A friend forwarded me this post from Fred Reichheld, the primary developer of the Net Promoter concept. He highlights some really simple ways to Wow customers with some simple customer engagement steps. He calls them “frugal wows.”
There are two points that stood out to me in this article. First, the two examples illustrated in the blog are both simple and totally unexpected by the customer but both examples indicate that the employee was really listening. Second, it took initiative on the part of an employee to, for example, order the pizza for the hungry customer. This is an area that needs attention. Managers too often want to focus on improving customer service by only focusing on the customer side of the equation. My experience shows that it is just as important, if not more so, to focus on the employee side. Does the work environment encourage employees to respond in a creative manner to customer needs? Are employees really engaged in they do?
If you are measuring customer engagement and not doing the same for employees, now is the time to start. It takes engaged employees to have engaged customers!
Lynn Daniel
