No one can say, “I am a Service Manager,” without reading (and maybe saving) at least one article, blog post, or LinkedIn piece about employee engagement. (A Tweet does not count.)
This topic is essential because there is a well-established link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. You can easily understand that if customer-facing employees are not engaged, their interactions with customers will be mechanical and dispassionate and will not engender customer trust. These reasons alone are good enough for me to want to ensure that my support team is highly motivated and well-trained.
In addition to improving CSAT and Loyalty, there are three other reasons engaged employees are a prerequisite to growing your business.
- Employees know the problems.
- Employees know many of the solutions
- Employees know what customers want and need
Employees know the problems
Most organizations have a formal or informal continuous improvement process. When you learn about a problem, you fix it. But you can’t implement improvements until the fixer hears about it. Check out this illustration!
Even great front-line workers don’t know all the problems the customers are having; however, they surely know most of them. And, if you start with all their know problems as equaling 100%, then by the time you reach middle management (the level where people have a little time to stop and think), they only know 9% of the problems that the front-line people know. Think about this – 9% is barely 1 in 10. For every customer problem that reaches middle management, nine more are waiting to bite your company in the ass!
Employees know many of the solutions
In addition to knowing your customer’s problems, the employees frequently know the solutions. They may or may not know the best answer, but they know how to resolve issues and give your customers genuine relief. Their solution will keep customers calm while you do your in-depth problem-solving process. Their solutions can buy you time to find and implement an elegant solution that makes everyone happy.
Related reading: A Journey to Customer Centricity: Part 3 – ( High Performance) Engaged Employees
Employees know what customers want and need
As you work hard to grow your business, you soon realize that customers buy products and services to improve their business outcomes. Who is most familiar with what your customers do and where they fall short of desired results? Right! Front-line, customer-facing employees!
Service engineers spend most of their productive time working with customers. They know what equipment the customers have, which is helpful, and which takes up space. They see how the customers use various tools. They know what issues are top of mind. They know where customers fall short of meeting their goals and, in many cases, know why.
Planning new products and services
When it is time to start planning your following product or service, who do you think should be included in the initial, high-level discussions? A broad cross-section of your field engineers and telephone support agents. If they are unsure about the customer’s issues, the least you can expect is for them to introduce the product planners to the customers, most likely to help formulate the future.
Because these customers are now part of the solution, they are most likely to be willing to participate in beta testing and give you actionable comments for the next iteration. They will help make your success achievable.
A handy reference
So now you know why employee engagement is so critical!
To read more about employee engagement, click here.
About Middlesex Consulting
Middlesex Consulting is an experienced team of professionals with the primary goal of helping capital equipment companies create more value for their clients and stakeholders. Middlesex Consulting continues to provide superior solutions to meet the needs of its clients by focusing on our strengths in Services, Manufacturing, Customer Experience, and Engineering. If you want to learn more about how we can help your organization increase employee engagement, please contact us or check out some of our free articles and white papers here.