Employee Satisfaction - A Key Part of Customer Satisfaction

The BBC News website carried a fascinating article yesterday "Staff appraisals 'waste of time'". Apparently appraisals are viewed rather dimly by many UK workers. 29% of people said their appraisal was a complete waste of time and 44% believed their appraiser had been dishonest.

The article goes on, but the bottom line is that appraisals don't have a great reputation for many workers.

So what's this got to do with Customer Satisfaction? Well, quite a lot actually.

Concepts like the Value Profit Chain show that employee and customer satisfaction are inextricably linked. Now of course, employee satisfaction doesn't just revolve around appraisals, but they do form part of the mix that determines overall employee satisfaction.

The work of Harvard has labelled this "the customer-employee satisfaction mirror". They've demonstrated that employee satisfaction produces higher levels of customer satisfaction. Plus, it's been shown that higher customer satisfaction produces higher employee satisfaction (wouldn't you want to work in a place where the customers are happy and don't keep having a go at staff!). More satisfied employees stay longer, by doing this they retain expertise and customer relationships within the organisation.

So, satisfied employees help to make highly satisfied customers which is good for profits.

If you're working on boosting your customers' satisfaction remember to consider your employees' satisfaction levels as well. This course might give you some ideas.