At Microsoft, our developers, HR professionals, marketers, sellers, and many other employees are the company’s Customer Zero. As such, they use our products and services first and more fully than most other customers. Their feedback is sent to our product groups, who use it to make our products better for customers.
“One of the best parts of leading Microsoft Digital Employee Experience is getting to be Customer Zero for our latest products,” says Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president for Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE), the company’s IT organization. “It’s always gratifying to see our insights and ideas reflected in the final products, and I’m especially proud of the work we’ve done with Viva Amplify, which will bring a new level of innovation and efficiency to communicators.”
To get our virtuous Customer Zero cycle right, we must communicate well with our employees—this is why our internal IT Communications team has been rethinking everything they do.
“Your employees won’t get behind you if you don’t bring them in at the right time with the right info,” D’Hers says. “We’re reinventing the way we do internal IT communications, and it’s working.”
Getting communications right is critical. It fosters collaboration, empowers individuals, and drives business growth. At Microsoft, we recognize that getting communications right is not just a necessary skill, but a strategic advantage. It enables us to align our teams, engage our customers, and ultimately, deliver innovative solutions that transform people’s lives.
—Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience
Our IT Communications team and all communicators at the company are preparing to use Microsoft Viva Amplify to get their messages to our employees. Viva Amplify is our new communications platform that we’re starting to roll out in September 2023.
[Learn more about our role as Microsoft’s Customer Zero. Find out how we’re evolving our culture with Microsoft Viva. See how we’re using Minecraft to teach our employees healthy hybrid meeting habits.]
Inform and inspire
The core job of our IT Communications team is to disseminate product updates and productivity guidance to our employees while gathering valuable feedback from them. The team’s goal is to drive product adoption, improve employee engagement, productivity, and to foster increased customer empathy in product development groups.
“Getting communications right is critical,” D’Hers says. “It fosters collaboration, empowers individuals, and drives business growth. At Microsoft, we recognize that getting communications right is not just a necessary skill, but a strategic advantage. It enables us to align our teams, engage our customers, and ultimately, deliver innovative solutions that transform people’s lives.”
Having a well-crafted strategy is essential for achieving effective communication. The IT Communications team lives by the guiding communication pillars of informing and inspiring employees and encouraging innovation.
“Inform” calls on Microsoft communicators to not only educate employees about new product features and capabilities, but to discuss the importance of what’s changing and trying new products out.
“Our goal is to ensure people at Microsoft know about, embrace, and influence technology changes at Microsoft. To do that, we provide critical information about technologies developed within Microsoft to employees,” says Diana McCarty, a principal group content program manager and the leader of Microsoft’s IT Communications team. “From the start, we’ve tried to be methodical in our planning and creative and flexible in our communication approaches to mitigate internal audience burnout.”
Avoiding burnout is a vital part of “inform,” as employees can feel fatigued by the amount of messaging directed at them at work. To do so, the IT Communications team employs user-centric messaging, which focuses on using different channels to reach people where they are in ways that are clear and concise. The other key element in user-centric messaging is providing an answer to the crucial question of “why” that comes up during transitions.
We feel that Microsoft employees are consumers—they are our Customer Zero. And, like external consumers, they want content that is inspiring.
—Susanne Smith, principal content PM manager, IT Communications team, MDEE
“So often in IT communications, you’re told to update or to move to a new system,” says Susanne Smith, a principal content PM manager on the IT Communications team in MDEE. “But at times you don’t get great context as to why that’s important so the change can feel arbitrary. Often, the “why” is that we are Customer Zero and test our products internally before we release them externally. But we also focus on what’s in it for our employees and their productivity.”
Microsoft views employees as its first customers, and this is where the “inspire” communication pillar comes to life.
“We feel that Microsoft employees are consumers—they are our Customer Zero,” Smith says. “And, like external consumers, they want content that is inspiring.”
The IT Communications team looks for ways to give employees a reason to smile, and to provide moments that make employees feel valued and connected. “That’s something that our team has really been focused on in the last couple of years—to create delightful marketing,” Smith says.
Change, particularly technology change, can be intimidating. Communications that are quirky, clever, and fun—when appropriate—invite employees to embrace the moment, get involved, and maybe see themselves working in a new way.
Being innovative within those pillars is also important. This involves incorporating feedback, and the two-way communication function that the IT Communications team carries out between internal customers and product teams.
“The innovation aspect is vital,” McCarty says. “We work with product and deployment teams to roll out new technologies. As we receive feedback from our internal customers, we send this back to the product teams—and often, features are added or altered using the feedback to create better end-user experiences.”
Innovation also happens within the IT Communications team. A top priority for the team is to keep finding new ways to get the word out about changes in technology, to try different approaches, and incorporate new communication tools and channels, like AI and Microsoft Viva Amplify.
Driving product adoption and engagement
If you make adopting new products interesting to employees, they’ll work with you.
“We are guardians of employee experience within new products,” says Eva Etchells, a program manager on the IT Communications team. “We advocate for the employee experience to ensure that products properly serve the intended audience. We also drive product adoption by making new technologies interesting and relevant to employees.”
