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The Cluetrain Manifesto showed us the reality of the Internet age. A reality where there are multiple conversations going and “Corporate” no longer is the only voice heard by the outside world.

In a web 2.0 world, employees talk about their employers, projects and products in a new way, as a direct voice to the customer, a voice that has not been polished by the corporate communications department.

In a web 2.o world, customers talk to each other. They share their knowledge about your company, your projects and your products. They do this in a human voice, giving their own opinion, in a direct conversation with the “outside world”.

We know that “Customer Experience is King “.. Since the overall customer experience is a product of all conversations a customer have with a company the Employee Experience is of importance too.

In a recent Harward Business School (HBS) article, researchers point out that how leaders keep the stated corporate values impacts their Employee Experience.

…employees also said that the worst thing about the company was that the CEO had been, from their point of view, breaching the values that he himself had developed for the company. Unwittingly, even a committed leader may appear to followers to be violating principles he or she has espoused.

It seems that in a web 2.0 world, less and less issues can be dealt with “offline” or at the “back-office”. Thus there are fewer opportunities for leaders to make silent adjustments. A web 2.0 age leader must show integrity by “walking the walk”. Anything else will soon impact the customer experience.

“Walking the walk” does not have to mean being nice to the customers. Ryanair is a good example. While notorious for poor service - one airline quality tracking site gets 35 negative comments per positive comment, there are those that feel they are getting good value from Ryanair’s extremely low prices.

The book Loyalty Myths has shown us that loyal happy employees does not necessarily mean loyal profitable customers. Still, all actions taken by the members of a company/organization have the power to impact someone else’s experience of the company/organization.

Service quality impression depends on our expectations. When we expect little, we seem to be satisfied with little. When a leader’s breach of corporate values impacts the conversations between the members of a company, the “press” and the customer, it impacts our expectations and then the overall interaction experience. Thus, as leaders we must strive to “walk the walk”, so we do not negatively impact the customer experience.

How does your company stack up?

roar at roarweb dot com