Workplace marketing: A 1990s business imperative

JULIET WILLIAMS Strategic Management Resources Ltd. U.K.

Workplace Marketing: A 1990s Business Imperative

In 1994 we have en- tered a brave new world, a world be- seeching us to shake off the shackles of mediocrity and take the opportunities that can only come with the birth of a new market economy. We have the chance to make a new beginning, to show our customers, our sup- pliers, our competitors, and our people that we

know how to secure confidence, loyalty, and refer- ral, and how to make the promises of quality and service come alive for everyone with whom our companies come into contact.

But, if our collective purpose is to throw off the mantle of mediocrity and become the aspiration, the exemplar, why will one succeed where another fails? What does i t take to gain the advantage that characterizes the undisputed market leader, the customer’s inevitable choice?

The answer is now abundantly clear and over- looked by most of us for its utter simplicity. You,

The text of this article is rdken from a presentation given at New Zedland National Marketing Conference in Auckland, May 1994. The author coil- tinues to present its essential message at various professional events. Workplace Marketing is an established trademark of Strategic Management Resources Ltd. registered in the U.K.

in common with thousands of companies, may be surprised to learn that up to 40% of the potential return on your marketing spend is lost by the failure of your staff to live up to the promises you make to your customers. Brand images, perceptions, and values are unwittingly undermined and eroded ev- eryday at every point of contact along the customer interface. “Workplace marketing” takes on the challenge and indulges in a form of matchmaking that meets customer expectation with employee motivation, and causes the workforce to volunteer the quality and service that ensure customer satisfaction. Workplace marketing’s task is to equip every last employee with not only the competence but the commitment to volunteer what we cannot spec- ify, but leaves the customer in no doubt that he has found his preferred supplier.

Unity, motivation, and competitiveness are the war cries of every organization bent on conquering our brave new world, but we can perhaps be for- given for feeling restrained by massive shifts in the geopolitical landscape and the intensified competition brought about by customer promiscuity and accelerating technological change. We are not alone in failing to capitalize on the opportunities of a new and evolving market economy. I contend that we should no longer hide within the recesses of reces- sion, but emerge refreshed to harness the power of perpetual change.

Change now affects every organization, large and small. People welcome it . People resist it. The business challenge has become to absorb and man-

0 1994 John Wiley bi Sons, Inc. and Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. CCC 0892-0591/94/04066- 12

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age the conflicts of change and reemerge as a co- hesive operation bent upon capturing the imagi- nation of the marketplace.

Change has intensified both complacency and competition but, above all, has raised the expectations of employee and customer alike. Failure to live up to promises of quality and service has denied advertisers of lasting loyalty, and failure to live up to promises of purposeful partnership has left em- ployers with destructive and demotivated workforces. Cheating is no longer competing; all are aware of the changed legislative, competitive, and social frameworks within which companies exist.

The business climate may be complex, customers promiscuous and employment a privilege, but we cannot hope to survive into the next generation unless t h e workplace, whether production line or front office, warehouse or shop counter, finds the employee with the commitment, competence, enthu- siasm, and volunteerism that provide his or her employer with true and sustainable competitive advantage. After all, anyone can pack up their purchases and say, “Have a nice day.” Motivation means much more than that. Take the college that had inter- viewed candidates for a course and then sent ac- ceptance letters to the rejects and rejection slips to those they had chosen to accept. Instead of owning up to the mistake, the administrators chose to let the error go and guess what: That year’s intake out- performed the previous four years. Personal motivation has since become a critical criterion within the selection process.

When you invited me to join you here today I’m sure that the last thing you expected was a fairy tale. Well, who’s in for a big surprise! But we aren’t going down to the woods today and the big surprise isn’t the teddy bears’ picnic, although I did get a teddy to help me o u t with an impromptu session at the Direct Marketing Fair in London a few weeks ago. No, we are going to d o better than that and join Alice in Wonderland: The wonderland of the workplace where business success is both born and made, and where courage and creativity are re- warded by consistency and competitiveness.

