Employee Engagement and Customer Satisfaction

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It’s no news that Happy Employees = Happy Customers

Employees and customers are closely linked; as what one does affects the other. Rude, aggressive customers will cause misery for employees and lower morale, while disengaged and unhappy employees cannot provide a good customer experience.

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Imagine you work at a place where –

  • You are stuffed into an office with a ton of other people. You’re given access to a phone, a computer and inefficient work tools.
  • You’re hungry and the air is hot (ACs are broken).
  • Your supervisor never says thank you, all he/she cares about is profits!
  • No one that matters in your organization ever ask how you’re doing.
  • The constant fear of being asked to go is always there (after all you know a few people asked to go last month).

This type of workplace negativity coupled with complaining customers will be just too much to bear. You hate going to work, but you just do it , mostly because it’s better than being idle at home. And you are still expected to be the ambassador of your company to the customer. I wonder how that works out.

While this scenario might seem farfetched, I guarantee that it is reality in lot of firms in this age and time. Organizations fail to realize that the happier and more engaged employees are, the more effort such employees would put into their roles than those less engaged and happy.

A study by Watson Wyatt, found that highly engaged employees were twice as likely to be top performers.

Employee engagement is fundamentally a measure of employees’ willingness to give their discretionary effort to help the organization achieve and exceed its goals. In the last few years, we have observed a phenomenon that we called “engagement recession”: increased economic uncertainty leading to anxiety and confusion on the part of employees, accompanied by growth in unproductive behaviors and a strong decline in engagement.
– Aon Hewitt

Whether it’s answering the phone, responding to enquires at a branch, a customer tweet or even an email, it’s important the people representing the organization feel their best. If employees feel their best your customers are going to get the very best experience.

To raise the level of employee engagement, organizations should first fulfil the basics of employee satisfaction such as –

  • An emotionally safe work environment
  • Right work tools
  • Fair compensation
  • A sense of purpose
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To create the type of engagement that leads to great Customer experiences, there are additional things a company can do, such as –

Get feedback from employees.

feedbackThey know what’s contributing to low engagement and have good ideas about how to fix it. They just need to be asked – in the right way.

For interviews/surveys with employees about a sensitive subject such as engagement, you will need an outside consultant that employees feel they can trust to preserve their confidentiality

Show employees how feedback is being used

Once an employee has taken the time to give their opinion on a matter, you can be sure they’ll be watching to see if their opinion is truly valued. No matter how little or insignificant the ideas or suggestions, follow up with employees and let them know that their feedback is always appreciated and encouraged.

Drive Initiatives from the Top

Employees must see the leadership practising and living the characteristics and behaviours they are being asked to display. Research by The Energy Project & Harvard Business Review showed that In companies where leaders model the desired behaviour, employees are 55 percent more engaged, 53 percent more focused and more likely to stay at the company.
“Walking the walk” is the single most effective employee engagement strategy any company can deploy.

Recognize and appreciate employees

Image credit: www.quotesgram.com

Appreciate & recognize employees for work, time and extra miles they put in at their duties. The magic of sincere appreciation never gets old, it’s such a simple thing, but it’s often overlooked, especially in large organizations. Acknowledgement and recognition by top management are the quickest ways to build trust, aspiration and excitement in the workplace.

People may take a job for more money, but they often leave it for more recognition. –Dr. Bob Nelson

Recognition programs provide an effective, low-cost way of raising morale and encouraging higher levels of performance

Incentives

Additional money on top of salary is an incentive that most would love to have.
Employee incentive programs that work don’t always have to be tied to commissions or bonuses, Platforms like Anyperk© allows businesses of any size to offer employees perk. Anyperk© partners with its vendors to allow members access to discounts.

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Promote from Within.

If your employees start to believe that they’re stuck in the same job, the same role and are not likely to advance, they’ll quickly lose motivation. An organization which promotes from within demonstrates that it has faith in its employees and is committed to helping them advance in their careers; this spurs them to work harder to reach the next level. (This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bring in outsiders to fill open positions, but look inwards first and see if you have people who fit that role)

Give them time to work on something else.

Follow Google’s example and make employees work on something outside their strict scope of work for a certain percentage of their time on the clock. According to Dan Ruch, CEO of Rocketrip

“We find that allowing employees that freedom and flexibility to think outside the box of what their day-to-day job is, you not only increase employee satisfaction but you also increase creativity,”

It’s easy to understand the connection between engagement in customer-facing positions (like sales and customer service) and customer satisfaction. However, it’s also important that those behind the scenes are engaged and dedicated to providing the best experience for customers; this is achievable by creating a solid service vision, and letting each of them see how their duties impact the Customers experience

 

Kelechi Okeke
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