Yes, happy employees make for happy customers

Just ask the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Workday. Or ask me.

I’ve always been a firm believer that happy employees make for happy customers. It’s one of my mantras.

My work is focused on people. Enabling organizations to engage and retain talent – and wow customers – is the core mission of what I do. I assist clients to achieve success through people and overcome challenges that impact success; creating places where employees enjoy working and customers enjoy doing business.

It’s not always easy work. Actually, most of the time it’s challenging. But I like a challenge. And I like making a difference. However, not all leaders and organizations hold the same belief that happy employees make for happy customers. Sadly, some are even of the mindset that people can just be replaced.

So, I was somewhat ecstatic when I recently attended the Fast Company Innovation Festival (#FCFESTIVAL) and listened to the session, Let Them Lead: Cultivating an Employee-First Culture, with Aneel Bhusri and Ellen Kullman. Ellen is the CEO & President of Carbon and Aneel is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Workday.

Although I have not worked with Carbon, I have worked with several clients on Workday implementations applying my technology adoption and transformation expertise. I’ve always found Workday to be a people-focused organization with employees who live the values. But I had never heard their focus on people mentioned in such a straightforward and simple way as I did from Aneel in the Fast Company session.

“I’ve never seen a company that has unhappy employees and happy customers…so if we take care of our employees, they’ll take care of our customers.” – Aneel Bhusri, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Workday

I’m glad the sessions had participants on mute and off-camera. As when I heard this I immediately perked up in my chair and yelled, YES! Actually, I yelled, Duh. No shit! Then I yelled, yes. Either way, given I was in my home office, my dog even gave me a startled bark. I couldn’t help myself. It’s not nearly often enough I hear leaders of successful organizations publicly tell large groups of people that the employee experience and the customer experience are clearly linked. Well, unless I’m working with those leaders.

My belief is in line with Aneel’s and Workday. People are the greatest asset to an organization. People service your customers, solve problems, and help drive innovation. To create a great customer experience, you need a great employee experience. Empower employees to wow customers. Happy employees provide higher levels of service delivery and innovation leading to an enhanced customer experience and increased brand loyalty and revenue.

Success requires creating a positive employee experience so that employees are more likely to create a positive customer experience. When the people are happy and giving 100%, the customers are happy, and the organization succeeds.

About Scott Span, MSOD, CSM: is CEO at Tolero Solutions. As a people strategist, leadership coach, and change and transformation specialist, his work is focused on people. Through his consulting and training work he supports clients to survive and thrive through change and transition and create people-focused cultures and a great employee experience. Through his coaching work, he supports people willing to dig deeper to identify and overcome what’s holding them back, change behaviors, accelerate performance and achieve their goals.