In my last post on red flag checks, I discussed the candidate experience and how your employees are knowingly or unknowingly influencing the decisions of prospective employees. In this post, I will discuss connecting the employee and customer experience.
Connect the Experience
As a Corporate Communications Partner, it’s my job to make sure the brand experience is integrated across all segments of our population. This is includes what happens before someone joins the company, while they are an employee and what our customer experiences. The candidate experience starts by building affiliation and connection before a person comes onboard and sets the stage for a good employee experience. In turn, when our employees are more engaged, they create a better experience for our customers. But how can this actually be done seamlessly?
Below is just one example of how to connect the brand experience across audiences when you have limited resources.
Look for Opportunities
Recently, my company held its annual client conference. This is the 10th year for the conference and it has pretty much been unknown to employees, until now. While we have approximately 500 customers, prospective customers and exhibitors attend the conference, only a handful of employees actually get to see what happens during three intensive days of sessions and workshops.
My vision was to bring the conference to employees at the ground level. Beyond the recorded sessions, which employees have gotten in past years, I wanted our 1400 employees to feel like they were there at the conference with our clients.
Since we have limited resources to do fancy video productions, I took one communications specialist with me to the conference. Our team of two was responsible for taking the vision I had and creating something awesome. We did this with one cannon camera, a microphone and a tripod. After a crash course in how to record a video from the IT department, we were ready to go. We used Articulate to do the very most basic cut and paste videos, but not one employee cared about the quality. It felt organic and natural, and like the employees were in the conversation with the clients. The background noise, various lighting and different locations made the whole series feel like you were there with us.
What’s the Word on the Street?
The end result was the “Word on the Street” video series. With short one to two minute video vignettes, we were able to produce 20 videos over the three days. The response was overwhelming. Videos being posted to the intranet in real-time gave employees a sense of being at the conference and sharing in the experience. They heard from long-time customers and new clients, and they saw the behind the scenes set up of what it takes to produce an annual conference. We even scored a cameo interview with our keynote speaker, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Limited Budget, No Problem
This example shows how with limited resources you can really integrate experiences. If thinking of doing your own video vignette series, I recommend starting with a strategy. For me it was to help employees better understand our clients. The “word on the street” series is just one part of this larger strategy. For me, I looked at where the larger communication touch points were with clients and found a way to capitalize on that experience to give all employees a connected experience.
Finding ways in your organization to connect the candidate, employee and customer experience could be as simple as clicking record on your iPhone. Videos are powerful medium to bring a large audience together. If you would like to discuss more about integrating the brand experience, let me know through the comments.