The Linchpin Between Employee Engagement and Customer Satisfaction

For years many of us have understood that employee recognition and awards have had a great deal to do with employee engagement and results.  Since the 1950’s the award industry has been connecting the dots and motivating the relationship between the customer and corporate employees. They were engaging employees to provide the best customer service they could….and it worked for many clients

Yet, employee engagement is now a field that is inundated with consultants and solution providers whose approach to improving engagement runs the gamut of satisfaction research, communications, real time measurement, new technology, training, leadership coaching, assessment, etc.  The one thing that is almost always left out of the equation by these suppliers is the rewards and recognition system combined with the analytical tools to deploy it in an audit-able manner.

We pondered the “why have rewards been left out of this equation” question for a long time.  And in our opinion, the main reason that these award companies missed the boat on this was because they put all their eggs in the “making their money by selling the awards” basket.  It was a simple matter of math.  If the client had $3 million to spend on the engagement problem, about 80% of it was spent on the awards after the fact, and the other 20% on the communications, research, feedback and training.  Even though these companies had highly skilled professionals in these ancillary areas, they often priced them at cost (or even lower) to be in a better position to compete for the award business. These traditional firms are known in the trade as “incentive companies.” 

If the linchpin between employee engagement and customer satisfaction is reward and recognition, the industry still has a long way to go to inform corporate America of it.  Recent incentive industry research shows that over 70% of companies use the award industry just for the awards.  They purchase the other needs of communications, feedback, training etc. from other providers, or do it themselves.

If you need expertise on how to drive employee engagement to achieve corporate results, you might try an incentive company.  They have been basing their success on the successful achievements of these programs for years.   

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

The Employee-Engagement Story

There has been so much written about Employee Engagement that it has frankly become a confusing catchall for almost everything related to employee performance.  It means different things to different people and certainly all types of vendors and consultants have found a home in this umbrella in order to sell their services.

As employee engagement is essentially a behavior change initiative, the incentive industry was implementing employee engagement activities long before the phrase was ever coined. Multi-million dollar “incentive companies” emerged in the mid-20^th century to sell programs to motivate company employees (either internal or external) to improve their performance in a variety of ways.  These programs were very successful and did drive performance because they used motivation techniques invented by the award industry….techniques that are still very prominent today. 

Following is a synopsis of an article written by Paul Herr, Author of “Primal Management: Unraveling the Secrets of Human Motivation that Drive High Performance”, that is as good a treatment of the connection between employee motivation and employee engagement as we have ever read.

ZERO MOTIVATION, no work would get done and the company would go bankrupt. 

OPTIMAL MOTIVATION, everyone works faster, better and smarter, so productivity, innovation, customer satisfaction and profits would sky rocket.  

THE MASTER METRIC, Motivation drives everything happening inside companies and it should be tracked religiously.

THE STORY

The term “employee engagement” was popularized by the Gallup Organization about 30 years ago.  It gained the attention of the business community by aiming its statistical prowess at human motivation.   Prior to that there were no stats to determine if satisfied employees were more productive than unsatisfied employees.

By reviewing all the top theories of psychologists dealing with human motivation, Gallup  then created hundreds of questions based on these theories and started testing them to see which ones statistically correlated with business performance.  

The result of this gargantuan effort was the Gallup Q-12 survey—12 questions which has been extremely important in measuring motivation.  And employee engagement has become a top business priority for senior executives.  To read the entire article click here.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Gift Card Facts for the 2018 Holidays

The National Retail Federation reported that gift cards have been the #1 requested gift card for more than 10 years.  This year, according to the research, gift cards are still the #1 item and clothing the #2 

• A gift card study by InComm, who drew responses from almost 2500 US consumers, found the following interesting data about shopper behavior for the 2018 holiday season ahead:
• Consumers plan to purchase on average seven gift cards for their immediate families.  That fact alone suggests the gift cards are not an impersonal gift.
• Respondents also plan to purchase two gift cards for friends and neighbors, two for teachers and coaches and one for a co-worker.
• Where there is a strong relationship between the giver and the recipient 86% of respondents indicated that the when they receive a specific gift card, it is for brand that they like
• Pairing a gift card with another item for the recipient is an increasing trend among holiday shoppers that is leading to incremental sales for retailers. 66% of respondents indicated they will give their gift cards in personalized greeting cards or combined with another item.  12% said they would give a card with a homemade item.

People Want the Holiday Experience

Brick-and-mortar stores will be the primary location where consumers plan to do their holiday shopping. 50% expect to do nearly all of their holiday shopping in-store,  an additional 35.1% plan to do a moderate amount in store and only 1.3% will not do any in-store holiday shopping.  

When asked what they liked about shopping in person, 40% s said that the activity gets them in the holiday mood, and  21% indicated they enjoyed the  festive decorations, displays and sounds of the season found in stores.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Electronic (or Mobile) vs Physical Gift Cards

The gift card industry finds that demand just keeps growing. The National Retail Federation has reported that gift cards are the No. 1 requested gift during the holiday season for more than 10 years, and it doesn’t look like it will be any different in 2018.

While the incentive industry has seen continuing growth and interest in electronic and mobile gift cards, new research indicates that planners should not count out physical gift cards for their awards programs.  New Findings from National Gift Card show that three out of four incentive recipients still redeem their loyalty points for physical gift cards. 

NGC has thousands of corporate clients that connect to their inventory of more than 500 physical and digital brands.  According to their B2B Gift Card Report:

75 percent of the volume in gift card program redemptions is still in physical cards, while just 25 percent is for digital gift cards.

Of the total gift cards used, closed loop cards (retail branded) had 26.8% of the total volume of gift card programs, while closed loop cards (banks, Visa. MasterCard etc.) were are 21.8%. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net