Customer Satisfaction and Happy Staff Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

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Editor Coda
Jul 23, 2013

The period over Christmas and New Year is a great time for people in business to stop and stand back for a moment. When the mind is still, it's amazing what exciting new ideas bubble up to the surface! You also get to read books you've had stuck in a pile for too long. One of my favourite business characters is Richard Branson. Some how over the past 30 or so years he has created one of the strongest brands in the world. Apparently the Virgin Brand is in the top 20 recognised brands globally, and where as all the other brands like Coca Cola and Nike, specialise in one industry, Virgin encapsualtes 300 companies cross industry. The Branson view is that this approach achieves a number of benefits: 1) it protects the business - if one company suffers as a result of oil price increases, a recession etc, the other businesses remain unblemished, so it creates a safety net that protects the longevity of the group and brand, and; 2) it retains the entrepreneurial, fresh feel that start ups and SMEs tend to have and multinationals tend to be short on.

So reading Bransons' latest book Business Stripped Bare has made me think a lot about the operations of shared services organisations. The beauty of a shared services org is that it is an exciting start up typically within a very large, existing business. The energy that is required to get it going is not dissimilar to the energy that ignited the mother company's creation in the early days. Often small to mid-sized shared services will peak around the 150FTE mark, so one always feels that one is working for a 'family' operation. If you have ever read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, you will know that his view is that once a company reaches 150, its energy changes. So, Branson's view is that, having lots of 'small' companies within the group keeps this start up energy going, and retains a level of freshness which he finds compelling.

Branson, being the excellent publicist that he is, talks about the learnings of business by exampling Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Blue, Virgin Mobile etc. And of course he talks a lot about the companies' successes, but thankfully without being blind to the bumps along the way. One thing he stresses, and again I bring this thought back to SSOs, is that if you have a happy team and happy people, you will likely have happy customers. His view is that satisfied staff and satisfied customers are indeed two sides of the same coin. So one sure fire way of increasing your customer satisfaction ratings is to find out how happy your staff is and do the things you need to to make your team even happier. Virgin Atlantic cabin crew are some of the lowest paid airline professionals in the industry, so Branson is not saying you need to throw money at your employees to make them happier. His view, and I think this chimes with the view of many, is that one of the single activites that will boost the happiness of staff is how you listen to them. The extent of this 'listening' is manifested in actions and improvements that take place as a result of the information heard. So if someone in your SSO comes to you with and idea, or a sugggestion, or a comment, and an action is discussed as a result, then realiseing that action, and quickly, will lead to happier staff, and ergo happier customers!

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