Engaged Employees Deliver Enhanced Customer Service

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and AI-powered rewards and recognition platform for employee engagement.

Providing the best customer service and experience is your ultimate goal, whether you are a product-based industry or a service-based industry. But who will help you provide the best customer service? Well, they are your biggest assets, your employees. But if your employees are disengaged, do you think they will deliver the best results in terms of productivity and performance? Ultimately employee performance directly impacts the customer service. Hence, engaged employees deliver enhanced customer service.

Gautam: Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Vantage Influencers Podcast. I am your host, Gautam. Today we are going to discuss how engaged employees help deliver enhanced customer service at work, and to shed light on this topic we have just the right person with us. Let me introduce you to Mr. Shep Hyken, CAO and Customer Service Expert at Shepard Presentations, LLC. Shep is a customer service and experience speaker, and is an international leading authority on customer service, customer experience, and loyalty in business. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of seven bestselling books that have made his presence on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and more. Shep has worked with thousands of companies and organizations who want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. Shep has been inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the speaking profession. Hello, Shep. Welcome to the show.

Shep Hyken: It is great to be here, and thank you so much. That introduction would have made my mother very proud.

Gautam: I think that when this podcast goes live, you should surely share a link with your mother, and maybe she will appreciate both of us.

Shep Hyken: Sounds like a plan. Sure.

Gautam: We are truly delighted to have you with us today, and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with our listeners and share your valuable thoughts on this topic. Before we begin the session, I know I already introduced you to our listeners, but we would still like to know something more about yourself. So if you would love to brief us about yourself, something I might have missed mentioning about you.

Shep Hyken: Oh, gosh. Well, since we've mentioned my mother in kind of a fun way: back when I was 12 years old, I started my first business, a magic show business for birthday parties. I was hired to go entertain, and after I came back from my first birthday party, my mom gave me my first customer service lesson. She said, send a thank you now, whether it's a thank-you note, an email, a text, or whatever. Today it's so important that you say thank you. I mean, this was back when I was a little kid, and I still do it. By the way, that same afternoon, my dad said my mom had a good idea: after the note, follow up with a phone call. Call the parents who hired you to perform for their kids, thank them again, and ask them how they liked the show. Basically, what was happening is my parents were teaching me some really important ideas: say thank you, get feedback, act on the feedback. It was a great experience to learn, without even knowing it was called customer service or experience. And here I am today, almost 40 years after graduating college, still doing this business and focusing on the whole idea of taking great care of our clients and customers, regardless of the kind of business they're in.

Gautam: Well, thank you so much, Shep. I think when we say the cliché that behind every successful man there's a woman, there was your mother right behind you from a very small age.

Shep Hyken: Yeah, there you go. That was good advice from him, but I'll tell you, my wife has been very instrumental in my success too, right behind me, promoting me every step of the way.

Gautam: I think you have two amazing, powerful women supporting you, and I don't think anybody can stop you with that.

Shep Hyken: Well, thank you.

Gautam: We hope you have continued success ahead as well. Now, I'd like us to begin with the session and our conversation.

Shep Hyken: Sure.

Gautam: So, considering your experience with customer service and customer experience, and as a public speaker: in a true sense, what is employee engagement according to you?

Shep Hyken: Wow. There are a number of definitions of employee engagement, and if you ask a CEO, they'll define it one way, and someone else will define it another way. But here's the bottom line: when our employees show up for work, are they doing the best job they can? I have this philosophy about consistency, that everybody should come to work with the idea that today can be the best day, and try to be a little better today than yesterday, every day. You may or may not hit it every time, it doesn't matter, it's the effort that counts. Now, when it comes to employee engagement, this is where you get different definitions: is it leadership and management engaging with employees, or is it employees engaging with customers? I think both have to happen. You have to take care of and engage your employees the way you want your customers to be engaged. I call this the employee golden rule: we all know the golden rule, do unto others as you'd want done unto you. Well, the employee golden rule is, do unto employees as you want done unto your customers. If we engage our employees well, they turn around and engage customers well.

Gautam: Thank you so much, Shep. I think that's a great point: if we want our customers to be happy, we should make our employees happy first. I think that's really what drives the good results, right?

Shep Hyken: Great way to summarize it.

Gautam: And since there's a relationship between employee engagement and customer service: how do engaged employees help deliver enhanced customer service?

