Today the world of work has totally changed. Nowadays people
skip from job to job and from company to company. Working as hard
as possible may still be an ideal held by some, but too often they
burn out quickly and lose their effectiveness. Just about everyone
sitting at a computer has access to the same technology. Privacy,
especially relating to company secrets, is harder to maintain, as
is its partner, security.
Industry is no longer a one-size-fits-all proposition.
Diversification is not a luxury but often a hard necessity.
Calculating productivity, growth, earnings, market capitalization,
or stockholder value requires complex formulas and hourly updates
from the industrial front. Television networks have expanded their
business coverage because the world's economy is a tanker riding
choppy waves. At any time that ship, as big and powerful as it is,
can spring a leak or run aground.
Customers who could once be counted on now enjoy choices -- a
whole lot of them. Monopolies are relics. Industries once regulated
-- telecommunications, auto manufacturing, and health care, to name
just three -- are now deregulated. And where competition is
concerned, the playing field, with its rules, is global. The
gradual but steady elimination of cultural and international
boundaries has opened up worldwide marketplaces. Now businesses
must compete with their counterparts from other countries for the
same customers. This requires broader income to fund the
development of more useful products and services. At the same time
organizations must maintain their image through brands and
positioning.
And that creates a new dilemma. In the past twenty years almost
every possible source of competitive advantage has been maxed out.
Where can value be found when price becomes less and less of a
factor, and customers are tired of hearing that every product or
service is the "best"? They know better. Where both employee and
customer incentives are concerned, organizations are running on
empty.
But more than ever, a reliable customer base, the core element
of every industry, must be maintained. At the same time productive
employees must be kept from leaving.
But how? What strategy could possibly do this? The great
organizations have discovered what it is -- and how to use it.
An Emotion-Driven Economy
Great organizations know how to chart a course through the
worldwide competitive maze to keep their customer relationships not
only intact but also thriving. They do this by connecting to their
customers on an emotional level. When that happens, customers
return because of the way they feel. The response has been so
phenomenal that these organizations don't refer to their return
patrons as loyal. They speak of them as being emotionally engaged
customers.
Simultaneously, great organizations create an environment in
which their best performers can do what they excel at, over and
over again. These men and women are so tuned in to what they are
doing, and so effective at responding to the needs of customers,
that profits and growth flourish, as do the employees. These men
and women are referred to, with gratitude, as being emotionally
engaged employees.
When engaged employees utilize their natural talents, they
provide an instant, and constant, competitive edge. They build a
new value: emotionally driven connections between employees and
customers.
Great organizations do not treat employees and customers as if
they are mini computers whose every action, based on very complex
mental processes, can be calculated in advance. Nor do they view
customers as "economic agents" who are supposed to always make
decisions based on price and quantity.
On the contrary, great organizations have turned from the "hard"
view of people responding like machines to the "soft" side of human
nature, the part that is guided by emotions. Engaging both
employees and customers emotionally is the approach that steers
organizations, through their managers, toward greatness. Great
organizations take advantage of the fact that the economy of
emotional engagement is much bigger than the economy of reason.