{"id":10053,"date":"2017-02-01T06:39:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T14:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recruitloop.com\/blog\/?p=10053"},"modified":"2017-01-25T14:36:43","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T22:36:43","slug":"the-link-between-employee-engagement-and-customer-loyalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/the-link-between-employee-engagement-and-customer-loyalty\/","title":{"rendered":"The Link Between Employee Engagement and Customer Loyalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0<\/strong>This is a guest post by Emma Miller – a\u00a0Sydney-based writer and contributor at Bizzmark\u00a0blog<\/span><\/i>. Her opinions are her own. \u00a0<\/em>
\nEmployee engagement is driven by the emotional commitment employees have with their company and its vision. This emotional commitment motivates employees to work better and harder. Employee engagement<\/a> is one of the most essential criteria for running a successful business and it creates benefits for employers, customers and employees themselves. In this article, we\u2019re going to analyze how employee engagement influences customer relations. Since the highest goal of most companies is to create an army of loyal and satisfied customers and use them as brand advocates, we\u2019re also going to analyze how employee engagement can help employers achieve this goal.<\/span>
\nKevin Kruse, an entrepreneur and an author of NY Times bestseller: <\/span>We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement<\/span><\/i>, has recently published <\/span>an article<\/span>\u00a0explaining the correlation between employee engagement and various other aspects of business. Since there\u2019s no unique recipe for improving customer loyalty, in this article we\u2019ll focus on several good practices that improve customer loyalty<\/a> and inspect how employee engagement can make this process easier and more efficient.<\/span>
\nCustomer loyalty is very important for all types of businesses. It\u2019s much easier to retain a current customer than to acquire a new one and that\u2019s why companies invest a lot of time and funds in improving their customer retention rates. These rates are usually defined by the efficiency in some of these business fields:<\/span><\/p>\n

Customer service<\/h2>\n

Many companies have specialized programs for improving their customer retention rates. These programs usually include giving out various incentives to the most loyal customers and targeting \u2018checkout dropouts\u2019 with advanced remarketing tactics. Most of these programs are being backed by advanced customer service practices, so we can conclude that customer service (also often referred to as ‘customer success’) is one of the most important criteria for improving customer loyalty.<\/span>
\nEngaged employees understand the value of the brand they\u2019re representing and therefore can easily engage customers and improve their overall experience. Employee engagement is directly tied to client satisfaction and a great\u00a0example for this is Morrison Management Specialists. This food services\u00a0company managed to improve their client satisfaction by\u00a01%, for\u00a0every 2% improvement in employee engagement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Product quality<\/h2>\n

Engaged employees are more careful than their disengaged colleagues. This results in less quality errors and a smoother workflow. The relationship between employee engagement and product quality was also mentioned in the <\/span>Employee Engagement: The Key to Realizing Competitive Advantage, Development Dimensions International<\/span> study. The study mentions an unnamed Fortune 100 company, which decreased the number of quality errors from 5,658 to only 52 (per 1 million products), just by introducing an active employee engagement strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sales<\/h2>\n

Engaged salespeople<\/a> are much better at sales and negotiation tasks. Most companies try to engage their sellers with sales commissions<\/a>. This is a very efficient way to motivate sales personnel. This was acknowledged by Doug J. Chung in<\/span> his<\/span> How to Really Motivate Salespeople<\/span><\/i> article. Chung advises managers to remove the caps from commissions and experiment with various compensation and reward programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

How to improve employee engagement<\/h2>\n

Many employers think that the job itself and the financial benefits that come with it are enough to keep employees enthusiastic. Dozens of different studies have proven that financial benefits<\/a> are not the most effective way to boost employee engagement. Of course, companies should use them to reward employees\u2019 loyalty and effort, but there are also other more affordable and thoughtful ways that can be used for solving this problem.<\/span>
\nBefore managers and employers jump to specific solutions, they need to recognize the engagement gap. They often walk down the company hallways, seeing smiling and engaged-looking employees. These scenes give them the false impression that employees believe in their vision and that they\u2019re giving their best effort. In order to get the right picture managers need to analyze employees\u2019 performance<\/a> on a regular basis and measure their engagement by using various productivity metrics.<\/span>
\nWhen trying to introduce the right measures that will result in an increase of their workforce value, managers should first determine the factors that drive employee engagement in their industry. Apart from financial compensation, these are some of the factors that are the most critical for <\/span>improving employee engagement:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n