Happy Valentine’s Day! Like we discussed last week, tools like mystery shopping and feedback surveys present opportunities for you to share some love with your customers. But as you’ll see this week, there’re also opportunities to show employees love, too.
As we know, brand identity is tightly entwined with the customer experience. You want your customers to enjoy their visits so much that they come back again and again, and even refer their friends and family. This is as much true for a restaurant as it is for a retail store or a car dealership. But let’s consider another angle of your company’s reputation: how happy and fulfilled are your employees? What’s the employee experience like?
A business owner might be tempted to think that an employee’s chief sense of job satisfaction comes from his or her paycheck, and while there’s a lot of truth to that, many people derive a sense of personal fulfillment from their work, too. This can be hard to imagine for certain vocations—after all, you might wonder who could derive personal satisfaction from sanitation or stocking—but many people possess an innate desire to help others or make tangible improvements to their surroundings, and that these motivations can be immensely satisfying in themselves. As mentioned in our last blog, mystery shopping reminds us that pleasing others is pleasing to us.
There are some straightforward ways to learn about your employee satisfaction. First and foremost is to ask them, but we understand that face-to-face questions can sometimes feel awkward, so we’re fond of Employee Feedback Surveys at The Brandt Group. We’re able to come in as an independent third-party and gather fully anonymous feedback for you. Moreover, we also like to leave a space at the end of our surveys to allow employees the option of waiving their anonymity if they have personal concerns they want to see addressed. You’d be amazed at how much more open and honest your staff can be when given this opportunity, at how empowered employees feel when given this avenue to voice concerns or air grievances.
Another way employee satisfaction gets uncovered is in the mystery shops themselves. Employee demeanor is often a great barometer for how they feel about their jobs; enthusiasm is obvious, as is apathy and frustration. Even the minutiae of your sales and service processes will get analyzed during mystery shops, so pain points (like when employees lack the authority or tools to help a customer with his or her requests) become apparent. Having this knowledge will give you the power to do something about it.
Admittedly, sometimes the answers we uncover are uncomfortable. After all, no one wants to consider the possibility that some of their employees are unhappy. But asking these questions, even while knowing you might hear answers you don’t like, is a sign that you care very much about your employees. Better to face hard truths now than something more painful later.
You invest a lot of time and energy into the customer experience. Time to do something similar for your staff, too. Let’s get started today—contact us here, or give us a call at 406–586–3036.
