Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 2

Are your employees making or breaking the customer experience?

Customer engagement is a crucial component to growth and success within the retail sector.

Your employees are the key to customer engagement—they

can easily make or break the customer experience. According

to the Gallup State of the American Workplace report, “When

organizations successfully engage their customers and their

employees, they experience a 240 percent boost in performance-

related business outcomes compared to an organization with

neither engaged employees nor engaged customers.” This

study is one of many reporting that employee engagement is

critical to ensuring a positive customer experience. Moreover,

employee engagement is increasingly crucial in today’s evolving

omnichannel retail world, as customers expect a seamless

experience across all available channels.

Allen has built a practice around developing innovative learning

solutions that enhance employee engagement. Fortune 500

companies such as Macy’s, Sears, Toyota, eBay, Domino’s and

many others have worked with Allen to develop custom training

solutions that meet their most critical needs. Allen’s fresh

approach, which has been perfected over 30 years, will have

a lasting impact on employee engagement and your overall

customer experience.

WHEN ORGANIZATIONS

SUCCESSFULLY ENGAGE THEIR CUSTOMERS

AND THEIR EMPLOYEES,

THEY EXPERIENCE A

240% BOOST IN PERFORMANCE

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 3

In today’s world, the customer experience extends far beyond the brick-and-mortar retail store. Customers want—and expect—business to provide a unified

omnichannel shopping experience.

One challenge retailers face more and more often is showrooming,

when a customer visits a physical store to look at a product and

later buy it online. Now customers are flipping that script and

have begun researching product features, reviews and prices

online to then go buy in-store, which is known as webrooming.

Your customer-facing employees must be ready to engage

customers everywhere. Whether you are strictly brick and mortar,

an e-retailer, or a combination of both, you should expect your

customers to be thinking omnichannel. All of your employees,

especially ones on the front line, need to be trained and ready to

provide the level of service that today’s new consumer expects.

Retailers who adopt an approach that engages employees across

all channels will have a key competitive advantage. Customers

want engaged employees who will provide a seamless and positive

shopping experience. In the following pages, you’ll learn the Allen

approach to enhance employee engagement, including:

• Critical strategies to boost employee engagement

and performance.

• Innovative learning tools, including ANSWER

analysis, performance mapping and behavioral

changing strategies.

• Best practices that create lasting and measurable

results for our clients.

The retail world is changing. Allen can help you stay on top of the changes.

Many companies look at

training too narrowly.

They think it’s just about

product knowledge and

sales skills. They don’t

realize that the right

education will boost

employee engagement

and a more engaged

employee will lead to

more sales.

“

RON Z AMIR , CEO

BRICK & MORTAR

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 4

1. BRAND BUY-IN Your employees must be genuine brand advocates of your

company and products. Your brand extends far beyond digital

signage or store layout. Your brand is intertwined with your

culture and environment, and is central to everything you do.

Because of this, it is vital to establish a brand that resonates with

your employees and customers.

Keys to boost brand buy-in:

• Encourage and incentivize your employees to

experience the brand and products.

• Teach your employees how they impact the brand.

• Use your brand to motivate your employees during

the education process.

2. CONFIDENCE AND KNOWLEDGE Confident employees have knowledge of your company, brand,

products and channels. They are armed with the necessary

knowledge and tools to effectively help your customers. Many

organizations are looking for ways to revitalize their educational

strategies to boost employee knowledge. Allen’s innovative

learning solutions have helped clients like Domino’s and Avon, who

saw a lasting and measurable increase in employee engagement.

Keys to enhance your educational strategy:

• Make it short.

• Make it repeatable.

• Make it relevant.

Critical strategies to boost employee engagement and performance

Confident employees

have knowledge of

your company, brand,

products and channels.

They are armed with the

necessary knowledge

and tools to effectively

help your customers.

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 5

It is clear that engaged employees are essential to the customer experience.

As noted, employee engagement begins when you arm

them with the correct knowledge to be successful in

their roles. Unfortunately, many organizations approach

employee education with a narrow mindset. These

organizations believe that employee training is primarily

product knowledge and sales skills.

To create an employee engagement educational strategy

that delivers measurable results, we begin by conducting

an in-depth ANSWER analysis. Working with your

subject matter experts, we help you gain a stronger

understanding of your employees’ needs, behaviors

and motivators.

