The Acid Test: Customer satisfaction surveys reveal how your employees are doing in UAE

Sir Richard Branson has famously said “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients”.

Leading management consultants today are articulating the same thought differently. They say that if you want to really know how your people are doing – Conduct a customer satisfaction survey.

The Customer Satisfaction – Business Performance dynamic is so self-evident, no expert- speak is necessary. If still bent upon having some proof, just review recent histories of a few companies. Companies that have fallen on bad times will be suffering from low esteem in their customer circle; successful organizations will be enjoying a high score in customer approval. Given the multi-benefits it can deliver, a brief discussion about customer satisfaction survey would be interesting.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Hesket and co-authors explain customer satisfaction in a nice equation. Customer loyalty drives growth and profits. Customer loyalty is generated by customer satisfaction, which in turn is a result of the quality of services/ products. Company policies foster employee engagement and better-engaged employees improve quality. Each component in this relationship is the driver as well as the result of the others.

Building upon concepts on similar lines by various management gurus, consulting practitioners have developed customer satisfaction surveys as a performance measurement and management tool (Williams and others, 2016.)

Take a simple real-life example that is familiar

There are several HR consultancies in the UAE. For your HR consultancy requirements, you may try the big names or the ones that happen to send you a mailer. Finally, you settle for the HR consultancy that meets your needs; your choice is based on personal experience. Satisfied customers accelerate the HR consultancy’s growth, which in turn encourages the people in the agency to deliver better services.

The real-life scenario sets out the roadmap for customer satisfaction survey and the multiple benefits it can deliver.

Aims and a packet of benefits:

Most of the time, companies conduct a customer satisfaction survey for marketing purposes but the objectives for a management consultant could be different. While both survey the same attributes, the consultant analyses the data for measuring the performance of the business and prepare a roadmap for converting human resources into human capital.

Some of the HR Management studies, for e.g., Martinaityte (2016,) have looked at the performance of only front-line staff during their customer satisfaction surveys. Our consultants at HLB HAMT, however, go beyond this limitation, as we believe that quality is the outcome of an effort by the entire company. We analyze the performance of all the stakeholders ranging from designers, production, finance, warehouse staff, front-line staff, and even the logistics personnel.

The comprehensive analysis will help you to:

• Analyze the strengths of your product/ services in terms of quality and marketing,
• Identify skill-gaps and which of the functions (production, sales, finance, distribution, etc.,) are lagging,
• Develop scientifically purposed Learning and Development programs for each function,
• Design a Performance linked Reward and Recognition Policy,
• Fine-tune Human Resources and recruitment strategy for the entire business
• Control costs

To put it succinctly, customer satisfaction survey helps to drive growth and profitability. To know how to customize the strategy for Dubai, Abu Dhabi or elsewhere in the UAE, reach out to our HR advisory specialists and we will be glad to assist.

Would you like to rate us on Google?      Yes    No