Shep Hyken: So the question is how do engaged employees help deliver enhanced customer service. Again, if we treat them the way we want our customers treated, I think people understand how to treat others in turn. I actually just wrote an article and did a cartoon: there's a guy on a megaphone screaming at his employees, "You guys are terrible! Now go out there and be nice to the customers!" It just doesn't work that way. I believe we have to hire good people, train them well, and empower them. When you empower someone to do the job they were hired to do, and let them know they're doing a good job, they feel really good about working for that company. So, tying this back to my last answer: the engaged employee is engaged with their company, and that means they're also engaged with the company's customers.

Gautam: Sure, I think I truly get the point. When you give employees that bit of appreciation, letting them know they've done a good job, I think that's the prime motivator for any employee to feel engaged and motivated, and to give the productivity that ultimately impacts the bottom line. Speaking of appreciation and recognition, which of course, as Vantage Circle, an employee engagement platform, we deliver through structured rewards and recognition programs and employee feedback tools: considering that rewards and recognition play an important role, what are some other ways to engage employees for an amazing customer experience?

Shep Hyken: Well, I think it's important to look at this up front. People say, pay them well and they'll perform well. True, but there's a flaw in that thinking. Pay them well, and they'll get excited about coming to work for you, but once they get there, the employee experience takes over, and it's more important than almost anything else. Compensation, while it needs to be fair, if not competitive, matters less and less once you provide employees the experience they want: feeling fulfilled in their job, and appreciated by their colleagues as well as their managers. People leave work, some of them, because they aren't paid well, but the majority leave because they don't like what's happening to them at work. They don't like how they're being treated, or maybe they're not being appreciated. I wrote about this in one of my books: the concept of serious fun. Now, fun isn't about having a party and a great time, it's an acronym. F stands for Fulfillment. U stands for Uniqueness. N stands for Next. Fulfillment is about hiring people who are genuinely good at the job we're hiring them to do today, or training them to become good at it, so they're fulfilled being in the right job for them. Uniqueness is about a unique talent an individual might have, to keep it simple, maybe somebody speaks a foreign language nobody else does, so we let them use that talent when it's appropriate. Even if it's a small amount of time relative to the overall job, using their talent to help the company makes them feel good. And then there's Next: what's coming up next? What are we most excited about? Is there a new product launching, have we hired someone new who's going to revamp an internal program? It doesn't matter what it is, if something excites employees, they'll be excited to come back to work the next day. Maybe the company is just such a great place to work that they're excited to come back every day. So: Fulfillment, Uniqueness, and Next. If you want engaged employees who do good work and engage well with customers, practice FUN: Fulfillment, Uniqueness, and Next.

Gautam: Thank you, Shep. That was a great explanation, and a great example of how you define fun. I'll definitely share this with my colleagues and across my workplace. I think we can sum it up as employee satisfaction, and that anticipation of, what am I going to get out of this? Will I ever be recognized for the effort I put into my work? Will my leader notice this? I think these are the questions every employee asks themselves, and if they feel fulfilled, that's when engagement levels go up, and as a result they show higher productivity, which directly impacts the customer experience as well. Am I right, did I get that right?

Shep Hyken: Yeah, what's happening on the inside of a company is felt on the outside by customers. It's cultural, no doubt: the culture of an organization, which starts with the leader, permeates through the organization out to the customer.

Gautam: I think that's very persuasive in its own way. Since we've been talking about customer experience and employee engagement, and our topic today is all about customer service: what is the definition of good customer service? I'm asking you this because you're an expert on this topic, so if you could enlighten us on what the definition of good customer service is, according to you.

Shep Hyken: Wow, there are so many definitions of customer service. Some people say customer service happens when the customer experience breaks down. I don't like that, I think that's the customer support department taking care of things when the experience breaks down. To me, customer service is not a department, it's a philosophy, and it becomes the responsibility of every single employee to understand what the service vision is for the company and act on it. Whether you've got outside customers, the people who pay us money, whether you call them customers, clients, patrons, guests, whatever, or internal customers, the people you work with. Sometimes you're supporting outside people, sometimes internal people, sometimes both. So the definition of customer service is really about being a good customer to your customer, if that makes sense. But I want to take it to another level: what does it mean to deliver good customer service? Do you have to be over the top and make people say, "that's the most amazing service I've ever had"? The answer is no, you don't. If you want people to come back again and again, you need to create a consistent and predictable experience that at least meets their expectations. I always say, just be a tiny bit better than average. That means your customers say things like, "they're always so helpful," or "they always get back to me quickly." The word always, followed by something positive, means there's predictability, there's consistency, and that's what everybody wants, it's common sense. I don't think it's that hard to deliver a good experience. Once in a while, something amazing will fall in your lap: maybe someone has a problem and you step up and do more than usual to take care of them, or maybe you overhear that it's a couple's anniversary at your restaurant and you surprise them with a little cake at the end. You're not going to do that every single time they come back, that's the kind of thing that just falls in your lap once in a while, and you're able to do something special. But if every time they come back the service is friendly, right on time, and you've got knowledgeable staff who can tell them what's on the menu, and people say, "they're always friendly, they're always helpful, it's always good," always followed by something positive, that's what matters most.