GO ASK ALICE

Alice’s adventures are full of emotions and promises, sensitivity and disappointment, satisfaction and

frustration, wisdom and regret, energy and opportunity. Alice might just as well have been wandering through any one of thousands of companies talking to staff at random and absorbing the rarefied and dispirited atmosphere of a multitude of different departments and divisions.

Images and perceptions fed to customers by the marketing department (however large or small that may be) often bear little or no resemblance to the realities of company motivation and culture. Worse, the customer is drawn to the advertiser by an ex- pectant compulsion that cannot be seriously matched by the morale and motivations of the staff in whose hands the quality of customer relationships lie.

The internal marketplace is virgin territory, workplace marketing is a business’s ultimate weapon, it treats the internal marketplace with the same respect as its marketing peers seek to offer externally. It shares business information, marketing’s messages, corporate confidences, challenges, opportunities, and threats throughout the organization to create a partnership between the company and its people that can do no other than differentiate i t from its competitors. The objectives are twofold: 1) to engender in its staff the pride that befits a preferred employer; and 2 ) to create for its customers the quality of service that must be expected from a preferred supplier. Workplace marketing’s purpose is simply to ensure that every customer experience is as an intimate encounter between old friends.

Nine times out of 10 it isn’t, and with trepidation we embark o n a rocky road that takes us from encounter to intimacy in a series of painful but very rewarding steps. If you follow fairy tale Alice down the rabbit hole and stay with her until she reaches the courtroom where truth will out and cheating collapses like a pack of cards, you have the case for workplace marketing. Fantasy though Alice’s experiences may have been, they have much to teach us in the real world. We now know that up to 40% of the potential return on marketing’s spend is lost as employees find themselves unable or unwilling to deliver to customer expectation. Nonetheless, we also know that the situation cannot be rectified until management accepts the blame for failing to recognize the critical importance of valuing the organization as a brand and marketing it to its people. This is our rabbit hole: The credibility gap where a

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lack of employee competence and commitment undermines every traditional investment in customer service, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Alice will assist us in exposing many of the non- senses of modern day marketing when looked at through the eyes of the workforce called upon to deliver its promises. Alice and her sister represent our organizations and, if you remember, t h e story begins when Alice gets,

very tired of sitting by her sister on the river bank and of having nothing to do. (p. 1 ) ’

For us, Alice’s sister represents marketing’s con- ventions, content in her own occupation of a peace- ful, sunny summer’s afternoon and unconcerned for the needs of the companion upon whom her peace relies. Alice is the organization’s internal face. Alice had

once or twice peeped into the book her sister was reading but it had no pictures or conversations in i t , “and what was the use of a book,” thought Alice, without pictures or conversations? (p. 1 )

So, Alice was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy- chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. (p. 2)

gets to the front of the latter queue, the assistant shuts up shop and goes for tea. So he starts again and finally, after 45 minutes, completes the pur- chase. Then, in order to leave, he has to pass three members of staff having a joke together in the mid- dle of the busy store and doesn’t so much complain as ask why buying is being made so difficult. “Ah,” they say, “it’s much better when the technology breaks down because we’re not quite used to it yet. If you can’t be patient you can always go somewhere else.”

Alice did not see anything very remarkable in a White Rabbit running close by her, nor did she

think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, ”Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (P. 2 )

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderlands author, writing in 1862, could hardly have guessed how apposite his story would be over a hundred years later. Alice didn’t think twice about following the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, but often wished she hadn’t as she fought to overcome the many obstacles in her path to the door into the secret garden.

