Employee & Customer Satisfaction

Companies are always looking for new and interesting ways to measure employee satisfaction. There are basic methodologies that some companies use for measurement, but basic methodologies are unlikely to get you the most usable and interesting results. You’re looking for ways for your company to get ahead, and to do that you’ll need to find a unique method of approaching employee satisfaction.

One idea that comes to mind is to not look at employee satisfaction like it’s different than customer satisfaction. Instead, it may be beneficial to focus on employees like they’re customers, because in many ways the goals are the same. Customer loyalty is related to employee loyalty, with things like turnover, word of mouth marketing, willingness to continue investing extra (overtime), etc.

Customer spending relates to employee spending, both in time invested in work and possibly even money invested in the company or its products or services. Customer satisfaction itself relates to employee satisfaction, in that when both are low, it’s not uncommon to see both skip out on the company. There are clearly many similarities, so there may also be some value in changing the mindset as you look towards addressing employee satisfaction trends.

For example, part of CRM involves things like customer loyalty programs and benefits, added discounts, etc., especially to those customers that seem to be bringing the most value to the company. Employees rarely get these same types of benefits. Let’s look at two similar scenarios: Customers appear to be becoming unsatisfied.

Company offers a discount and some great rewards programs to immediately bring back the morale of the customers – especially the most loyal customers. Employees appear to be becoming unsatisfied. Company does nothing other than a few meetings and discussions.

Then they may host an office party hoping to improve morale, maybe. Good employees may or may not get a raise at their yearly review. In the first scenario, the customers are pounded with reasons to increase their satisfaction.

In the second, the process is much slower, the rewards are worse, and the best employees are still going to become more and more unsatisfied until finally they reach their yearly review, by which time they may have already decided they are going to quit. Companies may benefit from looking at satisfaction more seriously, and targeting employees quickly the same way they target customers. When the trends start to show that employees are becoming unsatisfied, the company should consider providing raises, benefits, bonuses, etc., in order to immediately raise the level of satisfaction before it reaches an unhealthy level.

Otherwise, by the time the yearly reviews come around, the best employees may have already left.