How the Employee Experience Drives the Customer Experience

Countless research studies have shown there is a clear link between the employee experience and the customer experience. What does this mean to companies? It means, how you treat your employees will have a direct impact on how happy your customers are. This can also directly impact your bottom line.

In regards to the customer experience Gallup found that customers who are fully engaged represent a 23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue and relationship growth over the average customer.

The fact of the matter is, employee-centric cultures produce a more engaged customer which then, in turn, produces greater profit share for the company. Take Starbucks for example, their company publicly values how they treat their employees. A Starbucks customer study showed 87% of the company’s brand affinity is driven by the way Starbucks treats their employees. Because of this, they’ve been able to build a Monster brand.

Let’s face it, customers like doing business with a company who values their employees. The Temkin group put out a study in 2016 called the Employee Engagement Benchmark Study. This study showed a direct correlation between the employee experience and the customer experience. It revealed that companies who excelled at customer experience had 1.5 times as many engaged employees as their counterparts who did not excel in the customer experience.

One way to improve the employee experience is by doing things to help boost employee morale. Strategies such as employee recognition have been shown to be effective at helping to create a positive culture which then boosts employee morale, allowing your staff to better serve your customers.

Leadership Tips to Help Improve the Employee Experience & Impact the Customer Experience

Leadership has a special role in the customer experience; as they are responsible for putting strategies in place to improve the employee experience and to maintain a positive workplace culture.

We’re proud of our leadership team as they do a great job; so, we decided to interview two of our Customer Service Managers to give you some ideas on ways to improve the employee experience in efforts to impact the customer experience.

First, we interviewed Jeremy Yeargain who is the Director of Customer Care at our headquarters in OKC. Take a look at some of the ways he keeps his team engaged below.

What are some of the things you do to help boost employee morale for your team?

Give points and encourage peer to peer points when a team member helps them. We have weekly meetings and I try to walk through a few times each day to talk to them and lighten the mood.

What things do you do as a manager to help keep the atmosphere positive & drama free?

I try to deal with situations as they happen to attempt to prevent them from festering and becoming something bigger than they are.

As a leader of the customer service team what is your favorite part of your job and why?

  My favorite part of my job is the people that work for me.  I have an amazing team that I know I can count on.

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Secondly, we interviewed Amy Christiansen, our Customer Service Manager from our Princeton, IL location. Amy has some great leadership tips to help you in your efforts to better your employee experience below.

What are some of the things you do to help boost employee morale for your team?

We provide positive feedback for outstanding performance.  We set team goals and recognize the group when those goals are met.  We also recognize them when a customer testimonial is received by providing them with Carousel points and also congratulating them on the testimonial in team meetings.

What things do you do as a manager to help keep the atmosphere positive & drama free?

We try to keep the teams light-hearted and spirited. We have a relaxed atmosphere and we allow our employees to have fun while working.

What is an example of where the employee experience impacted a customer’s experience?

This is just one of the many examples we get on a daily basis to show how awesome our employees are at serving our customers.

See this testimonial below:

Mary has been absolutely wonderful throughout this process of revamping our recognition program in 2018.   There have been many changes I’ve asked her to make to our new website with MTM and with our new “Celebration Cards”.   There have been things I have missed in my review so I’ve had to go back to Mary quite a few times and each time she responds with “we’ll take care of this for you” and “it’s not a problem”.  Today there were more changes to make and after hearing her positive comments about it not being a problem and that she wanted to be sure I was happy with our program, I told her that she is the best customer-focused person I’ve ever experienced.  She relieved the tension I was feeling of asking for additional changes and I know she was sincere about ensuring we were completely satisfied with our program from MTM. I am 100% satisfied with MTM and the customer service from Mary.

 Do you use any tools that help make it easier for your employees to better serve your customers?

Training is important, and we encourage learning new processes to help provide better customer service. We are currently providing training classes in regards to processes and we are always cross-training amongst the teams.

As a leader of the customer service team what is your favorite part of your job and why?

As part of customer service, we are problem-solving all day long. The best part is being able to help our customer service teams with their problem-solving. At the end of the day, if we have been able to help our customers and the customer has had a positive experience, then that is a good day. That’s what makes us happy.

Hopefully, these two perspectives have given you some insight as to how you can start improving the culture within your teams. If you have additional questions on ways to improve your culture sign up to get our bi-monthly updates where we will share leadership tips, best practices and more. Or give us a call if you’d like to chat with a recognition consultant.