How Companies Build High-Trust Cultures

Updated from original article published on LinkedIn

A strong company is built by securing the trust of its employees. If this trust is lost, individual companies may weaken and employee engagement may falter. Employees no longer trickle in from regional offices on a yearly basis in successful ventures. If the company goal is to improve employee morale and build a solid customer base, practicing continual data-driven listening strategies is essential.

“Employees hold a vast amount of knowledge when it comes to how customers react to products and services,” said Thomas Ewen, VP of Automotive Research Europe for MaritzCX, an enterprise customer experience management company. “At the same time, employees are often the best and most critical customers of their company’s product or service.”

Employee Feedback Goes Nowhere in Isolation

Employee feedback is key. However, when a company creates an atmosphere where departments or divisions constantly compete for funding or attention, it isolates the individual employee within their own group. If a company encourages a divisive attitude, the average employee perceives that they have little power or control over their career path.

On the other hand, when only one department gets praise and encouragement in the old model of dissension, that leaves a rather narrow band of employees who are happy and functioning well in their positions. Over time, few companies will survive in this environment, and even fewer will thrive. Providing continuous feedback to all employees increases efficiencies and overall effectiveness of an organization.

And inherently, incorporating this type of cooperation among all departments is necessary to identify employee concerns and track trends. The quicker a company responds to an individual employee’s concerns, the faster their customer engagement improves related to that feedback and data loop.

A journey management platform is one way organizations provide this type of ‘in-the-moment’ continuous experience where employees can anonymously send information up the chain of command or to a trusted department member. According to Gartner, managers need to build a deep understanding of their direct reports to better perceive when they may be more receptive to feedback or need it most.

Operationalizing an employee journey and providing a personalized experience gives added support to the employee who is looking for a way to respond to organizational concerns; a way to make the organization run better and more effectively, ultimately creating an employee buy-in when their feedback matters to the employers they work for.

Positive Rewards Encourage Employees to Improve Customer?Loyalty

When feedback is sought and shared among departments, every customer experience is also affected. Everyone wins because employees feel valued. A valued employee acts like a confident ambassador for their business and they pass that trust on with every customer engagement.

Are competing departments prone or likely to share feedback received from their individual workers? Of course not! Every day, team leaders hear valuable information their company could put to good use. While some team leaders may keep such information to themselves in the hopes of benefiting their own team, companies cannot practice good customer care in that manner. The the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is one example of the ability to measure employee satisfaction in each role, in each department like is one way to foster employee engagement.

Valued Employees Improve Customer Retention

As companies practice a strategy of gathering employee feedback through multiple data sources, employees are able to sense the value their company places on their opinions. In fact, research shows that when organizations improve employee experience (EX), customer experience (CX) also improves. Therefore, customer retention depends on employee retention levels.

When a broad spectrum of company personnel give feedback and the company takes direct and positive action related to that feedback, employees begin to trust company leadership.

Once established, loyalty follows trust. Build a company full of steadfast employees who believe in the mission and watch the effect trickle down to create widespread customer loyalty. Any person who trusts their company and is faithful to its brand is part of the ultimate sales force; regardless of their assigned role within the business, that person spreads the word to everyone they meet.

A positive customer experience is every company’s goal. Customer retention is directly correlated to employee loyalty. Loyalty is earned by listening to all forms of employee feedback, all the time and yielding immediate and encouraging responses. Ewen may have said it best, “Engaging with employees, listening and incorporating their feedback will help companies realize improved employee retention, increased productivity, happier employees who willingly promote the business, improve the customer journey and eventually, greater profits and other positive business outcomes.”

Dawn Raquel Jensen, EMBA, merges social media, digital marketing, technology training, and business strategy together as an embedded CMO/CXO to organizations, leadership teams, and first-stage businesses. She provides coaching and deep-dive advisory and marketing support services so business owners can influence and impact the communities they serve. She founded Virtual Options in 2008 to work with successful entrepreneurs and high-performing teams and since then, works and speaks internationally on marketing and entrepreneurial leadership. Dawn also resides as the Social Media and Digital Marketing Adjunct Professor for Seminole State College.