‘Customers come first’.
Well, it’s a way in which organizations of yesterday worked. According to them, customers are king and employees are workers who are paid and that’s about as much investment they have in the company. However, things are slowly changing. Richard Branson, the famous founder of Virgin Group, said “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employee, they will take care of your clients.”
It sounds quite unusual and revolutionary. Well, that revolutionary philosophy did help Virgin to become one of the top companies on our planet.
So, how does it work?
The thing is if you want to satisfy a customer or a client, you have to satisfy your employees too. The reason: they are the ones with whom the customer interacts. When your customer purchases a pizza, they interact with the pizza delivery person. In the store, they talk with the cashier. Even when they are interacting with a machine, the machine is being programmed by an employee and hence, there is an indirect interaction present here too.
In the current world, customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance. The internet has dropped down the barriers of entry and there are many companies who can freely reach out to different customers, loyal ones and new ones. With the growth of social media, customer acquisition has become easier for every company. So, if your company loses one consumer, some other company gains them. To keep a customer loyal, you have to keep them satisfied. And since their first contact is with an employee of the company, your employees should be happy too.
And no, it’s not only based on money. Employees have a lot of needs – the working conditions, energy, time management as well as emotional needs. The working conditions should not only be harassment-free but also a place where open communication is present. If the employee feels like they need support, then the company should try to hire more people. Internal jobs become part of employee satisfaction as well. Hence, more and more companies are engaging in developing a great working culture within the company. Diversity is being encouraged and training programs are being initiated to help employees adapt to the current situation. All of this is resulting in a great employer-employee relationship.
How Is It Beneficial?
When you have a company with satisfied employees, your employees will be more invested in the company. They will not have just a financial stake in the company – rather, they would want to go the extra mile to make a difference for the company. More customer satisfaction means more reach among customers – it results in more acquisition of customers. Plus, the overall experience – the interaction between employee and customer will be amazing.
Let a Disney Theme park incident prove it to you. One day, a girl’s doll fell in the mud. So, an employee would have done either of the two things: turn a blind eye or pick it up and give it to the girl. But what a Disney employee did was pick the doll up, gave it a new dress, gave it a bath, styled its hair and then delivered it back. For the mother of the girl, it was a magical interaction.
It just shows how an invested employee could do wonders for a company. After all, in recent times, the public image of a company matters a lot. And it’s the employees who are going to keep it up.
What are your thoughts? Do you believe that employees come first? I’d love to hear you out.
