Meet Jamie, the insurance customer of 2030. What will it take to win her business?
The Insurance Customer of the Future report is the latest research from Prophet’s Financial Services practice. It explains how insurers can drive growth by putting their customers at the center of their transformation strategies. The first step? Understanding their customers on a deeper level. Not only understanding who they are, what they value and what they need in the present, but also several years down the line.
Prophet’s experts centered their research around Jamie, an insurance customer living in 2030. By understanding and anticipating the generational trends and technological possibilities that will shape Jamie’s environment, insurers can make the right transformation moves now to win Jamie’s – and her peers – business in the future.
Read this report to gain deeper insights on:
The digital transformation trajectory of the insurance industry and its implications for business leaders
The broad demographic, social, economic and technology trends that will define the decade ahead for insurers and their customers
The evolving consumer demands that will shape the future of insurance
The ways insurers need to transform their businesses to win in the “new world”
Your Digital Maturity Is the Best Way to Evaluate Technology Vendors
Our research shows that it’s time for a maturity-based approach to technology development and selection.
One of the biggest challenges for organizations pursuing digital transformation is parsing through the myriad of digital solutions available. For example, I’ve been diving into the world of customer data platforms (CDPs) for the past few weeks and it’s a dizzying array of jargon and solutions.
One approach is to reference the technology evaluations from analyst firms like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Forrester’s Wave — but those are already several years old. There are also several peer-based evaluation and review sites like Capterra, Gartner’s PeerInsights, Trust Radius, which can be filtered by reviews from by company size, industry, and region in some cases.
But I think they all miss one major factor when it comes to selecting technology — digital maturity. Our research at Altimeter found that digital maturity drove substantial differences in not only the strategic objectives and initiatives of digital transformation but also in technology priorities. And yet, the element of digital maturity rarely factors into the selection process or shows up in the marketing of these solutions.
“Digital maturity drove substantial differences in not only the strategic objectives and initiatives of digital transformation but also in technology priorities.”
What’s missing is a maturity-based approach to technology development and selection. Organizations can be better prepared to discuss their needs by understanding their digital maturity and knowing how they will evolve their technology stacks over time. And vendors could clear out much of the confusion in the marketplace by making clear not just how they help organizations but where and when they best do this throughout the transformation journey.
In this post, I’ll review how digital maturity impacts digital transformation and provide specific recommendations for both organizations and technology vendors.
Digital Maturity’s Impact on Digital Transformation Strategy
Let’s take a deeper dive into how digital maturity impacts technology selection. In our State of Digital Transformation 2020 report, we identified five stages of digital maturity relevant to digital transformation (see Figure 1). Most organizations are at Stage 3, focused on the digital transformation specific departments and hoping to move to Stage 4 where they start to knit and integrate across department silos.
Figure 1: The Five Stages of Digital Transformation Maturity
We also found that the top initiatives differed substantially depending on maturity levels. For example, organizations in Stage 4 prioritize modernizing IT at substantially higher levels (55%) than other organizations because of their focus on updating legacy platforms for better integration across the enterprise (see Figure 2).
In contrast, Stage 1 and Stage 2 organizations prioritize operational ability (41% and 32% respectively), especially around updating policies and processes. And organizations at Stage 5 of digital maturity indicate that accelerating innovation (39%) and integrating customer touchpoints (39%) are among their top initiatives because they’ve already done the heavy lifting of digitizing and integrating their operations.
Figure 2: The Top Five Digital Transformation Initiatives by Digital Maturity Stage
Given that digital transformation initiatives differ by digital maturity, the technology priorities also vary significantly depending on maturity. More advanced in their usage of and reliance upon data, Stage 5 organizations are more likely to focus their investments on technologies that support cohesive, data-enabled initiatives — such as machine learning/artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and 5G to (see Figure 3). But differentiation based on AI/ML or conversational technologies will matter less to organizations in earlier stages of maturity as they are still getting their data backends in order.
Figure 3: The Top Technology Investment Priorities for 2020 by Maturity Stage
What It Means
If you’re an organization going through digital transformation:
Assess your digital maturity. Know where you are starting and very importantly, align across your department and organization on where you are. To get started, take Altimeter’s Digital Maturity Assessment and benchmark it against the other 628 companies we surveyed.
Audit your strategy and roadmap. Once you know the stage of your digital maturity, examine your digital transformation strategy, especially the focus and sequencing of initiatives. How long will you need to wait for more departments to reach a critical level of digital maturity before moving forward with integration plans? Where are you missing critical capabilities? And timing is everything. Layout how major initiatives unfold over the next 18-36 months by quarters to ensure that everyone understands the roadmap.
Begin conversations with vendors differently. Instead of asking what they do, explain your roadmap so that they understand where you are today and where you are heading. Favor vendors who understand how to support your initiatives as your maturity and needs change. If the vendor doesn’t acknowledge or address your digital maturity stage, then walk away and quickly. Statements like “We serve every stage!” or “We can evolve with you!” reveal that they haven’t done the heavy lifting of truly understanding how you will evolve. Instead,
Resist the urge to buy technology ahead of when you are ready to use it. It’s tempting to invest in the “best” technology platforms, especially when they offer features like real-time personalization or AI-driven predictive analytics. But if your organization lacks the expertise and procedures to use these amazing features, you’ll be paying for wasted capabilities. Worst case, the platform is so complicated that few people end up using it. The alternative is to use a less sophisticated platform but one that is right-sized for your needs for the next 6-18 months. While platform vendors will raise the specter of switching and integration costs in the future, trade off the opportunity costs of slower and lower adoption rates.
For technology vendors, there are three ways to better address the evolving digital transformation needs of organizations:
Focus solutions on specific stages of their transformation journey. Resist the urge to say that your solution serves everyone and instead demonstrate you understand the priorities and needs at each stage of the journey. Instead of pitching AI and personalization features to Stage 1 and Stage 2 organizations, explain how dashboards deliver relevant KPIs to key executives.
