What Are the Keys to Improving Financial Performance?

Many businesses believe that customer satisfaction alone is the primary ingredient in their company’s financial performance. They spend all their time and energy pursuing the customer’s satisfaction and loyalty through advertising, specials, and discount sales in hopes that the customer will be a repeat customer. What these businesses are missing, and what can cause failure, is that financial growth requires customers and employees. A company must focus equally on customer satisfaction and employee engagement.

Employee Engagement as a Company’s Foundation

Companies that succeed are interested in employee engagement. Employee engagement can be measured by how committed employees are to their organization. Highly engaged employees apply 100% of their knowledge, skills, and abilities to the success of the company, and are loyal in all they think, say, and do both internally and externally to the organization. They care deeply about their company, and regularly have peak performance experiences at work. Employee engagement is based on two key factors: job satisfaction and intent to stay. Businesses should make an effort to ensure that their employees are satisfied and that their recruitment processes find and train employees who are not going to leave in six months.

Job Satisfaction: The degree of personal gratification an employee receives from their work. Satisfied employees believe in the work that they do and feel valued by their company. This results in higher production and retention rates.

Intent to Stay: Employees who have positive job experiences are more likely to stay with the company.

If your company is struggling with employee engagement, think about your hiring process. Sometimes the problem is not trying to create the ideal employee, but is instead hiring the right people from the start.

Employee Engagement is linked to Customer Satisfaction

An engaged employee goes beyond providing good customer service to become an advocate for your company’s product and philosophy. Engaged employees don’t just provide a product or service, they sell your company as a whole. The root causes of customer behavior as it relates to financial performance are:

Overall Customer Satisfaction: This is influenced by many factors, but your customers are likely asking themselves these three questions:

• Did the product or service exceed my expectations?
• Will I do business with this company again?
• Will I recommend this company to my friends?

If your customer can answer yes to the above questions, you may be delivering service that is worth bragging about.

Intent to Return: This behavior is the primary driver of financial performance. A customer will either return to your business or not based upon many factors, such as customer satisfaction. A repeat customer exhibits the highest form of customer engagement and represents the lowest customer acquisition cost.

Your company has a lot to offer customers. But, you also have competition striving to offer the same things. Win over your employees the way you win over your customers, by making your company a great place to work. The road to financial performance, growth, and stability lies in the hands of your employees and customers. Make sure your business strategy includes employee engagement as well as customer satisfaction.