Employee & Customer CSAT

Often when we think about employee satisfaction we look at value in terms of productivity and value. Specifically, how much the employee accomplishes in the workplace (whether directly, through the work they complete, or indirectly through how they interact with other employees) and how well the employee interacts with customers. However, for many companies there is an additional aspect of employee satisfaction that may be forgotten – turning the employee into a consumer. This is especially true of places like grocery stores, where the employees often shop after work in order to save time on their groceries.

It would be interesting to see how many companies focus on this aspect of employee satisfaction – or perhaps it should be considered customer satisfaction, since the goal is to make the employee a happy customer. Companies often offer a few incentives to promote this type of behavior. Going back to the grocery store example, many employees get a small discount if they purchase from the store (although this discount often has severe limitations that cut into its value), and occasionally a gift certificate or small bonus coupon.

It’s possible that these little discounts are enough. But how many companies actually do research to find out if this contributes to employee/customer satisfaction? It’s easily possible that these small discounts are not enough to turn employees into high satisfaction customers, just as it’s possible that these small discounts are not enough to improve employee satisfaction either.

I can tell you from my own experience that the small, limited discounts were not enough to improve my satisfaction as a customer. It was not because the discounts themselves weren’t enjoyable. It was because these same discounts came with severe, harsh warnings spread out all over the back room about how we’d be laid off if we used these discounts for anyone other than ourselves (including family).

That type of threat made the joy of getting these discounts (which were small to begin with) fairly limited. Businesses that are likely to have employees that are also customers are in a unique position. They may be able to get insight from their employees as to how to increase customer satisfaction, or may find that employee satisfaction and employee-customer satisfaction have no link at all, etc.

But whether or not these companies take advantage of the employee-customer dynamic is something that may need to be explored in the future.