Moving from Employee to Customer

Engaging your Alumni to drive bottom-line impact in the retail and food-service industry

For companies in the retail industry, whether in food service, fashion or a brick and mortar-focused chain, the importance of an Alumni platform and community extends well beyond expanding a talent pool. For retail, as with many other sectors, Alumni is a 'Recruiting & …' conversation.

And in this case, 'Recruiting & Sales'.

Employees become Alumni. And both have the potential to be current and future customers, in addition to being an integral part of your workforce.

What if, in changing the status of an employee in your HR system to Alumni, companies mark this change of status as moving from employee to customer? Or employee to a guest? You could extend the very same dedicated customer service mentality that's directed to your customers to your departing employees.

Switching From Employee To Customer

What if there were incentives in place to encourage employees to want to be part of the ecosystem and stay a little longer to benefit from alumni perks? This could potentially reduce employee churn as well as send a positive message to employees that they are valued, even after they have left.

Many organizations already offer their employees deep discounts and perks during their tenure – these could be extended to your Alumni on departure. Consider a restaurant chain that hosts a regular Alumni day monthly, offering a specific discount to family and friends. Or a special card or app code former employees can use at check out. We know Alumni discounts are incredibly compelling to your community.

Similarly, a retail store could allows alumni in-store or online discounts, even after leaving. The unit economics undoubtedly require attention to ensure that these customers are still profitable but in Alumni, companies have a readily available audience informed about their brand.

Alumni are a ready-made group who do not require large advertising spend to be directed to them in order to familiarize themselves with your brand. And for alumni, this is a generous perk of having been a part of your organization creating goodwill. With former employees often the best source of referrals to fill new positions, this goodwill is valuable.

Expanding Past Recruitment:

Recruiting & … is about ensuring that your organization’s Alumni are not just considered a talent pool. Rather, it is about a 360-degree approach to how alumni and employers can work together, leading to wins in areas ranging from sales to operations, to cost-cutting and more.

Read more from our customers and their Alumni on how engagement can be expanded to include a host of previously ignored value drivers especially when Alumni moves from HR to Marketing.

Alumni engagement demonstrably has the ability to impact your bottom line and reduce churn and the costs associated with it whilst also positively impacting business development …. because when employees leave, they are provided an incentive and easy path to becoming a customer. And everyone wins.