Empower your employees

1. Masters of CX
Empower your
Employees to
Power your
Customer
Experience
By Ted Rubin
Social Media Strategist
Published by Econsultancy in association with Offerpop

2. Empower your Employees / Ted Rubin
Brands have it tough
these days...
Many are trying to make the “social leap,” but are still
stuck in the traditional marketing thought process of
“controlling the message.”
It can be hard to switch gears, especially when Madison Avenue
still feeds us the same old lines; but Madison Avenue doesn’t get it
either. The days of handing your marketing over to a bunch of agency
wonks without getting and staying involved are over, at least if you
want real results.
Companies must be hands-on, and be willing to jump into the
conversation and participate, because that’s what their customers
demand. Social is where your audience lives. It’s how they want
to communicate with each other and where they share brand
experience - your brand experience.
So what’s the fastest way to evolve from the old “agency” way of
thinking to social communication? Empower those who work for you
to create conversation and represent your brand—especially those
who have a customer service or customer-facing role. If they build it,
service it or sell it, they’re in a perfect position to communicate with
your audience in a way that humanizes your brand.
Many companies are fearful of social media backlash, and muzzle
their employees in an effort to control the social conversation.
However, for brands to have an effective social presence, just the
opposite needs to happen.

3. In a Networking Exchange Blog post ‘Brands
Under Pressure,’ digital and social strategist
Cheryl Burgess highlights Apple’s “Genius
Bar,” which is the ultimate in employee
branding for retail. She notes that the genius
bar is “…a lynchpin of the most successful
retail concepts and innovative employee
brand relationships of our time. Apple simply
gets it,” she writes, “employee branding
matters.”
Check it out for yourself. Go into any
Apple store and count the number of blue
shirts milling about in the retail space.
It’s astonishing—and each one is an
Apple genius whose sole purpose is to
communicate with customers, answer
questions and share knowledge one-on-one.
However, you don’t get a hard sell. The
emphasis is on providing helpful information.
In doing so, each employee puts a “face”
on the Apple brand, and turns a shopping
excursion into a human experience.
The great thing is, you don’t have to hire
a zillion blue-shirts to stand around your
company store to do the same thing for your
brand. With a little guidance, your current
employees can be geniuses for you, in
social circles.

4. The key to effective guidance is creating the
right balance between freedom and order.
This includes having a written social media
policy for your employees, going over it with
them, and involving them in the process. Your
employees can be your best advocates and
a natural extension of your brand that gives
you much better Return on Relationship
than advertising ever could—but you need
to switch your thinking by opening up your
internal communications first.
Sit down and talk to your employees
about how they can communicate your
company mission and values. Open up
a dialogue. Get their opinions. Involve
them in the process of creating a social
media policy so they feel empowered
to spread the word about you within the
right framework.
Make sure that you do not overcomplicate the
process. The best social media policies are
short and easy to understand. Think about
the policies you’ve dealt with in your career…
can you remember paragraph 10, subsection
6? Probably not, but you can remember
things like “do no evil” or “our customer is
always right, unless they’re being mean.”
7777%++J 5454%++J
of senior marketers
say that their
strategy is easy to
apply to everyday
questions.
say that everyone
on the marketing
team understand the
strategy well enough
to describe it.
Strategy is at its best when it’s useful throughout the
marketing organization, and can be used to answer
granular questions. But it’s easier said than done.
Even though leaders tend to think their strategy is
easy to apply to everyday situations, that confidence
breaks down when you scratch the surface.
A good strategy should capture and promote the core
ideas that power socially-forward organizations. If
employees can’t articulate strategy, then they can’t act
on it.
// Source: Leading a Digital Evolution,
Econsultancy (2014): ecly.co/1vEm3Oo

5. Opening internal lines of communication and building healthy
employer-employee relationships is the first step. The next is figuring
out how to train them to communicate externally.
Educate employees about your core values, and about what’s
appropriate to share in social circles. Make sure to involve them in
the conversation. Keep the commandments to a minimum and the
door open to ideas. Give them some leeway. Train them to be your
brand evangelists and you’ll be amazed at the resulting Return on
Relationship!
In the digital age, you can’t afford to try to control your company’s
brand. You need to learn to let go and become involved in the
conversation already going on about you in the social space—and
let your employees help you. Otherwise, the cost in market share is
steep, because competitors that “get it” are already out there eating
your lunch.
Now, I’m not saying you should let go of the reins; there must be
some structure and planning involved.
In today’s world, with the average job length of approximately three
years, employees will have close to 15 jobs in their career. We hear
that there is no such thing as employer/employee loyalty anymore.
Global competition has changed the game forever. For employees,
that means zero job security; they’re always waiting for the axe to fall
(especially in a lousy job market). And for employers, it’s harder and
harder to find and hang onto good employees. As soon as you train
them—they’re looking for greener pastures. So how can we bridge
that divide?
One path lies in revamping the employee-employer relationship.
Employers have to understand that the “buyer’s market” they’re in
right now will not always be the case, and even today doesn’t apply to
the best employees – the ones you want to keep and others want to
poach.
It’s also
important that
employees
understand
that they’re
not under a
microscope...

