A customer orientation that is truly lived by companies and experienced by customers is only possible with satisfied and, above all, engaged employees. Employees who only do the bare minimum because of personal or organizational dissatisfaction damage the customer experience and therefore harm business results. Investing in measures to increase employee engagement is, at the same time, an investment in customer satisfaction, competitiveness and a company's sustainable financial success.
That low employee engagement negatively affects revenue and success is not new. In today's service society, whose logic increasingly influences even traditional manufacturing industries, the human factor - in the form of employees - becomes the decisive key variable. Yet many companies focus either on increasing customer satisfaction or on increasing employee satisfaction, with the majority choosing "customer satisfaction only".
This either-or approach often fails to create lasting effects on customer delight and loyalty. If all trainings were truly effective, we would live in customer paradise. So why are so many hotlines overloaded? Why does service quality not improve in proportion to investments in "closer-to-the-customer" projects?
One reason may be that employees fall out of focus. In some companies this has already led to a certain fatigue around customer orientation. The risk is that engagement becomes a modern mandatory exercise if it is pushed without conviction and without considering employee satisfaction and engagement.
Often it is about winning one of the many (and sometimes questionable) awards for "excellent customer orientation". The result: companies proudly decorate their premises with small stands to show customers the certified competence in customer orientation, while customers often experience little of it in reality. Why? Anyone interested only needs to google the survey methodology behind such awards and will quickly see how little meaningful evidence some institutes actually "measure and award".
Success through satisfied employees?
"Most of my employees are satisfied, and you can never please everyone anyway." You hear statements like that often, and they describe reality in many companies. But what is the difference between employee satisfaction and employee engagement? To support understanding, here are definitions of both terms:
Employee satisfaction: The attitude toward the work environment that results from a comparative evaluation between the expected environment (target state) and the perceived actual environment (current state). Employee satisfaction is a measure constructed from different parameters to assess the well-being of employees and leaders in a company.
Employee engagement: The psychological bond between employees and the company. Its strength depends on the degree of general involvement, loyalty and belief in the company's values. Engagement is therefore an outcome achieved by inspiring employees to contribute actively to company success and deliver performance beyond formal job requirements.
This means: employee satisfaction alone is merely the foundation for the service quality the company wants employees to deliver every day, which should lead to high customer satisfaction. Without sustainable engagement, achieving customer satisfaction, or more importantly customer delight, becomes a more or less successful gamble. The individual customer experience turns into a product of employees' daily mood.
What needs to be done?
High engagement is promoted by strong identification with the task and the challenges employees face. Such identification and commitment are generally easier when employees also identify with the company's overarching goals and these overlap at least partially with personal values and goals. Building basic knowledge for all employees creates conscious redundancy of skills, enabling employees to fill different roles. They can take over partial tasks or an entire colleague's function at any time.
Learning-oriented reflection and feedback processes not only build the necessary experiential knowledge, they also allow employees to actively contribute to organizational processes. This creates appreciation for their competence and actions. By linking individual action back to the overall process, organizational learning stabilizes sustainable service quality across the company.
Concrete measures - how to increase employee engagement in your company:
- Reduce complexity. Make interacting with your company easy for employees as well, not only for customers.
- Increase your attractiveness as an employer. Think about how employees are recruited and selected, how they receive feedback, how they are rewarded, promoted and recognized for performance.
- Create a company culture that fosters engagement, and anchor your customer experience strategy in all areas of the organization.
- As a leader, you are a role model. There is one rule: "Say what you do, and do what you say."
- Adapt your processes so they support your customer experience goals and so employees understand what is expected of them: why they do what they do, how they should do it, and what the company wants to achieve for the customer.
- Define how the values of your company should be communicated by employees, and what the desired behavior toward customers should look like in daily business.
- Make sure all employees feel emotionally connected to the company's mission and are proud when the company is recognized for excellent performance.
- Give employees responsibility and the necessary freedom to decide. This strengthens competence and enables faster decisions in customer contact.
- Ensure employees proudly recommend the company's products and services, or even recommend joining the organization.
- Reward employees who successfully worked to improve engagement. Not every reward has to be financial.
- Maintain a balanced ratio between on-site staffing and customer needs. What matters is not only headcount, but the right mix of roles and expertise throughout opening hours.
- Ensure employees are socially connected with colleagues and integrated into a close team. Colleagues strongly influence peers' attitudes.
- Ensure employees also have a social relationship with their direct supervisor and that a basis of trust is built from both sides.
- Measure employee engagement regularly.
- Develop action plans for the organization, department and individual that address root causes of disengagement. Ask: "Was the person hired with this attitude, or did something happen in the company that triggered it?"
Conclusion
Employee engagement requires an agreement with employees: the company creates the conditions that make work more meaningful and rewarding; employees, in return, deliver more effort to achieve above-average results in daily direct and indirect customer contact.
Want a concrete example?
"The ladies and gentlemen of Ritz-Carlton are the most important element in our commitment to perfect service." This first sentence of the employee promise reflects the importance of every employee at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. The successful luxury hotel chain not only takes care of its paying guests, but also its own staff.
It has recognized that first-class hardware alone is not enough. What matters just as much, if not more, is excellent service. And that is only possible with engaged employees.
Like every company, Ritz-Carlton has core values and a philosophy. At Ritz-Carlton, every employee lives and carries it with them - for example in the inner pocket of their jacket, as a small piece of paper the size of a credit card. It reads: "We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." A simple sentence, but an extremely demanding motto.
Every employee should be a perfect host. They should live the role, not just play it. Ritz-Carlton's success lies in the engagement of its employees.