The concept of workplace marketing is so obvious, so simple, so familiar, but so unglamorous as to be dismissed by the majority of marketers as unimportant, uninteresting, and unproductive. But

The White Rabbit is our impersonation of workplace their corporate peers are beginning not to share that marketing as he busies himself with extending the view. 40% of pote,ltial return on marketing’s corporate strategic marketing process to address a investment can be lost by failure recogllize it as

action and customer expectation. our marketers are condoning waste almost to the You can picture the scene-a totally new elec- point of

tronics hypermarket-where the customer, pro- Don’t they care what happens after the commer-

off the street with his mind set on three things: the order product very size of the store, the Aladdin’s cave he’s going to find there, and the new whizzy checkout he’s been told will have him in and out in no time. What does he find: a big store, yes; an exciting variety of goods to choose from, yes; whizzy checkout, yes. But then, while it takes 5 minutes to choose a pur- chase, it takes 45 minutes to pay for it . Why? There are two check outs; the first provides an invoice and Ihe second takes Ihe payment. There are queues in

closing Of the credibility gap between the most seductive sister in marketing’s family, then

voked by a local door drop, comes into the Store cials have been screened, the ad has run, the mail has reached [he doormat, or the has left [he warehouse?

MARKETERS: PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE

The consummation of a meaningful marriage be. tween marketing’s external and internal or dimensions is the total strategic marketing solution.

both places. To add insult to injury, the customer One is bereft 2nd celibate Without the other. In-

’ Carroll, I.rwis (1916). Alice i i i Wwderlaiid. deed, the “4 Ps,” the traditional elements of the marketing mix, remain entirely appropriate to


workplace marketing. “Product” remains goods or services offered for sale in response to customer demand but, in our case, the product is corporate values and the volunteering of an enhanced service at every point of customer contact. In other words, making the customer happy beyond the call of duty. External and internal customers alike have an expectation of the particular stage in the supply chain that directly serves them. That expectation can only be exceeded if the individual responsible wishes it and is prepared to become personally accountable for the customer’s satisfaction. That applies just as much to the sales assistant behind the counter in the high street as it does to the mail boy, marketing manager, or forklift driver.

Whereas “price” must reflect market sensitivity and value for money, for us its definition is extended to include the bottom line benefit to be derived from taking a sledgehammer to the lost opportunity cost. The taking of opportunities presented by customers is ultimately dependent upon a company’s commitment to investment in its people and the total continuous improvement of their performance.

“Promotion” harnesses a mix of media that ex- ploits a customer’s propensity to buy, but seeks to optimize the return per unit of spend. Promotion must always be seductive as well as productive, compelling and convincing, powerful and persua- sive, courageous and creative, passionate and per- sistent. With this we can have no argument except perhaps to wish that a company’s workforce be treated to it rather more often than they are at present.

Finally, “place” is defined as t h e point at which the message is received, but the practice of workplace marketing extends its meaning to ensure that the expectations of customer and supplier are matched, leaving no margin for disappointment o r misunderstanding as they come together at the point of sale.

Obvious though workplace marketing might be, it is relatively little researched and documented and has only recently begun to establish its practices and methodologies. One thing we can be certain of in 1994 is that people must become a priority focus for every organization concerned with competitive differentiation and organizational effective- ness. Research conducted late last year by MORI (one of the U.K.’s premier opinion pollsters) among 429 of o u r most influential business leaders, re-

vealed that people were indeed now ranked first among management’s priorities. Treatment of people was perceived to drive the other five principal priorities: competitiveness, customer relationships, quality management, profitability, and productivity. Europe’s business leaders are now, seemingly, following the Japanese example and regarding people as the critical route to competitive success. The Eu- ropeans, however, find that their workforces have yet to fully understand, share, and own corporate values. It is not surprising then, is it, that those same people cannot offer 100% commitment to their employer’s business objectives?

If universally held values have become crucial to the success of organizations i t is interesting to note just how few have taken the trouble to state them or, indeed, obtain a consensus that can be passionately and persistently represented and up- held by top management. If our management teams have failed to own their own values, attitudes, and behaviors, then how much more confused, frus- trated, and demotivated must their employees be?

Our research tells us that about 80% of all companies make some form of value statement, but fewer than 20% of their decision makers claim ad- herence or implementation. However, 82% of those decision makers strongly believe that properly im- plemented values have a significant role to play in marketing’s performance and in obtaining and sustaining profitable growth. Interestingly and despite this, 75% of business leaders own up to being per- plexed when it comes to finding ways of marketing values and business objectives to their own employees.

OH, DEAR, WHAT SHALL WE DO?

