As a global leader in customer experience (CX) management, our 80,000 people around the world create exceptional experiences for our clients' customers - 3.5 million times daily. At Sitel, our people are our greatest asset. To tell their story and engage with them, we created the #SitelLife hashtag.
With our people at the core of our strategy, the #SitelLife hashtag embodies all the elements that make up the Sitel brand: inclusiveness, friendship, pride and empowerment. It's about working hard, but playing hard too; it’s about having a purpose and working together towards a common goal. These brand values are the foundation of our user-generated content strategy because we believe that the best stories are real stories told by real people.
In 2019, our goal was to move away from stiff, generic and impersonal marketing (think stock-style photography), and towards more real, authentic content that aligned with our people-driven brand. The challenge? Getting our local markets to create and deliver content, consistently and at a large scale, and that captured the essence of our brand culture. Oh, and often without the guidance of marketing experts.
Knowing that this was key to authentic and impactful messaging, we doubled down on our #SitelLife hashtag to truly tap into our motto: "the employee experience is the customer experience." Leveraging our best ambassadors - our people - to let their pictures and videos tell our Sitel story.
Let's get practical. At the core of our strategy, Sitel is selling a job - a career opportunity - but what our associates get is an experience. In that sense, they too are our customers. User-generated content as a form of social proof (an online review, let's call it) is a valuable opportunity to reach a wider audience and generate more candidates applying to work for our company.
But what we want to achieve is deeper than that. We want to tell a story that is relatable, compelling and straightforward. As the saying goes, "there are always two sides to every story." Well, we've been telling our corporate side for years, through testimonials and case studies. And now, it is time for our people to tell their own stories - raw and unfiltered. In the end, if both stories share the same message, then we've found our truth.
Now, how do we get real content from our people that is both aligned with our brand and worth sharing? How do we build awareness around #SitelLife? Can we turn 80,000 associates into Creators? More realistically, how much content can we expect to generate across 20+ countries?
Because our business is mostly brick-and-mortar, our hashtag needed to go beyond the social realm. This was our opportunity to bring #SitelLife offline, and to where the action happens: our contact centers.
In August 2019, we launched offline initiatives to get the #SitelLife out there! We did this through onsite Instagram days, #SitelLife swag, videos for the production floors, computer backgrounds, etc. We needed to be visible. The success of our online strategy depended on our ability to promote it offline.
The culmination of that awareness strategy took place on October 7, 2019 during Customer Service Week (yup, it's a thing!) and with one clear call-to-action: "Share your #SitelLife on Instagram!" This is how we transitioned from offline to online with a strong boost in both internal and external visibility.
Today on social media, we regularly share #SitelLife moments - everything from charity events to Mario Kart tournaments, smoothie breaks to ping pong games and 5k runs to karaoke sing-offs - plus more! We are proud of our diverse and inclusive community.
Our story, as told by our people. That’s the #SitelLife.
In less than a year, the #SitelLife hashtag has generated more than 6,000 posts on Instagram from both user-generated content and posts from our social media teams. With a significant peak on Fridays, when it's time to celebrate the week's achievements. During Customer Service Week alone, the hashtag generated 827 UGC posts.
And let's be honest, not getting a single negative #SitelLife post or comment is something to brag about - especially in the customer service industry!
Internally, our brand hashtag was adopted from the front line all the way up to our global leaders. The impact it had on our culture was perhaps our most significant achievement, not because of pride, but because of the scale and diversity of our markets. This cultural shift was a catalyst for the creation of our internal social media community: MAX Social, which stands for My Associate Experience.
Today, this community gathers 598 employees (mostly customer service representatives) who are passionate about creating content for our Facebook and Instagram accounts. We've found a way to crowdsource our content production while educating our people on social media along the way.
You'll find below our internal promotional video for the #SitelLife hashtag and UGC from Mexico, the USA, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Ivory Coast, Bulgaria and India.