6. 3434%++J 6565%++J
of leaders say that
they are challenged
by attracting and
retaining digital
talent.
of follower
companies are
challenged by
attracting and
retaining digital
talent.
Econsultancy’s recent analysis of the Global 1,000
organizations suggests that culture has an enormous
impact on their ability to attract and retain digital talent.
Leading companies are much more likely to have
open social initiatives, encourage employee training,
experimentation with new marketing techniques and
design long-term career tracks.
// Source: Leading a Digital Evolution,
Econsultancy (2014): ecly.co/1vEm3Oo
To build a winning team that stays with
you, advocates for you and helps you get
ahead as a company, you have to treat
that team with respect.
Treating employees like a commodity and/or a cost center
eventually backfires because it leads to constant turnover, which is
counterproductive in the long term.
Start thinking of your employees as an investment instead. If you
look out for them and help them when they need it, they’ll be there for
you when you need them. It can be as simple as creating a nurturing
workplace that encourages growth and innovation, versus a culture of
fear fostered by so many companies today.
There’s an old saying in networking circles that in order to receive,
you have to give first—and do so without expectation of anything
in return. It’s called the “giver’s gain” philosophy. Doing for others
without expecting anything directly in return always brings good things
back to you.
One company that truly understands this
concept is American Express. I heard recently
from a number of people that American Express
downsizes with dignity whenever the situation
arises. They support those going through the
transition and allow them 60 days to continue
working in their offices and pursue other
opportunities, relieving the stress that always
comes with a change of employment.
So how do you think those employees felt about their employer, and
how did those feelings ripple through their personal communities of
friends, family and future employers? I know American Express has
experienced lots of giver’s gain by helping downsized employees
make a smoother transition.

7. Another way employers can benefit from helping their employees is
by recognizing the fact that digital social connection is an integral part
of our lives now. Remember that in today’s social world, every person
has an extended circle of personal influence and an opportunity to
build their own personal “brand.” By helping your employees build
that brand rather than squelching individuality, you could build an
army of very powerful advocates. Most people, when given the
opportunity, will advocate for their brands, when they feel good about
where they work.
Some companies still fear the “socialization” of the workplace, but
locking employees out of all personal social channels while at work is
a big mistake. It only forces your employees to break the rules. They
end up looking at their iPhones under the table.
Ever wonder why smoking breaks have gone up so much over
the last two years? It’s not because more people are smoking, it’s
because they’re going outside to look at their smartphones! Banning
employees from using social in the workplace only forces them to
use it on a different screen—when they could be more productive, be
aware of daily social trends, and advocating for their brands rather
than griping on their personal platforms.
Why not educate them instead? Let them know you’ll help them
build their own personal brand, and if they want to talk about your
company—great—but don’t make it a prerequisite. Create a social
policy that embraces your employees’ personal brand and give them
guidelines on what’s appropriate to share about your company.
Help them tweak their privacy settings, give them photos to share,
create company-specific hashtags and make it easy for them to find
content and use it when/if they want to. Unleash your employees and
encourage brand advocacy beyond your own social reach.
If we want our companies to prosper in the digital age, we have
to be more proactive in attracting and nurturing good employees.
That means we have to stop thinking of them in terms of costs and
liabilities and start thinking more about connecting with them as
human beings and advocates.
Want more
advocates?
Help your
employees
“be social.”

8. Empower your Employees / Conclusion
In short, if you build them up, support
them and add value to their lives,
the relationships you build with your
employees will pay dividends well
beyond the value of their salaries.
Unleash the power of giver’s gain
personally and socially, and great things
will happen to your customer experience
and your business as a whole.
Empower your Employees...
and they will Power your Brand.
// Ted Rubin

9. About the Masters of CX Published by Econsultancy in association with Offerpop
The Masters of CX series features true marketing thinkers
and industry heavyweights, covering the issues surrounding
your customer experience approach and strategy.
These unique reports will be published between October
and December 2014, along with two dedicated webinar
sessions where you can gain first-hand insight from the
authors on the key issues raised.
We’re delighted to be working with some of the most
influential authors within digital marketing.
Reports in the series include:
Winning Hearts in
Real-time
by Jay Baer
Influence the Influencers
- The Magic of Co-Created
Content
by Lee Odden
Beyond the Sale: Building
Customer Relationships
for Life
by Brian Clark
Empower your Employees
to Power your Customer
Experience
by Ted Rubin
Customer Loyalty
Lessons from Medieval
Times
by Mark Schaefer
Why Brands are Stuck on
Like and Failing at Love
by Mitch Joel
Find out more about the authors and reports at
hello.econsultancy.com/masters-of-cx and
join the discussion using #MastersofCX
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