Every business, large or small can use brand advocates – those customers who trumpet the businesses praise and express their delightful experiences with the company to others. But it’s also vital that a company’s leadership learn to nurture that same attitude among its employees. The benefits of building that kind of culture among a working team can be incredible.
On this episode of Social Business Engine Bernie chats with Andy Malinoski, Manager of Corporation Communications and Government Relations at Frontier Communications. He shares how Frontier Communications, a U.S. provider of residential and commercial broadband, video voice, wireless internet data access and bundled service offerings, is empowering employees to be brand ambassadors in the face of 4 unique types of business challenges.
Employees can be the best advocates your brand has if you help them do it
The value of an ecstatic customer can’t be underestimated – those are the people who make the business because they happily tell their family and friends about the great experience and feeling they have from dealing with the company. Take that thought and apply it to the interaction customers have with front-line employees of the company and you can easily see why those team members need to be brand advocates par excellence.
What are you doing to help your customer-facing employees deal with customer issues and complaints effectively and in a way that delights your customers in spite of the problem? Malinoski describes how the Frontier Communications team is equipped with the information needed to answer customer questions, head off problems before they escalate, and disseminate answers to common questions via social media – all for the sake of creating the happy, loyal customers every business wants and needs.
Operational hiccups are a great opportunity for employee brand advocates to calm the waters
Many times when things go wrong with a company’s services or systems, the biggest problem both customers and the business in question have is communication.
Here’s the reality: Customers are usually OK with temporary glitches or outages in service because they know technology is not foolproof. But they need to know what’s going on in order to maintain that calm demeanor.
Malinoski discusses some of the ways the leadership at Frontier has worked to engage employees as part of the response team to system outages or issues. The company has dedicated employees who provide social media content for everyone to use to inform their customers, clear the air, and help everyone rest easy.
Do you struggle finding and recruiting top talent? Enlisting employees can be a powerful approach
When it comes to building an all-star team of employees – from the C-suite all the way to the entry-level position – it’s powerful to remember that high-quality people usually run with high-quality people. That means equipping your employees to be recruiters on your behalf can enable you to find the people you’re looking for, faster.
Malinoski highlights the approach the Frontier Communications team takes to recruiting, particularly as it relates to making existing team members advocates for the company as they relate to those in their networks.
Featured on This Episode
Outline of This Episode
- [1:59] Andy’s role is to favorably connect those in media, politics, etc. with his company
- [3:54] Operational challenges that impact customers are a great opportunity for employee advocacy
- [6:50] Systems the Frontier team uses to communicate to employees about issues needing social media advocacy
- [9:50] Partnerships with other companies to empower customers to be more successful and effective
- [13:19] Creating the tools employees need to educate themselves to meet customer needs and truly be advocates
- [16:38] How and what Frontier is curating for employees to share as brand advocates
- [18:35] Recruiting challenges and how employee advocacy helps find quality people
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This episode is sponsored by Lithium Technologies.