Employee Satisfaction Key to Consumer Satisfaction

JOHANNA NAUTWIMACONSUMER-CENTRIC is a business strategy grounded in the ideology that consumers come first and must be at the core of a business.

In a world of increasing and ceaseless competition, designing and implementing appropriate strategies to make businesses stand out and maximise profits cannot be overlooked.

Companies apply diverse strategies and consumer satisfaction is no exception. However, in doing so, the vast majority commit a common blunder – that of operating under the misperception that ‘consumers come first’. As it is an accepted approach in most parts of the world, almost everyone is silent about it, resulting in a number of businesses, predominantly SMEs, performing poorly, often without even noticing it.

You cannot successfully attain consumer satisfaction if you have disgruntled employees. How you treat your employees is reflected in how they treat customers, be it with grease or milk. This implies a direct transition of satisfaction from the manager through the employees to the consumers.

Therefore, a manager’s main responsibility is to ensure that employees are treated well, are satisfied and are happy at work before they begin to worry about consumer satisfaction. That is why Doug Conant, the former president and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company advised that a business that wants to win the marketplace must first win the workplace.

You not only impede consumer satisfaction if you tyrannise your employees, you also generally militate against the Kantian approach: Immanuel Kant suggests that people should not be treated as machines as they have the dignity that must be valued. Thus, they should be treated as ends and not just as a means to the ends of others.

As much as you may want your employees to ground their service to consumers in this approach, you must equally apply the same approach when serving your employees.

Stephen R Covey, an author and a businessman, has also urged managers to treat their employees precisely how they would want them to treat their consumers. Otherwise, both the consumers and the business will bear the consequences, as elaborated on by Simon Sinek, a marketing consultant and author.

I highly recommend that managers consider reshuffling their strategies and control system through the prioritisation of an employee-centric approach. This means creating a conducive environment for employees, respecting them and taking good care of them so that they take good care of the consumers.

Hence, Harold Schultz, the founder and former CEO of Starbucks has guided managers not to view the benevolent treatment of employees as an additional cost but to rather see it as a powerful energiser that can steer the growth of a business to a higher level beyond its target.

Employees come first, and not the other way around, because consumer satisfaction depends on employee satisfaction.

* Johanna Pangeiko Nautwima is a business management student at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, Ohangwena region.