Customer-First Employee Culture

You've taken your first step. You've decided to conduct research on the customer's needs and use those findings to create a better environment for customer satisfaction. You've found what needs to be improved and you've made changes that you've sent and explained to your employees. While this is all very useful, and may help your company, you are still forgetting one very important part of making your strategies a success – giving the employees a reason to care.

It's not enough to simply tell your employees what they need to do, because your employees have no reason to care if the company is able to increase its revenue. They care that you make revenue, since they need a job, but beyond that they have no vested interest in whether the company thrives or simply "gets by." That's because most compensation structures for low level employees are fixed, rarely seeing an increase in pay or any long term benefits to putting in that level of effort. If you truly want to create a customer-focused culture in your office, you need to find a way for every employee, no matter what role they play in your company, you benefit from their max effort.

The most common, and arguably most effective way to do this is to create a compensation structure that rewards employees for outstanding customer service. Companies do this in a variety of ways: Raises – If the employee shows that outstanding customer service skills, they should be rewarded. Often compensation is tied to subjective factors, but if you are able to reward employees for their commitment to customers, you'll find more employees are motivated to help customers with their needs.

Promotions – Similarly, employees that show outstanding customer service should be considered important pieces of the company, and be more likely to receive promotions that reward them for their hard work and give them a prominent place in the company. Bonuses – You can also tie bonuses into customer satisfaction scores from surveys. If the employees score over X amount, they receive X bonus.

If the employees score over Y amount, they receive Y bonus. Employees will continue to be motivated to provide excellent customer service in order to improve their yearly or semi-annual bonus. By tying employee compensation to your customer satisfaction efforts, you create an environment that is customer driven, and possibly improve employee satisfaction as well.

This type of strategy will help ensure that your employees are as motivated to improve satisfaction in your company as you are.