Three ways to raise employee engagement and customer satisfaction

We look at the 3 ways businesses can get employees engaged and doing their best work in today’s hybrid working environment.

In 2019, the employer ratings company Glassdoor noticed something interesting about employee satisfaction. Every time a company’s ratings improved by one star, that increase was associated with a “statistically significant 1.3-point increase” (out of 100) in the company’s customer satisfaction levels.

It was one of the clearest demonstrations yet of the long-suspected link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction — or the idea that the happier your employees are, the happier your customers become.

And that’s not all. Glassdoor showed that the jump in customer satisfaction improves the company’s financial standing, too. It was able to demonstrate that every one-star improvement in employee ratings translates into a 7.8% — 18.9% increase in market valuation – with the biggest impact in high customer contact sectors like retail, tourism and financial services.

Collaboration tools are advancing at a rapid rate, addressing many of the shortcomings of the videoconferencing platforms that were the saviour of many businesses in the early days of the pandemic. Today there are myriad options for hybrid and remote working, from Microsoft Teams whiteboards for brainstorming to Monday.com for task collaboration. Tools like Culture Amp and Quantum Workspace, meanwhile, can forge a stronger sense of togetherness and belonging.

One company using tech to bring remote teams closer together is Ocado. It’s using Slack as a central collaboration hub for technology teams dispersed across the UK, Spain, Poland and Romania. “The fantastic thing about Slack is transparency,” says Clifford Bailey, head of Ocado Technology. “For the first time, you can overhear a conversation in a remote office and everyone can get involved.”

Professional development is an essential part of the employee experience, and should be considered an investment as much as a cost, since the aim is to equip the workforce to better meet customers’ needs. Remote workers need the same access to formal and informal development opportunities as their in-office colleagues, and technologies like virtual and augmented reality for training, and virtual water-cooler apps that connect junior hires with senior colleagues, can help.

Bank of America, for example, will debut a series of VR experiences for employee training during 2022, with simulated scenarios to help them navigate customer conversations and respond to customers with greater empathy. Managers will get access to insights from that training, enabling them to identify skills gaps and areas where employees need extra support.

In a hybrid working environment especially, managers need to know where their team is excelling and where individuals or whole teams need help to be at their best. New AI-powered tools, like Qualtrics, provide insights into individuals’ workloads and skills gaps, as well as overall team dynamics and areas of friction or inefficiency. Armed with this knowledge, managers can take action to re-balance workloads, invest in skills training, or tighten up processes.

One company using Qualtrics to boost both the employee and customer experience is Volkswagen Group Australia. It uses the platform to collect customer and employee feedback simultaneously, creating an immediate feedback loop that lets employees know when they’ve wowed customers. That has employees striving to be better, and according to Volkswagen Australia’s Chief Customer Officer Jason Bradshaw, “when our employees are engaged, our customers are advocating our brand. That, for us, is the way forward.”