So, the majority of companies own up to needing some form of workplace marketing but relatively few have any idea as to how to go about it. Add to this the fruits of our own research into the lost opportunity cost when we learn that 40% of what we could earn from marketing goes down the drain, and it becomes clear that something is wrong somewhere.

To begin with, the business leader’s new vision of the totality of the strategic marketing process is not shared by marketing, or rarely. For example, 15% of European companies claim to practice some

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form of internal or workplace marketing, but 80% of their marketing decision makers see no reason to include it in their plans. Forty percent of their bosses believe that it is marketing’s problem, whatever marketers themselves may say, but almost 75% of all personnel and corporate services chiefs claim it as theirs. What a Mad Hatter’s tea party, but what an opportunity.

Before I leave the statistics, 1 find it fascinating if not a little worrying that 44% of all marketing directors see no reason whatsoever to share their plans with other departments. Mushroom management can have no place in a highly competitive global environment where energy and direction, together with courage and creativity, make the essential difference between success and failure, competitiveness, and mediocrity. Ultimately, an organization’s very survival will depend on its ability to harness every ounce of human energy within its sphere of influence. Allowed to go untamed, these power sources can quickly create political and social barriers to business performance.

After all, as Richard Branson2 recently put it, “happy employees make happy customers and happy customers make happy shareholders.” No one can remain happy for long without information, motivation, leadership, and dir&tion.

So, workplace marketing is the missing piece in marketing’s jigsaw. Like Cinderella, forgotten and yet the most seductive sister in marketing’s family. Workplace marketing recognizes that business performance can only be achieved through people: people on both sides of a transaction who share the same expectation of it. I guess it stands to reason when you think about it-an employee can’t deliver what his heart and mind are not at one with-leaving customer satisfaction at the mercy of employee motivation and the pillars of corporate culture.

The high levels of morale and motivation that go with a success culture are as difficult to sustain as they are to obtain. There is no quick fix or magic wand and the process, once begun, is both continuous and perpetual. Much of what is done and needs to be done is a product of information, observation, innovation, and relationship management, but there are signposts offering choice along the way that re- quire the traveler to have the humility to read them.

’ Richard Branson, Virgin, Institute of Directors Annual Conference, L o n ~ don. Summer 1993

Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole caused her to fall into what appeared to be a very deep well and, although it was too dark to see anything when she looked down, she found that when she looked at the sides,

they were filled with cupboards and bookshelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took 3 jar down from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled Orange Marmalade but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing someone un- derneath. Presently, she began to wonder i f she would fall right through the earth. (p. 3)

My point is made if I end my quotation right here but I simply can’t resist the very next paragraph and you’ll realize in a moment why Alice in Wonderland was a particularly appropriate choice of imagery:

“ I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among people that walk with their heads downwards! The Antipathies, I think”-(she was rather glad there was n o one lis- tening, this time, as it didn’t sound at all the right word)-but 1 shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. “Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?” (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke-fancy curtseying as you’re falling through the air!) “And what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me! N o , it’ll never d o to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.” (p. 5 )

The processes of workplace marketing are very similar to those of its sister marketing disciplines and with similar attention required to the imme- diacy of its response to change. Here, however, process revolves round the manner in which business performance may be influenced by the perceptions, observations, and motivations of the people it employs. But what the people think and do boils down to management’s capacity for change, its ability to hear as well as listen, and the manner in which true dialogue can be created between the various levels of the corporate hierarchy.

FOUR STEPS TO IMPLEMENTATION

Workplace marketing has four critical tasks. First, to break down all obstacles to open two-way communication between management and the workforce, between peer groups of differing skills and

70 JOURNAL OF DIRECT MARKETING VOLUME a NUMBER 4 AUTUMN 1994

persuasions, and between the organization and its marketplace. Easier said than done, and often a long, arduous process in which trust has to be sought and won. Our second task is to ensure that brand images, perceptions, and values promoted to the consumer are not only understood but owned throughout the workforce, owned sufficiently to be lived by every member of staff at every point of contact. Third, to provoke volunteerism. Making sure that whenever there is an opportunity to add value i t is taken. Vol- unteerism lies at the heart of every relationship and is the cause of the bonding that creates the essential trust between people and business units. It demands responses that are both convincing and compelling. Last but hardly least, our fourth task is to gain competitive advantage through the ongoing management of the relationships we create.

