Should Employees Satisfaction Come Before Customers?

I have often gone on the record as saying, if forced to make a choice between a great customer or great employee, I would choose the employee every time.

Now, thanks to a great new book out called "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution", there is much support for my passion of taking care of people, pleasing them, and enabling them to excel. In this very way, I get to have my cake and eat it too, delighting in great customers AND great employees!

The first chapter formalizes a long-time premise of mine: employee satisfaction is a source of competitive advantage. It is tangible, measurable, and can add actual value to the bottom line. Motivated people attract other motivated people; we seek others with values similar to ours. It's not an accident if your customers make fewer complaints, if your workers do also.

It all starts with a culture of trust, ample communication, empowerment, and actually having fun. Employee satisfaction results in satisfied customers, low turnover, increased productivity, improved recruiting, and financial success with a great bottom line.

Basically, dedicated employees WANT to go the extra mile; it's only natural. Going to greater lengths creates better business results; the data confirms it. Volume not only increases, but so does profitability; customers will pay more for the same product if their experience in getting it is superior.

This study, done by a PhD., is very well documented. It is a quick read; get a copy and experience it for yourself.

Especially in these troubled economic times, it is refreshing to see a conclusive case study that documents how important our employees are to our bottom line. Instead of cutting staff deeper, perhaps we should take some of this to heart. When the recovery comes, as it surely will, how effective will each of us be in retaining our top folks so we can beat our competition, win the very best customers, and have an ever-increasing bottom line?

The Next Threat: The Vook

As I follow the progress of the Digital Revolution & the Book, it seems there is a new challenge around every corner. The newest one is the Vook.

A Vook is, "a new innovation in reading that blends a well-written book, high quality video, and the power of the Internet into a single complete story." This allows you to enhance the story as you read with the video, connect with the author(s), and tie in your friends through social media, all on one screen, without switching between platforms.

The nice part is that it can truly enhance the reading experience, adding not only more pleasure, but helping retention in a learning situation. Another upside is that it will probably increase the amount of reading, especially in the lower grade levels.

Concerns, for me at least, are there as well. My first question is how can the intellectual property issue be adequately handled at $2 & $3 a copy in some cases? Secondly, my laptop is not a book, or even an e-book, let alone my Blackberry. It's a very cool thing, but how will the use of it actually shake out? How much availability of authors will there really be on-line at any moment in time? And will this be another technological development that serves to reduce the actual amount of reading and books in circulation?

If you go to vook.com you can at least familiarize yourself with what Vook is and how it works.

Let me know your thoughts; it will be interesting to see how this develops.