It is very common these days for all the organizations to focus on customer centric process approach because of very obvious reason that we all want our customers to be happy…not only happy but we want to deliver more then expected and create the great customer experience. However, in the process of customer centricity, we push our people (employees) to the great extent which leads to employee dissatisfaction which ultimately leads to, they only comply to the process designed or follow SOP created, which finally leads to poor customer service. Ironically, these customer centric organizations always keep fighting for the higher customer satisfaction and addressing customer complaints.
Employees are the greatest asset to any organization, and having great people is a challenge to any organization. We put so much effort and resources to identify the right people. Hence, it is our job as a leader to make sure they are happy, satisfied and don’t loose their motivation. I strongly believe that employees can’t be motivated, great employees are self motivated, and as a leader we need to make sure that we create right work environment and culture.
Customer experience or customer satisfaction is an output to your product or service, but it doesn’t make any sense by compromising your employee experience or their work satisfaction. Customer experience is direct proportionate to the culture of an organization. What if we empathize with our employee and design the processes keeping them as a primary focus. If employees are motivated and happy, automatically you will have better quality of services or products, which ultimately lead to higher customer satisfaction or experience. Happy and motivated employee will not even think twice to go an extra mile to help customer if we go an extra mile to help them.
No matter how much customer centric process we design, it will be always delivered through the employees to the customer. Hence they are the first point of contact for the customer. How many times it happened that you have gone to a store or a hospital or a hotel where staffs are just answering your questions or fake smiling as a forced process, does that make you comfortable? I am sure you have also experienced where you were treated by a very happy staff which helped to make sure your all requests are addressed in the best possible way and get you the best possible service. Isn’t that is more comforting to us?
One of the best example for this is Southwest Airlines, it is one of the best airlines in United States and known for his great customer service in the industry. The secret to their success is people they have. The intent of their philosophy of “Employee First” is very simple, “A motivated employee treats customer well.” If you deep dive into their processes and policies, you will realize that they put their heart into making employee experience great, and so do employees for their customers.
I always believed that we can’t succeed by pushing our people hard, success comes if our people pushes themselves harder for an organization… We as leaders just need to focus on designing the right culture.
Happy employees lead to happy customers
Rohan Shah
