Most organisations have recognised that becoming more customer-centric is essential to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. What they often fail to realise is that creating a sustainable and impressive customer experience program has to start with your employees. If your team members are not being looked after, it will be next to impossible to ask them to buy-in to genuine customer service delivery, much less an end to end customer experience program.

Financial incentives only go so far, especially when it comes to genuine customer service, and often lead to superficial service quality, ready to sour at the first sign of customer dissatisfaction, which we all know is a key touch point in itself. There are a multitude of resources online with details on how to review and improve your employee experience to drive satisfaction and engagement, and what works for us may not work for you. What we will elaborate on are some of the results, from our own experience as a debt recovery agency, honoured to be entrusted to look after our client’s own customers:

• It has created a fun, friendly workplace – so when an external party speaks to any team member, across any department, it is obvious they are happy to be there;
• Client facing team members have the energy, resources and motivation to strive to exceed client expectations;
• Our contact centre staff members are friendly, more attuned to wanting to help the customer, to actively listen, and to defuse any customers than phone in discontent. These in turn help to protect our clients brand, can rehabilitate good customers in short term financial hardship and;
• Leads to optimal collections performance, as the boundaries of non-payment are more effectively negotiated and resolved.

So, before you set out on weaving customer-centricity into your strategy, the place to start is with your employees. Look after them.