Taking Care Of The People Who Matter Most

I was recently approached and asked to participate in an on-line book tour for Sybil Stershic’s new book, “Taking Care Of The People Who Matter Most – A Guide To Employee-Customer Care.” The title of the book sounded intriguing enough so I decided to participate.

In reading Stershic’s book, I was impressed at how well she made her case that the more invested employees are at work, the better service they will offer. Her book addresses the concept of “internal” marketing. External marketing is used to bring customers to a business but Internal marketing helps employees better understand the company’s strengths, vision and competitive advantage. In addition, internal marketing helps a company have their employees buy into company’s vision and helps put everyone involved with service delivery on the same page.

“Internal marketing involves the application of marketing inside an organization to instill customer-focused values for organizational success,” writes Stershic. “Most products and services can easily become commoditized, but competitors cannot duplicate the relationship an organization’s employees have with its customers.”

“Managers would do well to remember that unhappy customers are not the only ones who can choose to leave an organization,” she continues. “Just like the cost of customer-churn, the cost of employee turnover can be damaging especially when you examine both direct and hidden costs.”

What I found in this book, in addition to many tidbits of useful information as it concerns the running of a successful employee-engagement program in any business, is that your employees are not only your best customer service representatives, but also your best recruiters of new talent within an organization.

“Here’s a simple way to assess your firm’s internal service culture,” suggests Stershic, “ask this question: Would you refer a friend to work here? … Unfortunately, many organizations do not proactively engage in tracking employee satisfaction unless there are human resources or morale issues. The reality in many companies is that they know more about their customers than about their employees.”

In essence, in addition to reducing attrition rates of both customers and employees, a successful internal marketing program can attract new customers and new employees. The foundation of an effective internal marketing strategy is based on gaining employee commitment – which in turn helps to solidify customer commitment.

In my keynote presentations, I espouse the philosophy that business gets better when the people who are employed in the business get better. This book provides a foundation to achieve several ways to do that. Stershic presents several business cases which illustrate her points as well as a step-by-step guide to creating an internal marketing strategy for any business.

This book is an easy read of 128 pages (not including bibliography and references). Mixed into the research and evidence to support her claims, Stershic has interspersed practical tools that can be used to develop the basis for an internal marketing strategy to develop internal buy-in as well as a commitment to customer-focused and customer-satisfaction driven service.

It’s well worth the read. Even if you choose not to do the exercises, there is still plenty of kindling to light a fire in the brains of human resources and upper management about the importance of some sort of internal marketing strategy.

Bottom-line: improve the culture and the people who deliver service and service will improve as a result. That goes right to the bottom-line of any organization.

Want to own this copy for yourself? Click this link and enter this coupon number "107VBT" to save 20% off the book price. You may also want to check out Sybil Stershic’s Blog page here.

Schedule of Sybil Stershic’s Virtual Book Tour:

• On June 2nd, Kevin Burns of Burns Blogs Attitude will be posting a review.
• On June 3rd, Lisa Rosendahl will be posting a review on her blog HR Thoughts.
• On June 4th, Chris Bailey will be posting a review on his blog Bailey Work/Play: The Alchemy of Soulful Work
• On June 5th, Toby Bloomberg of the Diva Marketing blog will be posting an interview with Sybil.
• On June 7th, Becky Carroll, the blogger behind Customers Rock! will be posting a review and the results of an interview with Sybil.
• On June 9th, Paul Hebert will be posting a review on the blog Incentive Intelligence.
• On June 10, 2008, Phil Gerbyshak will be posting an interview on the blog Slacker Manager.