Are Your Employees Ambassadors or Saboteurs?

Harris Interactive announced the launch of a groundbreaking research solution that identifies the linkage between employee attitudes and loyal customer behavior. The solution, called Employee Ambassadorship, allows companies to calculate current levels of employee commitment and provides actionable direction on how to better manage employees to become more committed and active brand ambassadors.

“Employee Ambassadorship improves customer experiences, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy, and in turn increases sales and profits,” said Stephan Sigaud, Group President of Harris Interactive Loyalty. Sigaud added, “It is often stated that the greatest asset of a company is its employees, and Harris Interactive has uncovered distinctly new ways for an organization to link, drive and leverage employee commitment to expand customer loyalty, business growth, brand equity and bottom-line performance—and this is revolutionary.”

Employee Ambassadorship, which is based on the globally validated Harris Interactive Commitment Model, is an innovative research approach that correlates employee perceptions and actions to profitable customer behavior. Complementing, and even augmenting traditional HR solutions, Employee Ambassadorship research can be combined with existing customer and employee loyalty solutions to provide companies comprehensive and actionable insights on the state of their employees’ attitudes and how those may be affecting customer behavior and ultimately the bottom line.

The Employee Ambassadorship solution identifies new categories and drivers of employee commitment, while it also links with the emotional and rational aspects of customer commitment.

These employee-focused commitment categories include:

– Employee ambassadors, the employees who are most committed to a brand. Ambassadors represent employees who are strongly committed to the company’s brand promise, the organization itself, and its customers. They also behave and communicate in a consistently positive manner toward the company, both inside and outside.

– Employee saboteurs, the employees who are the least committed to a brand. Saboteurs are active and frequently vocal detractors about the organization itself, its culture and policies, and its products and services. These individuals are negative advocates, communicating their low opinions and unfavorable perspectives both to peers inside the company and to customers, and others, outside the company.

“In any group of employees, whether it’s a product group or a branch office, there will be differing levels of commitment to a brand, its value proposition and its customers. If the employees are saboteurs, they will actively work against your business goals. However, if employees are ambassadors, they will better service your customers,” said Michael Lowenstein, Vice President and Senior Consultant at Harris Interactive Loyalty. “The Employee Ambassadorship solution helps companies understand where the saboteurs lurk, the ambassadors flourish, and how to encourage employees in the middle of the commitment spectrum to become ambassadors.”

Harris Interactive Loyalty, the specialized loyalty research practice within Harris Interactive, will offer the solution alongside its other research solutions including customer satisfaction and loyalty studies, customer touchpoint management, customer and channel partner loyalty management, customer churn and winback, and experience management.

For more information at http://www.harrisinteractive.com