Sybil Stershic is the author of the excellent book Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care. She joined the show recently to talk about how to take care of these most important people for your organization.
You can listen to our conversation here.
Sybil is President of Quality Service Marketing, a marketing & organizational advisor with more than 30 years experience helping service providers strengthen relationships with customers and employees. She’s a leading authority on engaging employees through internal marketing, helping build Human Resources connect with Marketing for bottom-line success. She is a frequent conference and business speaker on how managers can maintain a 'high touch' approach in today's 'high tech' workplace.
Sybil, thank you for being on the show. It’s not too late to wish you happy new year, is it? Happy New Year!
Not at all. Happy New Year to you, too! I’m thrilled to be on your show today!
And thank Yvonne Divita for introducing us!
Thanks, Yvonne! I wouldn’t be here without her.
Let’s talk about your book: Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee - Customer Care. First off congratulations for writing a great book!
When did you decide to write this book?
It’s interesting. I thought about writing it a little bit more than 10 years ago. It took me awhile to sit down and do it.
One of the reasons that I did sit down and do it was basically I’d been doing a lot of workshops on the subject: How do you engage your employees to take care of customers?
I started noticing back about 2003 that there was a growing interest in this topic. i was getting a lot more feedback and input from my workshop attendees who said “Can you give it to us in book form? We want to take it back to our company.” So, based on the positive response from the workshop I sat down seriously to write the book in about 2005 - 2006. And it came out a little over 3 years ago.
That’s such wonderful feedback. I don’t know if any guest on this show has said the driver for their writing a book were their workshop audiences saying give us more, give us a book.
I was thrilled with that. I’d been thinking about that. The real reason that drove me to write the book, besides being responsive to my workshop attendees, was basically my passion. Everybody said that in order to be a successful author you have to have passion about your subject. My passion is really to create workplace that’s better committed to both its employees and its customers. That’s really what it’s all about.
That’s such a simple, clear, purpose: create a better workplace. But it has such profound implications for our selves, how we spend our day, our families, our communities.
What problem or challenge of theirs were you trying to solve? Why do they need to read your book?
The interesting thing is when I talk about employee-customer care and it’s really ll about engaging employees to take care of the customers and they’ll take care of the customers. The people who come to my workshop and the people who are reading the book are people who already get it. They know why it’s important. Interestingly, they already are doing a lot of the right things. They come to me because they want to do an even better job.
What’s interesting is that even though they get it, the reality is these are people with busy jobs, busy companies, a lot of competition, a lot of craziness going on in the workplace. The real issue is there is so much on their plate they are worried that attention to their customers and employees is going to fall through the crack.
So, while they intuitively know what to do and are doing it, they come for a reminder and practical tools they can use to positively engage their employees and customers.
I wanted to give them a solid reminder and a tangible framework so that they could be more pro-active with their internal marketing.
What do you hope happens now? My friend, Erika Andersen, coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future in her book Being Strategic. What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this book?
My ideal is to create a better workplace that is committed to better employee and customer care.
The challenge today is that there are still so many who don’t get it. Think of the number of people you know who still work in a toxic workplace. Whether it’s the corporate culture that doesn’t jive or a toxic culture or they’re working for the boss from hell...the sad part is there are still so many people out there in those situations.
My aspiration is that it will create a better workplace for everyone.
One of the statistics I saw recently was Gallop estimates actively disengaged employees cost somewhere in the range of $300 billion in lower productivity. There’s work not being done, they’re alienating customers. And in the process they’re certainly bringing other employees down.
Even for those that are engaged you can’t rest on your laurels. Just because you have engaged people today, doesn’t mean they will be engaged tomorrow. Even those who are fully engaged are getting frustrated and worn down by the economy and all the negativity. I’m engaged now but how long am I able to hang in there and stay engaged, especially if the company is doing nothing to keep their employees engaged.
What are some of the metrics you see now that say you are...at or near that reasonable aspiration?
There’s an increased interest in employee engagement. That doesn’t mean there’s action with it. There is a growing interest in it.
Someone at the Enterprise Engagement Allliance and this is a relatively new organization and it’s looking at engagement across an entire enterprise: employees, customers, partners, vendors, shareholders.
One of the things they did is a word or trend analysis over the last decade. There’s more published today on employee engagement than was published on employee satisfaction back when that was in vogue.
So, yes, there is an increase interest in employee engagement. That’s about the best metric I have these days.
What’s been the best experience or result since writing this book?
Meeting with so many people and connecting with so many people who share this commitment to employee-customer care and it’s also engaging with them learning new ideas on how they do it.