Gautam: Wow, I think that was great. When you spoke about consistency and repeat customers, my next question was actually related to that. I know you mentioned consistency, but I'd like to know a bit more: what is the key to good customer service? Could you expand on that a little more?

Shep Hyken: Sure. Let's go back to the word you just used a few minutes ago: culture. I think it starts with the right culture. Leadership has to define what customer service looks like in the organization, and I love it when they create a one-sentence statement, I call it the mantra: this is what we're about. The Ritz-Carlton's is, "we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." That's a great definition of what great service looks like in that organization. So leadership needs to define it, it needs to be communicated to every employee, front line and behind the scenes, everybody needs to be trained and understand what it is. Leadership, managers, and supervisors need to model and demonstrate that behavior. Remember, what's happening on the inside is felt on the outside, so treat your people the way you want your customers treated. And if somebody's out of alignment, bring them back in, they need to be taught what to do, and sometimes it's not just one person, it could be an entire department, or a division, or a region of a larger company. And finally, as we mentioned earlier in our conversation, you need to appreciate people and show them they're doing a good job. If they're doing great, let them know they're doing great.

Gautam: I completely agree with you on this. I'm someone who is deeply dedicated to company culture, DEI, diversity and inclusion activities, so whenever somebody speaks about good company culture, that really grabs my attention. I think our listeners would love to know this: you really don't have to shout about what you do for your customers. What you can do is show that you have a good company culture, that you appreciate your employees for even the smallest things they do, and that itself speaks volumes, that itself acts as a kind of PR.

Shep Hyken: Yeah, that itself acts as PR. And customers pick up on that. If a company is doing so well with its employees, with its products, with its culture, then customers think, I should really support them too.

Gautam: Sure. It was really nice talking to you today, and I'd love to keep this conversation going, but time won't permit us, so we're slowly approaching the end of our conversation. But before we let you go, how would you like to summarize your thoughts on the topic of engaging employees and customer service?

Shep Hyken: Let's go back to the main points of our conversation. Number one, the employee golden rule: do unto employees as you want done unto the customer, that sets the tone. Recognize that culture is what drives the experience, both internally and externally. If you want engaged employees, it's all about leadership, especially the person at the helm of the company saying, this is what we want, this is what we expect. So it starts with the culture. And I'd like to emphasize again that customer service is not a department, it's a philosophy to be embraced by everyone.

Gautam: Thank you so much, Shep. I think you've given our listeners, and myself, a lot of lines to quote. If I'm writing an article on customer service next time, I'll definitely refer back to this podcast. It was a great pleasure talking to you today, and I think our listeners would agree. But before we let you go, could you tell us how our listeners can reach out to you if they'd like to?

Shep Hyken: Yeah, just go to hyken.com, that's h-y-k-e-n dot com, and you'll learn everything about me there. By the way, one of the things available on my website is research I do every year, this year sponsored by Amazon, and it's available to you at no charge. All you have to do is click the link that says "research," and it'll take you straight to that page. It's free, and it's fun to read, there are some great stats, facts, and findings that will help you make great decisions related to service and experience.

Gautam: Thank you so much, Shep, I'll be the first one to go read it.

Shep Hyken: All right, thank you so much.

Gautam: Thank you so much for giving us your time today, and for speaking on this topic and giving our listeners such valuable knowledge about customer service and employee engagement. Listeners, you just heard Shep Hyken talk about how engaged employees can help deliver good customer service and customer experience. And with that, I'd like to sign off for today. Please stay tuned to Vantage Influencers Podcast for more such upcoming and knowledgeable content. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. Please subscribe to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our YouTube channel for new episodes.