Customer Experience and Employee Pride

As I logged in today I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted. I guess all those posts were written in my head instead of online. Oh well, that's what happens when you are busy.

In late June I received a comment on my posting "Creating detractors and why you should not use AIT". A previous AIT employee, Steve W writes:

"Sorry to hear about your bad experience, Deborah. I worked at AIT awhile back and your complaints come as no surprise. Let's just say you aren't the only customer they've managed to drive away. There really is no excusing such a poor customer experience. I'm sorry to have ever been employed by them."

Wow, does that say it all about this company's lack of focus on customer experience? How would you like your employees to be sorry they were ever employed by you?

This leads me to an observation. In all the companies I have worked with in customer experience, very few do anything to measure employee loyalty and employee perception of the organizations ability to deliver to customer expectations. What a missed opportunity. While collecting the customer's perceptions and experience is critical to improving your performance, are you missing a key opportunity with your employees to evaluate and improve performance while raising employee pride. Your employees are the ones handling the customer issues, they are quite aware of what you need to do differently. Don't forget this very important stakeholder in your feedback processes.

On a related note, I found this article on Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Enterprise was showcased in Fred's book, "The Ultimate Question". Looks like they take employee pride to the next level investing their philanthropic efforts in areas that matter most to their employees. What a great way to further employee pride. Next time I rent a car, I'm renting from Enterprise.