We rejoin Alice as she drops unscathed onto a cushion of branches and leaves. She finds herself in

a long, low hail l i t by a row of lamps hanging from t h e roof (p. 7)

and is immediately preoccupied by a desire to get through the little door that leads out into the beau- tiful garden. I’m sure that you know the story as well as I do, but her curiosity leaves her with no thought of strategy or plan, clutching at straws, growing bigger one minute and smaller the next. She always seems to end up the wrong size for what she wants to d o next: big enough to pick the key off the table, small enough to use it . Not only that, she offends almost everyone she meets from the mouse and the duck and the dodo to the parrot and the eaglet, and many other odd creatures in between. She sheds the tears that cause everyone to have to swim to safety and then suggests that a race is perhaps the only way of drying everyone properly. But who wins? There has to be a winner. She has n o way of knowing and so has to reward everyone. A thimble and a box of candy didn’t curry favor for long, and after Alice had upset them all for the second time they left her to it.

A1 ice’s experiences reflect the roller-coaster manner in which unstructured and ill-conceived human resource management systems and poor internal communications procedures can mislead and deceive, make promises and fail to deliver them, feed the grapevine and destroy the status quo, and result in political and social instability.

But, just as everything looks forlorn and Alice is beginning to despair : . . back comes the White Rabbit. The birth of workplace marketing heralds a totally new approach to marketing’s role within the strategic business process. Its claim to a place in marketing’s portfolio of disciplines is neither surprising nor untimely when marketing itself is preoccupied with the building of customer relationships and customer loyalties. This is where the courses of internal and external marketing collide and each discovers that there is no place for one without the other.

Workplace marketing is about creating custom by volunteering value. It accepts the challenge of defining quality and service and harnesses the real source of added value, the workforce.

Our purpose is to ensure that expectation, communication, and opportunity are managed both throughout the in-house supply chain and at every point of contact between the company and its customers. Workplace marketing is perhaps at its most powerful where there is a multiplicity of exposure along a limitless interface, as with the leisure or hotel industries, in government or public utilities, in the media or in banking.

The point at which the customer-the marketplace-meets the company-the workplace-is where sales happen, customer loyalty is nurtured and won, and value is added. As I said earlier, we now know that up to 40% of the potential return in sales per pound sterling of marketing spend may be lost through the customer’s failure to experience expectation. Staff knowledge, behavior, and attitude at the point of sale lie at the root of the problem and they in turn are driven by personal motivation and corporate culture. We believe that we can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that employee motivation drives customer satisfaction, and that employee motivation is the critical success factor in sustaining business prosperity.

It is not difficult to see just how few companies are currently concerning themselves with the cost of lost opportunity as marketing’s promises con- tinue to fall on stony ground at the moment of truth, the point of sale. I firmly believe that the present veritable epidemic of corporate anorexia has a lot to answer for as it continues to smother courage, creativity, and a return to business confidence.

If customer loyalty and advocacy sustain sales and retain revenue, then there is no more essential lever

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to customer retention than the custodians of the company’s own values and expectations, the workforce.

The White Rabbit may have returned to Alice’s side in her moment of need but it is some time yet before he blows the three blasts on his trumpet that herald the end of the old and the dawn of the new. Mice has to learn who to listen to and who not to, to take the caterpillar at his word, to trust the Cheshire Cat but beware of the tantrums of the Du- chess, not to confuse the Mad Hatter and the March Hare by putting words into the mouth of the dor- mouse, to know when it is time to move on, and try something new. Eventually, and before she is thoroughly disillusioned by everything that she tries coming to nothing, she does find a door and a key and makes it into the garden.

