Ten quotes that will convince you to put employees (not customers) first!
Over the last few decades, well-meaning business leaders have tried to build “customer-centric” workplaces as a way to gain advantages over their competitors and develop meaningful differentiators that catapult them toward market domination. Organizations should indeed deliver consistently remarkable service to customers, but business leaders who focus on customer-centricity without first focusing on their organizations’ overall employee experience are putting the cart before the horse. Truly remarkable customer experience is always built on a foundation of employees who genuinely enjoy their jobs and who are excited about helping their organizations meet their branding and business goals. The less engaged your employees are, the harder it will be to get them to deliver remarkable customer service. It is totally unreasonable to expect disgruntled, disillusioned or otherwise disengaged employees to deliver the type of service that will convert casual shoppers into raving fans of your business.
If you want to build a stronger brand and a stronger business, you need to have your priorities straight and design an engaging working environment where employees want to be the best versions of their professional selves, want to be compelling brand ambassadors for your organization and want to provide customers with a continual series of remarkable experiences.
Here are ten quotes that will convince you to put employees (not customers) first!
- “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients.” (Richard Branson, Billionaire Entrepreneur)
It’s pretty hard to argue against this position when it’s being made by a guy who built a billion-dollar empire using this outlook as a guiding principle. With this quote, Richard Branson comes out and says quite plainly what a lot of employees would love to say directly to their bosses, but can’t because, well, anyone who needs to be told this clearly isn’t putting employees first, and may have an aggressive response to an employee who says this to their face. It’s one of those statements that if you say it to your boss, it’s considered rude, but if Richard Branson says it, it’s sage advice!
- “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first!” (Simon Sinek, Author, Start With Why)
Many business leaders don’t use such highly emotive language or talk about having love for the organization they work for – but they probably should. Loving the organization you work for or purchase products and services from is the ultimate form of brand loyalty. With just a dozen words, Sinek identifies both the cause of poor customer loyalty as well as the remedy to the problem. The question is, are you brave enough, as a business leader, to move away from the “best practice” of trying to develop a customer-centric organization and move towards the “next practice” of developing an employee-centric organization?
- “The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers” (Sybil F. Stershic, Author. Taking Care of The People Who Matter Most)
I can almost hear traditional CEOs muttering to themselves! “I don’t care about employees’ feelings! I just care about the bottom line!” Even if you, as a business leader, don’t care about your employees’ feelings (and you really, really should), at the very least, you should care about your customers’ feelings, because if customers don’t feel valued by your organization, they aren’t going to purchase your products and services. And, if your customers don’t feel valued, chances are that it’s because your employees don’t feel valued!
- “The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers.” (Richard Branson, Billionaire Entrepreneur)
It’s a pretty straightforward concept. Treat your employees well, and they’ll treat your customers well. Treat your employees poorly and they’ll most certainly treat your customers poorly. This quote will surely bring some comfort to business leaders who go out of their way to treat their employees fairly. But it is likely to send shivers down the spines of business leaders who treat their employees poorly! At the end of the day, the way that your employees treat your customers leads straight back to your door as a business leader.
- “To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace” (Doug Conant, Author, The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights)
Everyone loves a winner! But, to be a winner in the competitive space of business, you need to have your priorities straight! If you want to win your customers’ hearts and minds, you first have to win your employees’ hearts and minds.
- “You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.” (Stan Slap, Author, Under The Hood: Fire Up and Fine-Tune Your Employee Culture)
If your employees aren’t buying into your brand promise, chances are, neither are your customers. Give your customers some credit! They can sense when even your own employees aren’t buying the story you’re selling! And if your own employees aren’t buying it, why should customers?
- “Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” (Timothy R. Clark, Author, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety)
Trying to get your organization to deliver remarkable customer experience while not tending to your organization’s employee engagement needs is as productive as trying to squeeze water from a rock. “Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” Sounds pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, many business leaders allow a toxic culture where employees are disengaged while expecting those same employees to deliver exceptionally high levels of customer experience.
- “Brands are built from the inside out. The way a company behaves on the inside is going to find its way to the outside.” (Ginger Hardage, Fmr. Senior Vice President, Culture and Communications, Southwest Airlines)
How many brands can you think of that talked a good talk, but then were rocked by scandals when the way that people behaved on the inside inevitably found its way to the outside. I’d reckon quite a few. If you mistreat your employees internally, your actions will eventually be found out by the public – especially in our highly connected digital world where disengaged employees can tarnish your brand by telling the world how they are treated in the workplace with a touch of the “publish” button on whatever the social media du jour happens to be at any given point in time.
- “Your customer experience will never exceed your employee experience” (unknown)
No matter how hard you try, and no matter how much money you throw at the problem, your customer experience will never exceed your employee experience! I’ve seen this quote being attributed to so many different speakers and authors that I thought it best to admit that I’m not 100% sure who said it first. In some ways, it doesn’t matter. No matter who came up with this quote first, it puts things into perspective for business leaders who want to improve their levels of customer experience. If you want to improve your customer experience, you must first improve your employee experience.
- “If we consistently exceed the expectations of employees, they will consistently exceed the expectations of our customers.” (Shep Hyken, Author, The Amazement Revolution)
Again, exceptional customer experience begins with exceptional employee experience. It’s just that simple! If you want to exceed the expectations of your customers, you need to exceed the expectations of your employees!
So there we have it. Ten quotes that will convince you to put employees (not clients) first! If you’re having trouble getting your leadership team to commit to developing an employee-centric culture, take this list to your next leadership meeting and read each quote one after the other. If these ten quotes don’t change their outlook, I’m not sure that anything will!
A version of this article was published on FastCompany.com
