When you dig deep into what really drives humans, it becomes clear there’s only one major factor in our decision-making process – and that’s emotion. So, it makes sense to emphasize the importance of this in the customer experience, because the way your customers feel is has a huge impact on their brand loyalty.
In fact, research by Capgemini suggests 70% of emotionally engaged consumers spend up to two times or more on brands they are loyal to, compared to less than half (49%) of consumers with low emotional engagement.
If you really want to attract, impress and retain a satisfied customer base, creating emotional engagement is key. Succeed at doing so and you’re set for CX success. Better yet, you’ll be generating a great emotional dialogue in your day-to-day interactions. Which means you’ll be the happy recipient of plenty of accurate, emotive and actionable insight.
But you can’t do it alone.
Get some employee satisfaction action
To create brilliant engagement with your customers your plan must start long before your customers first interact with your brand. Employees (and specifically contact agents) have a major impact on customer emotion. In fact, a 1-point increase in employee engagement results in a 0.4-point increase in customer satisfaction. Your employees are the Frontline Heroes of your brand, after all – so it makes perfect sense that emotional engagement begins with employee engagement.
Culture club
You might be feeling confident about employee motivation and general happiness, but it’s worth considering an action plan to improve employee engagement nonetheless. Your starting point should always be to create a culture your staff will rave about.
How this culture looks will vary from business to business, but it requires daily habits and behaviors that nurture employees in the workplace. As a starting point, ask your staff for
feedback, just like your customers. Although definitely not with a lengthy (and productivity busting) annual satisfaction survey. This is where the Rant & Rave platform really shines – our always-on Listening Posts allow your employees to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas whenever they want to. If you’re looking for a way to engage employees, then listening to them is a great place to start.
Engage the troops
Once you’ve nailed your culture, it’s time to make sure your staff have the tools they need to get (and stay!) engaged. The next step of your action plan to improve employee engagement is all about feedback, freedom and fun.
Access to feedback is essential for employee motivation. Your contact agents should be able to see how they’re doing in real-time, enjoying the warm buzz of great comments or being spurred on by advice on how to improve.
This also provides the freedom to grow – being given the opportunity to self-manage and strive for greatness is key to staying engaged at work. Plus, seeing measurable improvement in your performance keeps you motivated and confident. We had all of this in mind when we designed Frontline Engagement, which allows your staff to see all their customer feedback in one place, strengths and areas of improvement, and an agent score, all on a personal profile.
Fun speaks for itself, which is why we’ve gamified our dashboard to keep things fresh and interesting. If you like, Frontline Engagement lets staff compare their performances with their colleagues – watch out for the competitive ones in your midst! Offer all this, and your team will be engaged before you know it.
The next (1-2-3) steps
Whatever your goal is – improving your CX, generating better feedback, or even improving your sales – you need to put emotion right where it belongs: at the heart of your business strategy. But that means nothing without employee engagement. If you really want to empower your team to emotionally engage with customers, it’s time to take all the above into account.
Leverage our customer engagement software, Upland Rant & Rave, to turn your customer and employee insight into action. Speak to a member of the Rant & Rave team.