Welcome to the Listening Post!

According to the CE IQ study, organizations with the most loyal customers not only measure and monitor employee interactions with customers but then share that feedback with employees (a strong correlation of 0.54 to the study’s loyalty index). This creates a closed feedback loop that allows customer-facing staff members to understand the impact of their interactions on customers and enables the creation of programs that allow employees to improve those interactions over time.   

 

 

In addition, companies with the most loyal customers also periodically share VOC (Voice of the Customer) information with employees across the organization, ensuring widespread understanding of the customer’s point of view. Taken a step further, these organizations also engage customers in two-way dialogues through online communities. As Jeffrey wrote in The Top Ten Reasons for Building an Online Community in 2009, “This allows a wide variety of individuals within the business to interact and engage with customers. Dell has 40 employees participate in a team called Communities & Conversations.  CEOs always talk about making their organizations ‘customer centric’: by talking to customers and evangelizing their viewpoints across the company, as these Dell team members do, the organization truly becomes centered on the customer.”

Finally, organizations with the most loyal customers also recognize the link between satisfied employees and loyal customers by measuring employee satisfaction on a regular basis.  Satisfied and loyal employees reflect their positive attitudes and good behaviors to customers, who in turn increase their loyalty to the business.  

 

Averaging these four best practices together, the resulting index has a 0.65 correlation to customer loyalty, highest of any of the six practice areas examined. Clearly, employee-customer engagement is a key to unlocking greater customer loyalty.