Increasingly, companies and brands are utilizing apps to connect directly with customers through their mobile devices. However, only a small percentage of companies are taking the lessons learned in the consumer space and applying them internally to engage their employees through enterprise mobile apps.
Loyalty360—the loyalty marketer’s association—recently published a blog on why retailers and other consumer companies not only need apps to connect with their customers, but that “app personalization is key to capturing your target customer’s interest, keeping his attention, and converting successfully, despite all the other marketing noise.”
This got us thinking. The tips and best practices shared about consumer apps in the article concerning push notification, personalization, engaging hard-to-reach users, gamification, and recognition, directly apply to employee engagement apps. Let’s take a look at the two.
Push notifications
- Consumer App: 70% of consumers enable push notifications on their apps. This allows for time personalization, so customers receive information and deals at the moment they are most likely to act.
- Enterprise App: Some enterprise mobile platforms provide the ability to send specific messages at the exact time employees need to see them. For example, for a group of shift workers who start their shift at 9 am every day, sending a mobile message regarding mission-critical work information 5 minutes before the start of a shift exponentially increases knowledge rates.
Personalization
- Consumer App: Only when you understand who you’re communicating to, will you know what kinds of information will engage them.
- Enterprise App: Successful enterprise app developers take a page from popular consumer loyalty rewards programs, which uncover as much information as possible about customers and target messages that will spur action. For example, some apps allow organizations to segment staff by factors such as role, division, location, or department and then develop customized messages specific and relevant to those employees.
Hard-to-reach users
- Consumer App: A customer’s past interactions with the app should direct future communication in order to provide real value.
- Enterprise App: Enterprise mobile apps have the ability to remember employee preferences regarding types of messaging or programs (e.g. community volunteerism or professional development opportunities) and can tailor future messages to suit the individual’s interests. This is paramount when developing a one-on-one, firm-to-employee relationship.
Inactive users
- Consumer App: Don’t write off inactive users, it just means you have to target them specifically.
- Enterprise App: Mobile apps can provide real-time, one-click feedback on communication effectiveness. Managers can use this data to inform and improve business processes and internal communication strategies. And when gamification is integrated as a part of the strategy, engagement with company communications increases – driving awareness and comprehension across the organization and allowing companies to connect with their employees in a much more meaningful and fun way.
Give them a reason
- Consumer App: Give users a reason to use your app.
- Enterprise App: Rewarding and recognizing employees is a pain point common across almost all businesses. Providing incentives to employees for engaging in corporate programs or consuming business-critical content through an app’s game mechanics can foster a fun, competitive, and social environment throughout an organization.