We normally take a family vacation every summer. This year,
we made a last-minute change in our itinerary and went on a cruise to visit
some of the ruins from the former Mayan Empire in Central America. This was our
fourth family cruise.
Our first was on Norwegian
Cruise Line (NCL)
in the eastern Mediterranean, and it was a huge hit with
everyone. We were especially impressed with the quality of service we received
and how every crew member consciously personified the NCL brand. Each member of
the crew was passionate about her or his work, the NCL brand, as well as every
guest, understanding the intricate connection between service extended to
guests and how that translates into representation of the NCL brand.
NCL certainly gets it when it comes to brand experience. It starts
when you’re boarding the ship and extends to the last minute you’re onboard and
about to walk across the gangway, where crew members form a line and thank thousands
of guests for sailing with NCL as they depart.
When it came time for our second cruise about four years
ago, the family opted to sail with a different cruise ship operator that was
lower in cost than NCL. The experience was distinctly different. Staff went
through perfunctory motions. Beyond being ordinary, there was nothing special
in the service the delivered. There were no “towel
animals” each night to greet guests upon their return to their rooms,
dining “experiences” were absent, crew members did not show any delight in
serving their passengers, the little things didn’t matter…the list could go on.
We departed the cruise with no palatable grasp of what the
cruise operator sought to convey to its guests other than lower cost. Now does
that mean the cruise operator didn’t talk about guest experience? No, there was
an expression of commitment to customer service. But platitudes don’t equate to
brand experience unless embraced and enacted by the employees of a company.
We swore after that second cruise that the next time we
sailed, it would be with NCL, even if the cost was higher. So, when we went on
a cruise two years ago and then the one this past week, it was with NCL—not
because of cost but because of experience. Having learned our lesson, we now
advocate to family and friends about our NCL and non-NCL experiences—or blog in
this instance.
Over the past few years, much has been said and written about
the topic of customer advocacy. Companies—both B2C and B2B—invest hundreds of
thousands of dollars in resources and technologies to nurture and reward
customer advocates. Yet, too many, after expending significant time and money,
discover they built their “advocacy house” on a foundation of sand. Customers
don’t associate an experience with the brand. There is nothing unique about the
company’s product or services; employees don’t understand how their work—even
if it doesn’t require direct interaction with customers—embodies and represents
the company brand.
Getting your employees engaged and serving as brand
ambassadors isn’t an easy undertaking, and the vast majority of companies are
failing at doing so. A survey
by Gallup
finds that only 30 percent of employees in the United States are
engaged at work (13 percent worldwide). These employees embody what crews on
NCL ships convey: they are willing to go the extra mile, work with passion,
feel a profound connection with their company, and consistently bring new ideas
to the table.
Having engaged employees make brand a palpable reality,
delighting and turning customers into brand advocates. The same Gallup study
discovered that companies in the top quartile of employee engagement outperform
bottom-quartile companies by 10 percent on customer ratings, 22 percent in
profitability, and 21 percent in productivity. They also see less turnover (25 percent
compared to 65 percent), absenteeism, fewer safety incidents, and quality
defects.
Advocacy involves employees, partners, customers,
jobseekers, and others who interact with your company in some manner. Those
companies that initially focus on customers when constructing and implementing
an advocacy program set themselves up for failure. It even starts before
employee advocacy; the question is whether employees are engaged. If they aren’t,
and 70 percent of employees in the U.S. are either not engaged (employees who
are “checked out” and putting in time but not energy or passion into their
work) or actively disengaged (employees who are busy acting out their unhappiness),
then this is must be fixed before any talk of advocacy can happen.
There are a number of things organizations can do to foster
employee engagement. It starts with building healthy communications between
managers and employees; this means consistent, transparent interactions.
Performance must be based on a clear set of goals that are tracked and used for
coaching and measuring employee outputs (with associated rewards and recognition). Strengths
rather than weaknesses
should serve as the basis of assessments; 67 percent
of employees who strongly agree that their managers focus on their strengths
are engaged as compared to only 31 percent who express that their managers
focus on their weaknesses.
Engaged employees delight customers because they assume
ownership as brand ambassadors. When customers are delighted, they will
advocate—without solicitation—on your behalf. The same is true of employees, as
well as partners. Many of those who are engaged will advocate on behalf of your
company without any prompting. Naturally, you can aid this process by using the
right set of advocacy technologies and systems, making it easy and fun for employees,
partners, and customers to advocate on your behalf.
Yet, without engaged employees, the advocacy house will
crumble. Marketing and Customer Success organizations will fail to realize anticipated
results and benefits of advocacy and abandon their investments—time, resource,
and technology—and proceed to the next “shiny object” that attracts their
attention and promises them business “nirvana.”
Need help architecting and building an Advocacy Program that
delivers tangible returns? Contact us
for help
today.
