From the course: Building a Stellar Employee Experience

Customer benefits

From the course: Building a Stellar Employee Experience

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Customer benefits

- Have you noticed that some of the best customer service experiences you have are with happy, attentive employees? Good employees demonstrate a knowledge of the business or the product, and great employees have a willingness to help others understand it too. This is the making of great customer service experience. Richard Branson says, "Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers." One of the keys to great customer service is loyal and engaged employees. And the employee experience directly impacts whether or not employees are highly engaged. According to a number of studies conducted by consulting firms and universities, there is a strong link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. A study conducted by Washington State University determined that customer satisfaction is directly linked to employee satisfaction and that financial success is directly linked to customer satisfaction. When your employees are satisfied, it has a ripple effect. Employees are more likely to happily serve customers, actively resolve questions and issues, and offer genuine service that helps build a long-term relationship with your customer base. Temkin Group's Employee Engagement Benchmark Study found that organizations who excelled at the customer experience had 1 1/2 times more engaged employees than other organizations. And happy and empowered employees are more creative with customer experience. The employee customer interaction is not scripted. Happier and empowered employees have more headspace to come up with fresh ideas, and their minds are more likely to take on new challenges with enthusiasm. For example, when you go to a store like Trader Joe's, the staff gives you their personal recommendations and offer up recipes or new ideas. That's because Trader Joe's has all their employees try new products as a part of their weekly meetings. When employees are empowered to connect with customers, they will. So measure your customer experience and your employee experience in parallel. Ask your employees similar questions that you ask your customers, and ask your employees about their customers. Like if you could give your customer one piece of advice, what would it be? If you could ask your customers to do one thing for you, what would it be? And what's one thing you do that your customers compliment? By treating your employees' experience with as much care as your customer experience, you may actually unlock secrets to improve the customer experience too.

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