ENGAGED!

Outbehave Your Competition to Create Customers for Life

Evolve Publishing, Inc.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

What to Expect from YourJourney Through ugh ENGAGED!

Imagine ... your entire workforce shares a common mindset—away of thinking. This mindset is driven by deeply heldvalues and beliefs that everyone in your company holds tobe true. It's because of this mindset that people in your companytend to act a certain way. They interact with each otherand customers in ways that lead to an experience—a trulybranded experience your company has become known for.

Imagine everyone in your company is aligned andENGAGED around the behaviors that are necessary to makethat experience come to life. These behaviors are clearlydocumented, they're considered nonnegotiable, and they'reperformed consistently by employees in ways that lead tohappy customers who are more than just loyal. Your customersare delighted, they love doing business with your company,and they are ENGAGED!

Your workforce is outbehaving the competition. They simply"behave" better than your competitors'.

This is not by chance. It is by design.

Imagine that your company has taken the powerful mindset(and nonnegotiable behaviors) and fully integrated theminto the processes and systems for hiring new employees, ensuringthey are truly indoctrinated into your company's wayof thinking—its way of being.

Imagine these same behaviors are incorporated into jobprofiles to set clear and achievable expectations.

Imagine every employee performance review is not onlybased on the technical skills and tasks but also on the naturaltendencies and abilities to perform the very experience yourcustomers want most.

Imagine employee recognition is pervasive throughoutyour company. A daily dose of capturing and sharing examplesof the mindset and nonnegotiable behaviors in actionhelps fuel the replication of the branded experience. Yourbranded experience is visible every day. Employees love todeliver it. Customers love to receive it.

Imagine customers have contributed to making you greatby sharing their perspective on the experience of doing businesswith your company. Their feedback not only helps youimprove, it is also regularly shared with the workforce to helpthem see the terrific impact they have on customers' lives.

Last, imagine every manager in your company truly understandsthat it's their job to manage the experience. Everymanager is trained on the essential habits that make themmore trusted leaders because they remind others about theimportance of performing the behaviors and delivering yourcompany experience. Your managers are expert at makingthe experience part of the conversation at work every day.They make decisions using your company mindset. Theyhold difficult, yet necessary, conversations and use the experienceas their guide. And they are constantly capturing andsharing examples of the experience in action to help otherslearn, become inspired by, and replicate over and over again.

Your workforce is ... highly ENGAGED. You know it becauseyou've gone beyond simply announcing who you areand what you want to be known for. You haven't just toldpeople what your culture is and tried to get them to do it.Rather, you've inspired them to search deep into who theyare and why they should want to live your company's brandevery day!

Every company, no matter what the industry or economicenvironment, can ENGAGE its workforce to deliver a consistentlygreat customer experience. An experience that willin turn ENGAGE customers, leading to increased sales andprofits. Every company can do this when it Manages theExperience.

For over a decade, my firm, Brand Integrity, has workedwith companies who want to inspire an ENGAGED workforceto live their company's brand. At the time of this writing,over 60 percent of Brand Integrity's clients were notedon "best place to work" lists either in their region, industry,or on FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For annualranking. In almost all cases, our clients are wildly profitableand continue to grow and prosper. These companies embraceand take action on the Eight Principles of success presentedin this book.

In my last book, Achieve Brand Integrity: Ten Truths YouMust Know to Enhance Employee Performance and IncreaseCompany Profits, I introduced the concept of Brand Integrityas a business result. It's the end state you achieve when yourcompany is known as who and what you say you are whilereaching business goals—when all of your marketing messagesand sales-speak are backed up and delivered upon.

It seems crazy to me that so many companies still createorganizational silos between the employee view of thebrand and the customer view of the brand. It's not onlycrazy, it's way too complicated. The brand is your imagebased on the experiences had by human beings. It is basedon how you are BEING to human BEINGS! There is no needfor separation of branding disciplines. This separation is aresult of poorly designed silos in the workforce betweensales, marketing, HR, and operations. To achieve Brand Integrity,all of these disciplines need to come together, andthe company's managers need to recognize that there is reallyonly one brand for the company based on an experiencedelivered. And that experience must be managed ifa company is going to achieve an ENGAGED status withemployees and customers.

