How your Customers can Motivate Workers to lift their Game
Posted on Tue, Jul 19, 2011
In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini talks about social proof. One way humans determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. In particular, we view behaviour as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.
An example is canned laughter in comedy shows. Despite laughter sounding corny and fake after a joke is said on a sitcom, research has found that canned merriment causes an audience to laugh longer and more often and to even rate the material as funnier compared to a show with no laughter track.
"Since 95 percent of people are imitators and only 5 percent are initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer". Cavett Robert
So when it comes to inspiring workers to do a better job, a growing body of research is finding that customers, clients and patients are surprisingly more effective in motivating people to work harder, smarter and more productively than senior management.
Getting your end users to talk about how your products and services have helped them is a proven way to motivate staff.
In a 2011 Harvard Business Review article titled "Inspiration Point", Adam Grant stated that outsourcing inspiration to end users focuses employee's attention squarely on the ultimate impact of their products and services.
Examples include a brief visit from a student who had won a scholarship motivated fundraisers to increase their efforts. A photograph of a patient inspired radiologists to read X-rays more accurately. While a video showed to bankers at Wells Fargo featuring customers talking about how low-interest loans had rescued them from severe debt, kept bankers aligned with striving to serve customers and not their managers.
By serving as tangible social proof, end users discussing the consequences and values of employee's efforts can have a positive impact in inspiring and motivating workers to lift their game. After all, we are more likely to change our behaviour if we see evidence of other people undertaking that same behaviour.
Research has found that employees see end users as more credible than leaders as a source of inspiration. When leaders attempt to deliver inspiring messages, many employees react with skepticism, questioning whether leaders are just trying to get them to work harder.
But end users deliver convincing testimonials of their experiences with the company's efforts that show that the leaders' messages are more than rhetoric.
How to Get End Users to Motivate
Companies need to build a collection of stories from their clients. Get close to your customers - conduct focus groups, surveys and talk to them. Invite them to your company to talk to your employees.
And depending on how many customers you have and where your staff are located, film your customers talking about their experience with your product.
One powerful project we worked on was filming an AIDS carrier who had used a particular pharmaceutical product that had changed his life to the extent that 20 years after contracting the virus he was living a normal life. He told his story to camera and the video was shown to pharmacists at the other end of the world as to how important this drug is to improving people's lives. The compelling story helped those in the audience to understand the importance of their work and how much they are helping others.
As mentioned in previous articles, stories and metaphors are very effective at communicating.
In what ways can your company include end users to tell their stories to motivate your workers?