Everyone knows that one of the best indicators of profit and growth is customer satisfaction, but what are the best indicators of customer satisfaction? When it comes to predicting how satisfied customers are with your service and products, research indicates that service climate is a strong indicator for customer satisfaction, which is no surprise. Service climate includes the entire environment in which customers receive service from your employees. On that note, service climate is relatively easy to measure in the workplace, as employees will have a good handle on the environment where they provide services.
How Service Climate Predicts Customer Satisfaction
When measuring service climate, businesses often survey customers with questions about the quickness of service, quality of service, whether their needs are met sufficiently, and whether employees have the tools to provide quality service. Service climate is linked with outcomes such as willingness to return and intent to recommend to other potential customers.
While the customer’s opinion is the most important in this case, employees can also give valuable insight to some degree. In particular, employees will be the first to speak up about whether they have an adequate workplace to serve their customers well, while customers may be less aware of the necessary tools to provide good service.
Does Employee Satisfaction Predict Customer Satisfaction?
Testing employee satisfaction often involves asking employees about their work attitudes. Employees who are generally more positive about their workplace have higher satisfaction, which correlates with customers reporting better service and an experience that is more positive overall.
While service climate is still more reliable as an indicator for customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction is an effective measure as well. A combination of service climate and employee satisfaction measures create effective indicators of customer satisfaction from within the workplace, where you have the most influence and ability to create change as an HR professional.
Source: Salary.com