Highlight which stage you serve best. While it’s tempting to want to serve every company at every stage, you know where your sweet spot is. Put a big, bright spotlight on how you understand and address the needs of organizations at that maturity stage — and then explain why you can also support them going on to the next stage.
Partner with vendors whose strengths complement yours. Knowing that you don’t serve all stages well will free you to find and partner with vendors who complement your offerings. Go beyond having APIs to craft deep integrations in marketing, sales, and service to develop go-to-market strategies. Make it easy to upgrade the technology stack and conversely, partner with someone who specializes in support organizations earlier in their transformation journey.
Taking digital maturity into account in your digital transformation strategy is crucial to your success. If you’d like to learn more about how Altimeter and Prophet can support you in assessing your digital maturity, updating your digital transformation strategy, or creating a technology roadmap, please connect with us.
In the Art of the Possible podcast, Peter Dixon discusses how his journey from an engineer to Chief Creative Officer helped him discover the importance of branding through art. By using the art of the possible, companies can create meaningful customer experiences.
Listen here to learn how brands can use the art of the possible to create meaningful customer experiences.
Branded Customer Experience: Three Steps to Higher Impact
The right positioning, experience principles and design parameters reinforce what is unique about your brand.
Companies have become hyper-focused on delivering frictionless customer experiences, often stripped down to the simplest elements, that brand identity has become an afterthought. With many brands using the same technology platforms and focused on the same goals of “ease” and “speed,” the experiences often begin to fade into a sea of sameness. Too often, the three clicks customers used to book a luxurious escape to a high-end resort, feels exactly the same as that of an overnight at a roadside motel.
Branded experiences remind consumers why they prefer some brands over others and reinforce unique company positioning while encouraging ongoing brand loyalty. Yes, they should be streamlined and seamless. But simple doesn’t have to mean bland. When everyone is offering speed and convenience, companies must find ways to be memorable. That’s because each customer experience, no matter what channel, is a valuable chance to gain relevance. When businesses offer experiences that feel generic, they miss opportunities to deepen connections with customers.
“Simple doesn’t have to mean bland.”
Some companies excel. No one thinks of Costco as just another supermarket – they remember all the times an enthusiastic employee has offered them a tasty free sample or satisfied their cranky toddler with a $1.50 hot dog. And who doesn’t love the way Disney’s magic band allows beloved park characters to know your child’s name without asking?
But when experiences are off-brand, they are destructive. Ask anyone who has recently flown an airline that promised safety but then crams passengers together or has shopped a fitness brand that focuses on self-care but shames larger body sizes.
Critical Connections for High-Impact Experiences
When companies produce unremarkable customer experiences, we typically find the same cause: marketing, product and experience don’t come together early enough. Instead, each group works in their individual silo and by the time they meet to “collaborate,” they’re already entrenched in less-than-ideal solutions. While all three teams are focused on customers, the internal dynamics need to align to provide more clarity on the role each plays.
To be effective, companies need to spell out:
Brand positioning: The brand strategy is the foundation of customer experience. It is what encircles every aspect of how customers meet your brand. Brand positioning delineates a brand’s purpose, promise and principles and should be internalized by employees and resonate with customers.
Experience principles: Overseen by the experience team, these carefully developed standards explain how a company delivers its brand through user experiences and categories of interactions. Experience principles are inspired by brand principles and act as a filter for what differentiates the branded customer experience from its competitors. They guide the team as they develop experience concepts and signature brand moments.
Design parameters: These are the nitty-gritty details that ensure experiences are both helpful to customers and offer genuine moments of brand connection. They guide audience-specific touchpoints, such as products, channels and service. They reflect the brand and experience at the most precise moments, like when a Chick-Fil-A employee says, “My pleasure” instead of “You’re welcome.”
These three components make up the tenets of success. When teams use them to develop projects they are no longer just functional moments —they become branded building blocks that drive emotional responses from consumers. Each parameter clicks into a growing universe of interactions, deliberately reinforcing the brand’s relevance in people’s lives.
3 Tenets of Branded Experience Design
The Three-Step Secret to Powerful Customer Experiences
There are three moves organizations can make to immediately enrich customer experiences.
Come to a High-Level Agreement on the Value of Branded Experiences: Once companies understand that these are a critical component of brand relevance, it’s easier to break down silos. Organizations can avoid tensions and increase productivity when their goal — to create memorable moments of engagement — is aligned from the beginning.
Infuse Brand Strategy in Each Step: It’s important to make the distinction that brand is not more valuable than customer experience. Though brand positioning should be considered at every level of decision-making, encouraging brand police is also not the answer. To do this, the brand team must work harder to distill and communicate a positioning strategy that is most helpful to the experience and product teams. They should also check in with one another early and often, to make sure brand identity isn’t compromised.
Prioritize the Branded Moments That Matter Most: In an ideal world, there would be enough time and money to make every touchpoint perfect. But for most companies, certain moments matter more. Using the experience principles and journey maps will illuminate areas where your brand can best delight customers and differentiate itself from that sea of sameness.
By identifying these areas, teams can focus on what we call signature moments. Signature moments are proof points for customers, embodying the brand’s promise. They aim to elicit specific, positive emotions that relate to the brand’s positioning. Signature moments deepen the relationship with customers, reminding them of what the brand stands for and why they’ve made the right choice. Whether it’s Spotify’s Year in Review, Nike’s self-driven in-store digital exploration or BMW’s driver experiences (including on-ice training in Austria), these connect with customers in ways that are much larger than a single transaction.
Companies need to bring brand, product and experience teams together early on to create branded customer experiences that stand out in a sea of sameness. Not only does early collaboration result in powerful signature moments, but it also paves the way for a smoother experience evolution as market needs and consumer expectations remain ever-changing.
Looking for ways to help your organization create branded customer experiences that lead to growth? Contact our team today.
