Aged Care Insite Issue 92 | December 2015 - January 2016 | Page 29

workforce

John Fleming (second from left) and representatives from Warrigal.

Deep dives yield gold
A more sophisticated, in-depth approach
to cultivating client engagement
can generate tangible results.
By Dallas Bastian

I

t’s not as simple as ‘engaged staff
means happy client’. Delving deeper
into the relationship between
staff and clients can give businesses a
competitive advantage.
That’s according to Dr John Fleming,
chief scientist for Gallup Marketplace
Consulting and Human Sigma Practices,
who addressed retirement living managers
on customer and staff engagement.
At the event, held by the National Road
and Motorists Association, Gallup and COTA,
Fleming focused on behavioural economics.
He described this as the intersection
between psychology and economics.
“What it tells us is that we’ve entered an
age in this new economic environment
where we have to understand what
makes our customers and employees
tick psychologically,” he explains. “It’s
not enough to deliver perfectly executed
transactions. Behavioural economics holds
out the promise of getting under the hood,
getting in the head of our customers and
understanding why they do what they do.”

Fleming detailed four dimensions of
the emotional bond between customer
and company.
The first of these is the foundational
dimension, called confidence, which
revolves around the customer having trust
in a company. Fleming says a question that
related to this would be: ‘Are you a name I
can always trust and do you always deliver
on what you promise?’
“The next dimension, or the next level,
is what we call integrity and that has to do
with fair treatment,” he explains. “Do you
treat me fairly and do you resolve problems
in a satisfactory way?
“The third dimension is pride, and it’s
e X