The most expensive things in this world are those that are rare. What you treasure and that you protect the most are those things that cannot easily be replaced. If you think about it, the highest thing you and your customers value in common is the most important element in your company's products and services.
I most value my time. Time is rare indeed. It is fleeting. It cannot be preserved and saved for later. You either make the most of the moment you are in or it is lost forever. How can you best measure how you are valued by another person? Measure how much and the quality of their precious time they spend with you.
Allegiance has spent significant time and money writing and speaking about engagement. Engagement is the emotional bond that can (and I propose must) be built between an employee and his/her company, as well as between a company and its customers. We have worked hard to build technologies that can measure this bond. We have worked equally hard helping our customers not only implement these technologies but also to work with their people to improve the processes surrounding the measurement and improvement of engagement.
Lately, we have changed our thinking about engagement. We have begun to understand that engagement isn't some intangible concept, but like time, it is an equally precious resource. In fact, engagement IS time.
Look at your most valued customers. They are usually most valued because they are engaged with you-and therefore spend their money with you. How do you know they are engaged? It is because they spend their precious time with you, usually in providing feedback about your products and service levels.
Look at your most valued employees. Once again, we value them because they give of their time. These most valued employees often give over-time. They get things done, quickly and timely, and as a result, we profit from them.
May I suggest a few time-based things you can do to increase customers' and employees' engagement:
Appreciate their time by word
When a customer or an employee spends time providing feedback, celebrate! Take time to thank them vocally as quickly after they spend time with you as possible. Follow up (with more time) to send them a note of appreciation. The more time and effort you spend on the note the better.
Appreciate by spending your time
Spend some time to evaluate the suggestion and evaluate its potential positive impacts on your business. Further explore how it might impact other less obvious elements of your processes. Then make the changes necessary. And of course, communicate back the results and how much you appreciate those results.
Reward
Share with them some of the rewards of the improvement. This may not always need to be monetary. Customers may appreciate even more the company that spends their time to reward engaged behavior. Perhaps you can reward a customer who improves your bottom line by offering your best consultants' or executives' time to analyzing and improving their business.
Author Resource:-
Terence Fugazzi is the VP of Demand Marketing at Allegiance (http://www.allegiance.com). His company provides Customer Engagement Software that helps organizations grow and increase profitability through improved customer loyalty and engagement.
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