To Transform Digital Selling, Must Sales & Marketing Converge?
Despite historical differences, sales and marketing teams now see that more collaboration equals more revenue.
In our 2020 State of Digital Selling global research report, we found a consistent theme: the more in sync sales and marketing was, the better the outcome for sales, in terms of revenue, customer satisfaction and other metrics. That, and the tremendous growth of executives managing both functions—LinkedIn has identified the Chief Revenue Officer as the fastest-growing C-Suite role—has led to an emphasis on studying this convergence as part of my research on the digital transformation of sales. In this post, I’ll look at the impact of this convergence, which was discussed in my recent webinar with our research director, Omar Akhtar.
Convergence or Collaboration?
Convergence of sales and marketing today is embodied by the rise of new C-suite leaders, often with the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) title, who manage both sales and marketing—often with a new combined Revenue Operations team supporting both. What is the line between convergence and collaboration? It’s undoubtedly possible for these teams to align and collaborate so well that they could appear converged and achieve the same benefits. A question my research will answer this year is: what points of convergence or collaboration are required to digitally transform sales?
Clearly, the trend is in favor of convergence as shown by research indicating the CRO title is the fastest growing in the C-suite. What benefits are CEOs seeking with convergence?
An important benefit was a clear finding in my recent report which found the high performance of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Account-Based Selling (ABS). One factor we evaluated was the type of digital sales model employed, in terms of scale as measured by the size of the deal, lead time and level of collaboration employed. Our research found that high-touch, high-value, long lead-time sales that rely on a well-coordinated team and unique sales planning with marketing paid off well. Top performers (represented in the purple bars in the chart below) follow this model, and it was even the most frequent model among average performers as well (shown by the index in blue).
The benefits of collaboration are high. Consider the enormous investment marketing teams have made in technology, data, and skills development. Much of that investment can be leveraged by sales to digitize selling. By sharing the same data, enablement tools and customer experience platforms, costs can be reduced, and effectiveness increased, as near-real-time decisions can be used to nurture leads and provide the intelligence needed to up-sell, cross-sell and re-sell.
Barriers Are Deep-Rooted
Too many times, sellers and marketers don’t see eye-to-eye. In a recent conversation with a marketing leader, we discussed whether this is a left-brain/right-brain issue: marketers being more analytical and sales being more relationship and instinct-driven. Yes, these are broad generalizations, but they hold in my experience too. This impacts trust. Sales’ digital transformation will rely on new levels of trust among sales teams for the data and tools they use to navigate digital selling. This trust is lacking among the average digital seller, but high among top performers. For example, when we asked sellers if they trusted marketing’s data, 61% reported that they don’t—they want their own.
Perhaps the most fundamental challenge is misaligned priorities. In our recent 2020 State of Digital Marketing report, we found that marketing deprioritized sales-focused efforts, such as creating more sales qualified leads to buyers, supporting sales team productivity and growing e-commerce.
“An equal partnership in the form of an executive steering committee—or through CRO convergence—can address these barriers.”
Building trust is essential to sales’ transformation: if, as I believe, sales needs marketing’s help to digitally transform, we must tackle cultural mindsets and increase alignment focus. It may not be easy for sales leaders to accept marketing’s help given the risk of marketing dominating sales’ digital transformation, at the expense of what makes sales different from marketing. An equal partnership in the form of an executive steering committee—or through CRO convergence—can address these barriers.
What It Means & What You Can Do
The place to start is to look at the key touchpoints between sales and marketing that represent hand-offs, which tend to be problematic. The table below shows what I believe to be those key areas and the relative digital maturity of marketing and sales. As you can see, marketing and sales are complementary:
Planning. Much of planning integration is solved when sales and marketing collaborate through ABM/ABS. I’ve spoken with one large manufacturing business that plans GTM strategy holistically: team members from marketing, sales and service create a strategy through carefully structured workshops, spanning up to 5 days together working as a team. This not only ensures alignment, but time together can bridge cultural barriers.
Content. The content touchpoint includes selling assets, like playbooks, scripts and content that nurture leads to conversion. This area is most often led by marketing, but I continue to hear sales complain about the content they’re asked to share: it may not be easily personalized for the buyer, or the seller may not know how to position it for the prospect’s unique needs. Often training is the heart of the issue, but part of the root cause is a misalignment in strategy and insights. Sales need to be much more involved in content strategy and learn the tools necessary to use and measure content effectiveness.
Lead Management. Best next moves during lead nurturing are important in digital selling, because of the near real-time response that must be coordinated between sales and marketing. For example, after a lead downloads a white paper provided by marketing, what shared customer intelligence signals the best next step for sales? I’m also questioning whether lead management belongs in a digitally transformed sales organization that can do its own prospecting. As sales become increasingly comfortable with automation and data, the definition of a “marketing qualified lead” and “sales qualified lead” will surely evolve.
Data. My digital sales research has shown that top performers align performance metrics between sales and marketing, such as customer satisfaction, revenue goals, etc. In fact, there was a 34% spread in digital selling maturity between the index and top performers when KPIs, incentives and compensation were aligned between teams. But I also found that sales don’t necessarily trust marketing’s data—which brings us back to the cultural issues that must be addressed. The solution is also found in last year’s 2020 State of Digital Selling report: top performers collaborate with marketing on both a data architecture and technology stack roadmap to keep aligned—much more so than the index of average performers.
Technology. Technology touchpoints are dual: internally, represented by sales and marketing enablement (e.g., CRM, SFA, etc.), and externally, customer-facing digital experiences, such as websites, apps and social media. Marketing is leading CX work today, but as sales become more digital, they need to be part of a highly collaborative process with marketing and service teams to create a seamless customer experience that crosses their functions.
