Many times companies have the objective of providing excellent customer service and focus solely on how they can please the customers to improve loss prevention strategies. Although customer satisfaction is a key driver for the health and future success of a company, ensuring your employees are also satisfied and engaged is important for providing good customer service. When employees are engaged they become your biggest brand advocates because they want the organization as a whole to be successful.
Providing good customer service
Engaged employees bring an increased level of productivity to their jobs as they feel more motivated and personally fulfilled. When employees are more productive they have extra time that can be used to search for more customers, provide service to existing customers, or hone existing skills and develop new ones.
Exceptional customer service is achieved with engaged employees going the extra mile to ensure your customers have the best experience with the brand possible. Customers that are delighted by proactive education or superior service are 10-30% more loyal than customers who haven’t been delighted.
No matter what you do, good customer service skills can’t stop the odd customer from complaining about their experience. Productive, engaged employees will be able to deal with customer inquiries and complaints faster than disengaged employees, and because of this customers are more likely to leave satisfied and reciprocate with loyalty.
Engaging your employees for customer retention
Whenever employees are successful at a task, be sure to recognize them for it. Even the smallest of achievements can be recognized with gestures such as a pat on the back. Making this recognition visible shows other employees that they too can be recognized for their successes. Feedback is just as important as recognition. If employees aren’t told how they’re progressing they lose track of their goals. If you can, reviewing tasks and goals once a week can help employees better understand where they are and what they have to do to improve.
Trust your employees to do their job correctly and up to the standards you have set. You can empower them by allowing them to make key decisions surrounding their job and customers. By showing giving your employees autonomy to make their own decisions they trust you more and vice versa resulting in more engagement. Having a collaborative environment in your organization is also key for this process as employees feel that they can turn to anyone in the company for assistance. A team environment where employees can share ideas and give direction is great for engaging your employees and enhancing customer service skills.
The end goal is to enhance guest experiences
With these strategies you’ll be able to encourage your employees to hop out of their comfort bubble and will result in more engagement. Customers tend to be more satisfied when the employees they interact with show emotion and connection with the brand. These are great tools to utilize to improve your loss prevention strategies, and build both customer and employee loyalty to your brand.
Looking for Canadian mystery shopping companies to enhance your brand? Braymark specializes in internal employee surveys that can help you measure and understand your employees’ attitudes and levels of engagement. Mystery shopping is a great way to get both an external and internal view of your business.