Employee Retention Begets Customer Retention

  

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One component, perhaps the most important one, of the customer experience is the customer support agent. Make them happy and they, in turn, will make your customers happy.

What makes them happy?

• Consistant guidance from management, all the way up to the executive suite.
• Access to information needed to properly help their customers.
• Feeling empowered to do what is right for the customer.
• Timely information about issues in the field that have occurred too recently to be in the knowledge base.
• Business processes that don't include unnecessary steps from way back when "that's the way we've always done it".
• Support from their immediate superior if their actions have been called into question even though said actions saved a customer relationship without causing future problems with that customer or others.

The grocery store where I do almost all my shopping has customer service at the very heart of their business. Every single person you run across in the store will greet you and tell you to have a good day and ask if you are finding everything all right. And they do it without being intrusive. I have even had my groceries sacked by the store manager during busy times.

There is a cashier there that I recognized from a different grocery store. I asked her "weren't you at...". She said yes but she got to this store as fast as she could after the chain opened in the area.

I had seen her in action at that other store. Her main concern was that people got helped, did not have to wait too long, and to keep things moving but not rushed. She was very competent. Knowing that other store fairly well, I would venture to say that they did not appreciate what they had in her. In fact, I think it highly likely that any improvements she put forth were quashed and that other employees complained that she was "bossy" or "difficult" or who knows what.

I know she likes this new store much better. And I bet they know perfectly well what they have and they will hang on to her as long as they can.

And when I can, I get in her line because I know I will be expertly taken care of. So I am a loyal customer because they had the sense to hire someone like her.

So surround yourself with employees like that and watch them keep your customers coming back.

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