My recent posts dealt with the employee-customer happiness/satisfaction link and employees as personification of the brand.
Unfortunately, some managers may be blind to these self-reinforcing relationships, but not customers.
Customers are quick to pick up on signals of employee frustration & dissatisfaction, whether conveyed deliberately or not. Consider a consumer’s experience in dealing with employees who:
- lack sufficient product knowledge to help customers
- are not clued in to the marketing messages being communicated to customers
- genuinely want to help customers, but are hampered by a lack of internal support.
Any one of these situations that repeatedly occur reflect negatively on a company, its employees, and management. Even worse, it puts an organization at risk to:
- lose customers & income
- lose employees (while incurring turnover expense)
- negatively impact the company’s reputation (as a result of customer & employee churn), and
- inflict serious brand damage.
Here’s a case where preventative medicine is preferable to acute care. My prescription? A healthy dose of internal marketing’s 3 Rs (Respect, Recognition & Reinforcement) applied regularly.