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Thank you visiting my blog Customer Service That Astonishes -- however the feed you are looking for has been moved.

To view this blog, please click here. For additional information please email: bill@billhogg.ca

Cheers!

Happy Holidays

I will not be posting until w/o January 5 so I can spend some well deserved time off with my family and friends during the holiday season.

But I wanted to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and a healthy and prosperous new year. Til 2009 -- Best Wishes!

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/

Are You Maximizing Your Benefits?

Most organizations have put considerable time and money into developing a benefits package that is a positive for their employees. Rightly, they expect that these benefits will contribute to a positive work environment and overall engagement.

However, Andy Philpott of Accor Services (one of the UK's leading providers of employee benefits, rewards and loyalty services), reports that in a recent study they conducted of rewards, benefits and employee engagement that only one-third of employers (33%) believed staff understand what benefits are available.

More concerning is that just one in five employees (21%) claim to have a good understanding of the value of the benefits available and one in 10 admit they have no clue about the value of these benefits.

Employees also seemed unsure whether their pay, benefits and incentives packages were competitive when compared with people doing similar jobs in similar organisations. Only 33% felt their company was competitive on pay, 25% on benefits and just 17% felt their organisation offered competitive incentives.

It is critical that we communicate the value of our benefits package effectively to staff. Successful communication is an foundational element in building employee engagement and the resulting performance, motivation and productivity benefits are not maximized if people are unaware of what the benefits are.

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance of a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/

Will price beat service?

Like many retailers Abercrombie & Fitch Co. suffered dismal November sales results. However, unlike many of their rivals they have made a fundamental decision not to aggressively lower prices -- deciding instead to try and maintain the equity of their brand.

So if they don't match on price, what will be the draw to the customer? Have they built enough equity to survive the downturn? Has their brand experience built enough customer loyalty to keep them coming back? Time will tell.

It will be interesting to see what A&F does as the recession continues. Will they be able to maintain the profitability based on less sales at higher prices or will they succumb to the price war? Stay tuned.

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance of employee engagement and a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/

Direct Marketers

Direct marketers have long had the ability to test different messages and offers to determine what pulls the strongest and converts more purchases. More recently ecommerce has provided the same direct correlation between copy/offer and purchase. So who better to link financial gain to emotional connections?

A recent article in E-Commerce News speaks to exactly that point. Their focus is on the new technologies that are available to help companies get at the emotional drivers that affect purchase and loyalty. In the direct to consumer world, what works is easily tested, improved and refined. Their take on the power of an emotional connection or experience is summed up nicely in this quote.

"When you go beyond price, quality and service to focus on the heart or emotional aspect of customer relationships, you will create more engaged customers. When this happens, you will begin to enjoy all the rewards that engaged customers offer a business, including a greater share of their wallets, more positive referrals, less inclination to leave the business relationship, more useful feedback, etc."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance of a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/

What makes Customers Happy?

I recently read an article about online shopping and what it takes to make customers happy. The results indicated that the experience needs to be individualized, personalized, and centered around the customer.

There are some technology barriers to making this happen online, but we have no excuse on the phone or face to face.

Regardless of what we know in advance about the customer, our attitude and behaviour can accomplish these desired outcomes.

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance of a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/

The new old rules of engagement

Not that we need to say it again, but more recent research confirms that increasing employee engagement increases performance. Most boardrooms see employee engagement as a key priority for the future and investment in engagement is set to grow -- even in the current economic environment.

This is a key finding of a comprehensive study of engagement practice undertaken in the UK, commissioned by employee engagement consultancy, Engage Group.

The survey of nearly 23,600 directors, managers and employees, conducted during October 2008 , reveals that effective engagement can demonstrably improve an organisation's performance.

A high level of employee engagement is one of the top three drivers of an organisation's performance, and nearly a third of the UK's senior leaders see a fully-engaged workforce as one of the most critical factors in their organisation's success.

Key findings from the report are as follows;

• Effective engagement can demonstrably improve an organisation’s performance
• Most boardrooms see engagement as a key priority for the future and net investment in engagement is set to grow, even in the current economic environment
• Despite growing board support for engagement, most employees still feel disengaged from their organisation – board buy-in has not yet, according to employees, been translated into action
• ‘New world’ aspects of engagement, particularly the appetite and ability of leaders at every level to share power and engage people in decision-making, emerge as powerful new elements of engagement
• Delivering on the ‘new engagement agenda’ will result in more engaged employees, more committed customers and faster growth
• Forceful ‘command & control’ styles of leadership have little, no or even a negative impact on engagement and performance levels – less than 40% of employees view their leader(s) as effective
• Employee satisfaction, the oldest assumed element of employee engagement, sinks near the bottom of the list of influential factors
• Internal measurement lags behind external measures of performance – only 28% of board members claim to use robust internal measures of employee engagement
• This study confirms an earlier thesis, the outcome of an extensive research programme carried out in partnership with McKinsey & Company, that the drivers of employee engagement are steadily shifting towards a new inclusiveness

However, despite growing board support for engagement, most employees feel disengaged from their organisation. Only just over a third of employees believe their organisation engages them to perform well.

For those of us who live in the world of employee engagement this comes as no surprise, but for those clients who are still struggling to find the time, money or motivation, maybe this will help.

You can download a complete copy of the full report at Engage Group.

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance of a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/

All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Robert Fulghum is the author of All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. As his title suggests, his basic premise is that what we learned everything important that we need to be a success in business and in life in kindergarten.

But let's make another comparison. How about all we need to learn about employee engagement we learned by observing kindergarten.

Think about your early days in school. Were you excited about going, learning, playing, meeting new people, and having new experiences? I suspect many of us were. When thinking back about our school days, our early grades were some of the most fun and also where we learned the most of our basic skills (i.e. the 3 R's).

So what happened as we got older and started to be less interested in school? What was the difference?

For the sake of discussion, I would propose were were less engaged because the learning environment became less about the student exploring, working together and more about the teachers dictating what we needed to know and lecturing about the subjects. Much less interactive.

Of course, we all had a great teachers in high school. But if you look at what made them great it was often the way they engaged the class versus simply "teaching" the material.

I think there is a lesson here. How can we take the best from kindergarten and incorporate it into our work environment? How do we re-inspire people to learn and grow based on the culture we set up?

What did we learn from our experience in kindergarten that we have forgotten?

Cheers!

Bill's passion is improving business results by working with leadership teams to change employee behaviours. He does this by equipping leaders with the principles, processes and tools to cultivate an engaged customer-focused culture.

As well, he is a dynamic, results-oriented speaker on the importance of a customer-focused culture, either as a guest speaker or acting as a facilitator of a group discussion/workshop.

For more information please contact (905) 841-3191
Email: bill@billhogg.ca, Web: http://www.billhogg.ca/