I’m also incredibly gratified by the response to the book. I’m so glad I wrote the book.
You start your book on a firm basis. The first chapter is titled Employee Engagement and the Bottomline. What is the bottomline with employee engagement?
Let me give you qualitative bottomline on employee engagement, first. On a qualitative basis, there’s a direct correlation between the customer experience and the employee feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, then neither will your customers feel valued. There have been a lot of studies and research that validate the link between employee engagement and satisfaction with customer engagement and satisfaction and loyalty. And the bottomline.
The Wharton School a couple of years ago did an analysis of the Fortune Best Companies and found that there financial returns were more than double that of the average companies. Take care of the employees, the employees will take care of you.
The opposite approach, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum, what happens if you don’t take care of your employees and don’t take care of your customers. You might as well roll over and die and give stuff to your competitors. You’re going to have employee turnover, customer churn, you’re going to have negative word-of-mouth. And today’s it not so much negative word-of-mouth as it is negative word-of-mouse. You get a disgruntled customer and with a click of the mouse they can complain and share their hostility with a million people.
It’s music to my ears, loving everything you’re saying. But as I look at my notes on my page and listen to you I’m thinking this is so freakin’ obvious. There’s no way you can refute this if you are a rational and sane human being.
But at the same time so few companies seem to understand the relationship between honoring an employee and honoring a customer.
Where does this connection break down in management’s understanding of this business model?
I’ve given this a lot of thought.
First of all, I shouldn’t be needed to remind people of why they need to take care of their employees.
I think it doesn’t happen for a number of reasons. I think there’s still a lot of lip-service given to “Our employees are our most important resource.” Dilbert still lists that as one of the top 10 management lies when management of most companies still look at them as numbers. But they don’t invest as much in them as they do their capital expense.
They still look at their people as numbers and every time there’s a recession the first thing they do is cut the workforce. For some people, it may be an issue of culture. “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
There’s also an issue of benign neglect. You’re talking about employees and behavior. It’s a lot easier controlling a manufacturing line. It’s a lot easier to do quality control on an assembly line than it is when you have people who are delivering a service.
We’re talking about human behavior and psychology and you can’t automate that. I’v spent all of my career in the field of service providers. Back in the 80’s when Total Quality Management, TQM, was the thing and we want zero defects meaning we want to produce something off the assembly line with zero percent defects.
When we talk about people and employee engagement, the corollary is zero defections. What can you do to keep your employees from leaving and losing good customers?
But again, it’s kinda that million-dollar question, if it’s so obvious why don’t more people do that?
That’s a great example of zero defections for employee engagement. Thank you.
I read a lot about employee engagement. I have google alerts for the term. I have twitter lists for employee engagement. I’m a member of David Zinger’s employee engagement community. Lots of buzz about employee engagement. But so little of this buzz gets to this bottomline. Why do you think that is?
As you said, it’s soft. We’re talking about people. We’re hard to measure. You know it’s one of those you know it when you see it.
I think sometimes it’s presumed. Our people come in every day and do their job and go home. But there’s a big difference between being engaged and going through the motions.
I’m also a member of David Zinger’s employee engagement network. It’s interesting to see the different definitions of employee engagement. That’s a relative definition. I’ve heard definitions run the gamut. On one hand I’ve heard it defined as when employees are enthusiastic about their work. At the other hand of the spectrum I’ve heard it described as "sucking more discretionary effort from employees."
That’s a pretty cynical definition, that latter one.
Blessing-White defines employee engagement as employees stay with a company for what they give, for what they contribute, for how they help the company move forward. Whereas, dis-engaged employees stay with a company for what they get. They’re just there for the regular pay and benefits. They don’t do anything in-between to help it move forward.
I love your quote in Chapter two. Millions of dollars spent on heavy advertising are wasted if employees do not know, and are not equipped to deliver, promises that have been communicated to customers. What’s in it for companies to keep their employees in the dark on commitments to customers? So many do.
I look at is “Mushroom Management” approach:
Keep your employees in the dark and feed them fertilizer.
A lot of that might be power issues. We’re management and we’re at the top of the food chain. And you do what we tell you and how we tell you to do it.
Unless “Mushroom Management” is a way to insure turnover...it doesn’t really work.
But, again a lot of places really do that. It’s that credibility gap between saying your people are valuable and actually living it in your culture.
Let’s bring this into the light. What’s in for companies to keep their employees in the light and have them participate in creating and fulfilling these commitments?
That’s a great question.
