In Part I of this series, you learned how turnover blocks your ability to consistently deliver your intended customer experience and turn a profit.
Now in Part II, we’ll continue with the concepts of Stable Quality Management (SQM) and being Fully-Staffed and Fully-Trained (FSFT) as competitive keys to earning the active loyalty of your employees and customers. You will also be presented with a clear, detailed path of how to earn active loyalty – the key to winning the battle of earning employee engagement and retention – and shifting the tide away from turnover simply being a part of doing business.
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Most for-profit enterprises measure success in terms of some variant of growth in sales and profit. However, if you believe that SQM and FSFT are your competitive keys, then you have to add earning the active loyalty of employees and customers to the definition. I think in pictures, so let me recast this statement as a general business model of unit (clinic, store, or restaurant)--level success:
That’s a lot of x’s, eggs, and arrows, but it has worked well as a teaching tool for many years. What it says about the path to success bears repeating: Whenever an employee (hourly or management) or customer has a memorably positive or negative experience of your company, it creates thoughts such as “This is great!” on the upside or “I can hardly wait to get out of here!” on the downside. These thoughts lead to feelings of excitement when they are positive, and anger when they are negative.
These feelings create intentions such as “I am going to make (the name of your company) my career” on the upside, and “Heck with this! I’m going to tell my friends to avoid this place like the plague” on the downside. People put their intentions into action in a thousand ways, such as Facebooking, Yelping, quitting, referring, returning, volunteering for a shift, or being a no-show. In short, the stakeholder’s experience drives the stakeholder’s emotions, emotions drive the stakeholder’s behavior, and behavior drives the unit’s results. The multiplication signs between the eggs mean each experience hinges on the previous: in other words, a sustainably great customer experience cannot be built on the back of a mediocre manager or hourly employee experience.
Download our whitepaper: The Battle You Don't Know You're Fighting That Could Cost You the War - Part 2