Achieve Brand Integrity was delivered in a conversationalstyle and tone, packed with energy, humor, and knowledge.You can expect that same combination from this book. Whatis different about ENGAGED! is the intense focus I will share onhow to measure the experience, creating unheard of visibilityamong leaders in your company. These measures are not newin concept, only in application. You will learn proven methodologiesthat use readily available technology to quantifyyour culture and customer experience, helping you to makeimportant business decisions to improve your work cultureand customer loyalty. This is not simply another book onemployee engagement (clearly not needed) or the customerexperience (although many more are needed). The bestpractices shared in this book will enable you to measurewhether employees are Living the Brand, whether managersare Managing the Experience (being courageous, data-drivenleaders), and whether customers are having the experiencethey want (do they love you? or at least like you a lot?).

From my experience, ENGAGED is what every companywants more of. With the time you invest in reading this bookyou will learn the Eight Principles that will help you get moreENGAGED employees and customers.

What do I mean by ENGAGED?

An ENGAGED workforce is made up of employees whoare committed and motivated to act in the best interest ofyour company. ENGAGED customers fall in love with yourcompany, are more loyal, proactively tell others about you,and buy more of your company's products and services(and do so more often). As you will learn, the benefits ofengaging your workforce and customers are easy to see anddifficult to refute.

Your journey is broken into two parts.

In Part 1 you will discover how to create a Living the BrandSystem rooted in managerial and employee behavior. I willcover the topics of employee engagement and its impact on thecustomer experience as well as proven approaches for defininga mindset and experience that can be profitably delivered.

All businesses operate with systems. No business couldwork efficiently and effectively without them. You have HRsystems, distribution systems, customer service systems,financial systems, sales systems, etc. Just think of your company'sC-suite. They're all managers in charge of criticalsystems.

There is one system thatworks across all the systemsin your company—aLiving the Brand System.No one person orjob function owns it. Pigeonholingit in HR canbe detrimental becauseyou end up with a bunchof fluffy values integratedinto performance systemswith poor expectationsettingand limited accountability.If you confineit to marketing, it can be harmful because then you're leftwith a bunch of promises that your employees are not empoweredor motivated to keep.

A company must do three things to implement a Livingthe Brand System:

1. Clearly DEFINE the branded experience. (Okay, I realizewe're already on our third footnote. There are only a few inthe whole book. It's important that you understand thesekey terms up front.)

2. REMIND employees about the delivery of the experience—clearlysetting expectations, communicating, and holdingeveryone accountable.

3. QUANTIFY the experience and link it to financial results.

Defining the branded experience is the "simple" step. Engagingmanagement with the reality that continuous remindingand quantifying is not only a management skill but alsoone that will make them much more trusted as leaders is considerablymore difficult. In this book you will learn logicalbusiness theories that have been transformed into managementtools, techniques, and measures that make it incrediblypractical for defining, reminding employees about, andquantifying the branded experience.

While I am on the topic of reminding, let me share alittle secret that I will refer back to throughout your journeythrough ENGAGED! When it comes to implementingan employee- and customer-focused branded experience,your success as a company (and as a manager) will be determined1 percent or lesson the training providedto the workforce and99 percent or more bythe ability of managementto remind them.More to come on thislittle secret in the pagesahead—in fact, in Principle8, you will see howyour company can easilyreach 150 reminders permanager a year.

Part 2 will explore the necessary courage and data requiredto quantify the branded experience and hold it accountable(yes, you can and should hold the experience accountable)for delivering upon the financial results you already measure.You will be introduced to an approach for looking atyour branded experience from a 360° View that includes employee,customer, and financial metrics. You will learn provenmethodologies for learning from employees whether theyare Living the Brand and gaining insights from customers asto whether they are witnessing the brand in action, leadingthem to refer your company and buy more of your productsand services.

Each chapter will begin with a few highlights for thoseof you who are "skimmers." That way you can quickly determinehow deep a dive you need to take with each ofthe Eight Principles. At the end of each chapter is a Powerof the Pause section. The purpose of this section is to getyou to slow down, linger for a moment, and think beforemoving on. Doing so will help you reflect on what you justlearned and how you can apply it for maximum benefit inyour company.