It’s also a competitive advantage. We live in such a highly commoditized world. Any kind of product or service you come up with today can easily be copied tomorrow.
There is nothing new these days. So, what is really unique about a company?
The one thing that a company has that it’s competitors cannot duplicate or copy is the relationship your employees have with your customers. That is not something that can be copied. That is not a commodity.
Why are so many companies so in love with their ad agencies at the expense of those who actually deliver the products? Personal story: I was CEO of a company competing in a commoditized industry. Prices dropped by over 70% for new and existing customers. We competed against global providers. We took our ad budget and converted it into incentives for employees and rewards for customers. We grew by 80% and kept our cash-flows positive. And we had fun, doing it. What’s the allure of a stranger?
I’m not going to knock advertising. It can be very helpful in communicating a creative brand platform. That’s what you need them to do.
But you can’t do it at the expense of your employees. I don’t care how great a brand you have or hw great your brand promise is, if your employees don’t deliver then it’s worthless.
But why do companies invest more in their advertising than they do in their customers? Because it’s sexy. There’s pride to say did you see our ad on TV or ‘did you see my billboard’ or ‘did you see how latest direct mail campaign’.
Again, if employees can’t deliver then it’s all for naught.
Back in the 80s customer satisfaction was the hot thing. What they discovered was that it was really nothing more than the degree to which you can meet or exceed customer expectations. Meeting customer expectations is just table stakes. But to exceed them that’s what you really want.
So, the Holiday Inn worked with their ad agency and came up with this great campaign. They did billboards, ads, huge media. The media campaign was basically ‘no surprises’. We’ll have your reservation and room ready. No glitches. We’ll meet and exceed your expectations.
It was a great campaign. And it was almost very well-thought out. Except nobody in marketing or advertising took the time to talk with the people in operations to see if they do this.
So, they had this great campaign. And people would show up at a Holiday Inn and they didn’t have their reservations or it was lost. The whole thing was back-office operations couldn’t meet the campaign promise.
Don’t ever promise what you can’t deliver.
What is the foundation of an effective internal marketing campaign?
Ok. Uh, let me back up a minute and say there’s no such thing as, well there can be, an internal marketing campaign. But, I don’t advocate that. Basically internal marketing should be ongoing, part of the culture.
I prefer to use the term ‘strategy’. It’s the foundation for what I call the Three Rs of Gaining Commitment. It’s Respect, Recognition and Reinforcement.
By respect it means giving the people the tools and resources they need to do their jobs.
Recognition is to catch your people doing something right.
Reinforcement is to continually support a customer-focused culture. Part of that is recognizing employees as internal customers. It’s not all externally focused customers.
Thank you for making that distinction about the word campaigns. I made the same point in an earlier post titled: 11 Signs Your Word-of-Mouth Campaign Could Be Mute.
I love the thinking behind Recognition: catch them doing something right. Do you have an example of a company who goes about trying to catch their employee doing something right?
One of my favorite examples comes from a client I used to work with. Like many companies, it’s since been acquired. I wasn’t hired by them to do internal marketing; I was hired by them to be a trainer, help them with some things.
I had an interview with the CEO. By food service management, they work with schools and they do business or corporate dining in a large organization and provide food to nursing homes and hospitals. The CEO spent about 60-70% of his time out in the field being visible to the clients and employees. He would go to the nursing homes and the schools, universities. He’d meet with the clients. Then he’d go and walk through the kitchen. He would see the ones who were doing the food prep and service and clean-up.
The CEO would carry in his pocket a handful of gold plastic pineapple pens. They did that because it was tied in with their logo. The pineapple is the international symbol of hospitality. And very time he noticed one of the employees doing something right, going the extra step for a customer or co-worker, he’d pull one of these plastic pens out of his pocket and say ‘thank you’.
He said the reaction he got from his employees never ceased to amaze him. These pens cost them $.47. But the employees treated them like gold. His point was the reasaon it was so effective and so important was every one needs to feel valued and appreciated.
This company was so smart to do it this way. And the point is you don’t have to spend a lot of money to recognize your employees. Yes, you can do fancy employee appreciation events. But it’s the little things, the thank-you’s, whether it’s a plastic pineapple pen or a personal thank-you.
The other thing they did was they had a Customer Hall of Fame in their hallway. It was nothing but a cork board and posted on this was any time any of the managers got a letter from a satisfied client they would post these on the wall. So, anytime anyone was walking the halls they could see that. It reinforced the culture that our customers are valuable to us. And any time the CEO received one he’d make a big fuss about it and call the CEO and their manager and he’d make a public announcement.
