If you have happy employees, they’re going to treat customers well. That’s the conclusion of Men’s Wearhouse, the largest chain of men’s tailored clothing with more than 17,000 employees. What makes for happy employees? It’s in its vision statement: provide world-class customer service to customers and to one another.
Supporting that vision, Executive Vice President of Operations James R. Bragg reports that among its core values: having fun in the workplace, being able to have open conversations around issues, letting people know what’s going on, giving them context as to how they fit into the big picture, and having access to anybody in the company from the CEO to their department level manager. “Whoever they feel comfortable talking to, that’s who they should talk to,” says Bragg.
An enterprise social network seemed like a natural fit, and it was. Today tibbr helps Men’s Wearhouse cascade information to the organization, but more, it’s used as a competitive advantage for enhancing service.
Fewer Phone Calls, Better Communications
Before tibbr, communication required a lot of phone calls and emails. If it was the crisis of the week, it could mean amassing emails for later forensic examination of the details, calling key leaders one at a time, explaining the vision, and getting them onboard.
Now, tibbr keeps topics in one thread, lets managers put forth their vision or goal, and allows their team and others to interact around it. This internal social network has shortened cycle times and made change happen faster and easier.
Built for Mobile Interaction
One of the main reasons Men’s Wearhouse selected the tibbr platform was because of the mobile user experience. The majority of employees are not knowledge workers sitting at desks; they’re on the sales floor, in the backroom, in the tailor shop, driving trucks, or in the distribution centers. Every employee has an email address, but they rarely use it; however, they do have smartphones. And tibbr is designed for mobile interaction, not one-way interaction like email, but sharing, liking, commenting, and debating.
A Culture Reinforcer
tibbr has helped Men’s Wearhouse pull together a disparate group of leaders in forums where they collaborate and share best practices and viewpoints from other locations and communities. People across the organization are reporting a greater sense of connectivity because they can now see what is happening in Houston, Bakersfield, or New York. It is reinforcing the company’s culture of excellent service to one another and to customers, providing news on events and stories recognizing service for everyone to see.
Men’s Wearhouse will also be putting the new tibbr 5.0 apps to use, including the ability to manage projects through a private subject, delegate tasks, and apply document version control.
Explore Gartner’s latest report on critical capabilities for social software in the workplace.
