If you’ve ever cov­eted a J.D. Power award for Cus­tomer Ser­vice Cham­pi­ons, or if keep­ing the cus­tomer ser­vice sat­is­fac­tion (CSAT) score high at your com­pany falls under your job descrip­tion, this post is for you. Improv­ing CSAT scores, and ulti­mately, dri­ving busi­ness by cre­at­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices that keep sat­is­fied cus­tomers com­ing back for more is no easy task. Pro­vid­ing ade­quate train­ing for your cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives is nec­es­sary, for sure, but there’s more to the CSAT pic­ture than sim­ply a well-trained employee.

How about a well-trained, happy employee? Now that’s a step in the right direc­tion. Let’s look at three prin­ci­ples for improv­ing employee sat­is­fac­tion, which will pos­i­tively influ­ence cus­tomer satisfaction.

Prin­ci­ple #1: Under­stand the link between employee sat­is­fac­tion and cus­tomer satisfaction

A widely researched topic in the cus­tomer ser­vice indus­try con­nects cus­tomer loy­alty and employee sat­is­fac­tion. Case stud­ies and com­pany pro­files repeat­edly show that for employ­ees to pro­vide not just good cus­tomer service—but great cus­tomer service—they must first be dri­ven by loy­alty and enthu­si­asm from their employer. In other words, you can’t force devo­tion or com­mit­ment on your employ­ees, but you can fos­ter it by cre­at­ing a cul­ture that invites pride and own­er­ship in the job and company.

To see the con­cept visu­ally, the below graph, cour­tesy of MetricNet’s research on call cen­ter met­rics, aptly illus­trates the con­nec­tion between employee sat­is­fac­tion and cus­tomer satisfaction:

Prin­ci­ple #2: Cre­ate a great work environment

So it makes sense that happy employ­ees make for hap­pier cus­tomers. The research backs up a fairly intu­itive con­cept. But to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment filled with smil­ing, customer-serving employ­ees, sim­ply offer­ing your agents a great park­ing spot if they are cho­sen as employee of the month isn’t going to cut it. Nei­ther is offer­ing $.25 cent sodas out of the com­pany soda machine. We could write a book on cre­at­ing a great work envi­ron­ment (actu­ally, we did!…and we wrote a train­ing pro­gram, too), but for brevity’s sake, let’s take the exam­ple of one com­pany, New Bel­gium Brew­ery in Col­orado, that has a 97% employee reten­tion rate. Why? The employ­ees, quite sim­ply, like their jobs. The happy staff at New Bel­gium are also pro­duc­tive, moti­vated employ­ees that sell a prod­uct cus­tomers like.

What exactly makes New Bel­gium employ­ees so happy? Yes, they get to sam­ple the beer they pro­duce, but the man­age­ment at New Bel­gium has taken delib­er­ate steps to fos­ter a loyal work­force through the fol­low­ing principles:

• Encour­age employ­ees to have own­er­ship: The employee-owned cul­ture at New Bel­gium means that employ­ees par­tic­i­pate in major decisions—they vote on every­thing from new tech­nol­ogy pur­chases to new staff positions.
• Reward employ­ees for loy­alty: How about a custom-made cruiser bike after a year of ser­vice and a trip to Bel­gium after 5 years of ser­vice? (To name a few.)
• Cre­ate poli­cies employ­ees can be proud of: The com­pany has a strict pol­icy of envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship and does things such as turn­ing waste into live­stock feed and using wind-powered electricity.
• Lead by exam­ple: The founders of New Bel­gium are com­mit­ted to sound busi­ness prac­tices and stew­ard­ship in their com­mu­nity. They believe in what their com­pany stands for, and they hire employ­ees who reflect the company’s values.

Prin­ci­ple #3: Cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that encour­ages low turnover

We’ve writ­ten pre­vi­ous posts about how cus­tomer ser­vice starts with your staff, and we’ve men­tioned the impor­tance of ade­quate employee screen­ing, train­ing, and pay­ing fair wages. It’s a topic worth repeating.

Turnover, quite sim­ply, is expen­sive, a huge drain on time and com­pany resources, and leads to over­all low morale. There are many con­trib­u­tors to high turnover, includ­ing inad­e­quate train­ing, poor employee screen­ing meth­ods, and a rushed hir­ing process. If you think pay­ing lower wages will save your com­pany money in the long-run, first con­sider the costs of employee turnover. Accord­ing to recent data, replac­ing an employee can cost any­where from 30% to 150% of an employee’s annual salary and ben­e­fits. So if you have an employee mak­ing $40,000 a year, you could be pay­ing between $12,000 and $60,000 just to hire a replacement.

Even with a focused cus­tomer ser­vice skills train­ing pro­gram, there are greater forces at play when improv­ing employee sat­is­fac­tion and cre­at­ing a cul­ture that dri­ves high cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rates. If you, or other powers-at-be in the com­pany are down­play­ing the impor­tance of employee sat­is­fac­tion, exam­ine your employee cul­ture before attempt­ing to fix your cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rates.

Are your employ­ees sat­is­fied? Find out today. Down­load this free employee sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey or paste this link into your browser: http://info.impactlearning.com/reg_esatsurvey.html

Peggy Car­law is the founder of Impact Learn­ing Sys­tems, a lead­ing train­ing com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions between front-line employ­ees and cus­tomers. Peggy is co-author of sev­eral books pub­lished by McGraw-Hill, includ­ing Man­ag­ing and Moti­vat­ing Con­tact Cen­ter Employ­ees and The Big Book of Sales Train­ing Games.

Peggy Carlaw

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