Empowering your employees to act in your customers’ best interest!
There is a clear connection between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. While it is difficult to quantify the impact of employee attitude on the satisfaction level of your clients, one fact remains the same: satisfied customers will keep coming back and referring your company to their friends and business acquaintances. It is obvious that there are significant benefits to be gained from trying to improve an organization's service quality, and that's why managers devote so much time and money to training programs that provide employees with guidelines on the specifics of dealing with customers. What managers don't fully understand is that such attempts are, to a certain extent, shallow! Real improvements in customer service start with providing superior service and support to the employees themselves.
Akhtaboot is here to provide you with tips on how to make sure your employees are happy and satisfied and in return are giving their maximum in providing the best services to your customers.
Hire Better!Because not everybody is capable of working on a computer while handling a phone conversation, HR managers must first define the company’s future employee needs to deliver the right customer experience. Company culture, details of the job and specific competencies also need to be evaluated and understood in order to develop an effective hiring model. While finding exceptional client servicing employees who can do efficient post-call work is important, it is actually not as important as finding employees who can listen and respond with empathy to clients, and who have the ability to identify issues and deliver specific answers effectively and efficiently with emphasis on first call issue resolution. By systemizing the hiring process, using a more strategic approach and taking time to analyze the job and your employee competency needs, you will be able to identify and hire candidates that better meet the needs of your organization and who are more likely to stay in their positions for a longer period of time.
Trust and RespectTrust and respect are the basis of pretty much all successful relationships, and it’s certainly no different in employee relationships. One of the best ways to determine the level of trust in a company is to examine assumptions regarding intentions. Do policies and procedures seem to assume that employees act on their best intentions or their worst intentions? In other words, are the policies in place mostly to ensure employees don’t do things they are not allowed to do, or to ensure employees have the right environment to do the things they should be doing? An excellent way to test respect is in how input is heard from the different members of a team. Are people’s ideas that presented with detail and backed with supporting evidence taken seriously? This doesn’t mean that all ideas must always be accepted and implemented. However, if the idea is ultimately rejected, it should be rejected with the same level of thought and supporting evidence.
Show AppreciationEmployee attitudes typically reflect the moral of the company as a whole. In areas of customer service and sales, happy employees are extremely important because they represent the company to the public. Satisfaction, however, is not linked solely to compensation. Sure, a raise or extra benefits will probably improve employee contentment, at least temporarily, but small, inexpensive changes can have a long-term impact such as showing ‘Appreciation.’ Appreciation means making your employees feel important and that they are a vital part of a common goal. The result of doing so will sure be manifested in better customer satisfaction.
Instill ConfidenceWith a solid framework for hierarchy, clear accountabilities and matching authority, employees can begin to make decisions about their daily work with confidence. As those decisions become more and more effective, employees become more self-confident. Self-confidence is definitely a vital element to success in all aspects of life. Confident employees find it much easier to do what’s right for customers and for the company.
Create an Atmosphere of Growth A Job is more than a source of income, it is actually a venue for employees to grow and learn. Companies that invest in their employees’ growth will not only have happier employees; they will have more productive employees who generate better and better ideas for improving the company service level. This means mentoring employees, training them in areas even beyond their current scope of responsibilities, being more transparent about aspects of the business that are interesting to particular employees and more. Creating more skilled and more knowledgeable employees has an extremely high ROI.
Measurement is KeyCompanies with a highly evolved sense of the impact employee satisfaction makes on customer profitability constantly measure everything: customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, process efficiencies and bottlenecks. This enables them to determine what’s working and what’s not so as to make adjustments accordingly. Periodic re-evaluation also enables your company to benefit from the fresh ideas of your current and new hires.
“People are our most valuable asset”, “Our employees come first” and “We’re only as strong as our people”. These statements have been around in the workplace for decades, yet countless companies seem to be in denial of just how accurate those statements are. Many business owners think that they only need to pay attention to paying customers, providing them with exceptional service. Yet, it has been proven that keeping your employees satisfied with their work experience, providing them with challenges and allowing them to have a sense of ownership in the business can have a tremendous effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty. The correlations are clear: Satisfied employees generate satisfied customers, who in turn build long-term relationships and spend more money!