3. MOTIVATION AND EMPOWERMENT Everyone is motivated differently. Some are motivated by money, while others are motivated by

recognition or altruistic actions. An employee who is incentivized correctly will be motivated to perform for

you and will quickly become engaged with your company. Empowering your employees to do their jobs is

also key to creating an engaged workforce. Employees must feel trusted to represent your company and

to help your customers. They must understand that they have a direct impact to the organization’s overall

growth and success, as well as to the customer experience. By providing your employees with the tools

and opportunities to perform their roles, you set them up for success and increase overall engagement.

Keys to boost motivation and empowerment:

• Give your employees a voice in the educational process.

• Ensure employee education is accessible throughout their employment.

• Build an educational process that reflects your employees’ learning needs.

Tools we use to boost employee engagement

There is a link between

how a company treats

its customers and how

it treats its employees.

And an engaged

employee is also an

engaged customer.

“

RON Z AMIR , CEO

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 6

1. AUDIENCE

Understanding your learning audience will help you determine how best to

engage them. We ask questions like: What motivates these learners to learn

and to apply knowledge from each training initiative? How best do they learn?

What time constraints do they have? We put the learner front and center to

determine their needs and motivators.

2. NEEDS

To be successful, every training initiative must not only address how best to

communicate with the audience, it must also be designed around the business

need. We look at what gaps exist between the status quo and the business

objective. Then we assess how to fill those gaps to meet your goals.

3. SUCCESSES

It’s important to know where you’ve succeeded in the past, as it’s easier to

build on successes than to continually battle your failures. We help you identify

and use your unique strengths to your advantage.

4. WEAKNESSES We help you discover what lessons learned from past mistakes can help you

determine a better approach. By recognizing your weaknesses, you can identify

and remove hurdles in your path.

5. EXISTING CONTENT AND EXPERTISE Your content and information can help you establish updates, gaps, and

accuracy in your processes. We will use your content to help develop an

educational strategy that works for your needs.

6. RESULTS We help you define what success looks like for you and look for ways to get

there. We also gather evaluation data to measure the results so you can prove

your business objectives were met.

ANSWER Analysis

?

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 7

A performance map analyzes what motivates learners,

what they need to do, and what they need to know in

order to change their behaviors. The performance map

examines several factors and ultimately helps us determine

which training strategies and activities are best to drive

change and produce lasting, measurable results. While

each performance map is highly unique and contextually

relevant to each company, we rely on 30 years of data to

help decipher what your company needs. Our experience

helps you learn from your peers as well as integrates best

practices from other industries.

The first stage of the performance mapping process

is to determine a distinct business goal. We do this by

identifying problems, solutions and ultimately defining

what your specific business goal should be. The second

step of the performance mapping process is to identify the

desired behaviors that are required to reach the business

goal. We will work with you to determine what your

employees are doing right and what changes are necessary.

The third step of the performance mapping process is to

identify the following three critical employee attributes:

1. MOTIVATION Discovering what motivates your employees will help

you determine how to properly incentivize them. Do your

employees want a monetary reward, a paid day off, or

recognition in front of their peers? We work with

managers to determine the best ways to incentivize

your diverse team.

2. SKILLS MASTERY Arming your employees with the essential skills and

knowledge will enhance performance and engagement.

We work with you to determine what skills require

improvement and will drive measurable results.

3. CRITICAL THINKING To be successful, employees must have critical thinking

skills that help them become adept problem-solvers who

can think through situations clearly and develop solutions.

Performance Mapping:

DESIRED BEHAVIOR

Listen, observe, andquestion e�ectively

MOTIVATION

SKILL MASTERY

CRITICAL THINKING

BUSINESS GOALS

Improve customerservice to 80% compliance

Gain confidence in recommending a solution to a need

Listen actively

Observe behaviors/factors that could impact the sale

Ask appropriate questions to determine the need

Identify key phrases to listen for

Recognize cues of non-verbal communication

Decide when to use open and closed-ended questions

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 8

At the conclusion of the performance mapping process, our team

builds a unique, strategic curriculum to meet your business goals.

We work directly with your subject matter experts to engineer a

distinct and interactive education solution that will have a lasting

effect on learners and produce measurable business results.

To create an educational plan that delivers quantifiable outcomes,

it is important to recognize that how you deliver the message is

just as essential as the message itself. At Allen, we have found

proven results with instructionally designed material messaging.

Many training plans simply push content to the learner, which

results in content that is quickly forgotten. These plans are often

presented in a monotonous, non-interactive way that neither

inspires nor motivates participants.

