“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” That quote from Simon Sinek caught my attention this week. It seems so obvious. Yet the majority of our customer experience tells us that it an extremely rare phenomenon. You don’t need any employee engagement statistics to tell you that the vast majority of people either do not love their jobs or the organisation they work for.
That is why a great customer experience stands out brighter than a comet flashing across the night sky. Let me share a story about what I mean.
Pixie, our much-loved17 year old cat was starting to have bladder problems. So my wife and I felt we had no choice but to take her to the vet for only the second or third time in her life. The vet confirmed that it was likely an age problem, in which case it might be kinder to put her to sleep rather than prolonging her suffering and putting her onto a regimen of pills, which from previous experience we knew were almost impossible to get Pixie to ingest. He recommended, however, that rather than making such a fateful and fatal decision, he first give her an injection which would clear any bacterial infection that might be causing the problem. We could then monitor her for a few weeks to see if there was any improvement and so perhaps avoid such drastic action. Mightily relieved we opted for that and happily brought Pixie back home with us.
It seemed the situation had been satisfactorily resolved. She did improve and we thought we had at least six weeks before we would need to pay a return visit. Imagine our surprise when “John” phoned a week later to find out how Pixie was “getting on.” He was very pleased to hear that she appeared much better. He then told us that he was leaving that week-end for his annual holiday, but just needed to know before he went and to alert us that, if we needed to, we would have to deal with his partner, David, while he was away, but he had explained the situation to David.
Wow! It is an understatement to say how touched we were by this call and the care and love that underpinned it. I should also add that this is a very busy, well–established veterinary practice and so it was not just a marketing ploy. Even though it had that effect; we have already told at least a dozen people this story. It has certainly been a very rare good customer experience for us, and I am sure that you also find it exceptional based on the majority of your experiences and the unfortunate dominance of poor or mediocre customer service.
So the question you have to be asking yourself is, “How do I create an environment in which my employees provide an equivalent customer experience?” Here is a link to the article which brought the quote to my attention and which I hope you will find helpful. I would suggest, however, that it is a reciprocal thing: If you want your employees to love the organisation you have to first love them. You have to demonstrate that you value them and their contribution. Only then will they love the organisation enough to provide a “world class” customer experience that will have you customers loving your organisation.
Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, a company created to help larger small to large business organisations to properly value their people and thereby inspire them to optimise their self-worth and so engage them that they transform organisational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement.”