Workplace Marketing’s role is to turn the brief encounter between complete strangers at the customer interface into an intimate relationship between old friends. Information is the key, whether i t is your knowledge of your people, their circum- stances, attributes, and aspirations, or the information that you give them to enable them to do their jobs more effectively and more persuasively. The more you know about your people the better, the more they know about you and your organization the more they will not fail you. Whatever way you choose for information to pass between you, the most productive route is to supply little and often, beginning by treating one another as perfect strangers and then moving on to build a workplace marketing methodology that has intimacy in mind.

If information, and plenty of it , is the first principle of workplace marketing, then perfecting the art of the intimate encounter between employer and employee is the second. It involves treating one another to serious conversation by way of structured communication programs that are personalized and relevant. Conversations are not conversations unless they are true dialogues: dialogues that are regular and informed, whether aimed at creating the employee-employer partnership or meeting customer expectation at the point of sale.

Workplace marketing may herald the birth of marketing within organizations but its methodologies should not be news to modern-day marketers. We are, after all, simply assisting in the business of creating an environment conducive to making a sale. Treating the organization as a brand and marketing

it to its people is the third principle of workplace marketing. I t requires us to be able to select, seg- ment, and target so that the right messages reach the right people and each and every one has the opportunity to buy into the organization’s purpose, principles, and performance. We have to create a culture in which every contact with and between people is viewed as a potential promotion point, critical in establishing the dialogue that generates and sustains the sale.

Employer and employee have both to be per- suaded to recognize one another as people of many parts with multifaceted personalities into which you have to delve to achieve familiarity. Familiarity can, of course, breed contempt because there is no final portrait of any living individual or organization. They are moving targets and the more you know, the more you have to learn. The secret is to contin- ually refine your knowledge.

The fourth and final principle of workplace marketing, therefore, is the continual refinement and refreshment of not only the systems and processes that provide knowledge, but of the information itself. Our marketing expertise tells us that what we do must be consumer-driven, that the learning process never comes to an end, that we should analyze mercilessly, learn from the past in identifying the discriminating factors, and take a proactive approach to the opportunities of the future.

Our people are, in the final analysis, what they are and what they do, and we must capture their competence and confidence, and heed their messages. Our corporate courage and creativity are in their hands.

Lyons Brooke Bond sell packaged food and bev- erages throughout southern Africa and experience workplace problems that would tax even the most respected business leader. Management’s approach relies on linking employee activity, customer satisfaction, and company prosperity and introducing employees to the concept of problem ownership. I t may be impressive stuff, but an adult literacy program has also had to be injected into the equation, as has the relearning of weights and measures as scales change from traditional to digital readings. And then there is AIDS. The disease is not permis- sible as a cause of death on death certificates, yet it threatens to wipe out layers of the corporate struc- ture. Is that not a business issue and a challenge for workpIace marketing?

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I Developing highly profitable GROWING Informed, involved, and

common aims and A empowered staff with --*--I - I n customers locked in rnuti I ABILITY by added value and values personal service

.1

VALUE CONSENSUS

SHARED DIRECTION AND

Intimate understanding of customer ‘ requirements and strateaic intent

. Recognising opportunities

to meet changing customer requirements

Spiral of confidence

-

I OWNERSHi P, CUSTOMER STANDARDS

FOCUS AND PERFORMANCE

Discussing customer Setting standards and perceptions regarding addressing challenges brand image and related to increased productfservice satisfaction customer satisfaction

Figure 1 The Halo of Confidence: Volunteering Value at the Customer Interface

TAKING IT FROM THE TOP

Workplace marketing offers competitive differentiation and the opportunity to take a sledgehammer to t h e lost opportunity cost, but only if top management regards itself as the first step in the supply chain. That supply chain then transcends the hierarchy, each link paving the way for a smooth transaction, and an environment in which total customer satisfaction, retention, advocacy, and sustained loyalty become the rule rather than the exception.

We call the dynamic of the customer’s relationship with the supplier the “halo of confidence” (see Figure 1). I have no intention of delving into customer or database marketing here, so suffice to say that it is this dynamic that we seek to underpin with our seat of confidence: the workplace dynamic and the outcome of our endeavors in workplace marketing. Management is the seat’s driver and bears the responsibility of ensuring that it remains in perpetual motion.