Ongoing Teamwork. Customer experience worries for the sales team don’t stop after the sale. Some of the most integrated sales and marketing teams work within a growing part of the economy: Software as a Service or SaaS. For example, a salesperson who has sold a SaaS HR system needs to understand whether their customer is utilizing the system to its full potential. If the customer is underutilizing the system, they may have bought the wrong product; if they’re overutilizing the system, there’s an upsell opportunity. Even if your product isn’t SaaS-oriented, it helps a lot to think of it that way by demanding marketing and service customer insights that may guide your sales strategy for an account.
Why fans love Amy’s powerful and clear purpose, consistent quality and commitment to yummy innovation.
In a year full of disruptions, the latest Prophet Brand Relevance Index® (BRI) reflects the many ways U.S. consumers changed their relationship with brands. Amy’s Kitchen is a stand-out example of the power of brand relevance: Last year it became so beloved on a national scale, that many consumers consider it to be more indispensable than larger names including Nintendo, Trader Joe’s and Tesla.
“When people craved healthy choices, honesty and companies that stood for something more, Amy’s soared, acing many components of our Index, allowing it to not only make our list for the first time but also land the #21 spot,” says Scott Davis, Prophet’s chief growth officer.
Prophet’s research measures how well brands perform on four key drivers of brand relevance. First, the brand must be customer-obsessed, demonstrating empathy and offering compelling solutions. Next, it must be ruthlessly pragmatic, showing up for consumers when and where it’s needed. Third, it is required to demonstrate that it is pervasively innovative, finding creative solutions to adapt to this disrupted environment. And finally, it needs to be distinctively inspired, with a brand purpose that connects to consumers in ways that are both current and meaningful.
Amy’s Kitchen didn’t develop this relevance by accident. Here’s how it keeps growing its hungry customer base.
Making People Happy
A good meal makes most people smile, and amid pandemic fears, it makes sense that Amy’s wholesome meals would score well. But its high marks on our “Makes me happy” attribute reflects far beyond its fantastic General Tso’s Bowl.
Amy’s is a feel-good brand, and it emphasizes its wholesome roots in many ways. The Petaluma, California-based company understands that customers intensely value where their food comes from, both in terms of organic sourcing of ingredients and the companies that put it all together. “We are still family-owned and have always been committed to quality organic and vegetarian ingredients,” says Andy Berliner, Amy’s Founder and CEO. “Because we are independent, we can put the needs of our consumers first, and focus on making a positive impact, without cutting corners along the way.”
But there’s a core yumminess factor too. In a year where comfort food meant so much more, Amy’s entrees – soups, burritos and that ever-popular Chili Mac –soothed people. Treating yourself to a quick and healthy single-serve meal became an important form of self-care.
Quality Customers Count on
One of Amy’s best scores came in “Lives up to its promises,” where it ranks within the Top 10.
Amy’s team isn’t surprised by that. It carefully cultivates consumer trust in its chief promise – to use high-quality organic ingredients that are responsibly sourced, and carefully prepared and cooked for best taste. Its consumers, who are environmentally aware, health-conscious, savvy label-readers reward the brand with loyalty and repeat purchases. And last year, Amy’s won over many new fans, as well, many of whom got a taste, enjoyed it so much, they continued to return for more.
“Amy’s is a company not just focused on the bottom line but using its business as force for good.”
The “promises” attribute falls under our umbrella of ruthless pragmatism. However, Amy’s also outperforms on two other attributes here: “Makes my life easier” and “Delivers a consistent experience.” While these have been true of the brand since its 1987 launch, it took on new importance over the last year. Stressed-out parents desperately needed all the convenience they could find. And during a time when nothing seemed reliable, a frozen pizza that consistently satisfied the whole family meant even more.
Cooking up New Ideas
Pervasive innovation is another brand relevance driver, and Amy’s excels here too.
Amy’s relies on constant experimentation and its new offers impact the way customers see the brand. Gluten-free, vegan and dairy-free options all reflect changing dietary preferences. And while it’s long been vegetarian, Amy’s food offerings took on new resonance as consumers sought out more plant-based options.
The pandemic taught the company a lot about its innovative muscle. As with many brands, supply chain issues became a problem, making it difficult to get products into freezer cases. And since Amy’s assembles many meals by hand rather than automation, social-distancing practices required an overhaul of production processes to find safe ways to stretch pizza dough and roll burritos in its kitchens.
Stand for Something Bigger
Finally, where Amy’s shines brightest is in its purpose, an attribute we measure as a brand’s ability to distinctively inspire. When ranked by “Has a set of beliefs and values that align with my own,” it earned the #6 spot, outscoring companies like Patagonia and LEGO.
Amy’s purpose, “to make it easy and enjoyable for everyone to eat well,” rings true to its customers and functions as the company’s North Star. “It is the lens we use for all our business decisions,” says Berliner.
Amy’s demonstrates that commitment by improving the accessibility and equitability of organic agriculture, and by making meals that cater to a variety of dietary needs and restrictions, like gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan. The company is also committed to decreasing food waste and improving operations to ultimately “heal the planet” through its business.
Consumers will soon recognize those values expressed even more explicitly. Amy’s just achieved coveted B Corp status, awarded only to companies following the highest social and environmental performance standards. The B Corp seal signifies to consumers that Amy’s is a company not just focused on the bottom line but using its business as a force for good.
“It’s apparent that consumers are gravitating towards authentic, purpose-led brands more than ever,” says Davis. “As an early adapter, Amy’s Kitchen is truly built around a purpose that has defined its success for decades. Standing for something it believes in and staying true to its roots undoubtedly helped land it in this year’s Brand Relevance Index®. As Amy’s grows its loyal customer base, expect to see new and exciting things from this increasingly relevant brand.”
Get in touch today to learn more about how to build brand relevance to drive growth.
Prophet: The Indispensable Ally to Business Leaders
Uncommon growth requires purpose-led strategies, blending creativity, data and technology.
