Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Customer satisfaction: get your staff involved
Measuring customer satisfaction is a widespread practice in many companies.
E-mail, sms, telephone, website, beacons, all channels are now activated to ask your customers about their feelings.
Moreover, true to satisfaction theory, you regularly monitor your satisfaction barometer, reports, KPIs, customer alerts and so on. You've identified the strengths and areas for improvement in your services.
Are these lessons understood by your employees? Do you give them the resources they need to meet customer expectations?
We propose two methods for involving employees in your approach and understanding their needs within the company.
Customer satisfaction concerns the whole company: the "mirror" survey
Many people think that customer satisfaction only concerns teams in direct contact with customers. It's true that the latter immediately perceive customers' expectations or points of tension. However, they are not necessarily responsible for the entire production chain. They can't solve all internal problems on their own. That's why all teams need to be involved in the process of improving customer satisfaction.
The "mirror" survey compares customer satisfaction with employees' perception of it: the company asks employees to put themselves in the customer's shoes, by evaluating services according to the same satisfaction questionnaire.
The "mirror" survey makes the whole company aware of consumers' real expectations. Our experience shows that respondents generally tend to underestimate customer satisfaction. The "mirror" survey makes it possible to mobilize all company functions around the same message: "Keep up the good work, our customers are more satisfied than you think". On the other hand, some services may be overestimated. In such cases, employees need to be made to understand that the service provided, which they consider satisfactory or even better, is in fact less well perceived by customers. Changing lifestyles, the arrival of new competitors - these are just some of the factors likely to change customers' expectations, and hence their satisfaction with a service, even if the quality delivered remains the same.
Employees are also company customers: the "well-being" survey
By placing the customer at the heart of its strategy, the company also places the employee at the heart of its concerns. This is known as symmetry of attention: the link between employee and customer will be of the same intensity as the link between company and employee. Make your employees happy employees, and they'll make your customers happy customers.
Does the employee feel at ease within the company? Do they have the resources they need to fulfil their mission properly? The purpose of the "well-being" survey, generally organized by the HR department, is to identify areas for action to streamline internal mechanisms and improve the day-to-day lives of employees, always with a view to improving the consumer experience.
A well-designed, and necessarily anonymous, employee survey will enable you to identify, department by department, the levers for improving employee satisfaction. This will not only indirectly improve customer satisfaction, but also reduce your HR costs (recruitment, training, etc.).
Our customers' experience : Groupama and Cultura
Download the presentation of our "Customer satisfaction survey - Employee satisfaction survey" workshop held in September 2013 with feedback from our guest :
Véronique BOLAC - Quality Manager - Groupama
This document is no longer available, but you can contact us to discuss our expertise on the subject.