If we look more closely at the seat of confidence (see Figure 2) for a moment, we see that it is built on t h e premise that profitable growth can only be realized by developing a meaningful relationship with each staff member, by giving him or her the information and skills to do the job and the motivation to participate in performance, by rewarding courage and expecting creativity, and by setting in place the systems and tools that offer comfort and invite loyalty. Together, the seat and halo of confidence become the spiral of confidence that un- leashes corporate creativity and ultimately lays anorexia to rest (Figure 3 ) .

Successful workplace marketing delivers well- managed profitable growth but relies on a match being made on both sides of the customer interface. It is here that the worlds of the customer and the employee collide, where customer satisfaction and employee motivation must overcome customer frustration and corporate apathy.

Again, there is no magic wand, merelya pilgrim’s

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1 Profitability J 1

I Customer k

Consensus and Shared Direction

LrzzJ Communication

Flgure 2 Employee Motivation Underpins Customer Satisfaction

progress sustained by passion, commitment, and discipline. We call it the “total quality cycle” and expect custom to be provoked as well as created by volunteering value. The total quality cycle (see Fig- ure 4 ) is a continuum driven by objective setting, action planning, performance benchmarking, progress measurement, inspection, and regular reap- praisal and redirection. I t relies on management information systems and data-driven business deci- sions. Its concept is simple and merely requires the customer and the employee to undergo similar procedures in parallel. We kick off with Customer Sat- isfaction Indexing (CSI), which measures present performance, determines those factors critical to the meeting of future requirements, and sets the benchmarks for progress management. CSI is matched by Staff Satisfaction Indexing (SSI), which defines the culture gap not only between management and the workforce, but between the company

and the customer. I t is the starting point in the evo- lution of a strong brand culture, analyzing the dif- ferences between preference, perception, and real- ity. Thereafter, the management of relationships relies on informed and targeted communication reaching both sides of the customer interface and thereby nurturing an empathy and intimacy.

Rome was not built in a day, and most companies start out with a workplace that resembles the Queen of Hearts’ croquet ground, or as the croquet ground looked to Alice, anyway:

it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the sol- diers had to double themselves up and stand upon their hands and feet to make the arches. The chief difficulty Alice found at first was managing he r fla- mingo who kept twisting round and making her laugh, then as she went to give a blow to the hedge- hog found that it had unrolled itself and was in the act of crawling away. (p. 104)


PERSONAL PROGRAMMES DEVELOPMENT

I iv imnnc I IIYU BRIEFING AND I COMMUNICATION I

STAFF LOYALTY

I I I

Informed decision- Increased opportunity making at all levels value with reducing and at each point of lost opportunity cost customer contact

INTERNAL

__

Figure 3 The Seat of Confidence: Matchmaking at the Customer Interface

1

METHODOLOGY OF WORKPLACE MARKET1 NG

I should like to conclude by briefly introducing you to workplace marketing’s methodology, an approach designed to prevent pain and induce pleasure. After all, as many before me have said, we spend so much of our lives in the workplace that there is plenty to be gained by trying to make it a profitable and fun place to be.

Whether a large international player or small owner-managed business, we have to find the starting point. Nothing is ever what management tells you i t is, and that usually goes for the workforce and customers too. So, our first stop is the workplace audit. It reviews both actions and words in the statement of corporate values, it assesses understanding and ownership, examines internal marketing tools and techniques, investigates vertical and horizontal teaming and perceptions at the customer interface, captures planning, information, forecasting, and

operational efficiencies, and finally tests and reports its conclusions.