We strive to be an indispensable ally to our clients in their growth journeys, leaders who aspire to build brands, transform businesses and move society. This year has challenged us, as never before, to bring that purpose to life in new and innovative ways.
Many of our clients and employees came of age when the best solutions simply meant more sales and a stronger bottom line. Anything that increased a company’s return to shareholders counted as excellence. While the move to purpose-led growth and multi-stakeholder capitalism had already begun shifting businesses away from that narrow vein of thinking, the past year blew it up entirely.
What Does it Look Like to Have Prophet as Your Growth Partner?
Prophet draws on expertise around the world, with 600+ employees in 15 offices. And we work with a single global P&L that enables us to put a just-the-right expert in each client situation, whether our teammate is based in Austin, Hong Kong or Berlin.
From the ground up, we built Prophet to be your growth partner, driving high-impact digital transformation.
And all this consistently has helped us form enduring bonds with our clients. As Dr. Michael K. Stern, President and Chief Operating Officer, Climate at Monsanto, put it: “The Prophet team integrates themselves with the client – they felt like a part of the team and were completely aligned with what [the team] was trying to do.”
Our clients tell us we are responsive, supportive and thorough—a trusted extension of their teams.
These long-term relationships come from closely partnering with our clients, side-by-side, especially when the right path is the riskier one. Our Propheteers carefully cultivate these connections, blending creativity, data and technology in new ways to help our clients meet their growth goals.
Today, we know that is not enough.
Creating Enduring Bonds with Our Clients & Teams
“Indispensable” doesn’t mean the same thing it did a year ago and setting effective growth agendas can’t be the only goal. We build relevance–the kind that can only come from genuine purpose and empathy. That means we stand for companies that stand for something–and we’re here to push, prod and lead our clients to these new avenues of opportunity. What doors are opening in this changing environment? And how can we help clients find these purpose-driven transformations, nourished by digital and organizational change?
Our People Lead the Charge
This year, our unique team of thinkers, doers and makers increasingly challenged each other to share their entire perspective, including what it means to be gay, Black, immigrant or female. Those identities have always been there. But as we learn to be better allies to each other, the entirety of employees’ experience is helping us think more broadly and feel more deeply. We’re learning to be more empathic, compassionate and open-minded. Unsurprisingly, that’s allowing us to create even better solutions.
We’ve always tried to take our work seriously, but not ourselves. Our teams are recommitting to making life at Prophet positive, honest and supportive, bringing their most authentic selves to each experience. We’re not just indispensable allies to our clients. We’re indispensable allies to our colleagues, too. As much as we’re about respect, productivity and hard work, we’re also fans of irreverence, lightness and sincere pep talks. We’re here to enjoy the ride–and we expect our clients will, too.
Four Ways Social Programs Yield Employee Engagement
Social efforts boost retention, aid in recruiting and increase energy and engagement at work.
Employees need a higher purpose in today’s world. Increasing sales and profits and getting a paycheck are not enough. Even building great products or delivering exemplary service may not give an adequate answer to the “Why?” question employees ask when they sit down to do their work. Having an authentic, substantive set of social programs and compelling social purpose can be an answer for business leaders seeking to motivate and engage their employees.
Employees, including executives, want their jobs to have meaning in their professional lives. Employees motivated by a social purpose will be more likely to join a firm, turn their back on opportunities to leave the firm, and work effectively and enthusiastically toward the firm’s goals. They will be engaged.
Consider social programs like Lifebuoy’s “Help a Child Reach 5,” Dove’s Self-Esteem Project, Barclays’ Digital Eagles or Salesforce’s 1-1-1 Philanthropic Model. They are not about a commercial offering. These firms are no longer in business solely to deliver functional benefits and provide stockholders and others with the benefits that flow from generating sales and making profits. They now have a social purpose with substance. And that changes their relationship with employees in four ways.
Four Reasons Why Social Programs Will Help Engage Employees
1. Garners brand respect, even inspiration
One driver of employee engagement is simply to garner an employee’s respect and admiration for the firm’s brand. Take Lifebuoy and its “Help a Child Reach 5” program: it aims to reduce the number of kids that die from contaminated water by changing hand-washing habits using multiple initiatives including in-school programs. If an employee respects such a program because of its purpose, that respect will be transferred to the firm behind it. The ultimate connection will come when a social program brand not only impresses but inspires and this feeling of inspiration becomes embedded in the relationship an employee has with his or her employer.
2. Produces self-expressive benefits
The values and priorities of employees are not communicated by telling people but by the people they chose to associate with, the activities they pursue and, most importantly, the firm they work for. “Where do you work?” and “What do you do?” are common “get to know you” questions. Working for a firm that has developed social programs that are creative and impactful will reflect on the employee. They will represent his or her values and priorities. For example, one role of Dove’s Self-Esteem Program is to provide self-expressive benefits to the Unilever workforce. They are proud to represent a program that empowers self-confidence in young girls and to be a part of a firm that is willing to make such a program successful.
3. Creates opportunities for involvement
To address a trust crisis in 2011, Barclays empowered employees to develop social programs. A group of 17 employees started the Digital Eagles to create a set of social programs to teach the public about thriving in the digital world. Among its programs are informal “Tea and Teach” sessions for digital skill-building and Digital Wings, an online series of courses that advanced people from newbies to experts. The effort grew to involve over 17,000 employees. The result was a strong sense of community and an enhanced employee experience that is based on shared involvement in a program in which there is both individual and collective pride.
4. Provides natural talking points
What do employees talk about when they get asked about their job especially when the firm is unknown or when there has been negative publicity? How do they describe their firm? Social programs give employees a vehicle to describe an organization they are proud of because of its values, priorities and ability to make the world a better place. While talking about offerings and operations can be dull and uninspiring, a social program can be enlightening and perhaps intriguing. Of course, that which makes an employee’s firm more interesting and appealing will reflect positively on him or her and could even lead to business opportunities. Think of Salesforce’s unique 1-1-1 commitment and challenge, which invites companies to join them in committing 1% of employees’ work time to volunteer, donating 1% of their product to people in need and giving 1% of their equity to a nonprofit. It’s been accepted by some 10,000 firms, providing a meaningful way for employees to share the core values of Salesforce.
