Can Putting Data In The Hands of Your Frontline Employees Pay Off?

Empower Your Front Line

Those in the study strongly believe that both quality of work and productivity significantly increase when frontline workers can make data-driven decisions in the moment. In the case of the 20% that said their current frontline is empowered nearly half said they have grown revenue by 10 percent or more in the past year, with 16 percent growing it by 30 percent or more. This group is identified in the study as the “leaders”.

The areas of customer engagement and satisfaction, productivity and efficiency, employee engagement and satisfaction, and product/ service quality yield especially apparent results.

Few Companies Have Are There Yet

43% of those in the study admitted their frontline was neither empowered to make decisions nor were well equipped with the data and technology needed. This group is identified as “laggards” in the study.

Give Your Employees the Tools They Need

Frontline workers can resolve more issues on the spot without the intervention of a supervisor when armed with the right information. They are also the best people to correctly relay and report the voice and distress of the guest after an interaction that does require a manager or supervisor to get involved.

More than 50% of those surveyed said systems with self-service analytics, easy communication tools, and collaboration opportunities are among the top technologies their frontline workers will be using over the next two years to achieve this.

Put Change Management in Place

44% of respondents said that more than any other factor poor change management would be a barrier to success. Meaning providing tools, analytics, and technology will not generate any value unless you also provide structured learning and training for your frontline.  Staff must know how to evaluate the information they are seeing so they can act accordingly and make the appropriate decisions.

Your Technology & Your Culture Go Hand in Hand

The “leaders” in the study said that their employees are not only equipped and empowered to make in the moment decisions, but they are positively encouraged to do so every day. This requires moving to a more distributed way of working where more decision making is pushed to the edges than is with a traditional hierarchical model. The adjustment makes each workday more efficient allowing management to focus on the big picture.