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Nov 18 2010
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Blogging, Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Passing Thoughts

Read Up!

Here are a few interesting reads I came across in the last few weeks:

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Jun 02 2010
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Blogging, Business, Employee Engagement, Enterprise 2.0, Human Resources, Social Media

Read Up!

Scanning through the blogs and websites I visit frequently, I put together a fresh list of content that I found interesting. Spend time on these and I am sure you will come out a better professional!

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Apr 16 2010
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Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Management

Employees First: Why Employee Engagement Matters

Systemic / Cultural Enablers—> Employee Engagement—> Customer Engagement—> Business Goals

As simple as it gets. In order to attain business goals like profitability, growth etc. organically, organizations need to engage customers effectively – deliver great products / services and delight them in every interaction they have with the organization. And, that’s where employee engagement comes in. Engaged employees create positive interactions and create customer engagement. Customer engagement cannot be created by locking-in customers through contracts or by offering the lowest price, but it is created by “positive emotions”. The employee-customer interaction should be a very critical part of your business strategy.

At a recent conference, Vineet Nayar, the CEO of HCL Technologies (a large Indian IT company) spoke about this subject.

How do you execute the change in how you run your teams? If we outsource our thinking and believe that the real responsibility of bringing about transformation really belongs to the CEO, I think we’re making a mistake. Each and every manager can bring about a fundamental change in the way he runs his company and teams, and I think he will succeed significantly more than if he looks up to somebody else to bring about a change.

If you look at the control pyramid, which is very critical in running your organization, I think you have to leave it intact for governance reasons. But if the value pyramid could be inverted, we have to ask three questions of ourselves. Where is the value of the company being created? In the interface of the employee and the customer. So, what is the business of the company? To maximize the creation of the value in that value zone. So, therefore, what should be the business of the management of the company? To maximize the value created in the value zone. If all companies focus on that, they can maximize the value that is being created in the value zone and the management will be infusing, encouraging, enabling, rather than controlling and reviewing.

Focus on Employees First, and a lot will follow. You can read the full text of the Vineet’s talk here.

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Dec 11 2009
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Business, Management, Marketing, Passing Thoughts, Technology

Designing Customer Experiences

These days I have been working with a client to help design their executive education center for their leadership cadre. They want to provide trainees a world-class learning experience, not only in terms of quality of education, but also hospitality. They don’t even call them “trainees”, but call them “customers”. So, it’s like they want to create the Ritz Carlton of executive education.

I am yet to fully immerse myself in the project, but am working with a simple construct in my mind. Many times, when companies are looking at customer experience programs, they end up automating processes & setting policies which definitely ease internal operations, but may not directly translate into positive experiences for customers. That’s internal focus. My simple thought is that the process has to be reversed, with focusing first on what the customer experience should look like, how would positive interactions / touch-points look like and then think about what systems / processes are needed to get to the desired state.

So, a fancy CRM will not do the trick for you, if it has not been designed & implemented with the customer in mind.

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Sep 25 2009
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Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Management

Every Interaction Matters!!

I am a consumer too. I consume a lot of services like banking, telecom, insurance, retail shopping, medical etc. When I look back and think what draws me repeatedly to some service providers, I realize it’s not usually the product. The product is almost similar. Price could play a role, but “search” costs are high. Product and pricing are mere hygiene factors – necessary to keep you in the game. What brings me back is “People”.

Callcenter2

Ultimately, all service organizations are “people businesses”. Think of the last time you called up the phone-banking of your bank. That very interaction left you feeling either “better off” or “worse off” that what you felt before making that call. As you walk into a grocery store, the staff made it all too easy for you or you were left searching the mazes. Your perceptions of the organization are impacted by people.

And, every interaction a customer has with an organization’s employee is either a “deal maker” or a “deal breaker”. Either you can engage your customers through these interactions or end up with “lost opportunities” for engaging your customers.

And, positive employee-customer interactions are going to happen only when your employees are engaged. Start treating your employees like the way you would like them to treat customers. Because, it’s not just about the product. People are the software powering your business. They are your strongest marketing tool!

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