Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
There are few guarantees in business, but one thing is certain: If you don't keep your customers, you won't be in business for long. Yet at a time when most companies are desperately trying to retain their customers' loyalty (retaining them is more lucrative than acquiring new ones, after all), their efforts often lack one link: understanding the powerful connection between customer satisfaction and employee engagement—and how to unlock it.
As the Chief People Officer currently leading my company's customer organization, I've seen firsthand how interconnected customers really are. Essentially, losing customers can have a direct impact on employee morale and even lead to unfortunate talent turnover. But there's another facet to this connection: almost everything employees do can have a profound impact on customers. In turn, customer feedback and results can have a powerful impact on an employee's sense of purpose, performance, and satisfaction.
Related: 7 Surefire Ways to Improve Your Low Customer Retention Rate
I've seen how adopting a customer-centric approach across the organization can lead to growth opportunities that benefit both employees and customers. But to get there, companies must leverage that connection by putting customer success at the center of every employee's experience. Here's how.
Make customer success the responsibility of everyone
Most companies take a siloed approach to customer success, delegating it to a single department, while others largely insulate themselves from customer interaction. But I've come to realize that the more we empower all of our cross-functional teams to contribute to customer success, the more focused, impactful and engaging their roles become, and the more they can drive customer loyalty and retention.
For a more holistic approach, I'm a fan of the Bowtie model. Unlike the traditional marketing funnel, which ends when a customer converts, the Bowtie model provides a more comprehensive view of the customer journey. This helps ensure that everyone in the company is maximizing customer loyalty over the long term – whether through strategic, ongoing communications and marketing efforts or through more integrated processes and practices designed to deepen that relationship.
In my company, for example, we do this by encouraging every department to evaluate every task – and every request – from the perspective of how it will benefit the customer. Whether it's marketing, sales, product, or development, this filter is applied to all decisions. Of course, we also consider metrics such as customer satisfaction score, customer retention, and sales growth from existing customers to ensure that our efforts are producing results.
Improve contact points with your customers
I recently traveled overseas to meet with a client. As I was leaving, the client's CFO turned to me and said something I'll never forget: “Don't get me fired.” It's a stark reminder that our view of customer success must extend further than just ensuring product integration or stability. Everything we do has a ripple effect on the success of their business, which can also impact their personal reputation.
The concept of radical empathy is nothing new in customer service. A deeper understanding of customer needs is critical to effective product development, marketing, and sales, but can easily be lost once a customer is onboarded. Building more proactive touchpoints with customers—and even involving them in the early stages of product development—can help overcome this oversight.
For us, that means attending industry events and building strategic information-sharing channels and communities to better understand our customers' pain points. We've also created customer segments and areas to identify and address the unique needs of different types of customers to provide a personalized service approach. Understanding how customers use our product – and in particular, where their pain points are – helps us better target everything from our marketing and sales campaigns to any product-related initiatives.
Everyone in our company knows that customer retention is a team sport. It's not only possible, but desirable, to reach out to customers to resolve product issues or launch something new. That's exactly why we launched a customer retention program that views churn risk as a pipeline and leverages tightly coordinated collaboration across departments to make an impact with those customers.
Most importantly, these frequent and proactive touchpoints also allow us to learn what works for our customers, which we find is a powerful motivator for our team.
Related: 3 Ways Founders Can Connect With Their Customers to Increase Sales
Don’t neglect the connection between employee experience and customer experience
An exceptional customer experience can radically change our perception of a company, and it turns out that it can be just as powerful for an employee to help make it happen.
This should come as no surprise: today's employees are looking for meaning in their work. Who doesn't want to make a difference in the lives of others? Combining that desire with customer success initiatives makes sense – it improves the ability to keep customer promises and makes the workplace more satisfying for everyone.
And I believe companies can take this connection even further: They should put the same energy into employee experience as they do into customer satisfaction. In one of my previous roles, we actively compared customer loyalty to employee retention and found a strong correlation between the two. These results were interesting but not shocking: Prioritizing employee experience leads to more engaged employees, who in turn are motivated to create better customer experiences. Simply put, increasing satisfaction in one warehouse can effectively increase retention and productivity in both warehouses.
Of course, finding that balance isn't always easy. But in my experience, it's the incremental improvements that add up over time. Starting small is better than nothing. Ultimately, the more your employees know, understand, and care about your customers, the better they'll serve them (and the more they'll enjoy the results) – regardless of their role. And that's a real win-win for the bottom line.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
