Valuing Your Employees, Giving Value to Your Customers
An Article By Willowtree

If you value your employees, and show them that they’re valued, you’re going to create a dedicated workforce that will make you rich.

Sound over-simplified? Well, think again. When we’re happy doing a task, we do the task better, with greater care, with more dedication. If we’re not happy doing something, then….. the opposite is usually true.

Same for our employees. We want them to be happy so they’ll produce for us and the best way to ensure that happens is to let our employees know how very much we value them. By valuing our employees, we foster their attitude of valuing our customers.

And giving value to our employees is pretty easy and fairly low cost. Look at these following two examples.

Here’s an excerpt from www.disneyinstitute.com:

Engage staff in your culture and inspire them to meet your organization's goals; support them with rich traditions, quality standards and shared values and you will retain a successful workforce.

Empowerment of all staff is a vital, non-negotiable characteristic of customer service dedicated companies.

Allow your employees to take initiative in solving customer’s problems on the spot
Allow your employees to bend and break rules to take care of the customer
Let your employees know that they have your trust and support in their decisions
Recognize the value of your employee’s time.
Treat everyone with dignity and respect, no matter what their position – everyone.
Trust that your employees will live up to your (& your customer’s) expectations

“You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful workplace environment in the world, but it requires (among other things) praised and appreciated employees to make that dream a reality.
Praise is yeast for bread. Let it raise yourself and others.”

And another example from WestJet:

A message from Clive Beddoe, WestJet President and CEO
Treat employees as No. 1
"If there is one defining lesson to be drawn from WestJet," says Beddoe, "it's this: Put your employees first." That relationship is more critical to WestJet than the airline's relationship with its customers, maintains Beddoe: "If we have good relations with our employees, then the employees create good relationships with their customers."
And consider, too, Walt Disney's pearls of wisdom:

The message here is clear -- valued employees mean good business.

When you create a culture of recognition, you motivate employee performance and increase employee morale and individual self-confidence. Bonus – you also increase employee loyalty.

Here’s an often overlooked approach to valuing employees – get rid of non-performers. Non-performers, if they make it past your selection method, will harm the moral of your other employees as well as doing harm to your company reputation and your customer’s happiness.

None of these suggestions has a high cost. And all of these ideas promise to deliver for your employees, your customers and your company.

EMPLOYEE VALUE = CUSTOMER VALUE = COMPANY VALUE

Train and empower your employees and reward them for excellence.
Value and respect your customers and reward them with excellence.
Your reward will be dedicated employees, loyal customers, little competition and great revenues.

Like all great customer service, it’s that simple.

Article Contributed By: Willowtree Customer Service, www.willowtree.ca, (905) 454 6319. Turn Your Customers Into Your Sales Force

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