This is not a one-size-fits-all solution for defining, managing,and measuring your branded experience. My goal is toprovide you with the right questions, methods, and metricsto evaluate and understand your current culture and customerexperience to help you better understand the employeeand customer perspective. The questions and insightsI throw your way will lead you to answers best suited forYOUR business, for YOUR people, and for YOUR customers.Use this book to make the choice as to whether yourcompany has what it takes to ENGAGE employees and ENGAGEcustomers.

When I refer to employees in a company, I mean all employees,including managers and senior leaders. Anyone whocollects a paycheck is an employee. This is important becausein no way do I want any readers to think that some portionof this material does not apply to them. When I refer to leadersor managers, I mean anyone who has the responsibilityto lead employees. I will use the terms leaders and managersinterchangeably throughout. If you are someone who haspeople who report to you, you're a supervisor or a managerand the learning from this book will be directly applicable. Ifyou're not, but aspire to be one, the Eight Principles will helpyou with your career advancement.

HOW WOULD YOU RATE YOUR CULTURE TODAY?

Take a moment and rate how much you agree with the followingstatement.

Employees throughout our company are aligned, committed,and motivated (ENGAGED!) to deliver a consistently great customerexperience.

Unless you scored a nine or ten, do not plan on simplyskimming this book. Read the chapter highlights, but divedeep and explore the possibilities the Eight Principles present.Getting employees aligned, ENGAGED, and motivated is whatit takes to deliver a branded experience that drives profitability.The following prose will show you how!

THE EXPERIENCE IS YOUR BRAND

A 2013 study found that 49 percent of executives believe customerswill switch brands due to a poor customer experience.Even more interesting is that the same report found that89 percent of customers say they have switched because of apoor customer experience. Do you think this trend will continue?I sure do. Because while the great majority of companieswant to be good at delivering the customer experience,very few are investing the necessary resources to create thesystems to define the experience and ensure it is consistentlybrought to life. As consumers we are fed up with toleratingemployees in companies who act as if they are doing us a favorby providing ... well ... customer service. The latest researchshows there are three main drivers of a bad customer experience,which are easily avoided with an ENGAGED workforce.The three drivers and how often they happen are:

1. Employee was rude: 73 percent

2. Employee was too slow to resolve my issue: 55 percent

3. Employee lacked the necessary knowledge: 51 percent

The experience is what employees and customers use todetermine if they will be loyal to your company. Employeesevaluate their work environment (the culture) and what it islike to work in your company, and that perception has a profoundimpact on their attitudes and actions. Customers evaluatetheir experience at every point of interaction with yourcompany's people, products, and services. The experienceimpacts their willingness to continue purchasing. In bothcases, the experience drives the brand image your companybecomes known for. The experience creates engagement forboth employees and customers.

In Achieve Brand Integrity, I outlined the Four Realities ofBranding. I will share them again here to emphasize the pointthat the type of branding I am talking about has nothing to dowith marketing the brand and everything to do with inspiringemployees to live it.

LIVE THE BRAND!

ENGAGED employees Live the Brand to help their companyachieve Brand Integrity. To Live the Brand means you KNOWthe mission, values, brand positioning, guiding principles,etc., that your company has announced to the workforce andmarketplace and you know how to DO them in your day-todayjob.

Before you dive into Principle 1: Get Every Employee onStage, Delivering the Experience for Customers, pause and answerthe following questions:

• Am I Living the Brand at work?

• Are employees around me consistently Living the Brand atwork?

• Are customers ENGAGED because they consistently havethe experiences they want?

The companies that consumers love to do business withhave cracked the code on creating an ENGAGED workforcethat Lives the Brand—they outbehave the competition. Thesecompanies get recognized as best places to work and get rewardedwith ENGAGED customers who are incredibly loyal.These companies know the brand is about doing, not saying.You will read about best practices these companies use formaking the brand a part of the hiring, performance evaluation,and recognition systems, as well as how they gather andshare customer feedback. You will learn how they create measurablebehaviors and objectively and passionately assess theirability to do them. You will learn how they create experiencesthat earn their customers' admiration and dare I say ... love.

I invite you to join me, my teammates at Brand Integrity,and our clients on the journey to creating more ENGAGEDcustomers with an ENGAGED workforce.

Please read on ...
(Continues...)Excerpted from ENGAGED! by GREGG LEDERMAN. Copyright © 2013 Gregg Lederman. Excerpted by permission of Evolve Publishing, Inc..
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