To ensure that products serve the intended target market, Etchells and other members of the IT Communications team test new products themselves and share them with employees who want to be the first to try out new products.
The team has also carved out a role as an “ask desk” within the company on Microsoft Viva Engage. Answering questions, helping their peers work through issues with new technology, and connecting them with the Helpdesk when necessary allows them to nurture relationships and build rapport with employees who are willing to try out the very earliest builds of new products.
Employees are busy, and there are always a lot of messages coming at them in their daily work. Capturing attention is a key focus for us as communicators trying to drive adoption.
—Eva Etchells, program manager, IT Communications team, MDEE
The IT Communications team also stays in close contact with product development teams, testers, and others charged with gathering product feedback so they know what’s coming next and can adapt messaging to reflect or influence employee sentiment.
This isn’t easy. Cultivating interest in testing new products presents difficulties—this is where the team emphasizes how impactful being an early adopter is.
“Employees are busy, and there are always a lot of messages coming at them in their daily work,” Etchells says. “Capturing attention is a key focus for us as communicators trying to drive adoption.”
Reinventing how we communicate with employees
To get Microsoft employees interested in new products, the team starts with meeting employees where they are in their day-to-day activities. Using Microsoft Viva Engage for announcements and news provides a seamless, social media-like experience integrated into employees’ daily routines, eliminating the sense of it being an additional task.
Microsoft Viva Engage is an employee experience tool that’s part of the larger Microsoft Viva platform—with some aspects available within Microsoft 365—that enables organizations to foster employee engagement and collaboration through a centralized digital space for communication, announcements, and social interactions. When it comes to convincing employees to make the jump and test out new products, the team reaches back to their “inspire” communication pillar. Often, this translates to finding the right marketing angle.
“To encourage employees to incorporate something new into their schedule, we prioritize making our content engaging and demonstrating empathy towards employee interests,” says Sarah Lundy, a senior program manager on the IT Communications team. “Viva Engage is one of the most powerful tools we use to do this.”
The Microsoft Viva employee experience platform, for example, was set up as a tool that can help employees increase their internal visibility across the company, which in turn can help them advance their careers within the company. In the supporting content, the team highlighted how Microsoft Viva tools make employee lives easier and their job performance better.
The team also found new and creative ways to reach people beyond sending emails. For example, the IT Communications team used Microsoft Viva Engage hashtags to mix up how they got their messages out.
One fun way the team connected with employees was to create a Minecraft game to change their behavior in meetings to better accommodate our new hybrid work world.
“You never truly know what’s going to excite people,” Etchells says. “Recently, we helped our colleagues name their work semesters after elements in the periodic table for fun, and let people participate in polls to choose which ones we used. It was surprising how engaged and excited folks were—and the key to success here seemed to be focusing on user participation.”
At the end of the day, driving adoption and engaging employees often relies on the willingness of the team to try new ideas and adapt.
It helps us drive adoption for new products when executives engage with the content we create. Leader sponsorship can make a huge difference.
—Sarah Lundy, senior program manager, IT Communications team, MDEE
“As communicators, we have to be willing to try new things that might or might not work, and to pivot quickly when things don’t work,” Etchells says.
“There’s an aspect of behavioral science to communications,” Lundy says. “Employees may respond well to a type of communication once, and then later respond poorly to that same style of communication.”
Boost your message with executive voices
It helps when executives show support for the work that communicators do.
“It helps us drive adoption for new products when executives engage with the content we create,” Lundy says. “Leader sponsorship can make a huge difference.”
A campaign that the team ran, called “#2022Reflections,” featured Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
Nadella shared his reflections in a video on his storyline in Microsoft Viva Engage and urged people to participate with their own reflections using the hashtag #2022Reflections. When they used the hashtag, participants’ posts were aggregated in an official campaign in Viva Engage, generating conversations and interactions. The IT Communications team sent an email to employees highlighting ways Viva could support them as they wrapped up the year and encouraging reflections in the campaign.
Ultimately, the campaign successfully drove awareness of the Microsoft Viva Engage features and encouraged meaningful interactions within the product.
Becoming Customer Zero with Microsoft Viva Amplify
In a meta moment, the IT Communications team recently got to be their very own Customer Zero for a new communications tool, Microsoft Viva Amplify.
They helped us understand the challenges they face as communicators, from designing communications campaigns to tracking employee engagement metrics. This informed our development of Viva Amplify and helped us build a better user experience very early on in development.
—Judith Yaaqoubi, principal product manager, Microsoft Viva Amplify product group
Microsoft Viva Amplify is part of the Microsoft Viva employee experience platform that empowers internal communication teams and leaders to elevate their message and energize their audiences. Specifically, Viva Amplify provides a single platform for communicators and leaders to plan, create, and send their communications to employees. In one motion, they can use Viva Amplify to build a communication once and have it automatically formatted for and published to multiple endpoints—email, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva Connections, and internal SharePoint sites. Microsoft Viva Engage is being added as an endpoint soon, as well as other communications channels.
