The biggest concern for most small businesses is the happiness of their customers. A happy customer is a loyal customer, and loyal customers are what drives big, juicy profit margins. If you’re finding it hard to keep your customers happy, it may be because you’re focussing on the wrong people. Perhaps it’s time for you to spend more resources looking after the people responsible for making your customers happy: your employees. Here are three ways you should be moulding happier employees, and in turn, happier customers.
Take Their Wellbeing Seriously
There are a lot of companies out there which will encourage their staff to come into work, even when they’re sick. If you’re not salaried, I totally understand the want to not miss out on any hours. However, a lot of business owners could benefit massively by forgetting about productivity once in a while, and focussing more on the wellbeing of employees. Besides, if you get one person to come in sick, you could have five more cases the next day. Business owners should also be implementing things which will protect their workforce from any potential risks they might face, such as a good health and safety policy, or communication tech like AlertMedia’s emergency notification solution. Make your employee’s wellbeing a top priority, and they’ll be happier, healthier, and will apply themselves more at work.
Encourage them to Voice Concerns
Just as many businesses use social media and suggestions forms to give their customers a way to voice their concerns, it’s important to encourage your staff to keep you and the other higher-ups in the loop about what’s happening in their departments. Obviously, micromanagement can be extremely detrimental to the productivity of your business, and you shouldn’t be asking for every little detail of what’s happening in different teams. However, if some issue is big enough to disrupt an employee’s workflow, you need to know about it. Workers can often find it difficult to voice their concerns, feeling intimidated by senior colleagues who might wave them away or even take punitive measures against them. If your customers had an issue, you wouldn’t want to go by ignoring it. By the same token, you should always make sure your employees are voicing their concerns.
Offer Some Rewards
You reward your loyal customers with special offers, great customer service, and a high-value product or service. In the same way, you should be rewarding your staff for all their hard work. This is often the one staple of a happy workforce that small businesses are missing. You can do this by giving them a little flexibility as to how they tackle their work, offering career progression opportunities and valuable guidance, giving raises where they’re due, and giving your whole workforce little treats here and there. This doesn’t have to be some kind of grand gesture that will make the news. However, dishing out little rewards every now and then will show your employees that you appreciate the work they put in, and go a long way in terms of morale.