Warren Egnal

Companies with higher levels of employee engagement are more productive, profitable, creative and efficient. They also have higher levels of customer satisfaction-a proven competitive advantage.

Most companies’ engagement efforts fail due to lack of vision, unarticulated strategies and management communications that are ineffective and don’t lead to increased engagement. In these difficult economic times, as companies make tough decisions, keeping employees engaged becomes even more critical. As customer satisfaction is highly correlated to employee engagement, the first step in building customer loyalty is in ensuring employees are engaged. Then a comprehensive customer engagement program (marcomm, sales, PR, etc.) can begin to drive sales, as there will no longer be any disconnect between brand promise to customers and delivery on that promise by employees.

To build strong customer loyalty, it is vital to first deploy an approach that builds employee engagement and sets the stage for a customer engagement program that delivers results that have a positive financial impact on the company.

The key steps to accomplishing this outcome are:

• Achieve greater employee engagement
• Obtain real-time customer feedback
• Build an Employee Engagement/Customer Satisfaction bridge between company and customer
• Create a "burning platform" for internal change that stresses the vital connection between employees and customers
• Prepare company leadership and sales/support teams to more effectively improve customer relations
• Build a practical executable program and realize quick wins

This proven approach is distinctive in that it goes beyond traditional communication programs by a) ensuring leaders are properly equipped to lead employee engagement activities/drive needed organizational change and b) focusing specifically on an empirically based situation analysis that identifies connections/gaps (correlation) between company and customer, prescribing solutions to drive engagement of both stakeholders

Employees, from top executives to sales leaders and customer support personnel need to develop an enhanced understanding of the importance of employee engagement and how it relates to and builds customer engagement and the financial advantage increased engagement will bring to their companies and customer relationships. This is not an instinctive process-management needs to develop the knowledge of what specific process steps are required to lead an effective program to support an employee/customer engagement initiative.

Warren Egnal is the Founder of and Principal Consultant for Engagement Strategies, a global firm which helps corporate leadership define their visions, brands, and purposes; foster adaptation to change and motivate positive employee, customer and other stakeholder behavior. Starting with business objective-directed strategy, Warren also creates and implements the policies and programs that translate theory into action. His primary expertise is in providing counsel and support for executives to ensure their decisions are more effective and their employees more productive.

Warren has led teams providing communications and HR counsel and program support for key client initiatives in Corporate and Employee Branding, Total Employee Experience, Customer Relationship Management, Change Management, Privacy, Employee Engagement and Corporate Intranet Programs.

Warren’s client experience includes consulting on multi-dimensional programs for Activision, Xilinx, Sony, Amgen, Qualcomm, HP, Micron, Nextel, Sprint PCS, Merck, Honeywell, BMC Software, Grady Health System, Atlanta Life Insurance Company and Medco Health, among others.

wegnal@engagementstrategies.com

www.engagementstrategies.com