Rewards programs (e.g. providing discounts, coupons, and freebies to customers) can and do play a significant role in creating positive customer experiences with your business. However, by themselves, these programs rarely create the full emotional attachment needed to get and keep customers engaged.

The most successful loyalty programs come from strategies that build emotional engagement with both employees and customers. As an example, research shows that companies that are effective at building customer loyalty and engagement listen to their customers and take the information they receive and make the necessary changes, whether it involves a specific individual in a bank branch, a customer service department, or the entire company.

One of the best ways to encourage your customers to develop an emotional connection with your company and become engaged is by pairing loyalty programs with engagement programs – those that encourage two-way communications and create a convenient way for your customers to continually express their concerns, report problems or deliver praise.

When customers recognize that their concerns, suggestions or feedback are responded to and resolved, they begin to realize that they are important to the organization; that their voice can make a difference; and that they have a relationship with the brand.

To learn more about how your business can connect to your customers’ hearts and minds by pairing engagement programs with loyalty programs, download our “Buying Loyalty” white paper.

Most companies collect some sort of customer or employee feedback data. But once they collect this data they often ask: What do I do with the data now that I have it? How can we make the best use of it?

Companies typically vary in terms of where they’re at in collecting their data. For instance, some companies have never conducted a survey/collected data before and may now want to begin collecting it. Other companies may have collected some data in the past but may still be trying to analyze it and figure out how to create an action plan. And, there are also companies that may have been collecting data for 10 years or longer and may have mastered the process, but may still be looking for ways to better utilize their data.

Regardless of where your company is at, following are some high level tips from Allegiance’s Best Practices team on how to best design your data collection surveys and turn your data into an action plan:

Seven Steps for Designing and Implementing a Survey – Allegiance Best Practices

1. Establish your survey goals and objectives.
2. Determine your audience.
3. Design your questions so that they are relevant to your audience, flow naturally, prevent response bias, and employ the SONAR (Specific, Objective, Non-Ambiguous, Actionable, and Relevant) method of question design.
4. Do a pilot test of your survey.
5. Launch your survey.
6. Analyze the survey results.
7. Communicate the survey results to others.

Five Tips for Turning Your Data into an Action Plan

1. Determine if you’re gaining or losing ground. Use business outcomes and benchmarking to determine whether your business programs are having a positive or negative impact.
2. Find out which segments are affected. Chances are a challenge you’re facing isn’t affecting your whole organization uniformly. Most likely, some groups are more affected than others. Use segment analysis to find subgroups that need improvement.
3. Discover areas of high focus. Through a combination of demographic and date filtering, using predictive analytics can help isolate hot items that can move the needle for specific customer and employee segments.
4. Use qualitative data to understand items. Drill through statistical data to open-ended responses from customers and employees. Truly understand people’s hearts and minds by listening to their own words. Correct high impact negatives. Promote high impact positives as best practices.
5. Take action!

For more information about how Allegiance’s Professional Services team and technology solutions can help your company make the most of its data, read the Allegiance Best Practices Program Overview, where you’ll find solutions for everything from training on survey design and key process optimization to conducting data analysis, discovery and national benchmarking with your data.

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton (RWJ Hamilton) – an award-winning medical center that provides state-of-the-art care for more than 200,000 patients annually and has more than 600 affiliated physicians and surgeons in more than 30 medical specialties – consists of several semi-autonomous departments. And during visits, patients often interact with several of them.

Unfortunately, RWJ Hamilton did not have a smooth process for sharing patient feedback between departments. The hospital also lacked an efficient system for managing patient satisfaction surveys and feedback forms, which prevented it from being able to quickly and fully understand patient needs and concerns. In addition, the hospital needed a way to help improve patient satisfaction scores by increasing employee engagement.

RWJ Hamilton recently turned to Allegiance, and as a result of the hospital’s focus on improving patient satisfaction and its use of the Allegiance Engage solution, the hospital has gone from inpatient satisfaction scores of 67% in 1999 to Press Ganey scores today that consistently range between 85-90 percent. What’s more, the hospital has garnered countless industry recognition and also won numerous awards including the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award – the highest honor for performance excellence which is presented annually by the President of the United States to high perform organizations

“We have industry leading satisfaction scores as a result of our best practices, and the Allegiance Engage solution is an important element of that success,” said Monica Olaff, patient relations manager for RWJ Hamilton states. “We rely on Allegiance to help improve our satisfaction scores, and we definitely pay attention to our scores and our employee engagement because they impact our revenue.”

Download the full case study to learn more about how RWJ Hamilton’s focus on patient and employee engagement and its use of Allegiance’s Engage solution have helped the hospital improve its patient satisfaction scores and win numerous awards.

Last month we wrote about the role of management in employee engagement and just how important it is to cultivating happier employees. We emphasized the importance of finding good people to manage who will help influence positive employee engagement, which will ultimately lead to direct, positive impacts on customers.

This month’s article will focus on the five steps to predictive analytics. To tap into the power of analytics, companies should begin with leading indicators and business outcomes and end with the voice of the customer.

Step 1: Review business outcomes and leading indicators.

Remember, a leading indicator is anything that can be used to predict or signal future events. In previous articles, we talked about lipstick sales and how they tend to increase during times of economic uncertainty or a recession. There is also aspirin and the common belief that as stock prices fall, more and more people need pain relievers to get through the day. Leading indicators such as employee productivity, quality, turnover and job satisfaction influence employee engagement, which in turn impacts customer engagement

It’s important that companies understand what is influencing customer behavior. Are current external economic conditions slowing sales? Or is it a direct result of poor customer service in a specific branch?

Step 2: Find the subgroup (location, gender, job group) that is causing the dip or rise in leading indicators.

Once you have identified leading indicators, it’s important to address problem areas or focus on the people or practices that are influencing positive outcomes. In September’s feature, we emphasized the role of front-line managers. How much of an impact are your managers having on their staff? Is their negative attitude about their benefits or pay trickling down to other employees and thus affecting opinions about the company and customers?

Step 3: Review engaged, swing, and disengaged group scores – Get an overall feel of the employee and customer landscape.

Organizations need to understand who their engaged, swing and disengaged employees and customers are, and why. Do your customers feel like they are receiving helpful service? Do they feel protected and valued by the company? Are your employees feeling confident, informed, valued or protected? If not, why not?

Step 4: Review the driver items that impact key leading indicators (e.g., engagement) positively or negatively.

Understanding which of the drivers is impacting the leading indicators the most will help you better focus your time and resources.

Step 5: Review the voice of the customer/employee for deep insights. Find best practices and barriers.

The voice of the customer and employee is critical for helping to identify best practices and barriers to success. When companies listen and respond to employee and customer feedback, they are better able to address concerns before they become major problems, which in turn helps strengthen employee and customer engagement. Employees and customers that know companies are listening will provide more and higher quality feedback. And with more employee and customer feedback, companies will better understand the needs and concerns of these two important assets.

In our initial article about predictive analytics, we asked, “How do predictive analytics relate to engagement?”

The answer provides a fitting conclusion for this series of articles: “By understanding the ‘why’ of customer behavior, companies can help develop the products and services that will shape how customers relate to their organization and influence what they want from their customers in the future. Successful companies use predictive analytics to better understand their customers, which will ultimately drive better results to the bottom line.”