The vital link between employee and customer engagement

The vital link between employee and customer engagement

You won’t have happy and engaged customers on one end of the phone line if you have unhappy and disengaged employees on the other end of the line.

Insync’s research over the last decade shows that higher levels of employee engagement and retention lead to greater focus on the customer and higher levels of customer engagement.

It all starts with your employees

High growth organisations understand that achieving profitable growth starts with investment in employees. Providing employees with clear direction and empowering them to do their jobs well leads to greater employee engagement and retention. The cycle continues with engaged employees driving stronger customer relationships, creating greater customer loyalty and advocacy, which drives profitable growth. Engaged employees are also likely to be much more productive and innovative, which also drives profitable growth.

The Profitable Growth Cycle

Insync drew on its research involving over 1,000 employee and customer surveys over a period exceeding five years, to develop what it refers to as the Five People Drivers of the Profitable Growth Cycle. Insync’s framework is depicted in the diagram below:

Your people engage your customers

The link between employee engagement and customer engagement is indisputable. After all, it is an organisation’s people who are responsible for driving customer focus, ensuring customer satisfaction and strengthening customer relationships. If an employee is not engaged with their work, they will not go above and beyond to service customers.

If employers want their employees to treat their customers as their number one priority, then employers must empower and support their employees and ensure they are engaged.

• seek and take action on customer feedback
• deliver and improve upon customer focused systems
• meet and exceed customer expectations

Front-line employees are the face and brand ambassadors of an organisation. They are responsible for day-to-day interactions with customers and for building and supporting strong ongoing relationships. Engaged employees:

• are responsive
• solve problems
• build trust
• build commitment

The people component required to service customers and build trusted relationships means it’s almost impossible for an organisation not to rely on their employees to meet customer requirements.

Download Insync’s extensive research paper titled: The 5 people drivers of the profitable growth cycle