A copy of this note went into their HR files as well as posted on the Hall of Fame.
You shared a quote from Andrew Filipowski which went:
The insiders of an organization understand the stupidity of its traditions better than its outsiders.
Why does everyone who’s listening nod their head and go yep, sure do.
What are your thoughts on the source of this sentiment? How do companies create traditions of stupidity? Maybe your three favorite ways.
There’s lots of ways.
The context of this quote was the people will ask me ‘what do we do? How do we engage our employees?” And I can provide some guidance. But I keep telling them you should talk to your employees first. They can tell you the best way.
There’s a tendency for management, when there’s a problem, to go outside the company. "Oh, we’ve got a problem; we need to get outside help." And by doing this, they’re basically disrespecting their own people.
I saw this early in my career when worked in banking. We’d just had a customer satisfaction survey in our branches and some of the numbers weren’t up to where we wanted it.
So, what did management do? They brought all the managers in for a special meeting to share the results. The results were pretty dismal. And instead of turning it around to say “Ok, what do you think we can do?”, instead of asking for the input of those closest to the customers...all management did was beat them up and tell them you are stupid, you’ve screwed up.
This is an example of reinforcing what you do wrong instead of helping them remove the barriers that get in the way you’re doing your job. If you’re head of the company what 2-3 things would you do to turn this thing around. It’s basically an issue of not respecting their employees.
Part of it might be the culture, part of it might be management arrogance. nothing makes me more frustrated when I try to tell people “ask your employee. And respond.” Again, so simple, so obvious and so overlooked.
In your book, you profile some companies who have found simple ways to connect customers and employees. What’s your favorite one? What was so enticing about their example?
Awright, I’m going to go back to that food-service company. One of the examples I heard in my training sessions was a group of Food Service Directors for nursing homes. Food Service Director at a new account went in and looked at the situation. There was a high turnover rate among those doing the food prep. And the manager hadn’t been happy with the previous food service manager. What this new Food Service Director realized was the disconnect between the food service staff and the residents.
The residents are in one level of the building. And the food service people are in another, a lower level of the building. Totally separated from the residents. And they’re going through an assembly line mentality. So, here’s the low salt diet for room 202. And here’s diabetic diet for 303.
One of the things they did which I thought was brilliant was he set up an Adopt-a-Resident program. He was able to set up a schedule so that food service workers were able to carve out 15 minutes each week on the floor.
They didn’t have to talk to that person about their food. Just get to know them as people. After a week or so of this something magical happened. So, for the food service people they had a connection. They had a line of sight between what they did in the kitchen and the person who consumed that food.
It was no longer the here’s the meal for room 202. It was “Here’s Marie’s lunch and I know how important it is for her. She’s excited because her daughter’s coming to visit her this weekend. Or she’s upset because her daughter’s not coming to visit.”
The employee took more pride in what they were doing. The residents were happier. The nursing home staff were happy. The resident’s families were happy. It was a win-win-win-win all the way around.
I always encourage clients to find creative ways to connect with customers, especially for customers who do not have direct customer contact.
The bottomline is if you’re not serving an external customer you are serving an internal customer.
Now, not every company can do exactly as they did. So, what are three principles companies can look to in order to begin to bridge the gap between employees and customers?
First thing is ask your employees. What do you need to know about our customers? What do you know about our customers? What would you like to know about our customers?
Part of this is all about sharing customer information with the employees. I’m talking about nothing proprietary or confidential. I’m talking about basic customer information like why did they come to your company, why did they choose you, how do they feel about your company. What are your customers telling you about how you take care of them? How do they use your products and services?
The bottomline here is that the more your employees know about your customers the more they can take care of them.
You can set up a shadow program or a mentor program. For those who do not have customer contact you can pair them up for a day a week with someone who does. And, what that does is it also bridges organizational silos. The person who works behind the scenes gets a better understanding of what it’s like to work with the customers. At the same time the person who has customer contact gets a little bit more appreciation for what happens behind the scenes.
The other thing is share customer information, customer success stories, in your company newsletter or intranet. There’s no reason you can’t share that information with all your employees. Customer profiles or employee success stories. Those are things that can be done by every company.
You write about the importance of a shared culture, a culture where a common purpose and mission is shared, articulated, refined together by all the members. But, there’s so much data out there that show less than 30% of employees even know their purpose and an even smaller percentage are engaged, emotionally and intellectually, with its execution. How do companies turn these percentages around?