“Employees motivated by a social purpose will be more likely to join a firm, turn their back on opportunities to leave the firm, and work effectively and enthusiastically toward the firm’s goals. They will be engaged.”
If you’re a business leader hoping to make an impact on the world today, you’ll need your employees to believe in your organization’s purpose. In Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model, the firm’s DNA, which is comprised of purpose, brand and values, is at the center of employee engagement strategies, and it’s going to be even more powerful when a social program is a part of the business model.
Want to Make Your Strategy Stick? Make it a Behavior
Lofty directives don’t help. Specific behaviors do, making it easier for employees to follow through.
Leaders need to consider a broader set of actions, not only to make their strategies more effective but to help better engage employees too.
As a leader, you are defining a new set of priorities and getting ready to roll them out to your organization. The strategy is rooted in research, thoughtfully shaped and ready to take off. Or, you’re responding to the quick shifts of the current environment – finding ways to keep your employees safe while delivering value in new ways for customers. But what do you really need to make these strategies stick?
In his book, Simplicity, Bill Jensen outlines what his extensive research revealed about the questions employees ask when given an assignment. Of course, questions like “What exactly do you want me to do?” “What does it have to do with my job?” “How will I be measured?” and “What’s in it for me?” are standard. However, the most important question employees have may surprise you: “What tools and resources are available to me?”
In this period of rapid change – well-defined behaviors can be that employee engagement tool for your organization. While investments that require greater development take time to implement, clearly defined behaviors can inspire and guide transformation both within and beyond the pandemic. This doesn’t mean over-prescribing behaviors for every initiative, but rather linking a core set of guiding behaviors to priorities and making them actionable in daily contexts.
What makes for clearly defined employee behaviors? Behaviors should align to a business strategy or purpose, specific to individuals and teams and their roles. These behaviors should allow for flexibility and judgment while being measurable. Leadership behaviors can define ways to enable teams to live out company values. For example, they can specifically encourage adding a diversity of employee voices in key projects. Behaviors for frontline employees may include actions around service – opening the door for customers entering, or safety, wiping surfaces down after each interaction.
Think about your latest strategy and its objectives – how are you making it real for your organization and employees? What tools and resources are you equipping your teams to leverage? Specifically, what employee behaviors are you encouraging that reinforce said objectives?
“Behaviors should align to a business strategy or purpose, specific to individuals and teams and their roles.”
Prophet recently worked with a telecommunications provider committed to deepening relationships with customers. But in challenging settings like call centers where individuals have to solve issues quickly, “deepening relationships” would be far too broad of a directive. In partnership with the provider, Prophet helped define three core behaviors that employees could exhibit in any conversation. These behaviors weren’t mandatory scripts, rather a playbook to help make the strategy more concrete for the learner and measurable for the organization. We then applied these behaviors across various high-priority touchpoints to make them even stickier for the learner. Learners were highly engaged with the strategy, found the playbook very useful and are already putting it to use in their day-to-day.
And while organizations often think about defining behaviors for customer-facing employees, a clear set of behaviors can be critical for how employees work together. For example, in response to changing expectations of work from home during the pandemic, leadership at IBM defined a pledge on how to best support each other. The pledge doesn’t stop at generalizations – but rather gets incredibly specific. In a LinkedIn post, CEO Arvind Krishna elaborates on each pledge – taking “I pledge to be family sensitive” to the next level by defining “if [you] have to put a call on hold to handle a household issue, it is 100% OK.” Organizations around the globe are reinforcing the importance of creating better workplaces, but IBM has taken it to the next level by defining what better actually means.
Of course, behaviors require an ecosystem to stick – as we elaborate in our article Brand Behaviors Critical for Leaders, Managers and Employees. Organizations need to clarify the ambition for the behaviors, define the behaviors well, and then codify and connect them to the broader cultural ecosystem.
Once you have a clear set of behaviors, you need to, once again, consider what tools you’re offering to employees. As you roll out your behaviors program, consider a range of tools that can drive adoption and create strategies that stick.
Lower investment tools like internal resource hubs with scripts and guides, or huddle guides for coaches to encourage new behaviors.
Greater investments and tools including both live and asynchronous learning programs and realigned performance expectations
Full system changes and support such as built-in digital tools and AI tracking, which can enable more effective, real-time measurement and tracking
Strategies don’t just happen. And just as they require time to develop and refine, the same thoughtfulness should be put into making them real. Ask yourself “How should my team behave differently to deliver on this strategy?” and then answer the ever-important question “What tools will I make available?” Such employee engagement strategies and tactics are essential for every workplace – the organizations that invest in defining the right employee behaviors and supporting tools will be the ones who attract, engage and retain the best talent in the long term.
Do you need help defining which behavior changes could unlock business performance and increase your employee engagement? Reach out to our Organization & Culture practice today to hear how we are solving this challenge for clients just like you.
Expert Panel: Building Brand Relevance in China in the Era of Restlessness
How Colgate, COLMO, Alibaba and Vogue Business are navigating changing regional consumer sentiment.
Brand relevance is the most important element in determining the long-term success of a brand.
In his book, Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant, David Aaker, the “Father of Modern Branding,” describes his strategic theory on brand relevance for the first time. Aaker emphasizes: “Instead of promoting the superiority of the brand, consider framing a subcategory such that competitors are excluded or placed at a disadvantage. Ensuring that the subcategory wins is a route to brand growth.”
But as a brand marketer, are you sure of how to build and grow brand relevance in today’s rapidly changing business landscape?