The Allen approach uses the knowledge gained from

the performance mapping process to engineer robust

online educational tools that deliver a highly visual, easily

understandable educational message through engaging and

interactive curriculum. Our blended instruction uses innovative

learning strategies, such as gamification, videos and infographics,

to ensure learners are highly engaged and gain lasting

knowledge that will drive results.

The Allen process ensures that you never lose sight of your

business goals, and it helps you achieve lasting and measurable

results. It is a tried-and-true process that has been integral to

the success of numerous companies, such as Pizza Hut, HP, and

Toyota. Moreover, this process is a win-win as it helps inspire and

motivate your employees to do their best, which will ultimately

impact your company’s overall growth and success.

Instructionally Designed Learning

An engaged employee

believes in your product

and brand, which is the

same thing you want your

customers to believe.

“

RON Z AMIR , CEO

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 9

Allen has worked with several organizations to build impactful learning solutions that have led to increased employee engagement.

We were recently approached by an international technology company

who had the critical goal of increasing its brand awareness throughout its

global workforce. Because the company had experienced several mergers

and acquisitions in recent years, the company had an inconsistent brand

among its nearly 300,000 employees. The CEO quickly recognized that

these disengaged employees were affecting the customer experience,

which impacted the bottom line. The company knew it had to address

employee engagement and understanding before they would see a shift in

customer experience. Because of this, increasing employee engagement

became a major initiative.

Allen partnered with the company’s marketing and customer service

departments to develop a strategic global training program that enabled

employees to develop cohesive brand knowledge and turn that knowledge

into behaviors that measurably improved the customer experience.

Learning Goes Viral

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 10

Allen started the challenge by conducting an extensive needs

analysis and in-depth performance map to determine the

best learning solution. The in-depth analysis led Allen to

focus on custom gamification and personalization strategies

to meet the business objectives. Allen designed an open

scenario game that helped employees understand how they

directly impact the organization. The game incorporated

highly branded interactive media. It also focused attention

on how an employee’s daily decisions can have a profound

impact to the customer experience. Using compelling and

intuitive messaging, the game ensured employees were

highly engaged throughout the learning process, while being

educated about the brand and helping them understand how

they impact the customer experience.

The incorporation of personalized elements was vital to

the project’s success. Allen augmented the client’s existing

Customer Experience Center with an engaging learning portal

housing multiple courses, allowing learners to share success

through social interaction. Advanced tracking allowed the

learning portal to serve the audience personalized content

based on job roles and choices made throughout the course.

The program spread virally throughout the organization,

achieving 230,000 voluntary course completions, which

was 10 times more than any previous training initiative in the

company’s history. The company also experienced measurably

improved customer engagement ratings. Though the game

was not created for entertainment value, employee feedback

indicated that their enjoyment and engagement during the

learning process helped them to transfer an understanding

of content into specific behaviors that ultimately helped the

company achieve its business goal.

230,000 VOLUNTARY COURSE COMPLETIONS

10 X MORE THAN PREVIOUS TRAININGS

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 11

The research is clear: Employees directly impact the customer experience.

While an engaged employee will create a positive and memorable

experience, a disengaged employee will quickly ruin the experience

and negatively impact your brand. Engaged employees are armed

with the necessary knowledge, brand awareness, motivations and

empowerment to be successful. Creating an engaged workforce

is not only a key competitive advantage, but is vital to survival in

today’s evolving retail sector.

Allen has built unique tools that enable you to isolate and modify

employee behaviors. Our specific learning strategies and best

practices developed during the past three decades will ensure you

provide the best educational solutions that will lead to lasting and

measurable results. Today’s customers want—and expect—more

from their entire retail experience. Investing in your employees is an

investment in your company. By increasing employee engagement,

you improve the customer experience. Your success depends on

whether you and your employees deliver that experience.

Are you delivering the best customer experience?

Engaged Employees Provide the Best Customer Experience 12

Phone: (866) 310-7800

Email: info@allencomm.com

Web: AllenComm.com

For more than 30 years, Allen Communication has led the

learning industry, providing pioneering educational strategies,

technologies, and analytics. With extensive experience across

every major industry, Allen’s award-winning projects for the best-

known companies in the world drive lasting business results and

documented ROI. Businesses trust Allen with their most critical

learning and performance projects, because Allen aligns agency-

quality media design, best-in-class instructional strategy and

technology, and a proven design process centered on alignment

with quantifiable business results. For more information on

educational trends and practices, visit www.allencomm.com, or

contact one of our learning directors.

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