The Voice of the Employee = The Voice of the Customer (R3)

It’s time companies’ start listening to their employees.  After all, it’s the employees that are most closely involved in the day-to-day operations and interactions with the customers – not management.  There was a time when it was frowned upon to speak out against company policies or processes, but social media and the groundswell has changed all that.

In chapter 11 of “Groundswell”, authors Li and Bernoff discuss Best Buys approach to tapping in to their employees’ knowledge and expertise.  They know the employees have their hand on the pulse of the customers’ needs and concerns.  As the Best Buy executives stated, “We wanted to get insight into what’s really happening at the store, not just when the store is spic and span for corporate visits.”  This was a brilliant move by Best Buy to close the gap between their employees and management, and at the same time, bringing them closer to the voice of the customer.

By giving their employees a platform to speak, management in turn could listen, and it fostered an environment for employees to feel that they had more of a stake in the company.  Providing this forum gave employees a sense accomplishment.  Employees want to feel as though what they do matters.  If you want to read more about Blue Shirt Nation, check out this article written in 2008 from TwinCities Business:  2009 Blue Shirt Nation Article.

When I read this story about Best Buy, I realized that it was very similar to a project recently introduced at my own company, Fidelity Investments.  The operations department has decided to open up a forum called CDPS (Communications Data & DC Plan Services) which is a place for employees to collaborate on ideas and concerns.  I have worked at Fidelity for 10 years, and I have never seen anything like it. 

CDPS Site at Fidelity

The announcement about the site read as follows:  “This site is designed to provide you with an opportunity to actively contribute to one of our key 2011 business plan objectives:  BUILD EFFICIENCIES and FOSTER EXPERIMENTATION.  As Chris Hock mentioned in his blog post, Spaces is a social media in a business setting that enables you to easily offer your ideas and generate conversation with your peers on how we can improve our operation and service delivery to our customers.”

Up until this point, I had never seen a blog post at Fidelity.  The company always sent out letters through email or they would post a letter on an intranet site – it was a one-way form of communication.  Posting this blog from our leader, Chris Hock, allowed employees to comment on his post and respond.  Below is a snap shot of his blog.

CDPS Management Blog

The CDPS site is extremely easy-to-use.  Management plans to utilize the site as an opportunity to share thoughts on how to best meet customer/client expectations...Like Best Buy’s employee site, it also allows employees to learn from each other instead of working in silos not knowing what other groups are doing..  Management will be able to identify common themes and prioritize concerns.  With the operations community collaborating, it will hopefully drive efficiencies overall for the company while giving employees a sense of pride and ownership.  I am glad to see Fidelity finally joining the groundswell! 

Source:  TwinCities Business.com; Fidelity Investments, Groundswell