How Singapore firms can build strong service brands

To cultivate purchase preference and build a strong brand, a company needs to wins the trust of its clients. It wins that trust when its employees deliver a service which exceeds their clients’ expectations.

The employees do that by going the extra mile. This is only possible when the employees are sustainably engaged.

To build sustainable engagement, employers in Singapore need to focus on two aspects.

First, they can provide the support employees need to do their work efficiently and effectively. This is called enablement. This would include necessary tools and training-both in the classroom and on the job.

Further, in his book Drive, Daniel Pink says that for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to a new approach.

This has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

So companies that enable their workforce by providing these three elements will motivate them to strive harder.

Employers can also create a healthy work environment — one that supports physical, social and emotional well-being. This is referred as energy.

When a company builds a workplace that marries high levels of employee engagement with enablement and energy, it opens the door wider to a significant performance lift.

According to Towers Watson research, companies with the combined impact of all three sustainable engagement factors can generate operating margins almost three times higher than companies with low engagement.

The best brands never start out with the intent of building a great brand. Instead, they first focus on delivering a product or service that exceeds expectations and delights customers consistently.

How do they do that? They build employee engagement first. Engaged employees put in discretionary effort leading to high customer engagement which results in a strong brand.

So corporate Singapore, are you up for it?

The views expressed by the author are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employers.