Rules of Engagement – The quickest route to lasting Customer Satisfaction

I recently attended a fascinating talk by Fabien Riggall, founder of Secret Cinema. For those not familiar with the concept, Secret Cinema provides an immersive, participative experience for viewers of (mainly) iconic films. By creating large-scale cultural experiences in abandoned spaces, Secret Cinema fuses film, music, theatre and installations.

This brand of cinema has incredible appeal. As Fabien describes it, Secret Cinema has redefined the way audiences experience culture.

Therefore as an engagement and culture professional (addict) myself, it was good to learn something about how Fabien engages his audience. And it got me thinking…so many organisations are today chasing the holy grail of “customer engagement”. Why? Because it leads to sales and profit. So why do so many approach it in entirely the wrong way?

3 Types of Organisation

In my experience, organisations tend to fall loosely into 3 categories.

1.     Those that don’t really see the direct connection between customer engagement and employee engagement and therefore profitability. They just sell hard, cut costs and try to operate as economically as possible.

2.     Those that see the connection but address it with superficial methods such as sweeteners which are short lived but don’t tackle the issues in a sustainable way, because the benefits wear off quickly. They address the symptom rather than the root cause. i.e. put all their effort into instantaneous customer “feel good” initiatives by giving money away in the shape of offers, discounts etc.

3.     Those great companies that really do see the connection and put all their energy into true “employee engagement”. They understand that great customer satisfaction is a symptom of great employee satisfaction, so they attack the root cause instead. This is cheaper in the long-run, lasts longer and once it’s up and running it takes care of itself. But how do you do it? The key is to develop a coaching culture.

A Coaching Culture and its Benefits

I'm often asked to describe what a “Coaching Culture” is and its benefits, so here goes…

·        All line-managers and leaders are skilled coaches. They realise that their role is to get the very best from their colleagues and to help them grow, achieve their potential and be the best they can be. They don’t feel at all threatened by this as they will experience the benefits of it themselves in their own personal development.

·        A Coaching Culture is an accepted enabler of innovation and change within the business. It is a success driver and massively increases employee engagement and retention as all staff contribute to, buy into and own the vision of the organisation. Once they do this there is little or no desire to leave.

·        Coaching is all about effectiveness. Creating a Coaching Culture reduces L&D time and budgets in the long run because people learn continuously, in bite-size chunks and only focus on the key things that will make all the difference.

·        Coaching enables continuous application and a high retention of learning, so you can see and measure the impact on performance. At the same time, it enables evaluation and review so that mistakes are identified, learned from and not repeated.

·        Coaching is completely tailored to the individual and allows them to learn in their preferred way and from their own experiences. It is based on the assumption that the answers lie within and it is the role of the coach to ask the really incisive questions which will get to the heart of performance improvement.

·        Employees take ownership of problems – customers like that. They become company ambassadors and brand advocates rather than seeing it just as a job.

·        Politics – A Coaching Culture can start to eradicate some organisational politics – people fighting their way to the top; climbing the greasy pole; getting promoted purely for sponsorship/favouritism reasons. It provides a more equal playing field for people to showcase their abilities and provides you with a more flexible, adaptable, willing and committed workforce. You start to find out who has hidden potential, so your talent pipeline is in constant motion and development.

A Sign That Something’s Not Right

I observed an interesting conversation on the London underground the other week. Two chaps were seated opposite me. One was clearly relatively new to the company and was telling his senior colleague that he was keen to progress withing the organisation and asking what needed to do. He’d been told by his boss to have a talk to him about it.

The senior colleague pretty much fobbed the question off immediately by evasively saying they’d need to have a meeting about it at some point. He wasn’t particularly paying attention in fact he was looking out of the window most of the time. There was some faked interest but you could tell he’d been put completely and uncomfortably on the spot. It was a question he didn’t want to hear and certainly could be bothered to answer.

And why had his boss even delegated the discussion in the first place? I might be wrong but it suggested to me that the organisation in question doesn’t have a coaching culture.

A Coaching Culture – The Golden Rules

There are a few fundamental things you need to have in place though for all of this to work:

Don’t cheat yourself – if someone has the abilities to develop and add value to your organisation, then support and coach them. It’s in your interest. After all, you have made a considerable financial investment in them. If they’re earning ￡50K a year, it’s costing you up to ￡100k to employ them. If they’re with you for 10 years that’s a ￡1m investment, and that’s not accounting for pay rises. If I’d just invested ￡1m in someone I’d be sure to look after them and maximise their performance.

Honesty - if someone is ambitious, yet has no real future beyond the level they’re at, then tell them, don’t waste their time. Give them the opportunity to grow somewhere else, otherwise you just end up with disgruntled staff who believe they’ve been held back. They might flourish elsewhere, so you owe them that opportunity.

Unselfishness – the objective is to help that person become the very best they can be, not protect your own job if you’re their manager.

It has to come from the Top! The CEO has to believe in this culture, own it and take responsibility for driving it. They can’t delegate that belief. They have to think strategically and see the longer term benefits for the business. This is an investment in the organisation’s future which is going to reap rewards time and time again – for decades to come.

?Carl Gregory is Head of Client Engagement for The OCM Group. He is an expert in leadership, behavioural change and organisational culture with a proven track record of helping companies increase their productivity and profitability.

The OCM Group are coaching and mentoring specialists who use this expertise to support our clients achieve their strategic goals. We don’t offer generic leadership, innovation or change programmes but instead identify and build the leadership capabilities required to achieve strategic goals through innovative coaching and mentoring programmes.

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