The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

Satisfied employees make satisfied customers

During the industrial revolution of the 19^th century, workers were sometimes treated so badly that, today, you would go to jail if you did that to animals. As illustration, in England, the Factory Act of 1833 stipulated that children younger than nine were not allowed to work; children were not permitted to work at night; and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours!

However, during this period, some enlightened industrialists had the decency and, versus their peers, the courage to stand out by starting to treat their employees more humanly. And, guess what, they found out that the productivity of their factories increased proportionally to the (relative) comforts of the workers. Could this be a lesson for some countries that, in the 21^st century, still tolerate child labour and worker abuse?

Today, in most of the western world, the focus has shifted to ‘customer productivity’ and ‘share-of-pocket’. How much revenues and profits can you draw from customers and/or what share of their spending budget can you grab? Companies that treat their customers above the mediocre average and obsessively focus on obtaining top notch satisfaction find out that their customers welcome some form of relationship that leads to trust and loyalty. This produces repeat sales, often over a long period. Since selling to existing customers costs significantly less than acquiring new ones, this creates a direct productivity gain.

Satisfaction and loyalty also yield indirect productivity increases. On one hand, satisfied employees become strong advocates of your brand, serve your customers better, and gladly help you to hire good people. On the other, loyal customers often act as enthusiastic recommenders to generate extra sales through word-of-mouth. A virtuous circle. This makes sense, doesn’t it? If yes, why are so many customer-facing employees rather grumpy, badly trained and, apparently, not motivated to deliver good and ‘friendly’ service?