“Be the Customer” drive produces employee ideas, innovations, profits

PayPal’s “Be The Customer” employee engagement program boosted sales volume by $22 million from April to December 2014, and added more than 14 million PayPal users. For their aggressive drive to refashion PayPal as the Customer Company, and its employees as Customer Champions, PayPal and MSL GROUP have won the “Grand Prize Employee Communications Campaign of the Year” category in Ragan’s 2015 Employee Communications Awards.

When new CEO Dan Schulman joined PayPal in September 2014, he sent an email to employees asking for ideas and insights on PayPal. Thousands responded, and Schulman distilled a strategy:

• PayPal would become a Customer Champion company.
• PayPal would create ways for employees to be proactive Customer Champions.
• PayPal’s transformation to a Customer Champion culture was permanent.

PayPal’s new management wasn’t interested in talk alone. As a matter of fact, PayPal was just getting started on its transformation to total collaboration, customer-centricity, radical institutional innovation, and remaking the employee environment:

• Schulman set up monthly all-hands meetings broadcast globally to reinforce the new Customer Champion culture.
• PayPal celebrated its NASDQ listing by hosting a friendly employee competition, sharing customer and employee stories on all its online sites.
• “PayPal in 90,” a TV-celeb-style, 90-second video was emailed to all 16,000 employees worldwide, showcasing Customer Champions. 
• A new intranet, “The Bridge,” debuted. It reinforced the “We Are Customers” mentality.
• A new Instagram PayPal site was created to build community within PayPal.
• PayPal re-invigorated its Voice of the Customer program that lets non-customer-service PayPal employees listen in on customer calls, giving them insights into the customer experience.
• Employees were encouraged to test PayPal products. Workers around the world signed up.

The results encouraged Wall Street analysts and PayPal shareholders:

• From Q1 2015 to Q2 2015, PayPal’s revenue grew 19 percent to $2.3 billion.
• The number of transactions per account increased from 21 per year to 24 in this same period.
• In Q2 2015, PayPal processed 1.1 billion transactions, an increase of 27 percent over Q1.
• PayPal’s customer-service Net Promoter Score (csNPS) reached all-time highs.

Kudos to PayPal’s communications, PR, and HR departments, and to MSL GROUP’s strategic communication and engagement staffers!