Microsoft Viva Amplify makes sure that company messaging meets employees where they already are throughout Microsoft 365, making it an intuitive part of their daily activities. Viva Amplify is available to customers as part of the Viva suite and as part of a new communications offering.
“To create Microsoft Viva Amplify, we did a lot of deep research with external companies, but also with the IT Communications team,” says Judith Yaaqoubi, a principal product manager on the Microsoft Viva Amplify product group. “They helped us understand the challenges they face as communicators, from designing communications campaigns to tracking employee engagement metrics. This informed our development of Viva Amplify and helped us build a better user experience very early on in development.”
Particularly, the IT Communications team allowed the Microsoft Viva Amplify development team to study their work habits during communication campaigns over a long period of time, which wasn’t possible during the research conducted with customers. This allowed the development team to better discern how campaigns are created, and to comprehend the usage of tools within the campaigns.
“The IT Communications team also hosted workshops with other teams and individuals within Microsoft to test Microsoft Viva Amplify and identify challenges experienced in the product as we developed it,” Yaaqoubi says. “This close partnership not only helped drive internal adoption of the product but has allowed to us to create a product that better serves the needs of communicators.”
In Microsoft Viva Amplify, the results from internal testing with the IT Communications team are clear. The features for planning and sending communications across the company are intuitive and simple.
Viva Amplify has the following features for executives and communications professionals:
- Campaign orchestration tools, including the creation of a campaign brief that drives alignment on objectives and key messages between campaign collaborators
- The ability to create content once and publish it simultaneously across Microsoft 365 tools such as Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Viva Engage is coming soon)
- Publication preview modes to test how content will look on each platform before pushing it live
- Detailed performance metrics within Microsoft Viva Amplify to check campaign reach and engagement with target audiences
- Campaign cards that allow you to visualize and manage all campaigns in one place, with “Live” statuses for active campaigns
The “Campaign Brief” tab, in particular, shows the influence from the IT Communications team’s testing. Upon selecting the tab there are multiple sections, the first being “Campaign Objectives,” where goals and messages that apply to the entire campaign can be listed.
“We learned by working with the IT Communications team that often, there are many people with different roles and perspectives working on the same communication campaigns. This feature allows everyone to stay in alignment and ensure that key messages are clear across all campaign content,” Yaaqoubi says.
Each platform has its own nuances, and we wanted to be able to get that right. Sending everything out at once with the ability to adjust the message for each endpoint is very powerful.
— Diana McCarty, principal group content program manager, IT Communications team, MDEE
So far, the IT Communications team has used Microsoft Viva Amplify to develop several communications campaigns and has seen how the platform makes communications more efficient.
“We love being able funnel all of our communications into one tool,” McCarty says. “It allows us to reach employees where they are.”
The quick customization that her team can do makes sure that the message is appropriate for the various platforms where the content is published, which helps it land well. “Each platform has its own nuances, and we wanted to be able to get that right,” McCarty says. “Sending everything out at once with the ability to adjust the message for each endpoint is very powerful.”
Building toward the future
Looking forward, the Microsoft Viva Amplify team is excited to continue working on how to make communicators more successful, including saving time by using generative AI.
“Internal communications is primed for a revolution,” says Naomi Moneypenny, who leads product development for Viva Amplify. “Our goal is to empower and scale the impact of communicators by managing their extended teams and assets effectively, recommending most effective actions and resources.”
The IT Communications team is also working alongside other development teams to test communication features currently being built to add to Microsoft Viva Engage. Microsoft 365 Copilot in Viva Engage will help users to write posts by generating content.
“We innovate every single day and I’m so proud of this team,” Smith says. “From the channels that we use to the messaging we create all the way down to our use of AI to enhance our materials.”
It’s all about empowering the team to be creative in ways that drive impact, McCarty says.
“We thrive on exploring unconventional uses, finding new ways to approach challenges, constantly seeking fresh perspectives and unique solutions, and working with product teams like Viva Amplify to transform internal communications capabilities” she says. “Everything we do ends up supporting our employees and customers, and that’s what truly drives us.”
Microsoft Viva Amplify will start rolling out publicly in September 2023 and will undergo continuous improvement—with plenty of insights from the IT Communications team.
Here are some things to think about as you consider transforming your IT communications function at your company:
- Microsoft offers a range of powerful tools, including Microsoft Viva Engage and Microsoft Viva Amplify, to enhance productivity and streamline communication within organizations.
- The IT Communications team plays a crucial role in disseminating information, gathering feedback, and driving product development within Microsoft.
- The team follows three guiding communication pillars: inform, inspire, and innovate, to educate employees, create inspiring content, and incorporate feedback into product development.
- Microsoft views employees as their first customers and focuses on driving adoption and engagement by meeting employees where they are and using user-centric messaging.
- The IT Communications team has played a significant role in the development of Microsoft Viva Amplify, working closely with the product development team to ensure a better user experience and more effective communication tools. The product will start rolling out in September 2023 and will continue to be improved with insights from the IT Communications team and other early users.
Go here to learn more about getting started with Microsoft Viva Amplify at your company.
