The link between customer experience and employee engagement: More art than science
January 18, 2012Skepticism is rife and trust is not easily won but your people can help
January 24, 2012
photo credit: elyse patten
Following on from my last post and the theme that it started to explore, I would like to present to you a guest post from Jon Gordon. I’m very excited and this is a bit of coup for me as Jon is a Wall Street Journal and international bestselling author of a number of books. You can find out more about Jon via the links below.
The Greatest Customer Service Strategy
Smiling is important. Eye contact matters. Patience is essential. Being warm and friendly is a must. And providing a positive emotional experience for your customers is a priority.
But these are not the greatest of customer service strategies. Ironically the greatest of all strategies has nothing to do with customers and everything to do with employees.
The Greatest Strategy is this: Great customer service begins with being employee focused first and customer focused second. If you treat your employees well, they will treat their customers well.
Too often businesses, hospitals, restaurants and organisations focus all their energy on the customer while ignoring the very employees that serve their customers. This may work in the short run but eventually employees become tired, burned out, negative and resentful.
Just the other day I was speaking at a hospital and was told that they were doing patient satisfaction surveys as a way to improve nurse performance. “What about nurse satisfaction surveys,” I asked. “No we’re not doing that,” they said. The problem was clear. Measuring patient satisfaction will not make nurses more energised, positive and attentive.
Patient satisfaction will go up when nurse satisfaction goes up.
I have found that organisations who deliver the best service also have the best culture where employees are valued, listened to and cared for and in turn these employees value, care for and serve their customers.
Best Buy, for example, started to measure the engagement of their employees and in the process saw service and profits improve. T-Mobile dramatically improved and transformed their customer service when they improved the culture in their call centres by listening to their employees. Southwest Airlines has built their success on the foundation of an employee-first culture.
Of course we need to train our employees to do all the things that make for a great customer experience.
There are great books on the essentials of creating a great customer experience.
But most of all remember if you model great service, your people will share it.
So, if you want your team to serve, serve them.
If you want your people to care, care about them.
If you want your team to love their work, love them.
If you want your employees to be their best, give them your best.
If you take care of your people they will take care of your customers.
About Jon Gordon:
This post is a guest post by Jon Gordon. Jon is the Wall Street Journal and international bestselling author of a number of books including The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy, and his latest, The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work. Learn more at www.JonGordon.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonGordon11 or Facebook www.facebook.com/jongordonpage .
15 Comments
For my sins (and I wouldn’t admit this publicly) I am a six sigma black belt.
Now that might not make me a wow at parties, but it has taught me one thing:
“worry about the inputs and the outputs will take care of themselves”
I can’t help but think you have hit the nail on the head.
James
Hi James,
I’ve asked for Jon to comment on this too. But, for my part I think that what Jon is advocating is simple and elegant and, undoubtedly, effective. Why is it that we make things more complicated than they need to be?
Adrian
Thank you Adrian. Our belief is that simple is powerful. If you focus on simple actionable steps you produce powerful results. I agree with what James said about worrying about the inputs and letting the outputs take care of themselves.
Hi Jon, Thanks for dropping by and addressing James’ comment.
Best wishes,
Adrian
Very intreresting blog. It was very useful. I was looking exaxtly for this. Thank you for your effort. I hope you will write more such interesting posts.
Jon,
Says something about the world we live in that this 101 on Human Chemistry is still missed by many organisations. Maybe if you never received it, you can never pass it on?
I bet Best Buy’s CEO, Brian Dunn is still busy working his way through the 260 responses he received from currrent and ex co-workers in response to his recent blogging. A very public version of employee engagement!
Martin
Hi Martin, thanks for your comment. I have forwarded it to Jon and have asked for him to drop by and comment.
Personally, I’m not sure how someone can go through life without the 101 on Human Chemistry and how can one miss it.
Adrian
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