Talent show

I have a young friend currently trying to enter the marketing profession. She has applied for

countless graduate entry roles in various businesses and agencies around the country and she is unimpressed with the poor communication, the lack of respect shown when it comes to timescales and deadlines, and the complete absence of feedback, even from some of the biggest brands in the world.

And it is more than likely that these failures are systemic to the recruitment process not just the treatment meted out to the most junior of applicants.

When you listen to her tale any professional marketer would be appalled if their brand, a brand whose reputation they will have carefully nurtured and be dedicated to protecting, treated customers and prospects in a similar way. Yet it seems ok to treat prospective talent in such a brand damaging way. And if it treats potential recruits like this, just how does it treat colleagues? And does the way it treats its people align with the customer experience it is seeking to deliver? And more fundamentally should those charged with responsibility for the brand, usually in marketing, take more responsibility for the employee experience?

We all know that happy colleagues mean happy customers but I recently read that we don’t want just want happy customers and colleagues, we want engaged customers and colleagues. This means colleagues are more willing to build an emotional bond, will give more effort to build and deliver a great customer experience, will consent to giving more of themselves to your brand and to your customers. And this can only be good for the customer.

Ideally the customer experience and the employee experience ought to be perfectly aligned. But how aligned are they? And do we think that the colleague journey from recruitment through to resignation and beyond has been designed to deliver a great and fully aligned colleague experience? The results from the experience of my friend would suggest that in many cases they might not be.

And in a recent example when dealing with a business that claims it puts the customer at the heart of all it does, it was clear that its staff were so concerned with making sure that they do things right even to the point when this was not always in the interests of the customer. The management culture encouraged compliance with the rules and processes rather than doing what was right.

Having just completed research into identifying the principles being adopted by businesses to map out their customer journeys to deliver a great customer experience, we did not find one business doing this for colleagues.

There is surely a great opportunity for businesses to build a truly experiential brand by applying the principles of customer journey analysis and design and by learning to walk in the shoes of those who work in the business through

-          The recruitment process

-          The on-boarding process

-          The on-going management and servicing process

-          The leaving process.

And through these journeys asking and considering

-          How well does the employee experience match the desired customer experience ?
How well are these fulfilling colleagues’ rational and emotional needs?

-          Where are the service breakdowns?

-          How well are these experiences aligned with the brand promise? 

-          How can the communication and delivery eco-systems address and fix any problems and issues?

-          What are the critically important parts of these journeys?

As the economy recovers the market to acquire and retain talent will become increasingly competitive. To be successful in this market place businesses could learn much from the principles of customer engagement and the thinking used to develop a great customer experience and apply this to building a great colleague experience.

And of course building a great colleague experience is surely critical in building a great customer experience.

So if you work in marketing today, invite your HR colleagues for a coffee and start to discuss how together you can build a truly effective colleague experience.