Employee Service is a Key Ingredient to Success

As a company, we have been focused on enhancing the customer experience for many years. There is no doubt that one of the key ingredients to success is the ability to translate a differentiated and consistent customer experience every time someone comes into contact with your company.

So if we think that building differentiated customer experiences is critical – then why are we talking about employee service? And what is employee service? The more we mystery shop and interact with employees at companies, we have come to notice that far too often employees appear not to care about the experience they are delivering or don’t understand what makes them or their company unique and different. Far too often the employee simply executes on a transaction. They don’t make eye contact, they don’t welcome you to their environment and sometimes they continue on conversations with their colleagues or friends while you are right in front of them!

We believe that companies need to focus on employee service. We believe that the next key ingredient to success will be to translate the desired experience to your employees. So what do we mean? You employees:

Need to feel, breathe and experience the experience you wish to give anyone who interacts with you.
Have to believe that what you are delivering, either your products or services, are truly unique and valuable.
Need to understand that they are critical to the delivery of the experience, your brand and the overall success of your company.
Have to understand that they are critical resources that you want to develop for the long-term.

Far too often, companies simply look at employees as replaceable resources. Yes, it is true employees are replaceable. But are the great ones really replaceable? Are the ones that understand your unique value replaceable? Are the employees who have built long-term relationships with your customers replaceable? Are the employees who go out of their way to help other colleagues or your customers replaceable? We don’t think so.

We believe that companies need to turn the old model on its head. They need to, in parallel with a focus on the customer, help their employees understand the desired experience, their role in delivering it and their value to the overall success of the brand. This is employee service. Without it, you will never be able to deliver a highly differentiated and sustainable experience to your customers.

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