In recent years, the China market, in particular, has proven to be especially “restless.” Growing capital sources coupled with hypergrowth e-commerce platforms have lowered the barriers to entry to an increasingly sophisticated and demanding consumer market. Brands must compete to capture consumers’ screentime and customer data through constant innovation, in terms of both products and marketing & sales tactics. But to win in the long-term under these conditions, brands must also focus on relevance now more than ever.
“Instead of promoting the superiority of the brand, consider framing a subcategory such that competitors are excluded or placed at a disadvantage. Ensuring that the subcategory wins is a route to brand growth.”
David Aaker
With the launch of the 2021 Prophet Brand Relevance Index®, we invited four senior experts in consumer brands, e-commerce, and media to sit down with Tom Zhang, senior engagement manager at Prophet. Together they discussed how to effectively establish brand relevance in China, along with key trends, opportunities, and challenges they anticipate.
Expert Panel：
These four experts shared thoughtful perspectives on brand building in the China market. Despite the diversity in their thinking and experience, we found some common themes.
Three Core Principles for Brand Marketers Seeking to Drive Relevance
1. A Customer-Centric Approach to Meet Multi-Layered Needs
There’s no question that a brand must be clear about its target consumers as well as their needs and preferences. However, the new generation of consumers is increasingly complex. Information channels are highly fragmented leading to content that is more diverse. The result is a multitude of consumer preferences and values that translates into more nuanced and multi-layered needs. Cenran Hu, Strategy Director at Tmall Fashion, who has been closely tracking the evolution of consumer trends from the platform side, pointed out:
“Chinese consumers are very open to new things, but they can also be quite uncompromising. They have wants, needs and interests. Therefore, brands must take into account these many layers and continually find ways to surprise and delight them.”
— Cenran Hu, Strategy Director of Tmall Fashion (Alibaba Group)
Cenran also added that the high expectations of Chinese consumers mean that brands cannot become “one-trick ponies” and need to constantly create surprises. In this regard, Starbucks is a strong example, as it continues to boldly explore opportunities for product innovation and new digital experiences in the China market. Cenran gave the example of beverage brand Yuanqi Forest (元气森林). In less than 5 years, Yuanqi Forest has grown to become a sought-after 6 billion USD company. The success of Yuanqi Forest is undeniably linked to its ability to redefine its subcategory – sparkling water – from multiple dimensions, including a healthy lifestyle (0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories), unique taste and trendy design. Compared to traditional brands such as Perrier, Yuanqi Forest is more in line with Chinese consumers’ demand for differentiated products that meet multi-layered needs.
Yuanqi Forest
Colgate’s Core Brands Marketing Director, Vicky, shares these same views. Colgate believes that increasingly sophisticated young Chinese consumers will force brands to dig deep into pain points to create relevance. A prototypical example is the launch of Colgate’s Miracle Repair toothpaste, which is made with concentrated amino acids. The product was specifically designed to meet the deeper oral care needs of young consumers (anti-premature-aging) as well as their expectations for new offerings.
“Brands must provide tangible benefits to solve practical problems and pain points in consumers’ lives. At the same time, they must inspire when it comes to appearance, design, and experience so that consumers are willing to share and recommend.”
— Vicky Hu, Marketing Director, China Brand Marketing, Core Brands of Colgate China
2. Balancing Functional & Emotional to Capture the Minds & Hearts
Functional benefits can help brands quickly seize subcategories, and emotional resonance can help them further secure their place in the hearts of consumers.
In 2018, Midea Group launched its AI-powered home appliance premium sub-brand COLMO, with a clearly defined brand essence – “Simply Extraordinary.” Based on this positioning, the name, visual identity and experience all highlight the concept of “keep climbing,” allowing the brand to have an emotional connection with the target consumer. Arlen, Director of Brand Marketing at COLMO, noted:
“When a brand enters a subcategory, it must achieve a balance between functional and emotional values. Even if the brand defines a new functional subcategory, it must lay the groundwork for emotional resonance in order to establish a higher degree of brand relevance.”
Denni, Senior Editor at Vogue Business, shared her observations on the fashion industry. Denni believes that in addition to distinctive styles, fashion brands also need to amplify the story behind the design (e.g., designer crossovers, sustainability). Moreover, offline retail and brand experiences play a crucial role in creating emotional connections.
“Brands need to ‘iconize’ their own styles and ideas to lead the market, creating communities like missionaries, thus inspiring consumers and creating deep resonance.”
— Denni Hu, Senior Editor, Vogue Business
3. Playing Offense & Defense in a Restless Era
To take advantage of growing e-commerce platforms and new sources of capital, countless new brands continue to emerge in the China market. For both emerging brands and mature brands, it is increasingly difficult to gain traction in a market that is fiercely competitive and constantly changing.
Today’s restless era and high-stakes environment require brand marketers to maintain both “courage” and “consistency.” While disrupting the status quo through trending hashtags, creative products and maximized traffic, it is also critical not to lose sight of the “core” of brand building. A clear and compelling positioning should serve as the North Star of marketing and innovation; only then can the brand maintain long-term relevance and build brand equity.
“Emerging brands need to be repeatedly refined in order to establish a positioning that is both clear and malleable. Consumers need constant surprises. However, if the core of the brand is not strong, the initial surprises will eventually be short-lived.”
— Cenran Hu, Strategy Director of Tmall Fashion (Alibaba Group)
“In today’s world, to build a strong brand, you must balance ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ tactics – not only leveraging traffic and hot-selling products, but also continuously strengthening the brand ‘moat.’ Companies with multiple brands should proactively find ways to adjust their brand and product mix according to market segments and industry trends, define the role of each brand, and balance sales maximization and brand development.”
— Vicky Hu, Marketing Director, China Brand Marketing, Core Brands of Colgate China
We are delighted to see emerging brands in the China market leveraging e-commerce and social media are creating many new spaces for brands to play in. But as mentioned above, despite the gains from the “speeding up” of traffic and capital, it is particularly important for brands to “slow down.” Brands must be guided by consumer needs, emotionally resonant and clearly positioned in order to ensure brand relevance.
