Did you know?
- That 53 percent of Americans are currently unhappy at work, according to the Conference Board.
- According to Gallup research, an astounding 70 percent of U.S. employees are not showing up to work fully committed to delivering their best performance.
- According to a recent Gartner study of employees from across the U.S., nearly half (46 percent of employees) are largely dissatisfied with their work experiences.
Taking a keen look at the statistics above, it’s obvious that a large percentage of workers are not really satisfied with their working experience.
Guess what?
Even your employees are among them.
The effects
When employees are unhappy and dissatisfied with their working experience, the effect is felt by the company in terms of customer relations and overall business operations.
Simply put, if you have unhappy employees or employees that don’t really fancy how you’re running things in your organization, your overall business operation will take the hit, starting with your customer experience.
They will be less efficient to work, relate poorly with customers – possibly drive customers away, make colossal mistakes, and in the end, crash your business.
I’m sure you don’t want this for your business.
Instead, you want a satisfactory customer experience that drives sales and increases revenue.
The Solution?
Make your employees happy, and they will do more than you expect of them!
In the words of JW Marriott, “If you take care of your people, your people will take care of your customers, and your business will take care of itself.”
Ways to raise employee satisfaction that boost customer satisfaction
Ask them directly
Surprise your employees by sending them emails asking their opinions about their working experience with you. Ask them for things they like and things they would like to see changed.
There’s no better way to improve employee satisfaction than this. Taking effective actions to resolve their problems will help in boosting employee’s morale and confidence – which will, in turn, drive happy engagements with customers.
Be Flexible
The traditional method is that employees have to get to work at a particular time and leave at a given time. Why not make your organization open to workers leaving and entering earlier or later than usual. Of course, some people might argue that this may promote laziness and abandonment of duties, but not if there’s a detailed designation of tasks for everyone.
By using tools like Slack and Trello to manage tasks and projects, everyone can see what’s on their schedule, and if someone comes in too late or leaves their tasks undone, they know they will have to face the music.
By being flexible with your employees, the idea is to let them design “how they want to complete their tasks.”
Thankfully we now have tools like business Voice over IP, which allows people to route calls from and to anywhere. Even if an employee is not on seat, they can still take calls and tend to customers.
Incorporate latest techs
Whether you like it or not, your employees are aware of all the latest developments in the tech world. And they know how each of these techs can make their work faster and easier.
Although they might not walk up to you requesting that you provide these techs, they’re crazily wishing and hoping you’d one day bring them in.
The longer you stall, the more dissatisfied and frustrated they get with the outdated systems they’re working with.
For instance, if you’re still using Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) like Landlines to take customers’ calls, you’re really doing it wrong. Your employees likely wish you’d switch to more effective systems like VoIPs. They know the advantages of these systems – some of them are using it for personal purposes – and they expect to find it at work too.
Show them you care about their health
One of the biggest concerns for most workers is how their job affects their overall health condition. By educating and supporting employees on health matters, businesses can gain the love and trust of their workers.
For starters, you can distribute health flyers, hold health seminars, and invite experts, enforce regular breaks and leave, provide health-related incentives, and gift health and wellness packages.
Improve employee experience
If you expect someone to give their best for your organization, you need to make sure that they’re experiencing the best of times in their role.
For example, your business would experience a lesser number of call holds if you stopped bombarding employees with too many tasks. The conditioning of their working environment is another important point that needs mentioning. Not to forget remuneration, appraisal, and bonuses.
All these are a great way to make employees enjoy their time with your company.
Remember, if they have a positive experience working for you, they will be happy to embrace the challenges that come with their roles, and invariably maintain the best of relationships with customers.
Interesting related article: “What is Motivation?“