Employee Evangelism Matters, Big Time

Over at the Church of the Customer blog, Ben McConnel highlights a telling story about someone who was terminated for promoting an evangelical model of customer empowerment and marketing. I have heard a number of stories like this one. I think the most important factor needed to break through with traditional brand managers and internal gatekeepers is an economic context for why traditional advertising and marketing needs to change.

At the recent WOMMA Summit in Chicago, Pam Talbot (Edelman PR) explained how declining trust in traditional media source has produced an environment where source credibility is king. People now trust what other people are saying about a product, service or issue more than what they’re hearing through mainstream media channels. The takeaway: “Don’t brand, BOND! As media channels become increasingly splintered, self-selected and on-demand, the importance of genuine word-of-mouth endorsement and promotion will continue to grow. And the ROI from traditional marketing will continue to slip. The marketing imperative: Embrace internal innovation and empower every customer touch point with the freedom to engage in an ongoing conversation.

Diminishing returns from traditional marketing dollars is one economic context. Another is the fact that employee evangelism produces real-word, short-term, bottom-line results for organizations. I stumbled across a great example while doing some research for a client. One of the biggest challenges facing banking today is migrating customers to online bill pay services. While the growth of online bill pay has been extremely fast paced, most of these customers are establishing relationships directly with vendor websites and third-party payments services.

Why does this matter? A Forbes.com/ForeSee study shows that bank customers who use online bill pay services “are 11 percent more satisfied, nearly 20 percent more likely to purchase additional products and services from their bank and are 34 percent more likely to recommend their bank’s website.” Bank of America has become a leader in online bill pay. How’d they do it? According to an Ipsos-Insight study, “90 percent of the employees of Bank of America (BoA) use the financial institution's Internet banking channel, which the bank cites as a major reason for 70 percent of new customers signing up for online banking. By using the channel themselves, the tellers and call center agents become natural educators and promoters of online banking to those customers who have questions or reservations.”