2 Minutes On… How Employee Engagement Drives Customer Experience

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The remit of a modern call centre is almost unrecognisable from that of a decade ago, with social media and online channels having come to the fore – the internet is now a virtual meeting and marketplace rolled into one. A few things haven’t changed, however, and among them is the premise that a successful business should always put its customers first.

Companies aiming to enhance customer experience have many tools in their armoury, and one of them is often too easily taken for granted. Strengthening employee engagement within a company can fast-track your workforce to becoming a tight-knit, content team, ultimately having a positive effect on customer experience.

Caring Culture

The leadership within your company can go a long way to keeping employees happy and engaged. Do you regularly check up on your employees to make sure they are satisfied and enjoying themselves?

Do you make sure that they know their contributions are welcome in the decision-making process?

Showing employees that you care can facilitate a happier work environment, and in customer-facing departments like call centres, this positive atmosphere will likely be prevalent in customer interaction as a result.

Greater Good

By putting in place a well thought-out structure for performance, you can ensure that your employees understand that the work they are doing is important in the context of the company. Setting realistic goals can work to this effect, fostering a sense of purpose across your company.

This all comes down to building a culture of pride in performance, which will permeate through your organisation. When you have the key to producing this sentiment, you will also unlock the door to an improved customer experience through consistently high service standards.

People Power

We all sometimes struggle to balance our home and work life. By taking an interest in your employees as people away from the office environment, you can grow to understand them better. Once you have deepened your relationship in this way, it will be easier to make allowances for any flexibility needed to balance work and home commitments that employees may have.

It is almost magical how this culture of respect can also surface in the customer experience as a result. When employees are safe in the knowledge that their own voice is respected within their company, you will be amazed at how this can lead to them having a high regard for the voice of the customer as part of their customer value set.

How to Measure Employee Engagement

Putting together an employee engagement survey is actually very straightforward. By utilising a similar methodology to your customer survey process you can measure engagement month on month, year on year against previous scores. If you can benchmark this insight against your peers and across industry even better.
Monitoring achievement, recognition and development, the three key drivers of motivation, means that you can then drive the right behaviours to deliver business success.
It’s important to avoid survey fatigue so I’d encourage companies to look at the following areas as a starter for 10:

  • General Satisfaction
  • Recognition
  • Achievement
  • Support
  • Knowledge
  • Engagement

By surveying staff on a regular basis with a series of 3–4 questions behind each area, the volume of data enables correlations and trends to be identified. What’s more, asking staff to leave comments allows you to pull out great ideas, understand common challenges and map out focus areas for development.

What we have seen across most employee engagement techniques is that communication is key. Never stop talking, enquiring and listening to your employees – after all, they are your greatest asset. Never let the line of communication between your workforce and your management team be broken.

As long as you stick by this golden rule of employee engagement, you stand a better chance of seeing this positive company environment have knock-on effects in other areas of your business, including the customer experience.

With thanks to Rob Wilkinson from Bright UK.

For more information please visit Bright’s website

Author: Jo Robinson

Published On: 18th Apr 2016 - Last modified: 7th Dec 2023
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