A Happy Staff Equals Happy Customers
By Anne Fisher

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Surly, argumentative, indifferent, rude--is that how your customers would describe your customer-service people? If so, it's not too surprising. A couple of years of recession, followed by an achingly slow recovery with stagnant wages, have left legions of customer-service employees feeling overworked, underappreciated, and underpaid--and guess who gets the brunt of it? "There's a definite, proven connection between employee happiness and customer happiness," notes JoAnna Brandi, a consultant based in Boca Raton, Fla., who specializes in helping companies connect those dots. "Cranky, stressed-out staffers pass their frustrations on, and then top management is mystified as to why customers don't come back."

Together with Steve Simpson, head of Australian consulting firm Keystone Management Services, Brandi recently conducted a fascinating study of the "unwritten ground rules" in corporate cultures that determine how employees, and hence customers, are treated. (A detailed summary of the report is available at www.customercarecoach.com/pdf/UGR_summary.pdf.) In general, small companies in the survey come off looking a lot better than big ones. When asked to complete the sentence "Around here, customers are ...," for instance, 72% of people working for firms with fewer than 50 employees said something positive. At companies with 1,000 or more employees, just 37% did.

It may sound corny, but when people feel valued, they tend to spread sunshine. Just ask Don Slivensky, CEO of MicroTek Computer Labs, who makes it his business to hire the right people and then spoil them rotten. (For more on companies that put customers first, see "Five Rules for Finding the Next Dell.") Headquartered in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., MicroTek runs computer-training classrooms; its customers are instructors from other companies. Slivensky looks to hire outgoing types who can make decisions on their own: "We want our people to make any customer problem their own problem." MicroTek staffers have changed tires, walked dogs, and sewed on buttons for instructors. In return, Slivensky showers his employees with goodies. He has paid for honeymoons, given down payments on homes, and sent $500 gift cards to expectant moms. "If people are happy, they enjoy taking care of customers," Slivensky says. "It's not a chore." He must be on to something. MicroTek scored a 3.96 out of a possible four stars in a recent customer-satisfaction poll. Employee turnover is practically nil. In the 12 years of MicroTek's existence, Slivensky says, "I think two people have left."

Or consider the Seattle Sonics, whose customer service NBA commissioner David Stern describes as "setting the gold standard for the NBA fan experience." Says the Sonics' head of guest relations, Pete Winemiller: "When we train our people, we ask them, 'Who is the most important person in the arena at any time?' The answer is, You, the employee--because if you don't feel good about being here, neither will anybody else." Like Slivensky, Winemiller wants customer-service staffers to think for themselves. "People who feel frustrated and powerless will not serve customers well," he says. "But when you have 500 problem solvers in the building--that's magic."