It is only in the organizations that have high engagement where you will find consistent, exceptional, memorable and positive service experiences.
I believe if organizations spent more time focusing on the service experiences they are creating, they would simultaneously create employee engagement and enhanced service experiences.
If you really want to determine if you have engaged and enabled employees, try experiencing your organization from your customer’s perspective.
If you are in a leadership position, one of the most important things you can do to drive employee engagement while simultaneously improving the customer experience is to remove obstacles inside of your work group.
This means taking the time as a leader to solicit input and feedback from your team members about obstacles, policies, or procedures that they feel get in their way of providing faster and better service experiences. Asking and acting on these ideas will create employee engagement and momentum for service experience improvement.
If you are an individual contributor it is important for you to view all of your customer touch points from the perspective of your customers.
It is also important for you to bring any ideas, suggestions, or improvements that you believe would remove obstacles, improve the customer experience or your responsiveness, to your supervisor.
It is interesting to note, that one of the common characteristics of the best service organizations around the world is that they all proactively solicit customer input to find obstacles in the service experience process. You can meet the ever-rising service expectations of your customers by listening and then removing obstacles.
This will help enable you and your organization to create exceptional experiences for customers and employees alike!