It is a basic principle of promotional tactics that motivated, smiling employees attract loyal customers. Yet one of the hardest concepts to get across to business owners is that your employees and your staff should be treated as customers. You can do all the clever marketing in the world, but if your staff isn’t on board, if your employees aren’t engaged and enthusiastic, the results will be unsatisfying.
You should be asking your employees on a regular basis, by way of employee satisfaction surveys, what they think about everything you do and how they feel about working for you.
Start with input from every single manager in your business. It’s their neighborhood, it’s their career, and they should have a sense of owner- ship in any plan you come up with.
Managers always have something to complain about. Let them.
Everybody needs to vent, and you need to leave your ego at the door.
You want the truth, not a response that makes you feel good. You want a candid evaluation from every internal customer, from your top-line managers right down to the guy who vacuums the floor. What do they really think about the product or service, the pricing, the atmosphere—
all of it?
Managers are notorious for having great ideas but either feeling uncomfortable about speaking up or simply not having time to do so in the rush of everyday business. You want to give them a sense that you
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really want their opinions on what the opportunities in the business are and what the strengths and weaknesses are. Even if you don’t agree with all of their opinions, you’ve made your managers your partners.
When you get down the ladder to your staff, you must make sure that your internal customer survey provides your employees an opportunity to give you an anonymous opinion about what they think of your busi- ness. These are the people who make or break you.
At the start of this process, you may be nervous: “The staff is just going to slam us.” That’s not always the case, but if people do slam you, you might deserve it. The insights that come out of these surveys frequently surprise business owners and managers.
You might even think, “My people aren’t that bright,” only to discover that they are not only bright but caring and filled with valuable knowl- edge and insight. You just never asked them.
You can find standard forms online that you can either use as is or customize to suit your particular business. One vendor is AllBusi- ness.com. There are services that allow you to set up a survey online, although doing it in person is the only way to guarantee participation.
Ask around, do some research, and find the form that’s right for you.
The internal customer survey must be self-administered and absolutely confidential. If it isn’t, you’re wasting time. The answers won’t be honest or useful. Put a staff member in charge of this process and hold an all-company meeting. Tell the members of your staff why they’re being asked to fill out the survey, that their feedback will be taken seriously, and that the survey will be totally anonymous.
To demonstrate that you mean what you say, have your employees drop their completed surveys into a preaddressed FedEx box that is sealed in their presence for shipping to a research company or some other objec- tive consultant for tabulation. There are many companies that do this for a reasonable fee.
Don’t try to tabulate these results yourself. You’ll defeat the purpose, and you won’t get honest answers. Build trust and you get trustworthy employees.
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In your survey, ask your employees how they feel about themselves;
how they feel about the company as an employer; and what they think about the marketing, about the culture, and about diversity in the work- place. You may not want to change some things, but you should know what your staff thinks before you go out and spend a fortune on your next set of uniforms or new office equipment.
How do your employees feel about the salary and benefits you offer compared with those offered by other companies in the area? Of course, they’re going to think their salary and benefits are lower, but often that issue can be handled very simply. If you know they’re misinformed, you can go out and do a little research yourself. If you’re right, hold a staff meeting and show your employees in black and white that the grass is not really greener on the other side. You may, in this situation, even find that you’re able to reinforce some of the benefits that you do offer, benefits that your staff may not know about or understand.
If they’re right, maybe you have a clue to the reasons for your high turnover, low quality of staff performance, or any of a host of other issues.
Ask your employees in this survey if they see your business as a place they would recommend to friends or associates as a place to patronize. If your employees would not recommend you, you have a huge opportu- nity for improvement.
These surveys should give a total score for the store (or store by store, if you have more than one outlet). However, within each store, they should be broken down by category or employee activity. In the food serv- ice business, which employs more people—12 million—than any other industry, you would want your results broken out to reflect attitudes in the back of the house (kitchen staff), the front of the house (dining room and bar staff), and management. In an auto dealership, you’d break it down by service (garage and service desk separately), parts, sales (used and new), accounting, and so on. Even the people who manage your parking lot should be included and reported. Be creative and look inside your four walls to see who your internal customers are, what categories they naturally fall into, and how they can be surveyed.
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What you do with the results of this survey is study your business to see the big picture and a lot of smaller pictures that make it up. Look for opportunities to correct problems and build on advantages. Listen with an open mind.
See my book The 10-Minute Marketer’s Handbookand visit my Web site, www.tomfeltenstein.com, for more details on the survey.