Guest Blog: The Impact Employee Experience has on Customer Experience

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Max Yoder writes about how important it is to ensure that the employee experience will reflect the customer experience. I believe that the concept of internal customer service may be just as important, if not even more so, than general customer service.  – Shep Hyken

Work shouldn’t feel like holding your breath and sprinting from nine to five until payday comes around. Companies are catching on to the work-life balance trend, and the trend is here to stay. Why? Because the employee experience is related to the customer experience. Managers are asking employees what they want, and then making it possible. Sounds a lot like catering to a valued customer!

Look at Virgin. Recently, Richard Branson approved the benefit of parental leave of up to a year for employees that have been loyal to Virgin for at least four. This shows that Virgin cares about its employees’ emotions, growth and loyalty.

The benefit example is figurative too. Think of the company as the parent. The employees are the offspring, running around trying to make the parent proud. A child learns from observation then imitation. If a parent teaches and shows a child that sharing is caring, the child will then exemplify that. A good worker that’s enveloped in care will reflect the same learning and manners to customers. It’s simple communicative math: Emotions are contagious. Positive emotion evokes positive action.

As a manager, treat your employees like your most valued customer. Below are three steps to ensure employee experience will reflect to customer experience:

1. Train right

Training employees efficiently isn’t just chalked up to timing. Learning fast isn’t equivalent to being efficient. Learning fast and learning well is. One way to learn efficiently is by using the flipped classroom approach:

• Use a platform like Lesson.ly, to create customized content, whether it’s videos, documents, or photos. With a platform like this, you can assign content that is accessible to the employee anywhere.
• Prove the learning by having trainees present what they learned whether it be through action or presentation.
• Ask for feedback from the trainees during and after the onboarding process. This helps you learn to train better.

Employees that know the product and process well will be able to reiterate it to customers well. Set the example in training.

2. Recognize

Recognize employees when they do something well–no matter how small. Employees that experience recognition will want to do what it takes to keep receiving praise. Those who are excited about their jobs will encourage customers to be excited about the product.

3. Incentivize

Reward your employees for working hard. Whether it be reflected in a benefits package, or on a more timely basis, the reward will incline employees to go the extra mile for the company, which in turn is going the extra mile for the customer.

Implement these steps, but always ask for feedback. After all, it’s happiness that leads to productivity. If you ask Branson, he’ll say, “If you take care of your employees, you take care of your business.” So, like your customers, find out what your employees want and deliver it. In turn, they’ll deliver too.

Max Yoder is the co-founder and CEO of Lesson.ly, the easy training software. His team’s mission is to make team training as easy as possible, so you can build training materials, share them, and gain insight — all within the same interface.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com. Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:

The Future Of Communication In Customer Service