After clarifying these core principles, how can companies effectively measure and improve brand relevance? To learn more about the application of these dimensions, download our 2021 Brand Relevance Index®.
4 Steps to Optimizing the Remote Employee Experience
It’s time to re-evaluate what works best–and what that means for recruitment, retention and profits.
Remote teams want a better employee experience. Where to start?
Getting work done remotely isn’t the issue. It’s getting it done well, in a way that’s best for the organization and most engaging for the virtual workforce.
Through our efforts in digital transformation, customer and employee experience and cultural change management, we’re discovering straightforward approaches that companies can implement quickly. And by focusing on increasing employee engagement and productivity, they are leading companies to more effective–and even transformational– solutions.
Learning the ropes of engaging a remote workforce
It goes without saying that the work-from-home trend was well underway before the pandemic began. Many companies have long allowed at least some employees to contribute remotely. These organizations are already enjoying long-term benefits. They recruit the best talent from all over the world, regardless of location. And they enjoy a higher retention rate, especially among Millennials and Gen Z workers, who crave a better work/life balance, shorter commutes and more affordable housing.
But with the global surge in home-based workers holding strong, it’s important for all companies to design the best remote employee experience. That means supporting the company’s purpose, culture and customers, as well as its people.
4 Steps to Optimizing the Remote Employee Experience
Step 1: Start by analyzing workflows
Smart companies are treating the evolved employee experience as an opportunity to accelerate digital transformation, digging into which internal workflows might remain virtual for the long-term, even as recommendations of social distancing begin to ease.
To continue to identify workflows that make the best fit, implement metrics for what’s working so far, measuring productivity and engagement in all departments.
Step 2: Create engagements that support the culture
Zapier, a global remote company that helps users integrate web applications, has been primarily remote since it started back in 2011. To increase the sense of collaboration, it hosts a weekly Design Club, a digital open house that allows anyone in the company to present work for feedback. Anything is fair game, including research plans, visual designs and new concepts from product teams.
Using a Design Club channel on Slack and a weekly Design Club video call, colleagues can sign up to receive asynchronous or real-time critiques from their peers and stakeholders. It fosters an inclusive culture of appreciating and leveraging diverse perspectives, giving people visibility into what others are working on. And best of all, it improves the quality of the work.
With a little effort, most companies could implement similar ideas in less than a week.
Step 3: Review tools and applications often
Workers have grown numb to the onerous burden of email. And while switching to remote work offers much more efficient options, like Slack, Teams and Zoom, they can be just as paralyzing if they’re poorly managed. Finding the right mix and balance of communications channels becomes even more critical for a remote workforce.
Pay close attention to what seems to be working, and what’s burying staff in pointless group alerts and notifications. In an interview, Matt Mullenwegg, founder of Automattic, which operates WordPress.com and a host of other properties, discussed the importance of trial-and-error in building a virtual company with 1,200 people around the world.
“Today we use an internal blogging system called P2 instead of email,” he tells Ben Thompson, author of the popular business strategy blog Stratechery. “We use Slack for real-time chats and things like Zoom for calls and meetings. But over the years, we’ve also developed just a lot of cultural things around how we use these tools.”
For example, with employees in multiple time zones, meetings in real-time become more difficult, so asynchronous options are essential.
Step 4: Keep weighing the long-term implications
What changes might remote work have on your business long term–in terms of recruitment, retention and profits?
Automaticc’s Mullenwegg often surprises people when he talks about the company’s considerable investment in employee travel. Because almost everyone is a remote worker, real-estate outlays are minimal. But it spends heavily on group meetings, bringing the entire company together at least once a year. And individual teams of up to 15 people meet more often. “There’s nothing, no technology, VR or otherwise, that has the same effect of breaking bread across the table or sharing a drink with someone, for building trust, for building communication, for getting to know someone,” he says.
“There’s no doubt that as companies adjust to the new normal, they must revisit the definition of their employee value proposition.”
For many companies, building for the future means getting past the question of whether employees will like working remotely. Not all will, just like some people hate open-floor office plans. The point is to quickly pick up on employee concerns about efficiency, productivity and engagement.
Try fostering models for continuous exploration of better ways of working remotely. Those might include a group of colleagues who have this as a side project, internal and external surveys to see what different teams and companies are doing, or a Slack channel where people share ideas.
It’s important to keep looking at new tools that are worth testing. For example, new video-conferencing platforms, such as Around, offer features like AI-driven background noise cancellation and facial focus.
Shockingly, many companies have stopped probing employee sentiment at this critical time. And if they are, they are often asking about process and technology, instead of the key question: “How is this working for you personally, and how can we make it better?” Tools like Glint, an employee-engagement platform, make this kind of pulse-checking easy.
There’s no doubt that as companies adjust to the new normal, they must revisit the definition of their employee value proposition. And as companies thread their way through the after current of the virus, , we don’t expect to see many overnight decisions. But we do believe this will be the most durable change wrought by the coronavirus and one that will benefit both employers and their employees.
The reality is that there are far more people who are underserved in their desire to work virtually than most employers realize. Many will fare better as remote team members. And as best practices continue to emerge both from digital pioneers and remote newbies, we see the best results for those who design the optimal remote employee experience. That means creating a continuous model for improvement, steadily looking for net new benefits and using the right tools for the right reasons.
Take command of the situation today, with these three simple steps:
Identify the workflows your teams indicate are best positioned for long-term success in a remote, virtual model
Provide the right digital tools to enable their work
Be flexible as needs change, requiring new tools and working methods
Continuously re-assess, finding new workflows to convert to remote teams or bring to more of a hybrid or dual model in the future. And don’t forget to consider implications for your broader employee value proposition.
Interested to learn more about how to improve the remote employee experience? Get in touch.
