Managing and maintaining a good reputation is critical for any public-facing organisation. There are various ways to maintain your brand’s reputation, but the best way of achieving this is ensuring that every employee, from top management to ground-level staff, becomes an excellent brand ambassador, preferably not by forcing them.
The best approach to managing remote workers, including brand ambassadors working offsite, is to incentivise and empower them to take ownership of their role in the organisation. It starts with building trust between different stakeholders and often consists of a hierarchy: workers reporting to managers, managers reporting to area managers who, in turn, report to country managers and so forth. The more layers between a company’s headquarters and the workers in the field, the harder it is to maintain this level of trust, as problems often result in finger-pointing and broken telephone, ultimately leading to frustration. Therefore, having a workforce management system in place that creates full transparency with the ability to deliver proof of presence and, as a result, prove someone’s innocence becomes invaluable.
For example, a worker who is faced with a challenge that must be escalated to management but has to follow various steps and red tape to do so will become frustrated and despondent and discouraged. This is especially true when seemingly small issues take weeks or even months to resolve. It is right here that an organisation’s reputation is at risk.
In a recent conversation with one of our clients, Mark La Trobe, the Chief Operation Officer at Enviro Loo, he testified how Xactco’s evidence-based management solution helped to improve their field workers’ service levels dramatically.
Enviro Loo often works with small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) – these are local third-party subcontractors who service their sanitation units. In the past, service reports and escalations were compiled manually. It was possible to include information that was not necessarily accurate, but key information was often omitted. Previously, there was no way to validate the information provided in the reports. Xactco replaced this manual system with a proactive solution where digital validation is done using IoT technologies like NFC tagging and geolocation data. Xactco’s real-time “proof of presence” and “proof of service” hold fieldworkers accountable and ensure transparency and overall peace of mind for all parties. Since implementing Xactco, SMMEs’ service levels have increased dramatically, and access to accurate real-time data has enabled Enviro Loo to act on and resolve any issues as a matter of priority. Clear, measurable data is also available to clients to confirm that Enviro Loo has met the agreed-upon service levels.
