A business can be made or broken by the people that work in it. In the vast majority of cases, your employees are the first people your customers are going to be dealing with directly, so it stands to reason that you want them to give off the absolute best first impression possible. You can have the best, most original product at a reasonable price, but if your customers are immediately put off when they go to deal with your employees you’re not going to get very far at all.
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You need to make sure you’re hiring the right kind of people, and once you have, you’re going to have to put in a good degree of effort to ensure that they remain happy in their work environment. This, in turn, will lead to their more positive attitude transferring to the customers – after all, if they genuinely like their job and the place in which they’re working, they will have a real enthusiasm that cannot be replicated and that your customers will be able to recognize.
However, while a great many businesses claim to put the needs of their staff first, it’s questionable whether or not this is actually true. If you really want to improve your customer satisfaction, you’ll have to take steps within your business to ensure it. So, with that in mind, here are just a few simple pointers that, if followed, should help your business become one with a much happier employee base.
A Good Work Environment Will Improve Employee Satisfaction
Having an environment which your customers don’t despise spending time in is always a good place to start in improving their overall mood and work ethic.
You don’t have to go so far as installing a slide in your office to achieve this, however. Something as simple as introducing some real color into the space around them and ensuring that there is plenty of natural light about can actually work wonders in improving employee’s attitudes towards their work environment and toward your business in general, an effect that should rub off on your customers.
Should your business be in construction or a similar field which takes place mainly outside, ensuring that your employees feel safe and looked after is another solid way of improving their overall satisfaction.
Make sure that they have the proper safety equipment required for the job, such and ropes, harnesses, or a ringlock scaffolding system to better protect them from anything that might go awry. If your employees feel that you genuinely care about them and their individual safety, a great deal more enthusiasm will naturally come into their work.
Acknowledge Their Humanity…and Yours, Too
Always maintain the proper attitude when dealing with your employees directly. Respect them, and if they come to you with any ideas or feedback then listen to them too.
This doesn’t mean you have to implement each and every concept they throw at you, but simply being willing to listen to them and valuing what they have to say will make them feel a more integral part of the company. In many cases, your employees may actually have some great ideas that could genuinely help your business.
In most cases, the workers are the ones dealing directly with customers, after all, and might have a better idea of their needs and concerns – and should they offer something which is genuinely helpful to you and your company, you should make sure that you recognize this. Thank them, reward them, and never attempt to gloss over them or take credit for an idea that came from somewhere else.
You should also be willing to recognize your own margin of error too. If you make a mistake, as we all do, don’t be afraid to own up to it. No-one is likely to hold it against you, and your employees will see that you’re as human as they are, and they might be less afraid to come to you to share something which might be important.
Furthermore, it serves to increase transparency in your business, where openness and honesty always prove to be the best policy.
Encourage Personality and Creativity
Your employees aren’t an autonomous mass – each one is an individual, and if you treat them as such then they’re going to feel more respected and a great deal happier.
Customers hate dealing with robots and often want a human touch to the businesses and companies they deal with, and if you treat your employees as though they’re all the same to you then robots are exactly what they’re going to become in their professional lives.
Allow for a little creativity and personal flair, where applicable, in their work. Don’t make them adhere rigidly to an overly strict set of guidelines and rules, especially when dealing with customers directly.
Customers want to feel as if they’re speaking to someone who actually cares about their problems, wants and needs, and not allowing your employees to really be themselves under your business.
Rewards and Staff Bonding Will Help You Improve The Satisfaction Of Your Employee
If an employee has worked well or contributed some particularly insightful ideas, or is simply just a hit with customers, make sure that they know this and think about rewarding them for it.
It will mean the world to them to know that you value their presence and their input in the company, and by giving them a tangible reward or perhaps a bonus or a raise will encourage them to work harder and strive to do the same thing again in the future. You can find some ideas along these lines here.
You should also seek to implement staff bonding activities wherever you can, in whatever form you think most appropriate. Such activities will enable your employee base to get to know each other far better and serve to create a workforce which works more cohesively and smoothly together as a unit.
Furthermore, it’s simply a good break for them from simply working – introducing a little variety into their activity every once in a while will help prevent them stagnating or growing bored with the work they’re doing.
