Engaged Employees Drive Customer Satisfaction

By Chris Ihrig

Employee attitudes towards their job are correlated to customer satisfaction and appear to be causative. In other words, the more satisfied employees are, the happier customers are about their experience.

How much difference does employee engagement make in customer satisfaction? One study indicates a .43 relationship between employee engagement and customer satisfaction and a strong relationship between employee engagement and customer loyalty.

It makes sense that customers are more satisfied when employees are happier because 26.7% of an employee’s job performance is related to the employee’s attitude toward the job. Lower performance means more mistakes, slower service, and less forthcoming helpful information.

Employees Have a Vested Interested in Their Own Engagement

Employees frequently complain that the only reason their employer wants to increase engagement is to improve their profitability and that the employer doesn’t really care about the employees. This attitude reflects a disconnection between the employee’s status as an employee and the company’s ability to remain viable. Employees have a vested interest in the success of their employer. Even if an employee plans to leave, most employees have friends whose employment will remain tied to the organization.

Employees also have very personal reasons to be engaged at work. Disengaged employees suffer because they experience lower overall levels of life satisfaction, subjective happiness, and higher levels of depression. According to Gallup’s Well-Being Index, actively disengaged employees experience 9% more physical pain, 24% more stress, 4% more high blood pressure, 4% more high cholesterol, 7% more depression, and 4% more obesity than engaged employees.

Align employee motivation with customer satisfaction by making it personal. Satisfied customers come back and they tell other people they are happy. Unhappy customers don’t come back and they tell everyone about their bad experience. Today, one viral social media post can sway public opinion. Good customer service is critical to every businesses long-term success.

The health of both the employees and the business is dependent upon employee engagement.