Customers may be engaged – but what about you?

The concept of 'enterprise engagement' - the idea of improving long-term financial results by aligning customers and employees both inside and outside the organisation - has proven to be critical to business success, according to the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA).

The EEA is a coalition of companies, associations, and educators, and has announced two new initiatives to help companies understand, analyse, implement and measure engagement.

The first initiative is the 'Enterprise Engagement Indicator' (EEI), developed by EEA chairman Allan Schweyer with assistance from Rodger Stotz of Delta Qi Consulting and Tom Lacki of Peppers & Rogers Group. The EEI is an online survey tool that can be used to determine whether an organisation could benefit from a more formal engagement strategy.

The results pinpoint where and how an engagement strategy could be most effectively applied - from consumer and channel marketing to sales, customer service, operations and administration.

Users simply distribute a link to the online survey page by e-mail, sending it to key managers throughout the organisation. They set a cut-off date and, within three business days of that date, they receive a final survey report including top-line recommendations.