Metrics for building loyalty

I attended the IQPC Summit held in Orlando, FL this week and was honored to co-present at a pre-conference workshop on metrics that matter in a call center. During the presentation, we gathered a few key elements of what are the critical drivers of customer satisfaction as well as the correlation of employee engagement from coaching and other financial metrics. I was able to confirm that investing in employees and coaching were the factors that created a culture that leading organizations truly believe in...I was certainly impressed and would like to share them.

Employee attitude is a key leading indicator of customer attitude and satisfied customers help the business they patronize to survive and thrive. In brief we were able to come to an understanding and conclude that :-

1.   Employees who find meaning at work are more competent, committed and contributing which in turn raises their competence, commitment and sense of contribution which in turn leads to increased customer satisfaction and commitment which in turn leads to customer commitment which in turn leads to better financial results for the company.

Making meaning not money (although that is important for agent) is a significant cause to their loyalty and a leading indicator of long-term organizational success. So-called intangibles explain about 50% of the market value of publicly traded companies. What I call or term as Intangibles are simply the assets and capabilities of a company that cannot be touched or put on a balance sheet but give investors confidence in the future earnings of the company. Intangibles could also  include factors such as leadership, talent, innovation, skill and vision. Investors increasingly value these intangible organizational capabilities because they increase confidence in a company’s future success. 

Employee competence, commitment, passion and energy are among these intangible assets. Employees can be competent even committed but still lack passion for their work. Meaning reinforces employee’s passion for work because it ties what they do to a greater good that also pays off in the marketplace. Passion for work is an intangible asset that has shown to have a direct impact on a firm’s market value.

Abundant organizations are profitable organizations but rather than focusing only on assumptions of competition and scarcity, abundant organizations also focus on opportunity and synergy. Rather than accepting the fear-based approach in tough times, abundant organizations concentrate on bringing order, integrity and purpose out of chaos and disintegration. Rather than restricting themselves to narrow, self-serving agendas, abundant organizations integrate a diversity of human needs, experiences and timetables. Both in good times and bad times, abundant organizations create meaning for both the employees who comprise them and the customers who keep them in business. Employees, customers, investors and communities benefit when employees find meaning at work and when companies give meaning to society. So what do the statistics tell about these so-called "soft, warm and fuzzy" metrics...here are some of the results that I was able to gather in my research...

• -    Over a 10yr period (1998-2008), “best companies to work for” have a 6.8% stock appreciation versus 1.2% for the average firm.
• -    Over a seven year period, the most-admired firms in Fortune’s list of admired companies had doubled the market returns of their competitors.
• -     The probability of an initial public offering goes from 60-79 % when the company invests in it’s people.
• -    Sixty-one hospitals in the United Kingdom had a 7% decline in the death rates when they invested in the well-being of their staff.
• -    A one-standard deviation increase in high performance work practices yields $27,044 increase in sales revenues per employee per year and $3,814 increase in profit per employee per year
• -   Only 13% of disengaged employees would recommend their company’s products and services compared with 78% of engaged employees.
• -      Disengaged and stressed out employees are 10 X more likely to say that they will leave the company within a year.