Improve customer satisfaction by measuring employee engagement

When your employees are happy, your customers will be, too

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If your employees aren’t engaged with their jobs, they probably aren’t representing your organization well. Numerous studies have shown that a dissatisfied employee is unlikely to provide good customer service or to pass vital customer feedback up the chain.

For example, a Gallup poll found that 70 percent of American workers are either not engaged or actively disengaged. But diagnosing engagement problems can be as difficult as curing them. Disengagement is a complex issue that can stem from many sources like unclear (or unpromising) career paths, poor managerial relationships, or an unpleasant work environment. What can you do to identify problems and provide employees with the motivation they need to offer good customer service?

Start measuring engagement

The best way to find out what employees think of their jobs and your organization is simply to ask them. You can do this with informal interviews or company-wide surveys—there’s no right or wrong. But in order to improve this critical customer touchpoint, you need to ask the right questions.

Here are some tips for understanding employees’ level of engagement:

Ask employees to assess their own level of engagement
Ask employees to share their perceptions of their co-workers’ behavior—peers, subordinates and managers
Learn whether they feel like they’re fairly compensated, and if they get the benefits they need
Look into work-life balance to see what kind of external pressures exist and how best to accommodate them
Allow employees to respond anonymously so they can give honest feedback
Make it a regular exercise to measure engagement so issues can be identified and addressed
Set benchmarks and compare employees’ engagement over time

Once you know what’s working for your employees and what’s not, you can focus in on the things that make a big difference. This focus can help you get results right away. Because you’ll be able to create the right incentives, see where there’s friction between management and the rank and file, and ultimately have a more thoughtful approach to building a great team.

These sorts of improvements can pay big dividends when better products and services make their way to customers. Improved satisfaction and loyalty are likely to follow. When employees and customers are happy, it’s the ultimate win-win.

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How can you measure engagement?

If you want to create an employee engagement surveys, we’ve got a few tools that can help. Our survey experts partnered with the Society of Human Resource Management Foundation (SHRMF) to write a series of employee engagement survey templates. You can use them as-is, or customize them to meet your organization’s needs. See sample questionnaires here:

For other ways to improve customer satisfaction, check out our free eGuide: 6 Keys to Satisfaction, Loyalty & Love.