Empowered engaged employees your biggest advocate

I have recently been the recipient of some fantastic customer service.  One of our recent blogs talked about taking the time to say thank you to those within your organisation, taking this one step further I would just like to pass on my daughters delight and thanks to Brainstorm Ltd for their prompt and thoughtful customer service.

This got me to thinking about the power of simple thoughtful acts on customer perceptions. It’s so easy to forget that every touch point with a customer is an opportunity to delight; and even a disappointment can be turned around with a little care and thought.

It’s important for organisations to have the infrastructure in place so that customers can easily access the right person to get the information and service that they need – this is true for both internal and external customers. Once this has been achieved the role of empowerment comes in. You need to trust and empower employees make decisions, this will allow for a prompt response. Staff are more likely to innovate and make a decision in the best interests of the customers satisfaction and the organisation overall, if they are engaged. It has been shown that companies with engagement scores in the top quartile have 12% higher customer advocacy levels and 59% of engaged employees felt that their job brought out their most creative ideas, compared to 3% of disengaged employees.

With these statistics in mind it’s interesting that the NHS recently turned to super customer service retailer John Lewis to learn how engaging employees can better satisfy customers – or patients. Retail staff at the Exeter John Lewis brand are re-educating NHS doctors in Devon to better focus on the needs of the patients.

In today’s multichannel world, consumers expect to be able to connect intimately and seamlessly with nonstop organisations anytime and anywhere, across multiple touch points. In the same way, internal communications have been revamped and revitalised. These changes have raised expectations the challenge for organisations is to provide a highly compelling experience.

I am delighted to say that in our case the enquiry was forwarded to the right person and the response was both prompt and very satisfactory.

Are your employees empowered to make decisions to ensure customer satisfaction? Are your staff promoters for your product/ service; would they recommend your organisation as a place to work? To find out more about these and other employee engagement issues please contact us on +44 (0) 1255 850051.