Trench Workers Have Great Opinions Too! Listen To Your Front Line Workers

Trench Workers: The employees who work the front lines. In retail it would be the cashier or store manager, at a bank it's the teller, and in market research it's the survey interviewer calling from a database or the manager fielding a project for a client of theirs.

Trench workers are important to listen to because they have a unique perspective: They see both the customers and company's point of view at the same time. Their opinions stem from their work environment to the current projects they are working on. Failure to listen to the employees often result in unhappy workers who will try to find other jobs and the company will have missed opportunities to provide better or more efficient products/services. Managing employee opinions is not just an HR thing!!! In the B2B world clients who listen each other and communicate on a regular basis are often more satisfied with their relationship and will not shop for a new vendor/partner to work with. Many people worry about collecting biased opinions when listening to trench workers but as long as you know how to filter these out you will be pleasantly surprised to uncover valuable feedback that can make your company even more profitable.

At The Market Research Event in San Diego, CA, the vice president of customer relations at Best Buy spoke about empowering their front-line employees by offering a channel to get their voices heard. They set up a system that allowed them to track what customers are saying on the sales floor and gave the employee an opportunity to share it with upper management by simply logging into the computer/register. As a result Best Buy made changes to their warranty agreements, offered more customer-driven products and services, and employees feel more empowered to share their thoughts and are happier with their work environment.

Now I'm not suggesting for you to add a bitch button to the cash register like Best Buy but it would good to implement a system that can quantify employee experiences into actionable data. What their company did will not work for everyone, however establishing an open-line of communication is important to receive feedback and empower your employees to care about their job more. As the researcher it's our job to collect all types of feedback and the items using open-ended text analysis tools, crowdsourcing tools, and reveal actionable results. As a socially conscious marketer we are showing respect to all levels of employees and giving them an opportunity to make a positive impact to their work environment. Go ahead and empower your employees. This is a win-win situation for all.