Stage 2 tells us whether or not the organization is seriously committed to the responsibilities of workplace marketing or merely paying lip service to moral principle. We are not in the business of persuading leopards to change their spots: That takes forever, is abominably frustrating, and you rarely win anyway. We work best with those top managers who put up their hands to let us know they have a problem and need help, but aren’t entirely sure where to start. Because senior management commitment, passion, and persistence are critical to the success of a program that trades dis- cord for harmony, politics for teamwork, and frustration and apathy for energy and direction, they have to give the lead. That lead often comes from team brainstorming of the values and pillars of ex- cellence to be ascribed to the organizational brand, and the development of a success culture. The best results come from professionally facilitated, but creatively presented, top team away days.

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Figure 4 The Total Quality Cycie: Provoking Custom by Volunteering Value

Once we have the direction, the next job is to discard the baggage of the past by bringing together the wider management group, again under an in- dependent facilitator, to discuss openly concerns and frustrations, experiences and perceptions, ide- als and sensitivities. The aim is to start creating an environment in which barriers to progress may be laid to rest and the pillars of a success culture in- troduced.

Customer and staff clinics then provide the raw data upon which future strategies and action plans are built. In the case of the customer, we like to use mixed experience groups drawn from pros- pects, satisfied and less happy customers, and lost sales and provoke debate to gain a consensus view of present perception. Both customer and staff clinics use professional external facilitators to obtain an up-to-the-minute interpretation of business objectives, corporate values, customer service, and satisfaction, and the other requirements of business and organizational success.

Involvement fuels expectation and once the process of workplace methodology has begun, its par-

ticipants must share the output of each succeeding stage as it unfolds. The output is live information, sometimes welcome but more often not, and provides a meaningful starting point for a strategic planning process capable of plumbing the depths of knowledge and experience at every corner of the organizational fabric, inviting feedback and debate, accepting change, and committing to a program of business change.

Between the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, Alice treats us to some good lessons about the importance of education and training, and that what may be meat for one is another’s poison. The Mock Turtle took the regular courses as you might have come to expect, like

Reeling and Writhing to begin with, and then the various branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distrac- tion, Uglification, and Derision. (p. 124)

Then there was Mystery, Seaography, Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in Coils. (p. 125)

Although business must be profitable, it must also be fun, and the Gryphon interrupts the Mock Turtle to remind him,

That’s enough about lessons, tell her something about games now. (p. 126)

So we come to the Lobster Quadrille and the Mock Turtle’s song,

Will you walk a little faster? said a whiting to a snail, There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail. (p. 130)

Time passes for us too as we near the end of workplace marketing’s methodology. But not before we again take a leaf out of the lobsters’ book by un- derlining the need to give orders, speak plainly, keep rehearsing, and never stop repeating.

Workforce involvement in decision making and problem solving raises expectations, but if carefully managed can be used to achieve wider understanding of the need to balance corporate investment between achievement of short-term performance and the unleashing of long-term potential.

The secret of workplace marketing is to ensure that every voice is heard and that no opportunity is lost to secure competitive advantage. Social and political barriers to progress must gradually be broken down and internal sources of influence tethered to


corporate direction and cause. Business plans and cultural objectives cannot be left in a desk drawer; they have to be persistently marketed throughout the organization. I t is promotional campaigns driven by the management team that slowly harness the workforce to organizational values. Confusion then starts to dissipate as information, discipline, and direction take over and we find volunteerism creeping into all manner of activity along the supply chain.

Workplace marketing enables and empowers the company community, gives it courage, and provokes creativity such that corporate complacency and ner- vousness are confounded. Was it the White Rabbit that saved the Knave of Hearts, not only giving him the courage to steal the tarts but also to defy the

court with uncharacteristic creativity? We are led to believe so.

When Alice woke up she told her sister of her strange adventures and then, while she herself hur- ried off to tea, left her sister to ponder Alice’s very different source of entertainment. So, it is with workplace marketing, as we work to forge a new and dynamic relationship among management, the workforce, and the customer, a relationship strong enough to shake off the shackles of mediocrity and harness the opportunities of our new market economy. Workplace marketing is much more than a tactical weapon; like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party it is a never-ending menu that creates a total marketing solution.

JOURNAL Of; DIRECT MARKETING VOLUME 8 NUMBER 4 AUTUMN 1994 77

Workplace marketing: A 1990s business imperative

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