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Culture Shift: The Big Disconnect
April 21, 2008
Are "employee motivation" and "customer satisfaction" two issues—or only one? Think hard before you answer; it's a big question with serious implications.
By Paul Levesque
Businesses suffering from low morale and a cynical workforce know they have a serious problem (I'll label these as Category One for discussion purposes). And in most cases they know the solution has something to do with employee incentives of one kind or another. Meanwhile, businesses plagued by customer complaints and poor customer retention (Category Two) also know their problem is a serious one. And, in most cases, they presume the solution involves customer service training of one kind or another.
Point of interest: None of the turbo-charged businesses I've visited and profiled in recent years put their workers through any kind of customer service training whatsoever. Yet, these businesses are renowned for their highly-energized employees, and for consistently generating phenomenal customer loyalty and positive word of mouth!
What do businesses in this third category know that everyone else seems to be missing?
Cause and Effect
Our first clue emerges when we acknowledge that businesses in Category One (those suffering from low motivation) also typically belong to Category Two (those battling customer complaints) and vice-versa. These two kinds of problems are virtually inseparable mirror-images. Where employee satisfaction is low, we can safely predict customer satisfaction will be low as well. If customers are having a wonderful time, it's a safe bet the employees are too. These two phenomena are connected in a very basic way, yet it's a connection very few businesses have fully grasped or taken advantage of.
Managers inadvertently demonstrate their failure to grasp the connection when they say things like, "My employees are demotivated, which is why they never delight our customers." I ask such managers if there's any chance they might have the cause-and-effect aspects backwards. Could it be their company's internal systems, policies and procedures—its culture, for short—make it difficult, if not impossible, for employees to deliver a delightful experience … and that's what has them de-motivated?
Culture Shift Opportunity: One quick, simple employee survey that asks the right things can settle the cause-and-effect question in your organization once and for all.
Remedies That Make Things Worse
When employee motivation is treated as an illness in isolation, the traditional approach of incentives-as-the-cure typically produces improvements that are disappointingly slight and short-lived. The more lavish and costly the incentives become, the more the disgruntled recipients' expectations are raised … until they begin to feel a sense of entitlement. This means that instead of improving your employees' view of the work they do, these "compensations" encourage them to find even greater dissatisfaction in their jobs, precisely so that they can feel even more entitled to even splashier compensation.
Traditional customer service training efforts have also yielded consistently disappointing results. The ultimate object of all such training is to clarify for employees the kinds of behavior the organization wants them to adopt with customers. This is followed by management's attempt to "police" such behaviors. The more our resentful trainees feel they're being pushed to behave a certain way, the more inclined they are to dig in their heels and resist. They sneeringly refer to it as "smile training." And even though they might have been inclined to smile automatically before any such training, they'll often resist the urge afterwards, just to deprive management of any sense of victory.
Two separate organizational plagues, each with "cures" that are worse than the disease. So what's different in Category Three businesses—the ones with no training but happy customers and engaged employees?
The Flashpoint Effect
Employees in most highly-energized businesses are motivated by one single thing: They're determined to deliver the best possible experience for customers. This high level of collective customer-focused energy drives customer satisfaction sky high. But then, the magical part of the formula kicks in. Management ensures that all positive feedback from appreciative customers reaches all employees, all the time. In these businesses, positive customer feedback becomes the ultimate motivator. It inspires workers at all levels to redouble their efforts to keep customers happy and coming back.
In these businesses, employee motivation is driving up customer satisfaction, while at the same time customer satisfaction is driving up employee motivation. The two are no longer disconnected—in fact, they fuel each other directly, producing a virtual chain reaction of contagious enthusiasm.
The more closely I studied and analyzed this phenomenon in Category Three businesses, the more it reminded me of what firefighters call a "flashpoint"—where temperatures reach a certain level at which everything bursts into flames at once. I now describe businesses in that third category as having a "flashpoint culture."
Culture Shift Opportunity: How can you start using positive customer feedback to generate more motivational impact in your organization?
In flashpoint businesses, employee motivation and customer satisfaction are never treated as separate problems with separate solutions. That one cultural difference may be the simplest way to account for their success.
 Editor's Note: Just as an optical illusion has dual parts, so too does the portrait of your corporate culture—it's a parallel relationship between employees motivation and customer satisfaction. Meaning, when motivation is lacking, satisfaction is too, and vice versa. Listen to Paul's podcast this week, "The Big Disconnect" at www.incentivemag.com/cultureshift to discover how shifting your organizational perception can resolve the disconnect in a "flash."
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