Employee Ambassadorship: Optimizing Customer-Centric Behavior from the Inside-Out and Outside-In

There have been a number of professional and academic studies, in multiple industries, linking employee attitudes and behaviors with the value customers perceive in their experiences. Through targeted research, and resultant training, communication, process, and reward and recognition programs, what we define as ambassadorship formalizes the direction in which employee engagement has been trending toward for years. Simply, the trend is optimizing employee commitment to the organization and its goals, to the company's unique value proposition, and to the customer. This is employee ambassadorship, a state beyond satisfaction and engagement where all employees are focused on, and tasked with, delivering customer value as part of their job description, irrespective of location, function or level. There is growing general agreement that both developing employee ambassadors and customer advocates should receive high priority and emphasis if an enterprise is going to be successful. What building ambassadorship does mandate, however, is that having employees focus on the customer will definitely drive more positive experiences and stronger loyalty behavior (for both stakeholder groups). Because antecedent approaches to employee engagement (through research and application) are principally about productivity and alignment, and offer an organization only modest insight about level or degree of customer-centricity, more connection between employee behavior and customer behavior builds focus, effectiveness, and profitability. That is what the content/scope of Employee Ambassadorship will help provide.

Michael Lowenstein, PhD, CMC, is thought leadership principal with Beyond Philosophy, an international customer experience consulting organization; and he specializes in customer analytics, employee ambassadorship research and training, predictive modeling, and strategic customer lifecycle management research and training. He is broadly experienced as a visionary and innovative marketing consultant in many b2b and b2c product and service industries. He has written over 300 customer-related white papers, journal articles and columns, with material appearing in online and offline publications.