The latest news in the world of customer experience and customer loyalty.
Some Whole Foods Employees Voice Concerns About Changes Amazon Implemented Since Acquisition
Many were eager to see how Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods last June (in an all-cash transaction valued at $13.7 billion) would impact the latter and the grocery industry. Well, according to an article this week in The Miami Herald, many Whole Foods employees have been negatively impacted due to some changes Amazon instituted since the acquisition. “Seeing someone cry at work is becoming normal,” one staffer told the newspaper. A new inventory system is cited as an issue, which uses scorecards to grade employees. Managers do pop quizzes and spot checks. Amazon didn’t respond directly. We spoke to some loyalty experts last June about their views on how Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods could potentially impact the customer loyalty industry. Employee engagement was not mentioned.
Walking Toward Employee Engagement
Speaking of employee engagement, a group walk at lunch can go a long way toward building effective and impactful employee engagement and, in turn, accelerating customer engagement and customer loyalty, according to an interesting blog from Maru/Syngro. We walked through our archives and found a conversation we had with Medallia last August about how impactful employee engagement can be for customer engagement and brand loyalty.
When Employee Problems Are in the Corner Office
Having great employee engagement and buy-in to the mission and vision of a company is the key to success—and that includes the actions of the employee in the corner office: the CEO. What happens when something happens with the company leader? We found a couple of recently examples that ended badly. On Monday, Lululemon Athletica Inc. CEO Laurent Potdevin resigned abruptly after failing to “meet the company standards,” according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Bloomberg Businessweek just ran an in-depth look into “The fall and fall and fall” of Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, whose boorish behavior is well-documented.