How You Treat Employees Affects How They Treat Customers

There are few connections in the world of business clearer than the one between how an organization treats its employees and how those employees treat their customers. As Bill Black, former CEO of Canada’s Maritime Life Assurance Co., once said, “We're not running a country club around here, but we are in a service industry and the best way to have happy customers is to have happy employees.”

Though the connection between joint employee and customer satisfaction isn’t 100 percent, it is patently clear that you hardly can have happy customers with disgruntled employees serving them. Just ask most air travelers.

There’s an awful lot of bad customer service out there—but it’s not due to a shortage of books and seminars to teach the unenlightened how to be nice to people trying desperately to give them their money. And it’s not because employees in a service position are innately rude. Where service is lousy, it’s often because managers haven’t equipped their employees to provide the good service that they’d like to believe differentiates them from other businesses.

Research into service providers that understand the employee-customer connection suggests that you can substantially improve customer service in at least three ways:

First and foremost, give employees a reason to be proud of their job and your business. People truly want to take pride in their work. Good chefs get their thrills creating great meals and then watching appreciative guests devour the food. But if that chef has to make do with third-rate meats purchased by a stingy or ignorant corporate buyer, the chef can’t help but fail. The same goes for the server who brings the sub-prime steak to the table. Whether you’re selling food or tanning, the employee who sells a high-quality product or service is going to have a better day at work than the one who has to associate with sub-par product.

Case In Point: One factor that has propelled Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegman’s Supermarkets to a position near the top of Fortune’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” for more than a decade is its distinctive commitment to customer service. Rather than creating an added burden on employees who are expected to go out of their way to serve customers, Wegman’s high service standards actually improve working conditions for their employees. “This is hard work,” a Wegman’s employee told us on a recent store visit. “But what makes it worth it is that our customers are great. They love shopping here, and that makes me feel good about what I do ... even if I’m worn out at the end of the day.”

In a tanning salon, your employees will want to provide great service if they believe in the quality of your equipment and products. This makes the equipment and products easier to sell—and employees will work twice as hard to sell even more.