The connection between employee satisfaction and business success is not new. However, it’s taken a long time for business leaders to recognize how important that correlation is. But what about the connection between employee satisfaction and customer success?
The answer is simple, only when you reach absolute satisfaction can you route to stellar customer success. Satisfied employees tend to assist customers with a pleasant demeanor which gives a push to customer service. This hits the ultimate customer success channel, triggering the domino effect.
Employee Satisfaction is slowly becoming business performance metrics. Not just that, it gives birth to a rather satisfying customer experience, increases customer loyalty, and ultimately drives increased profitability. Ultimately, low work satisfaction and overall low employee morale can negatively affect company operations greatly, causing dysfunctional turnover and dissatisfied customers. This could hurt profitability as well.
So, how to measure employee satisfaction?
When you provide employees with the tools and skills they need, employee satisfaction rises and serves the customers better. Remember, happy and engaged employees are here to stay with you. We will be diving into the following today for better understanding:
- Repeat the 3E’s
- Focus on the Vision
- Employee Satisfaction takes the extra mile
- The much-needed employee’s involvement
- Hail the Employee Engagement
Employee satisfaction augments employee productivity, and higher productivity means greater service and value to your customers. This value leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Later, this promotes profitability and continued success.
Repeat the 3E’s
Your commitment to customers will automatically evolve when they see a rise in quality service and support. And how you do maintain that? You hail the 3E’s of the customer charter – Empathy, Effectiveness, and Ease.
Religiously following the 3E’s ensure that you deliver innovation and value to the prospects. Well, you could also set up a dedicated army of customer success consultants, ones who can be inherently wired to drive customer success, upholding the ‘Customer First’ policy.
Also, keep in mind that your mission should not just be to grab a ‘good’ from the customers. Rather you must envision making a real difference to the customer’s business. Once you do that, the results will automatically fall back in line.
Focus on the Vision
Do you want to become a world leader in the Customer Success niche? Strive to aim for a vivid focus where you empower your employees, who in turn ensure pure delight to the customers by driving their successes.
Simply satisfying the customers might not turn out to be the best practice you can take up to maintain a stellar customer health score. Yes, you heard that right! It could be possible that it might not work out well for you. However, a stern focus on the vision of your company, followed by the needs and interests of the customer’s success will.
Employee Satisfaction takes the extra mile
There is a growing number of companies that put forth employees and customers at the forefront of the business. These companies understand that satisfied employees are more likely to go the extra mile to service a customer.
If your employees feel appreciated and valued, they will most likely appreciate and show greater willingness to assist each customer. This will ensure each customer interaction is handled by the high standards set forth by your company.
Rightly quoted by Mike Abrashoff, Commander, USS Benfold, “It all comes down to employee satisfaction. It all comes down to recognition. It all comes down to leadership, which led to every sailor feeling ownership and accountability for the results. You can ask a team to accomplish a mission but you can’t order excellence.”
The much-needed employee’s involvement
A recent survey suggested statistically that employee satisfaction results in higher profits. The following are a few highlights from the survey,
- Help a company develop a positive, friendly reputation, a reputation that will spread and attract new customers.
- Retain customers since satisfied employees are more likely to meet or even exceed customer service expectations.
- Reduce churn as customers who repeatedly receive the same friendly service are likely to become or remain loyal customers.
If you think that you are going everything you can to boost the satisfaction quotient, yet the results aren’t as expected, maybe then you can introduce the missing ingredient of employee involvement or happiness. Then you will see how things change to a positive note. Just fit in the right piece in the jigsaw.
Hail the Employee Engagement
When your employees don’t feel committed to fostering the company’s mission, they will do little to contribute to a company’s success. Lack of personal or professional satisfaction with an employer will result in a lack of incentive to help the company present itself in the best possible manner.
Therefore, if a company wants to ensure customers receive superior service, it must provide a high level of service to employees and empower them. Only when this is in-built into a business’s culture, you can see the real outcomes.
Ensure that they are being customer-centric in every facet of their professional behavior and work. Because it is them to bring in a new client and it is they who could lose one. On this note, managers can take an extra step in this. They must actively work to foster a healthy environment wherein the employees feel recognized for their efforts. Further, this will immensely help a company meet its goals. These are something additional you can do:
- Work on trust and loyalty and make that an ongoing top priority.
- Clearly and consistently articulate its commitment to making employees feel valued.
- Recognize that high levels of turnover will have a debilitating financial impact on the company (hiring expenses, training labor, productivity loss, etc.)
Being with your employees on the same journey will diminish employee stress and develop a team working spirit. And this will eventually lead to customer success. It is you who can bring out the domino effect and the rest of the positive impacts will automatically queue in.
Final Take
While measuring customer satisfaction is, undoubtedly a priority, so is measuring employee satisfaction. This data could strengthen the backbone of internal operations: nurturing highly engaged employees, will lead to more efficient business performance which can only result in improved customer satisfaction.
Use your time and veer in the right direction before you are late. Follow these battle-tested practices and in no time will you see the fruitful outcomes. And lastly remember, the customer is the king!
Kaustubh Sangam is a Customer Success Analyst with 2 years of experience. Committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving business growth. Proficient in leveraging data analysis to optimize customer success strategies.
Published September 24, 2020, Updated June 07, 2023