Engagement Touch Points

Absence from work is considered as temporary avoidance of work, more so when people avail sick leaves when they are not actually unwell or visiting a doctor. A recent survey by a job site Careerbuilder.com reveals that more than a third of employees become imaginative when it comes to cooking-up an excuse for taking a sick leave. The resultant impact is in the form of replacement costs, overtime costs, productivity losses, all of that adds up to something like 35 per cent of an employer’s base payroll.

Shocking? And it hits the employers hard! But who takes the blame. 

Another recent study strategic consultant Gallup shows that by a whopping 91 per cent of Indian employees are not psychologically committed to their organisations or are not as productive as they can be. Gallup in its latest annual report titled State of Global Workplace has revealed this startling finding that effectively means that 91 per cent Indian employees are either ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ at their workplace. Lower engagement not just affects productivity, but also the potential for innovation. However, the biggest worry comes in the wake of high proportion of ‘disruptors’ — the 31 per cent of employees who are actively disengaged. According to the report, “these employees are not just unhappy, but busy acting out their unhappiness and undermining their engaged co-workers’ accomplishments”.

Put two and two together, manufactured sick leave excuses should not come not as a surprise. All that is popular is not a common practice. Engagement is one of them.

At the CMO roundtable organized at Bangalore on 25^th October, 2013, by Paul Writer and Ma Foi Analytics and Research, brought together some talented marketers in this country under one roof. The cool and comfortable confines of the five star location did not in any way lessen the heat generated by the discussion done with the same passion and fervour with which these marketers competed in the Indian market space. 

Some excellent perspectives were shared in the round table conference that hold some interesting lessons in engagement. I attempt to conceptualize the discussion, without necessarily intellectualizing the same. My objective is to draw the crux of the discussion and present a practical insight into engagement. 

Managing engagement touch points becomes primal to engaging the stakeholders. Every time a brand comes in touch with a customer, employee or a channel partner, it is defined as a touch point. Aggregate of such interaction goes on to define a brand.

Managing engagement touch points would include:

1. Discovering Engagement Touch points: Tube Hotels, a hotel chain in South-East Asia found out that customer, out of all the facilities and services in the hotel, valued their bed, the television in their rooms and the shower in their bathrooms the most. They made sure that these three aspects in every room were of the highest standards and although rest of the facilities were just about ok or average, the customer satisfaction of this hotel was very high.

Apollo Hospitals gets patients from 100+ countries. Along with ensuring that patient gets best medical attention, Apollo also ensures that the patient’s’ attendant gets adequate care, is looked after well, often ensuring that they get their native cuisines in their food.

ITC’s food division was taken by surprise when a customer from Gujarat asked them which of their food products did not contain onion or garlic. After some effort, the customer query was answered but it exposed a hitherto unexplored touch point. Gujarat a predominantly vegetarian state would have many such consumers who will be sensitive to presence of even onion and garlic in the food products. Some other northern states of India had similar consumer population. ITC food division thereafter began to specifically label the packages of their vegetarian products as having ‘no onion, no garlic’. The appeal that it created among consumer segment was huge.

ITC also found similar engagement touch point when it came to wheat flour. Traditional customers in India were used to buying wheat, drying it in sun and then taking it to a local mill to grind the wheat into flour. The whole process not only used to be tedious & cumbersome for the customer but because of inconsistency of the quality of wheat available in the open market, the quality of flour also used to fluctuate. ITC kept this fact in mind and created a brand called ‘Aashirwad’ that promised hassle free readymade flour and ITC ensured that the high quality of the flour was consistent.

Flipkart introduced COD (Cash-On-Delivery) and ‘30-Days Return’ policies understanding customer sensibilities. Many customers want to pay only after they have received the product. The customers also wish to have the flexibility to return the product if they are not happy with the same, once they start using it.

1. Different Individuals, Different Touch Points: As much discovering engagement touch points is important, generalizing such touch points when consumer base is heterogeneous is not a good idea. 

One of the senior marketers in the roundtable who earlier had stint in Club Mahindra shared an interesting fact. Club Mahindra a family holiday destination resort generally gets families in its resorts. A typical family comprising of ‘father’, ‘mother’ and kids has different needs and hence different touch points. While the ‘father’ wants a lazy holiday, preferring no connectivity of any kind with the outside world, if possible; the ‘mother’ wants a more active holiday with yoga, exercise, etc. Young kids are hyperactive during holidays and want to run around and have as much fun as possible. Contrary to this the teenage kids want Wi- Fi connectivity and just need a cosy corner for themselves with their gadgets. Understanding these different touch points and addressing them becomes significant in engaging the entire family.

A 100 year old jewellery chain C. Krishniah Chetty & Sons gets broadly two kind of footfalls in their retail stores – 70% of its sales comes from repeat purchases and hence from old timers and more loyal set of customers; while the rest 30% of its sales comes from new customers walking-in the stores. The former set of customers are looking for long-term value and usually purchase in bulk, while the latter are the new-age fashion conscious customers who are looking for trendy designs and are essentially deal driven. The new-age customers’ churn-out rate is high, not because any love is lost, but since they love to wander about and shop more randomly. Both sets of customers have different expectations and hence different engagement touch points. The challenge is always in terms of translating owner’s passion into frontline sales to deliver better experience and drive engagement.

1. Dynamic Touch Points: The engagement touch points are not always static. ITC continuously experiments with its biscuits and creamy range of biscuits to bring-in new flavours and tastes to its very demanding set of consumers – the kids, whose tastes and choices keep changing very fast.

The dynamic nature of the touch points can also be looked from the perspective of speed with which a brand delivers on the engagement touch points. Take Club Mahindra for instance, they have installed touch screen kiosks in their resorts to gather feedback from their customers on a continuous basis and make correction or amends, if required, before the customer leaves the resort, rather than waiting for him/her to arrive next time. They understand that the ‘next-time’ may simply be too late.

Discovering, understanding and delivering on these engagement touch points becomes primal to engaging customers. However, it is pertinent to note that such engagement may not be possible without engaging the ‘internal customers’ or the employees. 

Internal Engagement

Similar to the external customer, discovering engagement touch points for the employees is equally important. These engagement touch points could be essentially functional or psychological, that may be discovered in pre-employment stage, On-boarding stage or during the employment stage. The functional variables may include job content, infrastructure, technology-in-use, compensation etc. While the psychological variables may include Psychological Support, Organizational Culture, Leadership, Respect, Psychological Job Fit, Growth & Development, Recognition & Reward, Involvement & Influence etc. Having said these employees cannot be generalized into a homogeneous set. They are also individuals and hence their individual touch points for engagement may equally vary. C.K. Prahlad’s n=1 formula whereby he treated each customer as a unique entity with unique set of needs & expectations holds true for employees as well. And finally, the engagement touch points for a particular employee may not remain consistent over a period of time. Understanding this dynamic nature of the touch points is no less important.

To conclude, it will be only fair to say that managing engagement touch points becomes critical in ensuring both external and internal engagement.

This article - 'Engagement Touch Points' was originally published at Paul Writer's Website. The link to the article is -http://paulwriter.com/articles/item/1043-cmo-roundtable-customer-engagement