“Maritz Motivation Solutions designs programs to help companies improve employee performance through positive, motivating and behavior influencing ways all leading to increased loyalty, retention and productivity”

Kimberly Abel is the Employee Solutions Leader at Maritz Motivation Solutions. In this role, Kimberly is responsible for leading Maritz Motivation Solutions’ innovative employee recognition and engagement solutions.  Maritz helps companies bring strategies to life – delivering tangible results, reducing costs, increasing productivity and driving growth.

Maritz partners with companies to design and execute market research, creative communications, incentive programs, rewards and recognition solutions, customer loyalty programs, and event and meetings solutions. All of Maritz’ services focus on helping companies drive greater performance through their people, often in ways they never thought possible.

By combining creative thinking with strategic insights and advanced technology, we provide each of our clients with the optimal mix of solutions to their unique problems.

 

BusinessInterviews.com: What advice would you give to a company that is thinking about implementing their first incentive or rewards based program?

Kimberly: The best advice is to take the time to put a plan in place that details the vision, strategy and goals for incentives and recognition…remember to keep it focused and simple…then, execute the heck out of it. Additional guidance would include aligning your organization with the right strategic partner to help you get from point “A” to point “B” in your plan.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some ways that a business could start improving their customer brand loyalty?

Kimberly: One of the most impactful ways to improve customer loyalty is to manage the customer experience from end-to-end and focus on employee performance. It might be obvious, but it’s not easy and few companies do it well. You might want to start with problem resolution. Case in point, the 2013 Customer Rage Survey (can you believe there is such a thing?) conducted by Customer Care and Management – a consulting firm, found that 68% of people that experience a problem with a product or service reported feeling “customer rage”. Yet, a whopping 50% of those who experience a problem that is quickly resolved, report increased levels of satisfaction that exceed that of customers that experienced no problem. Ensuring that employees resolve problems and live up to your organization’s brand promise, consistently at a behavioral level will go a long way towards delivering great customer experiences.

BusinessInterviews.com: How important is social media to the overall marketing strategy at Maritz?

Kimberly: Social media is a big part of our marketing strategy at Maritz – it is a key avenue we use to share thought leadership, events, stories and experiences about workforce performance, recognition and incentives.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some emerging trends in the Customer Experience sector that you’re excited about?

Kimberly: We’re leading innovation in the areas of enabling customers to give snack-size feedback on a great transaction or experience via text or voice, then opt in to recognizing or thanking the person or team that gave them great service. We believe this simple-but-effective tool will help create deeper, more meaningful relationships for both customers and employees, resulting in increased loyalty and engagement. We’re excited about the potential for valuable data and feedback loops that will help provide actionable insights for employees and organizations in support of improving the overall customer experience.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you share some tips on evolving a brand in an ever changing marketplace while still staying true to the core message and vision?

Kimberly: The pace of business just keeps accelerating and brands have to evolve to keep up and stay relevant. The old paradigm of marketing communicating the change, the training department training for new skills, HR providing tools for managing performance and managers figuring out how to rewarding results is old fashioned and outdated. Today’s approach tightly couples information sharing, learning, ability to practice new skills, track performance and align achievement together to accelerate a brand’s transformation and quickly impact the customer’s experience. The best tip is to use one tool ,a seamless process and make it fun and engaging.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some ways that Maritz helps demystify the purchase journey for your clients?

Kimberly: We are a solution-oriented company that doesn’t believe in the one-size-fits-all product approach a lot of start-ups are taking to the marketplace. Maritz utilizes a design thinking methodology to ensure that the right solution is developed and applied to a client’s unique environment and needs. Developing a winning solution takes time and never is the adage “go slow now to go fast later” more appropriate. We look to help accelerate and demystify the purchase journey in three important ways:

• We spend time to understand your business
• We facilitate solution driven design thinking with your teams
• We help build a ramp-to-success using our Growth Index model
• We provide multiple business model options so you can make the best decision for your business