Now more so than ever we are bearing witness to the ever-increasing impact our Young Professionals can have upon business success. In particular, and perhaps more crucially, the impact and influence that Young Professionals (YPs) and maintaining a strong YP Network can have on increasing overall customer experience.
In an article written by Forbes it stated, "Millennials have higher expectations for customer experience". Unsurprisingly, they intimated this is "mostly due to instant gratification with mobile and email notifications from brands." So if Young Professionals have seemingly higher expectations for their customer experiences, how can we use this to our advantage, and what are we doing to utilise and harvest the enthusiasm of YPs to positively impact our customer and client experiences?
Some years ago, DWF established its own Young Professionals Network (YPN). A network which aims to bring together YPs from across the world regardless of industry or sector. With a mission to deliver an exciting and engaging international programme of webinars, panel discussions, newsletters, round tables and networking events that are inclusive and relevant to all ambitious YPs.
The group recognises that networking with other like-minded individuals during the earlier stages of a career, can help build contacts, confidence and experience to support a YP as they make their way up the career ladder; gaining new skills to help shape and steer their own company's direction.
Not only does the YPN exist to facilitate and support connections, educate, train and enhance a YP's early career development; but it also helps to facilitate better integration with our clients and customers by bringing together contacts at a more junior level within those organisations. This collaboration helps us to not only support our own YPs but also gives our clients a different perspective on our firm, and allows integration at a level perhaps not seen or done before.
Recent examples of how this has worked in practice are our various events that were hosted in conjunction with clients. These include:
- "Innovation: I just don't know where to start"
A global online event delivered in collaboration with adidas and Fujitsu. Speakers explored what innovation really means, looked at how it works in their organisations and discussed some real life practical examples of when innovation has succeeded or failed.
As part of National Inclusion Week (UK) we hosted a D&I themed event with Enterprise Rent A Car, Lloyds Banking Group and Robert Walters. Throughout the session we heard our panel of professionals, all at varying stages of their careers, discuss their own experiences of diversity and inclusion and how they, and their employers, are seeking to achieve more diverse and inclusive workplace cultures.
Similarly, in conjunction with our internal Innovation & Ventures department the Network worked collaboratively to create an open "innovation challenge" aimed at encouraging internal YP's to come up with radical new ideas that would challenge the status quo and ultimately generate new ideas and initiatives to enhance DWFs working processes or the end user experience.
By leveraging the expertise and voices of our Young Professionals, we can help develop better, more long lasting client relationships, which in turn result in more effective and positive customer service as well as helping to support and encourage a pipeline for future workforce talent.
If you require any further information, please contact Emma Marsh.
