Employee branding is a critical component of the customer experience

The Covid pandemic significantly disrupted the business landscape forever. Employees are rethinking what they want from work, and customers now expect more from brands than ever before. Brand trust has moved to the fore, with customers and employees expecting brands to not only live their brand purpose but to demonstrate honesty, integrity and transparency in securing both customer and employee data, respecting personal information privacy and consistently delivering value and better customer experiences.

This view is supported by the “Adobe 2022 Trust Report”, which found that 75% of global leaders say that since the onset of the pandemic, it has been harder to build and maintain trust with their customers. It says taking care of employees earns trust across the board. Though there are several factors involved in building and maintaining trust, the findings from the report confirm that employee wellbeing is a vital contributor to trust and the customer experience. See the report here.

Employees as brand ambassadors

In the eyes of customers, employees are often the face of an organisation. Employees answer calls, respond to queries, send content and are trusted to deliver a consistent customer experience across all interactions. Gartner says that employees are the most trusted spokespeople for organisations and, with more platforms available to share their message, have the power to be a company’s best supporters or worst detractors.

Employees need to be prioritised as a key audience that experiences the brand daily, witnessing how the company lives its brand values and brand purpose from the inside out. To achieve this and to build trust and improve the employee experience, employers must treat employees with honesty and empathy; this includes treating employees’ personal information with respect

When employees feel respected and empowered, they are more likely to go the extra mile, to engage with customers authentically and to contribute to a consistent brand experience across all customer touchpoints. Fair treatment of employees, however, is not enough, and employees also need to be equipped with tools and technology that simplify their lives. Gartner points out that this should be balanced by providing employees with the autonomy to use their authentic voice within specific brand guidelines.

The personal touch

Companies have been collecting customer data for several years and now customers believe that these companies know enough about them to add value to the experience. According to Adobe, personal experiences are a trust multiplier, with trust increasing with good personalisation and decreasing with bad personalisation.

With personalised content inspiring trust among consumers, it’s important that employees have easy access to the right content to empower them to provide personalised content in all customer interactions – 71% of consumers say that relevant content delivered at the right time and place boosts their trust.

Improving productivity improves experiences

According to Gartner, employees are well aware of the link between their experience and those of their customers. Two-thirds of employees cite unnecessary effort as hampering their company from consistently excelling in customer experience. However, while companies often strive to improve efficiencies by implementing technologies to help employees with workloads, when these technologies are introduced in an already complex environment, it adds to employee frustration and stress.

The “Gartner Digital Friction Survey 2020” found that two out of three employees reported that they need to exert too much effort to use the technology their company provides, and  that they waste more than five hours a week to be able to perform their job function.

To overcome this, Forrester research suggests that automating mundane tasks for employees with easy-to-use tools and technologies allows them to focus on higher-value strategic work which improves the overall employee experience.

Engaged employees are the key to creating memorable customer experiences. However, for employees to be engaged, companies need to focus on employee branding, reinforcing the brand values in every employee engagement and, in turn, empowering employees to deliver on-brand experiences in every customer interaction.

Companies need to provide employees with tools that are easy to use, give access to the right content at the right time, streamline processes, simplify their lives and enable them to add strategic value to the organisation (rather than having them search for content and learn new technologies in an already complex technology environment). Doing this will create positive employee experiences that result in positive customer experiences, delivered consistently, to build trust.

Paula Sartini is the founder and CEO at BrandQuantum