As brand activity grows on social media, it’s clear that your business’s motives, actions, and values are becoming more visible to your customers. This transparency means your brand’s promise must remain strong throughout the entire customer experience. It’s not surprising that there’s a strong link between a business and its customers through social media marketing. However, a study by TNS Global found that employee engagement is also crucial for a well-functioning company in today’s social media landscape. Researchers discovered that employees who say they work for one of the top companies in their field tend to be better workers. They are much more likely to use customer engagement data in their tasks and focus more on the customer brand experience, which overall helps build a stronger social media brand.
The study looked into understanding brand ambassadorship, how customer perceptions matter, and the evolving roles of supervisors and leaders. It concluded that combining employee engagement, brand, and customer engagement leads to high performance. Discover the four main insights from the study that researchers think transformed a good business into a great brand.
Creating a good environment for your employees – Employees that view their companies as ‘one of the best’ in their industry are 86% more likely to say they are satisfied. Employees in high performing companies are also twice as likely to say leadership is interested in the well-being of its employees.
Being customer-focused – Employees who believed they worked for ‘one of the best’ organizations also thought they had a clear understanding of their customer’s needs. 78% of employees from this group also reported actively using customer feedback to improve a product or service. This is significant compared to only 40% of employees who claim they work at ‘average’ organizations.
Striving for great brand experience – Employees in ‘one of the best’ organizations are also more likely to focus on the brand experience, with 76% willing to go ‘above and beyond’ to deliver a great brand experience for their customers. This again is compared to 38% from employees at ‘average’ companies that are willing to take it a step further.
Being a brand ambassador and company proud – Again, employees who believe they work for ‘one of the best’ companies were 85% more likely to promote the company’s products and services, as well as their company overall.
The moral here seems to be that a happy worker is a productive worker. In a time when businesses can be as transparent as their Facebook posts, it’s a great idea to make sure your company, as a whole, is happy and actively relating to customers. “To manage these changing boundaries organizations must break down the silos between human resources and marketing. Examine the internal and external messaging for congruence and look at employee and customer engagement measurements as facets of the same core identity,” said a senior TNS consultant. “Look at social media and track what is being said about the organization, use social media more deliberately by leveraging the ambassadorship and passion of an organization’s products and services.”