Conventional wisdom says not just “yeah” but “hell, yeah.” That said, an issue with the “conventional wisdom” is that people rarely question it. And since this is a question I was asked earlier this week – and my response predictably slotted into the “hell yeah” quadrant – I thought it only fair to dig a little deeper.
Do happier employees really mean happier customers? Without giving too much away, the results of my exploration will almost certainly surprise you. Not because happy employees don’t mean happier customers (in general they do). But because of the potentially worrisome connections between employee performance and happiness, and customer engagement.
No Shocker: High Employee Engagement Yields Good Business Results. (But…)
Earlier this month, RagingWire – a data center firm that boasts the highest customer loyalty scores in their industry – published an excellent blog post about employee engagement and customer experience. They feel these scores wouldn’t be possible without a real dedication to employee experience, which they’ve encapsulated into 10 handy tips (see them at right). It’s hard not to agree. After all, it seems logical that companies with a commitment to employee satisfaction, development, and well-being would have at least some market advantage.
But these aren’t exactly new ideas. Gallup, for example, has been promoting the 12 Elements of Great Managing – which are all about inspiring top performance in employees – since at least the ’90s. And their latest Q12™ research quantifies the (significant) gap between companies at the top and bottom quartiles of employee engagement. In it, they found that organizations in the top quartile had:
- 22% higher profitability,
- 21% higher productivity,
- 10% higher customer metrics,
- 37% less absenteeism, and
- Up to 65% less turnover.
No brainer, right? Faced with numbers like these, what company wouldn’t think that employee engagement should be a top priority? What we want to know, though, is if happier employees mean happier customers.
Since the top employee-engagement groups beat the bottom by only 10% in customer metrics, it seems the answer is a resounding “maybe.” What gives?
The Fly in the Ointment: Are Your Lowest-Performance Employees Also Your Happiest and Most Engaged?
The title of RagingWire’s blog post “Would Your Employees Recommend You?” reminded me of a recent Harvard Business Review post, titled Your Least Engaged Employees Might Be Your Top Performers. In it, the author quotes from recent research from Leadership IQ which states that in 42% of companies studied, low-engagement employees outperform high-engagement employees. You may have to read that line twice. I did.
Yet reading the research, a crystal-clear picture of these high-engagement, low-performance employees emerges. They are happy and engaged, in part because they actually aren’t held that accountable and/or don’t have to work as hard as high performers. Expectations are lower, and their jobs are easier. As a result, they’re even more motivated to “deliver 100 percent at work” than high- and middle-performers.
These higher-performance, lower-engagement employees care a great deal about their work, have loads of intrinsic motivation, and lots of talent – but often don’t feel empowered, encouraged, or recognized.
Bottom Line? Happier Employees Do Mean Happier Customers. But if They Aren’t Held Accountable, Your Business Will Suffer.
Between the Gallup and Leadership IQ research, it’s easy to think these two pieces of research conflict. I’d suggest the answers are a bit more nuanced, and point in a direction that may help explain why customer metrics track less with employee engagement.
While higher-engagement/lower-performance employee want nothing more than to please your customers, they may not be as willing (or as able) to make the difficult choices sometimes required to satisfy customers and meet business objectives.
Which brings us back to the question at hand, and the “dangers” of conventional wisdom. Because while happy employees do help deliver happier customers, high-performing employees can help to deliver happier customers and business results.
The trifecta is this: happy, high-performing employees, happy customers and stunning business results. If you’re like the most successful firms I’ve worked with, getting there means aligning your reward systems with your customers wants and needs – and ensuring that your desired outcomes are clearly defined, and that everyone is held accountable for their results.
Get that in place, and it gets easier to imagine all your employees contributing to customer happiness – boosting customer metrics, while driving profitability and productivity along the way.
Which, when it comes to customer loyalty, might help you go from reading about companies like RagingWire to becoming a company like RagingWire.
….and correlation don’t match up very well where employee happiness and customer marketplace behavior are concerned: http://www.customerthink.com/blog/correlation_is_not_causation_big_data_challenges_and_related_truths_that_will_impact_business_s. Further, and about as unfortunately, the inability of staff research companies to agree on what employee “engagement” is – i.e. Gallup’s definition is different than Kenexa’s and Hay’s (and, from work done by The Conference Board in this area, this inconsistency goes on and on and on) – make even the connection, or correlation, between employee engagement level and customer behavior pretty fragile and modest: http://www.customerthink.com/article/linking_employee_behavior_to_customer_loyalty_advocacy.
We have found core, real-world employee causation and influence on customer behavior by going past the analytical limitations of engagement research, to employee ambassadorship: http://www.customerthink.com/blog/employee_ambassadorship_and_advocacy_living_the_promise_of_wow_customer_value_delivery_part_i
Per your summary point, I’d agree that the real connection, or causation, of success re. customer behavior is in high employee performance, irrespective of an individual’s function or level within the organization. In my own employee ambassadorship research, and as discussed in the blog cited in the last paragraph, I’ve characterized this performance in terms of three commitments:
a) Commitment to the organization and its values,
b) Commitment to the value proposition of the organization’s products and services and
c) Commitment to the organization’s customers