer is at they help you find the supplies, offer information on their website, or even take on the job themselves.” These companies, Temkin explains, often design approaches for dealing with negative circumstances. “They don’t just recover from the problems; they work hard to eliminate similar problems from happening in the future,” he says. Maria Brous, director of media and community relations at Publix, cites the chain’s purchase guarantee, wherein customers can return an unsatisfactory product for a full refund, as a key component of its customer engagement strategy. “Our guarantee extends to products we don’t carry,” she says. “We will shop at a competitor for our customers and bring that product to the customer to prevent her having to go around to several different stores.” In other words, by better understanding each customer’s experiences and expectations, a company stands a greater chance of retaining customers when its service or product fails to deliver on their expectations. > Kevin Zimmerman http://www.asignaturecommunity.com/ http://www.1to1media.com/View.aspx?BioID=24403 http://www.cmocouncil.org/ http://www.forrester.com/rb/research http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/customer_service/
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.