It’s all about a shared culture. What is the common purpose? Part of this is insuring that employees are connected on three levels. Employees need to be connected to the organization: what its mission is, what it’s goals and strategies are, and built in through all of this is a line of sight. Do employees know what is expected of them? That’s how you connect employees with the organization.
Now, this connection usually happens with new employees. And they get a lot of attention and orientation and training. Then it’s ‘see you later’.
The problem is more organizations get caught in their day-to-day crises and they forget employees need this day-to-day connection be reinforced. What is our connection? How is it changing? Why is it changing? What are our new expectations?
That needs to be constant, constantly connecting the employees to the organization.
The 2nd is to continuously connect the employee to the customer. Without customers we wouldn’t be here. That also has to be constantly reinforced.
The 3rd connection is how do you connect employees to each other? This is part of the service economy. Do I understand we’re all in this together? Forget the organization silos because then you have people competing with each other. We’re all here to deliver a positive experience with our customers. No one department is more important than anyone else.
Now, with large companies we have a lot of high-tech to reach people instantly. Yet, the same technology has made our world more insular. We are hungry to connect, to belong. That’s the reason that’s social media is growing so much. It’s allowed people to connect and form communities around their interest.
What’s the L word in internal marketing? Why’s it so important?
I love that. Everyone will say the L word is Love.
The L word is all about Leadership. Leadership makes the difference. Leadership sets the tone. And if Leadership doesn’t walk the talk then employees know right away when they’re just being given lip-service.
One of the first banks I worked for we had tellers on the main floor and the CEOs office was on the top floor. Oh, yeah, we’re real customer focused. Let’s do what we can to isolate the CEO from customer contact.
Another bank I worked for was the branch was on the first floor, the CEO’s was on the 2nd floor.
The really successful companies I’ve researched and written about don’t use the term internal marketing. They do it intuitively. They just do it.
We’ve reached the point in the show called Imagination Moment. Let’s imagine for a moment waiting for you right now is an email from President Obama, sent from his Blackberry. Personal. And he says Sybil, he gets all personal because he’s the president and he can, Sybil, our economy reflects our failure to take care of the people that matter the most. I want you to come to the Oval Office and present your three ideas to reverse this trend, nationally.
What would you say to him in that meeting?
Before I respond, I gotta tell you for all the interviews I’ve done I’ve never had a question like this. Wow. How do you put it together.
“What an honor, Mr. President. I suggest that business and industry associations and academia partner with each other. Collect examples of effective customer care and employee care. They have members and they can collect this information. Get everybody to collect these examples. The 2nd thing this partnership can do is create awareness...among their members about the positive relationship between engagement and the bottomline. The 3rd thing and the most important is provide education and training on how to engage their employees and customers."
The lack of management training is cut the first thing in a recession. They are not soft at all. It’s crystal clear they make a bottomline impact.
1. Gather the examples.
2. Make people aware of their importance.
3. Provide training in their skills.
Chapter 6, for me, was the most interesting. It’s comprised of 5 questions and your answers for those 5 questions. The first one is Do Happy Employees Ensure Happy Customers?
The question and your answer preaches to the choir on this show. However, this choir also knows that many of them sing in other choirs where their leader doesn’t believe this.
Question 4 was What do you do if you can’t get management’s support...to create happy employees?
Basically, what I tell people is that if you can affect engagement at a macro level throughout an organization with management don’t despair. You can do it at a micro-level. You can do it with your team, your department. So don’t let that throw you.
It’s not worth your time banging your head against the wall of management. You can do it yourself. Sometimes that will have a halo effect and branch out.
And if it doesn’t work out, begin to spread then the basic fallback position is update your resume. Life is too short to work in a place where you are not appreciated.
What social media technology do you use with your business?
I primarily use blogging to expand the brand and connect me to a greater network of colleagues and sources in engagement and internal marketing. I just started using Twitter.
For my clients, it’s a great way to develop bottom-up listening. For internal communities, it’s a great way to connect employees with collaboration and mutual idea sharing. It’s a great way to connect people with each other and their organization.
You’re a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that; I just quote him. What are you reading in your free time? Fiction or non.
In my spare time I really enjoy reading the history of Native Americans. Right now, I’m reading the history of Sitting Bull. And for pure escape I choose contemporary Chick Lit which my husband teases me about.
Where can we find you on the social media dial?
My website is Quality Service Marketing. That provides a link to my blog. I have 6 years of posts. There’s a lot of content there providing information on the book and how-to’s.
And on Twitter?
I’m at SybilQSM.
Thanks, Sybil!
Next Guest: Phil Simon, author of The New Small: How a New Breed of Small Businesses Is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies
