It’s no secret that customer satisfaction directly impacts the bottom line — more than 80 percent of U.S. consumers say they have stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service. But what should your organization do to ensure a great customer experience? Research suggest it all starts with having engaged and happy employees.
Employee Satisfaction Equates to Customer Satisfaction
Research from the Glassdoor employment website establishes a strong statistical relationship between employee and customer satisfaction. “Maintaining a satisfied workforce — particularly among customer-facing roles — should be considered a key prerequisite to delivering great customer experiences,” the report’s authors noted.
The study took Glassdoor’s own employee satisfaction reviews for nearly 300 large employers across 13 industries and compared them to company ratings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Each one-star improvement in a company’s employee satisfaction rating corresponded to a statistically significant 1.3 percent improvement in customer satisfaction scores.
The Digital Side of the Employee and Customer Experience
The increased use of digital engagement technologies can drive improvements in both the employee and customer experience.
With face-to-face interactions limited during the pandemic, organizations have become increasingly dependent virtual assistants, chatbots, self-service portals, video conferencing, cloud-based contact centers and other technologies to support customers online. The results have been better than most could have imagined.
In a new Mitel survey of more than 4,000 consumers in the U.S., UK, France and Germany, 60 percent said they saw improvements in customer service during the pandemic. Consumers said company representatives were friendly, helpful and knowledgeable, provided fast and responsive service, and maintained strong communications throughout the process. More than 70 percent said they expect to continue relying on digital engagement options in the future.
Many of the same technologies have been essential for allowing employees to remain engaged and productive while working safely from home. According to the CNBC Workforce Happiness Index, remote workers score higher than in-office colleagues on nearly every question related to work satisfaction. Remarkably, 97.6 percent of workers in a separate study reported they would like to work remotely at least some of the time for the rest of their careers.
There’s been no drop in the productivity of remote workers, either. According to Mitel, 83 percent of companies report that employee productivity remained the same or improved during the pandemic.
Unified Communications: key to employee and customer satisfaction
To maintain employee satisfaction — and, by extension, customer satisfaction — Mitel finds that companies are planning to increase investments in technologies that support remote operations. Our customers have shown particular interest in unified communications (UC) solutions that make it easy for employees to communicate with colleagues and customers via voice, video or chat.
Share Files
UC impacts remote employees in a variety of ways. It allows them to easily share files, notes and images with coworkers and managers whether they’re at home or in the office. With the right application integrations, remote employees can also use their UC platform to access to a broad range of customer and business data.
Alleviating Social Isolation
Social isolation is a major drawback of remote work, but UC can help with that. Voice and video communication enable face-to-face collaboration regardless of location, device or network. That’s a great option for maintaining social interaction and friendships among team members.
Schedule Flexibility
Most important, UC solutions provide remote employees with the flexibility they crave. Working from home with kids, spouses and pets that require attention can wreak havoc on work schedules. UC platforms give people the tools they need to work whenever, wherever and however they can.
Unified Communications and Employee Happiness
Happy and motivated employees play a key role in delivering an exceptional customer experience. As such, companies must continue to invest in technologies that facilitate remote work and set the right tone for customer interactions. Call us to discuss UC solutions that will benefit both your employees and customers.